Unknown Cause

About the artist:

Stephanie Solomon (she/her) is the new Youth Program Coordinator with the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence.  She spent over 3 years as Prevention Coordinator with the Youth Services Bureau of Monroe County, with a focus on promoting healthy relationships and environments for youth and families.  She is a graduate of Indiana University with 19 years of experience in the social service sector and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Public Health at Indiana University.  Stephanie is an adult ally with the Kaleidoscope Youth Community. She is passionate about primary prevention and building spaces that promote belonging for youth and families.  She enjoys karaoking to Barbara Streisand songs.

About the art:

The artwork is a line drawing in marker with colored pencils for emphasis.  The piece shows the merging of health, struggles with addiction, pain and diagnosis with visuals of a bloodstream flowing through pills, flowers, plants, quotes, medical bills, and diagnoses, some from doctors and some from friends, family, or acquaintances.  Text: Live and Let Live; “fight flight and freeze behaviors are unconsciously reflexive”; Robotic laparoscopic hysterectomy; emotional abuse; Disorder, Unspecified 300.02; Insurance Denial; “What story are you telling yourself”; This, too, shall pass; to remove the uterus (womb); patient balance- $29,886.61, insurance balance; “When pain becomes chronic, the nervous system naturally becomes overactive”; pain 1-5 (worst); Depressive Disorder; “There is so much we don’t know, and to write truthfully about your life, your own or your mother’s… is to engage repeatedly with those patches of darkness, those nights of history, those places of unknown…(R.Solnit); post traumatic stress disorder.