Cynthia's Story:
In the Darkness A Light

Beyond Words

It is hard to specify just how or what affected me in the natalism art workshop. It is so irrational I cannot put it into words. I just know it affected me. It gave me a greater awareness of what it was like for me in the environment of the womb. Going back to that prenatal period where I began my life allowed me to establish a beginning place. I went back to a place that was like Heaven. The art work was healing for me and had a dramatic impression on me feeling good about myself, and feeling safe. There has been a positive pleasurable experience that I now have in the midst of the pain, and it has stayed with me all the time since the workshop.

On my own I had done therapeutic art work before. In the workshop we went back in to the womb, we went back to conception through art and visualization. I travelled back in the mind. I felt spiritual feelings, or enlightenment, or spiritual perception, knowledge, something new, something spiritual and ethereal about the whole experience and gained something spiritual. To put words and language to the experience is difficult. I can relate to the phenomena of going through the experience. I can better relate the experience in drawing and images; words are insufficient to describe what I felt.

I got in touch with a beginning place before my parents ever even came into the picture. A place where I floated in space and there was a unity going between me and something. It is hard to speak about in any other terms, it is like a spiritual quality. I was floating and I was like a celestial body. I think that what I am saying is true.

While in the womb, I knew that things were going on, I knew that I was insecure there. Yet I was still secure because there was lots of physical support. While I was being fed and held in there I did not have to do anything. There was a primitive state of consciousness that I stayed in where I was not aware of my body. I was completely alone with my consciousness and I did not have to worry about much. All there was to deal with was my consciousness.

I see it is kind of like when you die, your body gives way and you just kind of stay there in your consciousness; you float into this space and wait to die. Though I do not actually know what it is like to die, I seem to know a lot about dying. I could have been at that brink of death where I reached that and then decided to come back and live again.

In terms of logical, rational brain kind of cognitive memory I know it does not make sense to have memories of conception; but in an impressionistic way it does make sense to me. I was willing to accept the impression and work with that impression. It feels right because it registers more in the heart than it does in the head. It is more of an intuition.

It has changed me to look at my conception, I connect it with other childhood feelings of, "I do not want to be here; I hate being here." Those feelings which originated prenatally all seems to be part of my personality and the way I am. At birth those feelings developed into, "It is taking too long and I am impatient and frustrated."

In the womb I knew I was not wanted. It was unstable out there and I had an unstable mother. There was not a consistent feeling of "I want you," from my mother. There was a combination of I want you/I don't; I hate you/I love you. Having two opposing emotions going on was very confusing. I now feel like it was so unstable for me in the womb because my mom was dissociated and fragmented outside of me. I did not like it, it was not a secure environment. I just stayed there any ways and waited.

For me there are two kinds of wombs - a toxic womb and then a loving womb. I was very confused in the womb. I did not know which way it was -- love or hate. In the drawings in my life experiences, there are always those two opposing dualities -- the love and the hate. My mother was wanting me and not wanting me. I coped with that by actually splitting in the womb so that one part of me held the loving, caring mother and another part of me held the hateful, angry mother. The loving caring sense may be my spiritual Mother or God.

To Soothe and Detoxify

In the trauma drawing (figure 18.a) of birth and the womb there was a lot of chaos to heal. Drawing two (figure 18.b) was a tissue paper healing drawing with a purple womb surrounded with yellow and was done on top of the trauma drawing. The blackness was on the inside of the womb in the trauma drawing (figure 18.a) . Over the series, the black started changing through using purple and blue instead of the black and red until eventually I internalized that healing womb self.

In part, because of those womb feelings, I had difficulty trusting. It has felt like I cannot move or do not know where to do -- like I have no direction, no support, no foundation. I am lost and do not know what to do with myself. Those feelings have been very basic to why I cannot get ahead, I cannot feel secure.

It is possible that there was chanting going on outside while I was in the womb to specifically prepare me for the cult my parents were in and that my birth was planned by the cult. While talking about the feelings, I experienced a cult alter personality make the statement, "We/you were designed to be what we wanted you to be." It felt like I was planned and that they were going to use me for some purpose. The cult really confused reality.

On the drawing is written, "Monotonous Chanting. Satan's baby. HATE. HATE. BABY. I experienced an alter personality come out and relate that I was "The chosen one," or "the devil's child," so I was a child for Satan even while I was in the womb. The skulls or masks on the drawing represent behavioural states, or alter personalities. One is anger, fear and bewilderment of horror; the other is sad, despair and shock.

