“…what if the trial you want me to overcome is my fear of truly being me…my creative self…totally putting myself out there for all to see? What if my flaw is not in failing to be practical enough, but in failing to JUMP…fully into the waves, trusting your love will catch me there. There’s love beneath the waves.”
I’m sharing with you in real time today, Overcomer.
I’m not sitting up high on a pedestal of self-actualization, condescending to share my knowledge with you. I am a survivor…an Overcomer…of narcissistic abuse, still very much on this journey of healing and redefining my identity.
I’m here to share some tools and skills with you that I’ve learned along the way, and to show you how I am STILL using them to become more and more of who I am meant to be.
On today’s episode of Art That Overcomes, I’m getting super vulnerable. I invite you to hear what aspects of my identity I’m currently struggling with the most. I’m feeling tension between two different parts of my Self, and still wrestling through it.
And as always, it’s my art and writing process that is helping me uncover what I need along the way.
I hope you’ll listen in…
Scroll down to view the art image, related free association writing, and Message From Your Future Self that I discuss in Episode 9: Who am I, anyway?.
Listen and subscribe to Art That Overcomes on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, right now! If you like it, give it a 5 star rating and review so that other Overcomers can find it too (all those listens and reviews bump it up in the algorithm).
>Missed last week’s podcast email? CLICK HERE to check out the art and message from your future self featured in Episode 8: From Trapped to Transformed.
Episode 9: Who am I, Anyway?
Writing from Day 1:
“It’s flowing, it’s bursting and bulging. It’s open.
Is it? Is it open?
Its’ open through the backside. I can see through it. Like how my other painting was going, flowing, through the ocean, through the wall. This is moving THROUGH – through me. Coming, reaching, into the unknown. Into you (God)- my divine source of all that’s REAL, not surreal.
You are the real deal, the coming and going. You make it happen. I have to connect, here in the ether, here in this space in between the chaos of thoughts and mind, beyond the paper. You’re there in the inside, the deep trenches of it. You MOVE. And I want to swim in you. To fully grasp this picture I have – this sense of me in you, the version of me (the realest, truest version) that is inside you and you inside me. Like in all the recesses of that circle.
I want to go through it and dive right in and tuck my head, my face, right inside. To never come out to see the “light” of day – the everything else that’s around and distracting and pulling me out. I want you. I trust YOU.
Can I trust you?
Can you? What has time shown?
Yes. A resounding yes. The truest most consistent thing is you. You and me, me and you. My artist self is all in you.
What is the yellow?
You (God), and my muddy circle is diving in to greet you and live in you and be”
Writing from Day 2:
“You look like a flower. Are you a flower?
I’m loving and warm and thick and juicy. Tactile. Full. rough and smooth. Little divots and bumps and whole places and empty spots.
I say…
I’m drawn to that shape in the middle(ish). Like it’s a little piece that I can grab and tear. Put one finger along the edge and rip. Rip this circle open. DIVE IN. Put my face and chest through that circle-flower-shape and feel the warmth of that yellow background and feel fully alive.
It’s like that thickness of the oil pastel on the surface is beautiful and smudgy and luscious and I like it, but it feels like it’s so…on the surface. It’s the top coat, the finished part, the presentable piece.
The respectable part?
I don’t know. The easy part, maybe. Pretty and easy.
What’s back there once you go through, rip through?
Just so much more, and I’m not sure yet but it feels right. It feels open and alive and I’ll figure it out. I’ll keep stepping into it. But I know it’s something I stand firm in – a place I stand firm in, no matter what is outside, no matter what job, what other circumstances, what other people or influences. It’s still strong. I’m still strong in this fullness of who I am.”
A Message From Your Future Self
“This journey can be so confusing. So frustrating. So full of obstacles.
You long to speed things up…to jump through a few months or years of this pain and adjustment and doubt…
You wish you could leap to where I am now; so much more trusting and self-assured in the future.
I want to remind you, today…
You are in exactly the right place, time, and circumstance. All the strength and power and knowledge and skill that you need to reach me is within you now. And you ARE uncovering it…one small piece at a time.
Rather than envisioning this process of Becoming as a building of bricks one on top of another…a system of adding and adding more and more…
Consider this image:
You are a painting, a piece of art created by so many others.
One layer from your mother…your father.
Another from your siblings.
A layer from your work, and schooling.
One thick and muddy layer from the narcissist.
And a heaping smear of confusion on top.
There’s nothing that you, or anyone else, needs to add here.
This is an uncovering.
It’s time to peel back the layers of who they created you to be. It’s time to gently, with caring attention, tend to YOU…the real and true You that lies beneath.”
-Your Future Self”
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Ready to go deeper?
❤️Jennifer
Jennifer Kramer Art Therapy 