the dKol la femme project: I'm still here, can you hear me?

How do we define trauma? It’s a mutual understanding that trauma involves a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. But the embodiment of trauma and its specific impact can vary significantly from person to person. For Jenna, trauma comes in many forms.

abuse. alcoholic households. grief. substance addiction. loss. rape.

Reading all of those traumatic events outlaid in a sort of laundry list does not allow for the complexity of it all to sink in. Re-read this list and realize that all of this happened to one person.

dKol and Anxiety

I can remember writing this journal page vividly. My hope was if I could see the patterns of the spiraling down, I could grab ahold of the signs and triggers of the isolation I was feeling. It took a long while before I could begin creating a plan to dig myself out of the recycled patterns of the darkness I was living in.

depression, self-abuse, anxiety, dKay thoughtsDanielle KolachikJanuary 18, 2019Anxiety, Depression, anxiousness, self-abuse, fear, journal, journalingComment

the dKol la femme project: curves are beautiful. unless they’re my own.

Self-hate can come in many forms and in varying severities. For Melissa, this hate was severe enough to trigger harm at her own hands.

“I cut myself for the first time when I was 11,” Melissa shared. She struggled to see the beauty within herself and to find enough self-love to bury the pain – even if it was just a little bit. She always found curves on women to be beautiful, yet when she looked in the mirror and saw her beautiful curves, she felt disgust. Why, she wondered, were curves beautiful unless they were reflecting back at her?

the dKol la femme project: abuse + bulimia

From a young age, Ashley saw the challenges and darkness that life can bring. She saw instability, fighting, sickness, alcoholism, death, physical-mental-sexual abuse at the hands of someone she should have been able to trust, and discomfort in her own house; and soon her own skin. She felt like she had no control of her life, no opinion, and nothing was her own. So – she did something, something that could be her own, something that she could regulate, and something that she now wishes she could go back and reverse; knowing what she knows now.

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