Psychology Today Blogs - Cathy Malchiodi

Women Making Art: A Time Guiltily Seized

Cathy Malchiodi — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:23:28 -0700

All artists pursue their calling at a price, but for women artistic creativity sometimes comes with intense sacrifice, guilt, ambivalence, and personal challenge. A compelling documentary film on women artists explores the barriers to the creative process and how art ultimately transforms women’s lives and those around them.

Like many female artists, I cannot begin to count the times I have been waiting for water to boil while thinking about the composition of a painting, or running back and forth from the studio to the stove to make dinner or the laundry room to put the clothes into the dryer. Certainly, artists of either gender may engage in this dance between the pursuit of art and the domestic life, but women in the arts know what I am talking about. One of my favorite authors bell hooks captures much of this internal struggle when she writes in Art on My Mind, “We worry about not giving enough of our care and personhood to loved ones. Many of us still labor with the underlying fear that if we care too much about art, we will be companionless, alone. And some of us who have companions or children make sure that when they come home there are no visible signs of our artistic selves present."

bell hooks is correct – in spite of the feminist movement in both society and the arts, women are still conflicted about how to divide their energies between creativity and the home front. And they sometimes even wonder how these decisions about where to put one’s passion are killing the imagination and passion necessary to fuel their artistic creativity, dreams, and visions.

Filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll has taken on these aspects of art in women’s lives in her documentary, "Who Does She Think She Is?” The film relates the stories of five women who are professional artists and mothers, the critical importance of art in their lives, and how both parenting and art making are often devalued in our culture. Boll was the co-executive producer of the acclaimed documentary, “Born Into Brothels,” about the lives of children in Calcutta's red light district and the power of art and winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Her current film is due for national release this month; take two minutes right now to enjoy this trailer:

Being a caregiver and being an artist have some things in common—neither is generally a paid position. And both are about engaging in something you love—the care of children, partners, and family and the deep desire to make art. What becomes challenging, as unfolded throughout Boll’s film, is that women are also expected to make money from their creative skills and talents while juggling roles of marriage/partnership, motherhood, art, and economic realities. Despite these hurdles, what becomes clear is that women and often those they care for strongly believe that it is all worth it, and that, in fact, the duality of artist and caregiver enriches everyone’s life, rather than diminishing relationships or creative passion.

Adrienne Rich once said of creating poetry that it is a time “guiltily seized.” While the moments are stolen, I know from myself, conversations shared with other women, and the stories told in Boll’s film that it is every bit worth the struggle. Women in the arts know that in the end it is not acclaim, praise or approval that we seek to attain; it’s the irresistible journey to transform the self and live a life that is whole.

http://www.cathymalchiodi.com

Telling without Talking: Breaking the Silence of Domestic Violence

Cathy Malchiodi — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:23:49 -0700

Speaking the truth about domestic violence is a step toward healing for all survivors. But when talking about violence brings shame, ambivalence, and fear, art therapy gives survivors not only a voice, but also is a way to raise consciousness about the profound effects of battering and all forms of abuse between partners.

While I have no explanation for the psychology behind the current financial crisis, as a therapist I am certain of one psychological effect of an economic turndown -- an increase in domestic violence. In this time of economic uncertainty, job loss, home foreclosures, and increased costs of living, pressures mount in families and frayed tempers inevitably will give way to an increase in battering and abuse. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, domestic violence is a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person may all be part of the dynamics, including any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure or wound another individual.

While domestic violence can happen to anyone of any race, age, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic status, or gender, for the past 25 years I have worked with adult women and child survivors and mostly those who have found refuge in shelters and safe houses. I suspect that with the continuing economic rollercoaster, we will see a rise in not only reports of domestic violence, but also a strain on these community-based programs that help women and children leave abusive relationships.

Although personal safety and a violence-free life are the first and foremost issues for anyone who is the victim of domestic violence, the long term healing process involves recovery from cumulative trauma, often posttraumatic stress reactions, and almost always personal shame and loss of self. Art therapy, which formally began as a field and treatment shortly after World War II, continues to be widely adopted to help battered women and children deal with their physical and emotional scars. Art as a healing force does not come easy for those whose lives have been controlled, are accustomed to betrayal and punishment, and have learned self-hatred. But inevitably when it does, creativity and imagination restore a sense of possibility, identity, and reconnection with parts of the self that were silenced in order to survive the violence. While survivors often feel shame in talking about abuse, talking about their artworks is an experience of finally coming home.

