05. Body
Crawling Veins: A collage series exploring lost familial connections through art and paper
This is a continuation of a series to help me connect with my heritage and to learn about myself more as an artist. The book I am pulling papers from to use as a substrate is titled “Pennsylvania Dutch Cut & Use Stencils: 47 Full-Size Stencils Printed on Durable Stencil Paper” by JoAnne C. Day.
TW: This piece and series as a whole contains talk about suicidal ideations and other struggles with mental illness. It includes discussions on eating disorders, addiction, drug abuse, family trauma, and self-harm.
She closes the door to thrumming music. Vision spins, the bathroom — a tiny closet — is her only haven away from the performance. She looks in the mirror at vacant eyes. Where is she now? Certainly not here, not in this body. A smile, the flirtatious smile she’s been sharing for free drinks most of the night, looks like a ghoulish impersonator has stepped through her skin. Her stomach rumbles angrily. Fast food is all she ate today — some type of chicken sandwich although who knows if it was actually chicken. She had tried most of the day to swallow back the hunger that threatened to crawl out of her throat, screaming for food. Once she started pre-gaming at a friends house, the inhibitions and self-control were gone. On the way to the only “dance club” (if you could call it that) in town, they had their friend run through a drive-thru. The carbs she consumed would help to drown her insides in more liquor, after all. It would come in handy when the coke came out at the after party as well.
When I got sober, I began to untangle the web of the urge to drink. I wasn’t a wake up and drink a beer type of girl. I wasn’t the won’t stop consuming any alcohol or drug once she gets started kind of girl. I knew that alcoholism ran in my family. Knowing that didn’t stop me from developing a difficult relationship with mind-altering substances.
As an introvert, it seemed to make sense that alcohol became my fuel in uncomfortable social situations. I spent most of my life with close to the same group of friends, and so any expansion beyond that made my skin crawl. I didn’t know how to talk to people. I became highly aware of all that was happening around me. I made jokes that were overly-intellectual and delivered way too late.
I was already too deep into my journey of body hatred to realize I could have found kin elsewhere. I could have found community in a place that didn’t include booze and drugs. It was around family that I learned my body was unattractive — too big, too much. Over the span of the summer of 2007, I went from a girl who was *somewhat* confident to one who kept trying to fold in on herself. I spent days trying to make myself smaller, and at night I drank to try and make myself bigger.
I also spent the years of my 20s taking ibuprofen almost everyday, in doses much too big. When the pangs of body pain or discomfort came jolting underneath my skin, I repressed with these painkillers. As a lifetime sufferer of sinus and tension headaches, swallowing pills was all too familiar. I couldn’t be bothered to think how any of this would impact my only vessel here on earth — my body, a gift from my ancestors. I treated it with acidic hatred. All of the unspoken resentment and heartbreak that seemed to exist within my family was directed at my body.
I remember telling people I was planning to die by 50. Then I realized one night that 30 was probably better. It was clear to me then, in the early 2000s, that women who were young and beautiful were valued while everyone else was discarded. My grandma died her hair well into her 80s. Vanity is a staple for the women of this lineage. It was all we were worth.
When I failed out of college, this story became even more true. I was fairly heavy by then, at least 200 pounds. Drinking most nights will do that to your body eventually. At some point diet restriction morphed into binge eating. With each bite I tried to shove down the shame that threatened to swallow me whole. It was eat or be eaten.
Now, at 36, I am still dealing with the consequences of these decisions. So much alcohol. Acid. Synthetic mescaline. Ecstasy. Heroine. Speed. Coke. Mushrooms. Ibuprofen. Pain killers. Keep the body quiet.
My body is NOT quiet anymore. I finally stopped taking ibuprofen to get through my days. Last week, I went to the ER for stomach pain to find myself with an ulcer. A few days later, crying during therapy led to two days of barely functioning due to a tension headache. My shoulder and neck are still throbbing in pain. They whisper to me we remember. We were there the whole time. You never loved us, even after all that we’ve done for you.
