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Photo by Dawn Sanborn
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"Michelle: Pieces of a Life" was a project that had been writing itself in my mind for years. What was puzzling individually suddenly seemed much more valuable when collected and told as a story. By pairing poems with current images, I was able to construct a tangible bridge from the victim of the past to a survivor who's still emerging today. I collaborated with photographer Dawn Sanborn of Rochester, MN in 2011 for an exhibit that was held at the Rochester Civic Theatre. Based on my poetry, we chose several images that re-created some of the traumas (being stalked and stabbed, accepting loss, battling breast cancer in 2008 raising a child with autism, questioning my faith) that I've experienced. None of the photos in the collection were shot in the original settings. Instead, as a team, Dawn and I were able to evoke fragmented memories and create images in a completely different form...and yet still capture the lingering emotions...something that, perhaps, was safer for me to revisit.
Working with a photographer trained as a therapeutic coach allowed me to open and embrace the freedom of exposing myself to what would have been too vulnerable otherwise. Much has changed in the physical properties since these events have taken place (and now even in 2014, three years since that exhibit) -- locations, people and even feelings -- but these are the pieces we retrieved: parts of a self touched by trauma. We wanted not only to produce art from life, but to give a face to trauma in its many forms: crime, illness, abuse, loss. In my poetry, I yearn to bring awareness to the manifestation of physical symptoms that often occur from chronic stress -- including cancer -- and to the emotional scarring, such as PTSD, that remains after attacks upon our bodies. Even survivorship harbors fragility, but poetry can soften sharp edges, and photography can produce light and angles which allow us to change the manner in which we view a subject. Sometimes it's the art itself that lets us create who we need to be.
My writing on the blog is organized by pages and can be accessed through the links at the top of the page. I've tried to gather them together in a way that makes sense to me, one after another. From this home page, I suggest you begin with Casualties of Color, work your way to the right and then down onto the bottom row.The poems and photos from the exhibit will be paired together. The collection ends with the poem Residing Hope. Additional poems that were written at various times have been spliced in at the end. These contain casual photos that were not professionally prepared for the exhibit -- they are merely favorites of mine!
It is my hope that something will resonate....either to provoke insight or to bring healing. No matter what, collectively these poems are inclusive...they represent our human walk. They hold a message in their parts that can be felt in society as a whole. Isolation keeps us broken. It is in the connections that we heal, piece by slivery piece. -- Michelle
p.s. A new thyroid cancer diagnosis this year led to the addition of the tab marked, "2015," which has allowed me to share a personal reaction to the news. However, my time right now is spent on exploring trauma; please visit my other page, In Search of My Asylum, found in the link, as I chronicle the research I'm doing on a future memoir that includes my great grandmother's lobotomy. Two new links have been added that detail my son's poetry (at age 6) and how that has been made into a short film about my cancer.
