From Estrangement to Reconciliation, the Experience of Wholeness (2024)

Photo Credit: Lisa Kiss Design

This collection of poetry and drawings explores the ways creativity and imagination can recreate relational connections that reconcile estrangements that live in the body when emotions become split off and repressed from the psyche in order to survive traumatic situations. This book chronicles inner child therapy work using drawings and meditations to reintegrate exiled parts of the mind and to explore how a person moves from having “no self” or lost emotions to being fully feeling and functional.

This book puts words to a visceral experience that is intangible and focuses on describing the process or repairing ruptures. The drawings show how wearing masks erodes self-esteem and creates negative belief systems. It also illustrates how authenticity can emerge from the act of drawing to revitalize self-esteem by visually depicting positive belief systems. The poetry and drawings show a process of reconciliation to rebuild the self in order to embody a sense of personhood by moving through a series of identity stages.

This book is a narrative journey that uses imagination to transform a dissociative and empty sense of self into a unified self that can walk with pride and experience a sense of belonging that embodies personhood.