The tradition of art as a voice for domestic violence survivors has spawned a number of well-known programs, including the Clothesline Project, a project to address violence against women. In 1990, visual artist Rachel Carey-Harper, inspired by the AIDS quilt, presented the concept of using shirts hanging on a clothesline as a way to raise consciousness. Since doing the laundry was always considered women's work and women often exchanged information over backyard fences while hanging their clothes out to dry, the concept of the clothesline became the vehicle. Each year thousands of women now tell their stories of survival—and commemorate victims who died from domestic violence—by using words and/or artwork to decorate a t-shirt to be exhibited on a clothesline. And programs such as A Window Between Worlds in Venice, CA, serve as models for how art helps both women and children develop a sense of hope, possibility, and safety.

In her seminal volume, Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman echoes the very reason that violence must be transformed in some way in order for recovery to begin: “Certain violations are too terrible to utter out loud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable …Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried.” Domestic violence is one of those atrocities that continues to plague lives and for its survivors, is often too horrific to verbalize. Unfortunately, it may increase and intensify in these weeks and months if the expected financial crises continue. And while art is not the panacea for abuse, it is certainly a way through it and one that not only transforms the atrocities of violence, but also sends a powerful message that ultimately breaks the silence.

If you need help, please contact National Domestic Violence Hotline at http://www.ndvh.org/ or phone 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

www.cathymalchiodi.com

Music and Memory: She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Cathy Malchiodi — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:16:25 -0700

The preliminary results of a six-month online survey of over 3000 people and 69 different nationalities were presented at this week’s British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool. So is music really a prompt for your long-forgotten memories? And is it a good thing or bad thing?

As I reported in Music and Memory: Get Back to Where You Once Belonged, researchers Martin Conway and Catriona Morrison at the University of Leeds are in the process of conducting what is thought to be the largest online survey of people’s memories of the Beatles. After collecting responses for six months, the team reported a number of interesting findings at the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool this week.

Somewhat predictably, most of the study participants were teenagers during the Beatle’s popularity during the mid to late 1960s, although participants’ ages ranged from 17 to 87 years old. According to Morrison, fourteen years is the age when music has its strongest impact on us and we generally arrive at many of our life-long preferences for certain music during teenage years. Additionally, the researchers note that most memories reported in the survey were extremely positive, with one exception: the murder of John Lennon in front of his New York home in 1980. Participants also recalled numerous sensory experiences associated with their memories, such as smells, sounds, and sights.

The overwhelmingly positive nature of these findings brings to question the connection between music, memory, and emotion and what the relationship ultimately means. For example, music and positive feelings have been linked with the increase in dopamine, a hormone and neurotransmitter that is associated with the pleasure system in the brain. And as Morrison explains, musical prompts may help not so much in storage, but in memory retrieval, perhaps acting as aids for recall when memory fails us as we age. Good news for an aging population in which one in five people will be over the age of 60 years by Y2010.

The study will continue for the foreseeable future and you can still add your Beatles memory to the Magical Memory Tour project. In the mean time, what song generated the most memories? The 1963 “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.” With a song like that, you know you should be glad.

When Katrina Happened, Children Drew: Three Years Later

Cathy Malchiodi — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:24:15 -0700

It’s the eve of the third anniversary of a disaster that literally drowned a city, displaced thousands, and remains a reminder of failed recovery efforts. Three years later, some children are coping while others still struggle.

I visited the Ninth Ward area of New Orleans earlier this year. Traveling through neighborhoods on pot-holed streets I saw houses being rebuilt along side residences that were abandoned in 2005. Some homes still had the ominous X symbol used by rescuers in the first days after the flood to indicate that a structure had been searched for the living and the dead. While driving past a row of homes near the levee, a young and strikingly beautiful girl walked down the sidewalk toward the car. I rolled down the window to say hello, but was greeted to my surprise by a 7-year-old’s rage—unsmiling, she extended her middle finger at me. Her anger was tangible and unforgettable.

