Poem: Personal Healing is Communal Healing – Faerie Bear Art
IDJ Team
A comic-style hand-drawn graphic with 4 panels numbered 1-4 from top to bottom and left to right. The art is titled “Personal Healing is Communal Healing”, the same as the associated poem. In the first panel, a child is sitting sadly with a closed body posture, their arms crossed over their lap, head down, crying, and with a broken heart over their chest. An adult is also in this panel, standing, kind of slumped over, also crying. Their heart is a jumbled mess of tangled lines. In the second panel, the child is in the same position. The adult has opened their eyes and stopped crying as they begin paying closer attention to their body. Their tangles heart lines appear to be taking some shape. In the third graphic, the child still has their arms crossed over their lap and their heart is still broken, but they have opened their eyes to look at the adult and stopped crying. The adult’s heart has formed into their inner child – whole again – and they are gently cradling their inner child as the sitting child looks on. In the final frame, the adult has worked with their childhood self to heal enough that they an now share their inner child with the sitting child. They have bent down, arms open, to invite their inner child to support the sitting child who is clearly navigating their own childhood harm. The inner child gently wraps their arms around the sitting child and the sitting child smiles to welcome the embrace and their heart begins to get *stitched* back together to heal. All three are in more open, inviting, and connected positions. The comic ends with a social media handle @FaerieBearArt for Patreon, Etsy, Facebook, and Instragram.
Poem
I cannot find the childhood I lost.
But maybe I can create love and safety For children now – my childhood now –
Or at least
Let other lost children Know they aren’t alone. We aren’t alone.
Faerie Bear Art is an art adventure by Skye Ashton Kantola (she/they) founded in late 2016. Skye is a fat, white, trans, queer, and intersex, chronically ill autistic person. Skye’s art focuses on trauma healing and uplifting marginalized communities. 10% of all art sales are donated to BreakOUT! Youth, a QTPOC youth lead organization focused on abolition and decriminalization in Louisiana. In some cases, the profits from certain pieces are also split with collaborators.
Poem: Personal Healing is Communal Healing – Faerie Bear Art