I was confused and life was so complicated that I could not get going because I was stuck between all that emotion. Having those overwhelming feelings in the womb left me with a sense of having no direction. It contributed to a pattern of: I cannot decide what is my direction, what is my purpose in being here. It was hard to make choices or focus because there was so much going on. I felt like the energy which was all over the drawing and I could not integrate it.

Though I could not say at the time of drawing, the yellow healing drawing (figure 18b) that I did on top of the first trauma drawing (figure 18a) was the start of a repatterning of a loving womb. Through the yellow drawing on tissue paper (figure 18b) I took childhood awareness of Omadan, a spirit/guardian angel alter personality back to the womb period to heal the wounded womb and prenate.

His voice helped me to be in touch with Omadan. I think that I developed Omadan in childhood. As an alter personality, Omadan represents an external presence, and love coming from elsewhere outside of my consciousness. Omadan is a masculine God-like angel who knows the everlands, which is the timeless place after death, and I can trust him. Omadan came through the natalism work to soothe and detoxify; through Omadan I was able to create a loving womb. While drawing I was not very aware of it, but there was a loving presence coming out in the drawing and colours.

It was interesting in the first drawing (figure 18a) that the inside of the womb was filled with black and red, with an inside black womb surround. By contrast, there was only a small amount of yellow as the outside womb surround. Later on that changed, the yellow, along with soft blue, purple and green more and more went inside the womb; and the black and red increasingly went outside. Through other drawings purple got added with the yellow to heal the wounded prenate in the womb. For me purple and yellow are calm and healing colours.

This Is My Place

I was in a lot of pain between the first two workshops and was spacing out and leaving my body. Most of the week there were very simple feelings of abandonment, wanting to die or feeling like I was going to die. The drawing from the previous week (figure 18a) was related to the feelings which were coming up, though I could not intellectualize just how. I just knew there were a lot of things stirred up, especially around mother abandonment and mother abuse issues.

The day before the second natalistic art workshop I went into a space where I could not speak or walk around which I had gone to several times in the recent past. It felt so ethereal, in the head and out of touch with my self. Using yoga helped me get centred and get back in the body. I also found Atavin helped me get back into my body.

I was coming in and out of amnesiac periods so I did not remember much of the week. During the workshop check-in I talked about not remembering much detail of the week. Michael suggested I start taking my pictures home and look at them at various times in order to assist with breaking down the amnesiac barriers; but as I thought about it over the evening I did not want to take the pain home with me any more than I had to.

In the drawing (figure 18c) all of the trauma was represented in the red scratches. In the drawing it looks like the internalized exterior outside world is put inside of me. The first thing I wrote down on the drawing (figure 18c) was in brown letters that there was, "Monotonous chanting," going on the outside the womb. That prenatal experience might have something to do with how a monotonous quality to music triggers me. Also written in brown was, "F... O...," a small, "No," and a large, "NO." Written in black there was a big black, "NO," and "Stupid bitch," and "Angry."

Outside of the womb surround was all the negativity. In the belly of the drawing I wrote in purple, "This is my place, leave me alone." Inside the womb it felt somewhat safe even though it felt very black and ominous around the outside. The green, yellow, blue and purple scribbling filling the womb surround are a safe place in my body. Those colours were the environment I wanted to stay in. The largest imagery in the drawing is, in fact the safe place. It was very powerful to have access to that.

Both ends of the womb surround are sort of open in the drawing. At bottom the channel not only represents my legs, but also represents the passage way out. The opening at the top of the drawing where the head is represents my head hitting the cervix. In the drawing I am dealing with the early womb period as well as birth; the entrance up into the fallopian tube to the top of the uterus.

At birth as I was given drugs I started to lose my anger, that is the hopelessness. After the drugs took hold I did not want to move any more, I just became apathetic. Then when the forceps pulled me out along with some of the contractions I just came out without any more resistance and without any anger. The anger still existed; it was just split off into what became Scratchit, an alter personality. I perceived and interpreted my birth in two different ways, in one dissociated state the birth was fine, and in another it was not OK.

The green scribbling filling the drawing (figure 18c) was the tree of life and a lovely green pasture which was a safe place. It was quiet and it was my place, and only my place. The colours of the safe place are also an alter personality, Mesee. It feels like there was dissociative splitting at birth -- with Scratchit holding the angry birth feelings; and then totally separate, a place that was safe.

