ART|Community|Health and Wellness|Self Improvement

Once I Let Go of Past Trauma, I Was Able to Draw!

Don’t let your past trauma’s affect your todays!

It’s only been 53 years since I last held a paint brush. All this time, I thought that I could not draw even if my life depended on it.

Let me share my story about the lifelong chains that trauma has had on me and my journey of letting them go and perhaps this story can help you with the chains that have held you back from the joy of experiencing life’s wonderful miracles.

Mom had me when she was just 20 years old.

She was Miss Hawaii when my dad met her at nineteen years of age. Dad married her a week after they met and she flew to the Philippines with barely a suitcase and spent the rest of her life there.

Back in the 60’s, tradition dictated, well, Filipino tradition at least, that all families should live under one roof. And dad brought mom home to the ancestral home to live with grandpa and grandma, and 30–40 other family members, living there for as long as they needed to. They would support each other with food, utilities, careers, and babysitting.

There were about forty people in the home when mom arrived. Mom had always wanted to prove herself to a very skilled family of attorneys, doctors, and engineers. She had just graduated from high school and now living with an Asian, Filipino family of 35–40 people. Can you even imagine what that was like for her every day—no privacy, every wife trying to prove to the others how better a cook they were? How they could sew gowns for their balls. She was a high school graduate with no knowledge of local culture, cuisine, or traditions.

As the years went by, my mother continued to obsess over proving herself to my dad and his family. I was five when she started to take art lessons. This was when the trauma started.

Every time she started painting, she would ask me to stay with her in the room. As she painted, with every stroke of the brush, she would curse away her life, then she would start drinking and start painting. If I did not have a good answer for her when she asked me about her painting, I swear that her hand was faster than my eyes closing as she swung to slap me across the face. It was a six-hour ordeal for me each and every day as I heard all the negative aspects of their marriage. Every damn detail of the ugly side of marriage. The slapping of the face became a hitting frenzy, she had sticks, badminton sets, anything she would and could brake on my body. All this happened through my 6th grade in elementary school.

As I developed hatred for being called to her room to sit and watch her paint, I clearly remember throwing all the brushes to the wall as I started to clean them, cursing them for the daily unhappy thoughts I had about my parents, who I thought had a whirlwind of a marriage.

Life became gray. Dull. I hated art. I had no desire of falling in love, knowing that happiness would end, or was just a fairy tale.

My mom also wasn’t successful with her art skills. Every time she met with her art teacher, he would tell her to put her heart into her painting. She never knew why her paintings looked “Blah,” she would say.

We all knew why. She was unhappy with life, the cards handed to her, and a future she had no desire for.

Through all my years of school, I would try to dodge any art classes and take sports over art classes. That’s how I know I do not have an artistic bone in me.

Until writing happened.

In February, 2022, I decided to write a book of fantasy/fiction. I would be able to write about the dreams I had been having since I was five. However, here was my dilemma. In order to describe and articulate these dreams, I needed to draw.

Remember, for 50 plus years now, I have eluded art as it continues to bring not so very good memories about my mom.

As I continued to procrastinate about writing, the dreams started to get more frequent, underground caves and pyramids, mythical creatures, Mother Earth asking me to write about the universe and the preparations we needed to make to save her from taking another deep slumber. More folklore stories from our elders started to become clear. So, I needed to decide and draw them so I could tell these stories.

On February 28, 2022, I decided to let go of every trauma about my mom. I did a full reset, I started meditating, going back to when I was five, thinking of the events leading to the trauma I had with mom, and trying to remember every detail.

Then I just decided, HECK, JUST LET EVERYTHING GO! Mom had her reasons why she hung on to her traumas and she took it out on me. That’s in the past; I am not letting any of the trauma from her affect my todays!

And this is what happened.

I started to draw!

No tracing, just freestyle. Everything in my head started to flow, I drew a banana tree, half of the body of the vampire, what elixir to bring to know when one is close, I mean all those details from my dreams just started to come back and I was able to draw them.

Little did I know, the many years my mom had been taking art lessons with me by her side, I too learned how to sketch and paint as I had the same lessons she had. I used to critique her, I was six when I was already reading about Monet. She bought me a library of art books to read so we could have meaningful conversations together about art.

Here are the 1st three chapters of the book I was about to write, I need to draw more to feel the stories and remember my dreams. I don’t think it gained any traction here on this platform, it was a first attempt, so I am going back to the drawing board, include my sketches, and break the chapters up so it does not seem so long winded.

I hope you check these chapters and let me know your thoughts, I need to move this forward, probably on a different platform.

1st Story:

2nd Story:

3rd Story:

I hope you enjoyed these stories before I pull them off this platform and re-write them breaking them up to bite size shortform chapters, adding more sketches of my own. (I still want to hear from you)

Lastly, I wrote about NOT letting your past traumas affect your today. I hope you find this piece inspiring.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO BE YOU!

Did this piece resonate with you?

I’d love to hear from you. My email is [email protected]

Thank you Francis Lee for inviting me to write for your publication, “Believe It, This is Art.” I am truly enjoying my new found art skills.