A guest!!!!!

Guest blogger: Allie

Allie: This is a piece from the Art Therapy Workshop Atara led along with a description. I'm honored to be asked to be a 'guest blogger' and I hope whoever reads this finds this meaningful and inspiring. I'm dedicated to the cause of helping women cope with pelvic pain conditions and I welcome your feedback.

When I wake up each morning, I look over the mound of my husband (or the pulled back sheets he left
after wakening) at the clock on his bedside table. If it’s early, and I can’t get back to sleep, that means
more hours of the day in pain. If it’s later, I’m relieved that I will have less hours in pain, especially since I usually have at least two drinks at night, so even if I stay up late, the alcohol has numbed my nervous system, and therefore my pain, to a tolerable level.

Art therapy workshop, 2011
Allie's drawing

My pain varies daily, hourly. Most of the time it is a stinging, shooting pain that radiates over my entire vulvar region. In this depiction of my pain, my vulva is red and irritated. The black tendrils represent  the stinging, radiating pain – a pain that is evil and menacing, and seems to exist outside of my body. The blue surrounding the vulva is meant to be a cooling liquid or force, which represents the varieties of treatment – psychological, medical, and homeopathic – I am employing to combat the pain. But regardless of the large amount of healing energy represented by the blue background, the black tendrils overpower it. The flower that covers the vaginal opening has multiple meanings. First, and the most obvious, it is in reference to the vulva’s flower-like nature. Second, the fact that the flower covers the vaginal opening means that it is not accessible right now, because I am unable to have intercourse. It’s a barrier to pleasure. Thirdly, it represents a gag, an inability in the medical community and society/culture at large to speak about this devastating condition, which is not particularly rare. So the symbolism of the flower is ironic – it both represents the cultural idea of femininity but also silences the feminine voice. It exposes the rampant sexism that continues to pervade Western culture and medicine.