Last week, before all my body decided to get LOUD, I joined the Back from the Borderline Patreon. Host
shared that in addition to bonus podcast content, there was a section called ‘pathwork’ with exercises and rituals one could work through. I was intrigued. The first one is the threshold ritual. It’s simple, approachable and is a great beginning step for those unfamiliar with ritual or spiritual practice. All that to say, I highly recommend you check it out, as well as the podcast. So I followed the instructions. The energy was there. I felt the things, I journaled, I moved on with my day.Now I realize that the embodiment I stepped into during that time has started a dialogue between my body, and me, and all of my ancestors as a result. The ulcer and the headache was just the beginning.
I’ve also found myself in a different world when it comes to my dreams. What is usually a time of navigating my old college town and feeling lost, or having the usual relapse dream, now has transformed into an intense play between me and family members. I’ll paint an example for you below.
She didn’t understand why they were trying to come through the back door. The mudroom is always cluttered. Her grandma was old and nearly on her deathbed. The stairs were more narrow and difficult to navigate. Of course, no one listened to her. She saw a couple of her aunts hovering around her mom, who had her grandmother cradled in her arms like a baby. She shoved boxes and laundry hampers out of the way…trying to clear a path. It didn’t seem to help. The clutter was endless. The older women just watched as she shoved things aside and stepped on trash…anything to make way for the older women to get to her. She kept trying to make space. It felt impossible, until it was done. The way was carved, and they carried in the old woman. Snide remarks followed them, whispered in a passive aggressive tone with words unclear. One of her children watched from the corner of the kitchen. She didn’t know what to do.
In this dream, I am trying to deal with the clutter. I am trying to make space. The cluttered mudroom is a very real place in my home. Clutter is something that I struggle with along with other family members. But in the dream world, this all feels…bigger, deeper, more intense.
My body also remembers the exertion. The thankless effort that went into making space. It does not escape me that my child (the one who also struggles with clutter) as witness is a message to be careful what baggage we unload onto our future generations.
For those who may be new to this space, it is also worth noting that my grandmother passed away just over a year ago. The relationship is complicated. I write more about it here. But the image of her cradled and carried into my home, as if a child, is tattooed in my brain.
All of these messages still require further meditation. Honestly, I am unsure of what to make of this connection with my ancestors and my body other than to start treating my body with the intention of love. It has always been treated as the burden, the thing that holds me back from getting stuff done and getting through my day. This is so true in parenthood. Some days are HARD. When you wake up with stiff joints, a swollen hand, a headache…it makes it hard to want to do anything. Caring for others has, ultimately, been one of the motivators to keep me going. I think that care must also be turned towards this flesh that I have abused for so long.
Our ancestors, those we know and those we don’t, grappled with their own body issues in their own time. I can approach honoring this body as a form of honoring them. Some of my ancestors didn’t have the chance or resources to live a more embodied experience. Some of them have probably watched me leaving my body, either through drugs or alcohol, or later on through TV or my phone, and try to send the love I so desperately needed. As the one who is here, in this flesh, the responsibility to care for myself now lies with me.
Living a more embodied experience is the path I am walking now. I am not quite sure where this will lead. Mostly it means adjusting the way I talk to myself in my head, and developing the awareness I need to see when I am trying to escape. Something about Adler’s threshold ritual helped me to find an easier path to that awareness. So, now, I will continue to cultivate it.
What is your relationship to your body? Do you stay present within it? Can you sit with discomfort? What messages do you think it’s sending you? How do you see your body as connected to your ancestors?
This is the fifth piece of my series “Crawling Veins.” The series explores lost familial connections through art and paper. The title of this piece is “Body.” It was completed 06.04.2025. It’s a mixed media collage on vintage stencil paper, and features much of my own repurposed artwork, magazine scraps and vintage book pages…among other things. It also includes ephemera from The Flying Cat Studio via their Patreon The piece measures slightly less than 8.5” x 11” and is available for purchase. Please email starmothpress@gmail.com for inquiries. No NFTs. Prints will be available via Redbubble.
Thank you. May we all love each other, and ourselves, better.
Rikki
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Thank you SO much for this. I’m 40, sober after years of misuse, just lost my nana in January, suffer from tension headaches…. A lot to relate to here (and you don’t even have to explain how collage can be part of the body stuff: I get it!)