This is the introduction of the first artist book titled ‘Ephphatha’, which is Greek for ‘Be Opened’. We did a set of three, over time I will share the other artist books with you all. Enjoy!
Dear Reader,
My name is Angel and I am one of Ruth’s parts that live in her head. She has D.I.D and there are many of us that you will meet as you turn the pages in this book. D.I.D Stands for Dissociative Identity Disorder and was created because Ruth (and all of us) suffered severe trauma, abuse and neglect at a young age. Some of Ruth’s parts were created by her mind to help her cope and take away the memories, others were created by the ‘lodge’ and programmed to be seperate from Ruth to do certain jobs and respond certain ways. All of us are now aware of each other and the whole system, that we refer to as the ‘heard’ and Ruth is finally free from any abuse from the ‘lodge’.
We have chosen Elephants to represent ourselves in this book for a few reasons. Elephants are Grand Majestic creatures and are known for their memories. Unfortunately D.I.D survivors like Ruth are kept in the dark for so long because of the denial and the memory loss that comes from dissociation.
Elephants are peaceful animals but are also very protective and powerful. We all in Ruth’s system have used this analogy to help us all feel more powerful, and start to become more and more like a family. Elephants move in herds of families, but when there is a young baby in the herd it is hard to know who the mother is, as every adult elephant is just as protective of the young as the mother. We have a lot of young parts in our system that need this protection and this book has helped us all feel stronger, to be able to provide this to all in our ‘Heard’.
I hope you enjoy reading our book.
Angel.
P.S Disclaimer with the photo’s – They were not original images we took just stock photos from the internet the parts chose to represent themselves the way they needed to. We do not know the original artists or who took the photos, when the original artist is know we will always acknowledge them. The medium we have used is charcoal on paper, the size is A4.
Ruth's Heard 