Having worked with so many traumatized children over the past two decades, I continue to closely follow the status of the child survivors of Katrina. My art therapy colleagues who worked with children in the now closed Renaissance Village FEMA site provided intervention to hundreds of children up until recently. I have learned firsthand and from mental health professionals who work in the region that the anger and sense of betrayal in many child survivors continues to be palpable, the result of trauma, displacement, and loss. Others, like researchers Joy and Howard Osofsky,report evidence of resilience despite direct exposure to crises and unspeakable experiences. In contrast to other disasters, New Orleans has not yet made the transition to recovery that other communities affected by crisis have made, including the rebuilding of human services and educational infrastructure. Any degree of resilience in its survivors is, in and itself, a miracle.

In remembrance of a national tragedy and as a reminder of how Katrina’s aftermath continues to affect thousands of individuals, take a couple of minutes and watch a brief excerpt from the film, “Katrina’s Children.” Filmmaker Laura Belsey’s compelling work exceptionally honors the smallest survivors, but includes no footage of winds or floods, rescues, or mayhem at the Superdome. Children are the heart of this documentary that offers a rare opportunity to view their drawings and listen to their first person accounts about the day of the hurricane. Their images and narratives illuminate the core of human spirit, helping us to more deeply understand how it feels to lose everything and, at the same time, leaving us to wonder why something so terrible happened.

When Trauma Happens, People Draw: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Unforgettable Fire

Cathy Malchiodi — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:41:18 -0700

More than six decades have passed since the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; this month marked the 63rd anniversary of the events that changed the history of modern war. And the A-Bomb survivors’ drawings and paintings continue to teach us about atrocity, empathy, and ultimately, humanity.

Lynne Soraya and Satoshi Kanazawa recently provided enlightening and provocative commentaries on the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Like many people, I read about the bombings as part of a history or political science class covering WWII. It wasn’t until the first year I worked as an art therapist when I traveled to see an exhibit of drawings and paintings by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I finally began to grasp the impact of these events. Those drawings and paintings forever changed what I thought I knew about trauma and war.

In 1974, 77-year-old Mr. Iwakichi Kobayashi walked into a television station in Japan with a painting of what he recalled about August 6th, 1945. The image was his memory of seeing people burned by the atomic bombed dropped on Hiroshima that day. As a result, the television station decided to put out a call for drawings by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings to “draw a picture of the A-Bomb.” What followed was unexpected: More than 2000 drawings and paintings were submitted to the station. Half were sent by mail; the remainder of the images were brought to the station by the survivors, who arrived over the next two years as if on long-awaited pilgrimages. The drawings and paintings were created on the backs of calendars, paper used in sliding doors, and sheets torn from notebooks. The majority of the images included written explanations, often on the pictures themselves.

This collection of now famous drawings and paintings by hibakusha (A-Bomb survivors) is now housed in the Peace Memorial Museum and pieces from the collection form a traveling exhibition from time to time. They also are the subject of a book, Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors, an account of what happened and a catalogue of images of the mushroom cloud and aftermath of fire, black rain, and radiation.

While the images made by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki each capture a different moment in time, they also mirror the individual and collective “felt” memories of man-made disaster. It is a stunning example of how implicit memory—also known as sensory memory—is still present in trauma survivors even decades after direct exposure to war, terrorism, or disaster. It only took Mr. Kobayashi’s single painting and a request to those who were until then silent to provide the catalyst for a torrent of visual memories and nightmarish narratives to emerge. Those stories remained untold for close to 30 years, materializing as vividly as if the events depicted happened only moments ago. When trauma happens, people express what the mind and body remembers, sooner or later.

Trauma theory aside, viewing these images makes it impossible to disconnect ourselves from the pain, torment, and misery of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, long after the events and long after many of the artists have died. They stir the empathy that Soraya asks of us, dissolving that which is “different,” “foreign,” or “abstract” and revealing that which is undeniably universal – suffering. Ultimately, these images challenge us to find our own sense of compassion, and in the end, compel our own confrontation with humanity.

Next post: Katrina Happened, Children Still Draw -- Three Years Later

Music and Memory: Get Back to Where You Once Belonged

Cathy Malchiodi — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:58:07 -0700

To what extent does music shape autobiographical memory? And how does it help increase understanding of human memory? The Magical Memory Tour is creating the largest database on music, memory, and personal history ever attempted.

Researchers Martin Conway and Catriona Morrison at the University of Leeds have developed a survey on autobiographical memory and the impact of The Beatles and their music on our lives. It's based on the premise that John, Paul, George, and Ringo have had a powerful effect on millions of people over the last four decades. In brief, the collective work of the Fab Four spans cultures and generations far more than any musicians' in recent history. The researchers believe that outcomes from their study will enhance understanding of how we develop memory as children, how adults form memories, and if and how memories change over the lifespan, into older adulthood.