There is "Scratchit" written in red over to the left side of the drawing. The bold red scratches near the neck and filling the head are a very angry, Scratchit, who has always been connected to my eczema. I had eczema starting around five months in infancy. It seems Scratchit developed the scratching as a means of expressing anger.

Due to the amnesia between alter personalities I would sometimes have to be in an alter personality to know what they had been drawing about. When I was talking about the drawing in the sharing group, Scratchit was not out, so I was not sure what Scratchit was writing or drawing in relation to pain of birth and of the womb.

I like that there was a lot of soft yellow in the womb of the drawing (figure 18c) . During the experience of rebirthing in the art regression I started crying like a baby. My partner encouraged, "Come on little baby, come on little baby, it is OK." When I came out of the birth canal in the rebirth, I felt welcomed really well, it was wonderful. Mesee came out during that part of rebirthing. When she was there I was not depressed anymore. I had been bothered with depression for a while. When Mesee came out in the workshop at the end of the art exercise and in the sharing group I felt better and other people in the group commented that I looked better.

[Author's comment: In the check in after drawing, Cynthia was sitting with big eyes and a big smile. I interpreted her look as though she was about to say something or wanted to say something. She did not seem distressed, but she also did not say anything for the longest while. Finally, likely in some frustration for me not catching on, the young alter personality Mesee, identified herself with a quiet and soft, but bubbly happy sounding voice.

In the brief time we had for a check in I wanted Mesee to know she was welcome to come out and that this is was a safe place. Upon coming out she immediately indicated that she had difficulty with using language. While she was talking that little bit I wanted to encourage a bridge between non-language thinking and communicating, and language thinking and communicating. Our brief discussion follows directly below.]

Cynthia: I'm Mesee.

MI: Hi Mesee. I'm Michael. Have we met before?

Cynthia: Yeah.

MI: I think I recognize your name.

Cynthia: (giggling)

MI: You look good Mesee.

Cynthia: I can't talk, not adult like, so I'm forcing myself to.

MI: I am glad you're talking. One thing you can know Mesee is you share your body and your mind with other parts that can talk. If you think what you need to say, somebody else inside can pick out the words for you.

Cynthia: (In an older voice, having switched personalities) I don't understand what you said.

MI: OK. I will talk to Mesee again. You share your body and your mind with other parts? Those older parts that know how to speak?

Cynthia: Uh, huh.

MI: If you feel or sense a thought, someone else inside can put it into words or pictures for you, or help you do that.

Cynthia: That's good.

MI: It is something that the more it is practiced the quicker it happens.

Cynthia: Nodding.

MI: Any ways, it is good to see you. You look great.

Toxic Womb/Loving Womb

In black writing the first drawing of May 11 (figure 18d) says, "I want to die. I hate life. Mommy. Black. You can't get me." Underlined in red letters is the word, "Hopeless," which was what my life was like, it was hopeless. Frantically scratched in red and black all over the huge paper were the feelings of my loss of self and direction. At the time I felt there was little more to say about the drawing -- the picture and those few words spoke for themselves.

My experience of doing the drawing was feeling hopelessness, anger, rage. I felt the drawing depicted such awful, negative stuff that I did not even want to display and share the drawing with the group that evening. I felt I got very negative trauma really early. In the sharing group I was still experiencing my mom's and dad's shit. I did not want to put a damper on anyone else.

In the drawing I did not feel like I had a container, there was no containment -- just wild crazy. I felt floating in all directions and there was no foundation. There was nothing. It was just an explosion. Not having a container means I do not have one personality. The drawing (figure 18d) was without a womb surround which I though at the time meant I was resisting being born, I was resisting growth and I wanted to get back again. I wanted to get back up there to the ovum and I did not like it down here.

In the guided visualization when Michael said something about journey that implied a positive connotation. I wanted to go against his comment of the journey as something positive. I always do that. In the second drawing (figure 18e) , the first thing that came to me which I wrote down in black was, "No journey, just hopeless. Stagnation." For years whenever something says positive I want to be the opposite.

