Thinking about protest trauma this week! No reason.
I painted this piece in 2022 and it remains one of my personal favorites. It was featured in the t4t Art Collective :Symbiosis: art show last year, along with this artist statement:
After returning to daily life following a year or more dedicated to protest, I found myself searching for continued community and purpose. The garden became a place to heal and rebuild connection with myself, and with anyone who shared in the labor and bounty of it. Slowly, I strengthened my relationships with the living beings around me, found new aspirations to nurture, and learned to feel safe and held in my environment again after the tear gas cleared. This piece honors the supportive interdependence between resistance and rest, solidarity and solitude, trauma and recovery.
If you’re joining a protest movement, it’s crucially important to integrate supportive practices along the way. Lean on your people, honor your emotions, take breaks, be in nature. Connect with the world, so you never lose touch with what you’re fighting for.
Psychological trauma is inevitable when you're showing up to a war zone, and it’s not something to power through. Treat it like a wound, tend to it intentionally, and recognize when you’re critically injured. Your hypervigilance can be an advantage, but it’s a liability in roles that require calm awareness. Adapt to your changing capabilities and don’t get attached to the frontlines.
It’s not a mark of dedication to sacrifice yourself. Find the things that sustain you and seek them out with the same principled militancy that you apply to the struggle. Not just to maintain yourself as an asset to the cause– you’re more than a resource. You are a precious person worth protecting, same as the comrades you’re standing with.
