July 2021: Incest Survivor's Roar idea

I did a fantastic Business Start-up for Female Entrepreneurs course with Accelerating Women’s Enterprise and Enterprising Women, and got really constructive support from the coaches and Twitter people for my idea of hosting creative workshops for adult survivors of incest.

This is an idea that’s been brewing since 2017 and suddenly the time felt completely right to give it a go: it excites and will challenge me, plus it will enable me to use my gifts as an artist for meaningful good. I feel as if I’ve found my ‘roar’ both as an artist and as a person.

On our completion of a Village Builders course we were both doing, a peer wrote about Incest Survivor’s Roar: “Gemma, to be able to move from a place in which we hurt one another to a space in which we nurture one another is a gift to the world. Turning deep personal wounding into what appears to me to be extraordinary bravery and into open-hearted sharing with strangers, is to dive into the best of being human. A community of even two people is so fundamentally different from being a lone survivor. You are amazing.”

Throughout this time I also felt the spirit of my heroine; the all-round artist and survivor herself, Maya Angelou surrounding me.

Here is my application for the NHS-run Sensemaking and Healthcare course that never happened in the end, which gives you a good preview of what I’m hoping to achieve with Incest Survivor’s Roar.

I’m applying as an NHS patient (survivor of incest abuse) who also has a wealth of experience working in caring / supporting roles with a diverse range of people.

I wish to widen survivor perspectives and educate professionals about how to reconnect, heal and create following incest abuse, by hosting small, safe, face-to-face workshops in a variety of subjects (music / art / poetry / organic gardening). Dave Snowden talks about how art and music came before language in human evolution: hopefully I can use my skills as a jazz musician, poet and mixed media artist to help survivors find their own voices.

Survivors of incest can have highly complex issues which is why I believe mending from it needs to be rooted in an understanding of complex relationships, (Warm Data) and Sensemaking.

Being molested by a family member is a different shade of abuse from being raped by a stranger, and so far as treatment is concerned (in my experience), incest gets conveniently boxed in with generalised sexual abuse where reductionist therapies (with long waiting lists) are insufficient in tackling individuals’ specific trauma, for example, incest-related OCD/PTSD.

Especially since lockdown, the crime of incest threatens to become an epidemic behind closed doors in the UK, which when reported is met with ignorance by the police and victim support.

What mainstream culture deems this nauseating problem can’t be forced into the light just by being unashamed to say the word, ‘incest’ out loud on posters of motivational quotes, however. It requires more thought about the delicate interdependencies between the mind, body, human beings and nature in order to address it effectively.

I’m hoping to learn more about this, the SenseMaker tool and how to instigate change by connecting people in novel ways from Dave, Nora and my peers.

I believe that participating in this programme will impact my role in the following ways:

·      It may enable me to better zoom into how incest abuse impacts survivors, families, communities, healthcare professionals and charities by valuing, respecting and collecting their multi-perspective narratives using SenseMaker as an alternative to standardised mental health assessments

·      I could share coherently how organic gardening, walking in the forest, nurturing my passions as an artist and studying Warm Data have empowered me to feel less alone; less of a mistrustful, scapegoated, contaminated survivor label, and more connected to the planet through expanding my understanding of what being a part of a ‘blood family’ can mean

·      It will help me fuel survivors’ appreciation of how living beings are connected in the present as a way of counteracting suicidal ideation

·      Survivors of incest might find a home space in my creative workshops

·      It will inform my work as a micro-local village builder

·      It could help myself and others ask better questions around the subject of incest

·      It will help me to take the next small elegant step towards being part of the solution in tackling incest abuse internationally

I would like to better be able to help survivors, families, communities, healthcare professionals and charities learn how to be more flexible in their outlook about incest abuse together, so that they can become grounded enough to recognise the beauty and love in themselves, others and the world around them.

Nora Bateson’s film, ‘An Ecology of Mind’ (about her father; the anthropologist, biologist and psychotherapist, Gregory Bateson), was a revelation and heavily influenced my above application. Gregory Bateson once said, “The major problems with the world are the results of the difference between how nature works and how people think.”

Sticking to my ‘art piece a day’ challenge has been fun; combining original and digital art sketches.