In that second drawing that evening (figure 18b) I was beginning to move out of that black and red explosion into the blue space. This was the last time in the workshop series that one of the womb surrounds was done in a negative black. The writing in the soft blue above says, "I enter into the blue sky," and at the bottom of the soft blue is written in pencil, "Forever Floating. I enter into the peaceful sky." The soft blue feels like something that I have with me a lot now. The blue space was partly a state of dissociating, a place to move into to escape the chaos. There was something in the centre swirling which was chaotic and the soft blue above was very calm.

The second drawing of that evening (figure 18e) had the first overt references to wanting to go back to some place. In the drawing it was called, "Heaven." It was floating, the place of where I could be safe. Before I started doing the natalistic art workshop series, I had remembered that floating state. The positive quality of the soft blue feels like something that I have had with me a lot since the workshops ended over a year ago.

MI: Because you have been sitting on this suicidal stuff all week long you really need a break. Can you leave those feelings in this piece of art? Allow yourself to see them in the piece of art and then tomorrow when you are with your therapist, Jean, you can see an image of the art and let negative feelings and suicidal feelings you need to work on come back. Can you do that now?

Cynthia: So we want to put all those feelings on the drawing right here.

MI: They are going to stay there and tomorrow when you see Jean you can image the picture and let come back to you what you will need to deal with in your individual session. OK?

Cynthia: Ok.

MI: If you get triggered tonight or this stuff comes up again? When you image the drawing, rather than seeing it as something that's triggering, see the negative stuff inside you leaving and going into the drawing. You allow the drawing to actually rid you of the experience. OK?

Finding Wholeness Before Conception

In my personal therapy I was connecting a lot on an infant level and was transferring that anger onto my therapist, seeing her as the bad mother. Fortunately the previous session with her was very healing because we dealt with having a sense of a good mother. She became a good mother holding and talking to my inner baby and I was the baby.

On June 8th, I did five drawings (figure 18f , 18b , 18c , 18d and 18e) which was more than most of the people. The first one (figure 18f) is all blue except for a red womb surround. It was the experience of the egg before conception -- floating and feeling light in the blue watery solution. I felt like I was there by myself as the egg feeling freedom. Then I saw myself as expansive and exploded - no self, not integrated. The red outside of the egg was nutrient like blood. The writing says, "Where am I? Nowhere, floating. The egg. Hi, I'm the egg. Expansive self -- exploded self -- not integrated." The feeling of not having a boundary or a body was something like the explosion in the drawing. There was a black explosion that was actually done in blue. The blue in the drawing represented the same thing that the black explosion represented in two drawings back (figure 18d) .

The black explosion was an uncomfortable feeling and by changing it to blue I was making it more spiritual. I give way and allowed myself to float in an expansiveness that had a sense of hope and caring. It was similar to dissociation, but it is not the same, in that there was a way I was trying to make the explosion, transform it to be more palatable.

Connecting as far back as the slow floating feeling of the egg, felt like it was not just my imagination, but a feeling that was in myself. I trust enough that my consciousness can hold that kind of memory, that kind of knowledge.

I had consciousness prior to fertilization. During conception I did not like this thing coming at me. I say the time of conception was already planned. My mother was uncomfortable and did not like her body. She was uncomfortable, she was embarrassed. Her experience of being embarrassed and uncomfortable to any feeling this was not going to be an enjoyable experience. The whole thing that I went through, going down the tube and getting implanted was not secure for me. They do not feel secure, so I do not feel secure. The effects of the distress around conception affected my childhood and adult life with a feeling of directionlessness. Not feeling secure, I did not have direction and could not decide upon what is best for me. In my life I have had two opposite feelings going on, the egg consciousness and the sperm consciousness; feelings of contentment and feelings of danger and fear.

The third drawing June 8th (figure 18h) is titled, "Angry Rape." For me conception felt like an angry rape and oppositional forces. My first impression of the drawing was my resisting to be born, my resistance to being conceived or to have an identity, my resistance to being part of that family. There were two births going on in the drawing. It feels like conception is one birth and then coming out of the womb is another birth.

In the second drawing (figure 18g) the black sperm was coming into the egg and the third drawing (figure 18h) there was black lines all over on the inside of the egg. The black was an intrusive and negative force. There was a lot of activity going on which to me felt like I was resisting all the stuff at conception which was going on beyond my control.

The conception was inevitable so I had to accept it, but I still did not like it. After the feeling of inevitability then came a feeling of resignation. Feeling inevitable and resigned had been the dominant feelings in my life, but those feelings began changing to hope. I found re-experiencing the original experience of the feeling and working it through - eventually it went. Doing the natalism art work me helped connect with and understand the origin of those feelings so I could work with them.