The final results will be presented at the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool from September 6 – 11, 2008. So before you keep reading, take a few minutes and go to the Magical Memory Tour site to add your data (you don’t have to be a Beatles fan to participate).

Autobiographical memory is a form of long-term memory and consists of the events and experiences we have had during our lives. It’s about who we are, where we have been, and how our sense of self is shaped. Within families, groups, communities, and cultures, shared autobiographical memories create commonly held beliefs, values, and collective histories. While all the expressive therapies capitalize on autobiography in one way or another, the sensory power music in particular quickly stimulates both long-term personal memory and emotion in ways no other art forms do. Music therapists know that by recalling music memories and associating these memories with significant events, our musical memories provide a veritable life review. In turn, these remembrances provide an internal sense of social support and connect us to others, whether through peer groups, classmates, friends, families, or communities. And triggering recollection of our musical histories reinforces identity, strengthening a sense of self, meaning, and purpose throughout the lifespan.

So how did the Fab Four affect my life? When asked to identify a powerful memory of The Beatles, the famous 1969 “Roof Top Concert” atop the Apple corporate headquarters in London immediately came to my mind, as well as the songs “Get Back” and “Don’t Let Me Down.” The event turned out to be the last public concert by The Beatles, essentially ending a musical era. Why did I recall this memory? I am not completely sure, but I can say that 1969 was milestone year in my young life. And, well, when you watch the film, how can you argue with all that incredible hair?

Also see Jefferson Singer’s PT post, Meet The Beatles of Your Memory.

Drawing on the Effort-Driven Rewards Circuit to Chase the Blues Away

Cathy Malchiodi — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:04:06 -0700

A number of small studies claim that art therapy reduces depression through helping people with mood disorders resolve emotional problems and release repressed feelings. But maybe that is not really why art making helps to alter mood. The answer may literally be in your hands.

In a recent post, “Where Depression Might Reside,” Peter Kramer notes that both researchers and clinicians are increasingly pointing to an area of the brain known as the frontal cortex. In a similar vein, psychologist and neuroscientist Kelly Lambert proposes that the accumbens-striatal-cortical network—a system in the brain that connects movement, emotion, and thinking—is the underlying source of symptoms associated with depression. While the pre-frontal cortex in linked to the inability to concentrate (a symptom associated with depression), there are other parts of the brain that are involved, too, according to Lambert’s research. Those areas account for slow responses (accumbens), perceived loss of pleasure (striatum), and negative feelings (limbic system). These areas form what Lambert defines as the effort-driven rewards circuit.

What interests me as an art therapist and expressive therapist is Lambert’s finding that a well-engaged “effort-driven rewards circuit” helps us effectively meet emotional challenges, thus ameliorating depressive symptoms to some extent. Brain-wise, moving our hands activates larger areas of the cortex than movement of other parts of the body such as our legs or back muscles. And more importantly, what drives that effort-driven rewards circuit are physical activities that involve our hands, particularly activities that produce tangible products that we can see, touch, and enjoy. While Lambert mentions knitting or tending a garden as effort-driven reward-giving activities, I can’t help but think that this brain-hand connection applies to art making as well. “Making things” such as a drawing, painting, collage, weaving, or sculpture involve hands-on investment in an object with tangible results that give pleasure to or have meaning for their creators.

My arts in healthcare colleague Ellen Dissanayake says that art making evolved not only out of psychological need, but also as a “proto-aesthetic operation” involving using one's hands for elaboration, repetition, and manipulation, starting in early childhood. Ellen’s theory is based on how cultures throughout history have used the arts for connection, communication, and curative powers. In contrast, the 21st century seems to be a time that Blackberries and cell phone, computer, and plasma screens increasingly take humans away from those physical, effort-driven, proto-aesthetic operations – in short, away from making things for pleasure, reward, and meaning. Lambert claims, and perhaps rightly so, that this contemporary trend is sapping our mental well being and reducing an innate resistance to depression.

