Poetry by Esther Claus The snail, 1/12 collage paintings from the project: What Lives On, Written By Those Who Love You. I refuse to sit in stories that broke me to hold up pain like it still owns me. 
I will not place the past before my feet,
 those old ghosts of shame, anger and defeat. I refuse to be a prisoner
 of someone else’s harm. I refuse to let my story
 be shaped by their sin. 
I am not what happened to me. I am what I chose to become. But the body remembers
 what

No One Wants to Remember Trauma. "No one wants to remember trauma. In that sense, society is not much different from the victims themselves. We all want to live in a world that feels safe, controllable, and predictable, and victims remind us that this is not always the case. To understand trauma, we must overcome our natural resistance to face that reality and learn to summon the courage to listen to the testimonies of those affected by trauma."
 Bessel van der Kolk, The Body