I did not care what happened after that point, that was the beginning of the sense of no direction. That is when I started to feel what I wrote on the drawing (figure 18i) , "Who cares, I don't. It does not matter where I go from here. Lost. I have been invaded. Ambivalence. I don't care. Scattered mind. No direction." Then I said to myself, "Where is God and the peaceful meadow and the sun and a place I can feel whole," so I wanted to return back up before the conception. Drawing three (figure 18h) is when I was still contained as an integrated being, even though I exploded, I was still whole. There is no self at that point, but I still felt contained and integrated. In the egg there was containment and then with the angry rape there was no containment, that was the split. Between the point the anger and rage drawing (figure 18h) and the resignation drawing (figure 18i) there was a total split.

I see my splitting and having very divergent views and different ways of being as having started with the trauma of a conflict and raped conception. Because the conception was so traumatic, to return to a sense of peacefulness and wholeness I had to return to a place even before conception. That feels like returning to the unfertilized egg floating of the fallopian tube. Returning to that place has transformed me and has given me a certain quality of peacefulness that I have been able to draw into transforming many of the traumas of my childhood, as well as the womb experiences.

The purple in the fourth drawing (figure 18i) represents the disintegrated self and the lack of wholeness which was a result of the trauma. I was whole when I was that nice little egg. I was invaded and that is when the trouble started. The black writing in this drawing represents part of myself that felt that trauma. The purple scribbly lines represent loss of identity and wholeness. The blue writing is asking where is that peace. In my drawings this sense of peace is often represented with blue. Three colours were used, one colour in the picture and two colours in the writing. It is so simple, yet those three colours really say a lot.

I decided not to draw my implantation. At that point I did not care what happened to me. I just let the forces take over. The egg moved on and I decided to go backwards which is what came out fullest in the fifth drawing (figure 18j) . There may be two or three splits depicted in the fifth drawing. I wanted to go back up the fallopian tube which is written as, "Backwards towards heaven." I wanted go beyond that to the universe. I wrote in blue, "Tree of life. Heavenly Tree, and a lot of beauty." In the drawing I am a beautiful tree. The tree of life is like the placenta.

Trees are very important for me. They represent a womb and the eternal womb, security, rest and peace. They are implanted in the earth and they reach towards the sky which is heaven. I wanted to go back through the fallopian tube, back through all the eggs and into another reality which is what the drawing was. The tree drawing was another reality beyond the physical, a peaceful, whole, heavenly place.

The tree of life image and the whole drawing touches on some of my ability for going out of my body and moving within my body. Through visions of heaven I go to a place without the trauma. The drawing is not my mom's womb. It is kind of an out of body experience into God's womb. I want to be implanted back into heaven. That place before I even came into her body, before I was ever identified, whatever that means. The blue circle in the tree is the egg lying inside the tree. I looked for a hole in the tree. That is where I wanted to be implanted, I did not want to be implanted in my mother's womb. In the drawing there is the sun which is hope and it is coming up, it is not going down. There is warmth and growth which is sort of blood red because without blood you would not live. It has all the nutrients in it. The sun keeps everything alive and embraces everything.

Exploded Into A Wonderful Ball

On June l5th I did four drawings (figures 18k top, 18k bottom , 18l top and 18l bottom ) on two sheets of paper. Michael had asked us to use the two large pieces of paper to do a trauma drawing and then to create a positive experience to overlay the negative. I did not do it that way.

On the first paper the top yellow drawing (figure 18k top) , which represents the egg, says, "ME in all my integrity and wholeness." I do not know what the funny purple lining on the outside of the egg is - I have done it many times in my art over the years. Michael showed me a picture of a fertilized egg which actually looks like that on the outside. In the first drawing (figure 18k top) the egg was floating and it felt stagnant.

 

Michael C. Irving, Ph.D. and Cheryl Irving, B.A.
have a private practice partnership serving
as psychotherapists with individuals and groups.

For more than 20 years their practice has encompassed individual clients and psychotherapy workshops and trainings on - healing emotional trauma through regressive therapies, mind/body integration, dissociative disorders, ego state therapy, primal therapy, art therapy, prenatal parenting and, working with pre and prenatal issues through art.

To book clinical work or

mediation call (416)469-4764