So does “making things” offer a possible intervention for depression? It seems it might, at least as part of a program to treat what is not always alleviated by pharmacology plus talk therapy. While the arts serve as a means of self-expression and perhaps emotional reparation, we humans have consistently returned to the pleasure of crafting things with our hands for some more fundamental reason. Lambert’s research also brings new questions to the perennial debate about connections between depression and artists (more about that in a future post). But for now, it is exciting to know that we all may have access to an internal effort-driven rewards circuit to simply chase our blues away.

www.cathymalchiodi.com

Words of War, Words of Peace: Writing as Therapy, Part I

Cathy Malchiodi — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:10:50 -0700

It’s a form of emotional reparation that goes by many names: poetry therapy, poetic medicine, and creative journaling, to name a few. The use of writing to heal goes back as far as the fourth millennium BC in Egypt when words were written on papyrus, dissolved in liquid, and ingested by the sufferer. And in more modern times, poetry therapy has emerged as a formal discipline whose practitioners use to address emotional disorders or simply as a means personal growth.

While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become a barely audible hum in the background of the daily news, the reality is that over 4100 US soldiers have died in these conflicts. Many are fortunately making it back home and of those, some are readjusting to civilian life. But others are less fortunate and find themselves in the recurring nightmare of a war raging within. That war comes fully-loaded with posttraumatic stress (PTSD), mood disorders, and other challenges that most of us who have never seen combat cannot begin to imagine.

Veterans of recent and past conflicts are using words to bear witness, find their way through horrific memories, and to battle back emotional reactions and PTSD. While in the past there were few programs that encouraged returning military to use writing as part of recovery from war’s inner wounds, today the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Veterans’ Voices, and numerous websites provide both opportunities and examples for soldiers to tell their stories. Documentary film Operation Homecoming, recently nominated for several Emmies, has provided the springboard for a series of national writing workshops for military and their families at Walter Reed and other veterans hospitals across the US. In contrast to the Viet Nam war whose returning military often remained silent for 20 years or more before putting pen to paper, more and more veterans are courageously confronting their feelings, memories, and nightmares through poems, prose, autobiographies, and stories.

One of the most recognized role models for the use of poetry and writing as forms of recovery from combat experiences is Larry Winters, a veteran of the Viet Nam War, a mental health counselor, and poet. His one-minute poetry reading captures the power of words to convey combat’s mark on the human soul and helps us to momentarily bear witness to the universal nature of war’s impact:

A veteran of the Iraq conflict recently explained to me how writing saved his life over the past year’s readjustment to civilian life, saying, “The phrase, “welcome home” makes no sense, because the battle never leaves me. Writing has given me power over the conflict that is now inside me everyday. Because I write, people can read what military go through long after the media and everyone forgets.” What this former soldier says tells us is that the catastrophic effects of war are not thousands of miles away in the streets of Baghdad; they resonate with urgency in the minds of those who return to the US each day. Fortunately, for a growing number of returning soldiers the curative power of writing combats the soul-destroying nature of terror and war. And the power of those healing words ultimately transforms those of us who read them.

Photo Credit: Zoriah, at http://zoriah.com. A young soldier displays a tattoo reading "Walk Peacefully on Heavens Streets, You've Done You're Time in Hell." Baghdad, Iraq - July, 2007.

www.cathymalchiodi.com

Dance Like Your Life -- and World-- Depends On It

Cathy Malchiodi — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:33:48 -0700

Dance therapy has recently been recognized in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, autism, and posttraumatic stress. And dance—whether you can move and groove with the best or not-- offers more than just good medicine; it unites the heart and soul of humanity on a global level. Before reading the rest of this blog, take a break and enjoy this short film by Matthew Harding called “Where in the Hell is Matt?”

While Matthew Harding has reportedly been everywhere in the world the film implies, his work has managed to transport me directly to all the times and places in the world I have boogied and all the people-- in tandem and in crowds—I’ve danced with over this lifetime. My brain “on dance” is a perennial peak experience of being Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, and one of Amy Winehouse’s back-up dancers. While I don’t recognize the person staring back at me in the mirror on some mornings lately, when I am moving to the music I am gratefully twenty-something again.

Dance has always been intuitively used by humans as a healing force, a source of soul, and perhaps even a spiritual experience; it has been formalized in a modern day context as dance or dance/movement therapy. Dance therapy is based on the theory that mind and body are interrelated and that the body can be influenced to impact emotional and physical wellness in many ways. Dance therapists use movement and dance in psychotherapy for a variety of emotional, cognitive, social, behavioral, and physical conditions. Autism, eating disorders, stroke, dementia, and various emotional conditions such as posttraumatic stress are just a few of the subjects of dance therapy research over the past several decades.

Recently, the potential of dance in wellness gained recognition in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. A study at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis demonstrated that people with Parkinson's disease who took tango classes did better than those who participated in non-dance exercise programs in improving their balance and movement abilities. Although dance and movement exercises may be helpful for people with Parkinson’s, the tango essentially uses specific movements that address balance, stepping backward and foreword, and variety in speed of motion. Other theories about its success point to an increase in endorphins and bypassing a part of the brain involved in Parkinson’s disease. Simply put, people with Parkinson’s disease tend to walk more confidently and perform daily tasks involving movement with more ease and proficiency, for at least the short term.

Dance is part of the spectrum of healing arts and creative arts therapies that continue to extend our knowledge about how the arts improve wellness, particularly from a neuroscience perspective [see Brainy Art]. While research emerges to support its benefits, it’s our primal response to move to rhythm and music that is at the heart of dance as a source for well being. And as Matthew Harding’s film conveys, to dance is to commune with others around the planet, virtually or in real time, in ways in which no words of explanation are necessary.

[Special thanks to art therapist Nicole Brandstrup for pointing me to this film]

www.cathymalchiodi.com

When Trauma Happens, Children Draw: Part III

Cathy Malchiodi — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:31:07 -0700

In China and Myanmar, the innate impulse to communicate through art, play, and imagination is emerging as children begin the long process of recovery. But what about those who don’t want to remember what happened or discuss the terror they have experienced? Some children are so traumatized they may never learn to be children again.

In When Trauma Happens, Children Draw Part I and Part II, I discussed some of what we know about why creativity can be reparative after traumatic events. In brief, when language is not possible, sensory activities such as drawing, painting, constructing, and playing express emotions and memories when words cannot.

During the last several weeks I have been working with three service agencies in China who are attempting to address the psychological needs of child survivors of the earthquake in Sichuan province. Naturally, relief workers are eager to learn what interventions would be helpful reducing stress reactions and how to use art and play therapy to prevent posttraumatic stress in the future. Living with children in tent cities and makeshift trauma units, professionals and volunteers are dedicated to helping children do what children do—draw, play, and pretend. They are bringing, at the very least, brief respites of normalcy during what are undeniably abnormal and extreme conditions.

In regard to the tragedy in Mynamar, CNN recently aired a compelling story on a 7-year-old child survivor who pretends the cyclone that took the lives of her parents and destroyed her home never happened. Members of World Vision International discovered her wandering through a demolished village a month after the cyclone. Essentially they found a child who might never be child again, a child who cannot play, laugh, or create.

Relief workers in China initially contacted me because they encountered child survivors who did not want to talk about their feelings and experiences in the first several weeks, post-earthquake. As I reported in Part I, a specific area of the brain actually may prevent language when coping with overwhelming circumstances; culture and beliefs may also inhibit some traumatized individuals from talking about “what happened.” However, in my experience in providing intervention to survivors of domestic violence, witnesses to homicide, and survivors of natural and man-made disasters, it is vital that children have the opportunity to talk about their experiences of loss, confusion, and terror. For those who have been most directly exposed to trauma and may have experienced previous traumatic events, this is sometimes not possible for months or even years.

What do we do when a traumatized child refuses to remember? Evidence-based research tells us that the first step in trauma recovery is to establish safety for survivors. Because of the way mind and body respond to traumatic experiences, particularly disasters involving loss, injury, and uncertainty, this is often a formidable task. I believe one of the ways we can help children find an internal sense of safety is through their senses. This means opportunities to draw, play, pretend, and even learn to laugh again. It also means creating child-friendly places—even in a tent city or camp-- where children can engage in activities that make this possible.

Trauma has always existed, but media coverage of the plight of child soldiers in Uganda, children who lost homes in Hurricane Katrina, and children who saw their families killed or violated in Darfur now brings the profound effects on the youngest survivors into constant focus. We still wait to learn more about the outcome for children in Myanmar where communication with relief workers has been more difficult. While clean water, food, shelter, and reunification with community are basic to the recovery process, let’s not forget that all children have the human right to be children in every sense of the definition. Art matters and is an essential part of relief for traumatized children, to rebuild their lives while restoring their childhood.