| FROM OUR CLIENTS |
| | Artist Heals from Pain of Incest
Sharon knows this truth better than anyone does: healing never happens in isolation.
Healing happened for Sharon through expressive art therapy. She learned to express with paint and clay a truth too bitter for words. Guided by C4 art therapists, Sharon began to expose the pain of her childhood incest. And she began to heal.
For more than ten years, Sharon participated in art therapy programs, directed by C4 staff who helped her explore new mediums as she dug deeper into a painful past.
The results of C4 art therapy and Sharon’s creativity culminated in a one-woman show at Uptown’s Images Gallery, where Sharon’s art tracked her journey from victim to survivor. A colorful chalk drawing captures Sharon’s philosophy of life:
“You can look at a scar and see hurt. You can also look at a scar and see healing.”
Sharon’s resolve to heal from childhood pain is being tested by a new challenge- aggressive breast cancer. Despite the cancer’s threat, Sharon has dedicated the rest of her life to bringing home the message that incest can happen to anyone.
Trees figure prominently in Sharon’s art. “You can lean on trees, and they will protect you,” she observes. “At C4 I found a support system that helped me to look at the broken roots of my childhood, discover who I am as an adult today, and give me the space and encouragement to allow myself to bloom.”
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| | Trust and Compassion
It’s the simple things in life that count most. For Jim, it was hugging his six-year-old son at his family reunion, his first in 20 years.
His drug addiction had put Jim on the streets and into the state penitentiary. For almost two decades, Jim’s life had been a relentless cycle of homelessness, treatment, recovery, and then return to using.
Referred by his homeless shelter, Jim began receiving intensive outpatient substance abuse treatment at C4’s Recovery Point in August 2005. As Jim’s recovery progressed, he was able to secure more stable housing. Despite this, Jim relapsed often, slipping into old patterns. Yet C4 counselors stuck by him, somehow knowing down deep that Jim would recover.
Jim successfully completed treatment shortly before Thanksgiving 2006. Just a month later, he celebrated his first year anniversary of sobriety. With help from C4, Jim gained the confidence to get a job at Borders three days a week. He also volunteers at the Mustard Seed, a 24-hour Alano Club for those in recovery from addiction.
“C4 helped me get my life back,” observes Jim.
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Quetzal Center Connects Threads of Compassion
Sometimes healing comes wrapped in a few threads of yarn.
While hiking the Appalachian Trail as a teen-ager, Linda and three friends was viciously gang raped, beaten, and left for dead. After the horrific attack, it was the silence that brutalized her the most.
“Our testimony was on the front page every day, yet no one acknowledged that it happened,” recalls Linda. “The silence said, ‘You don’t matter.’”
Year later after moving to Chicago, Linda sought professional help. Frustrated over failed attempts to obtain copies of the court transcripts, she turned to C4’s Quetzal Center for help. Several dozen letters and phone calls later, a C4 counselor was able to help Linda obtain some of the court records.
But something else happened. Long buried emotions were unearthed.
“When I finally talked with a C4 counselor, I learned that it was normal to feel shame and numbness,” recalls Linda. “I had buried these emotions for so long.” Linda participated in both individual and group counseling at the Quetzal Center, gaining strength from other survivors.
Now a mother of two teen-age sons and a professional counselor herself, Linda decided to give back. “Threads of Compassion,” a group she founded with another woman helped by the Quetzal Center, invited women affected by violence to knit scarves for victims. So far, more than 100 handmade scarves have been distributed by Quetzal Center and other rape advocates to victims getting emergency treatment.
For Linda and so many others affected by violence, the scarves help break the silence. They remind victims they are not alone.
“Each stitch is knit as a sign of comfort and hope,” says Linda. “We tell victims that when they wear the scarves, they are connecting with someone who cares.”
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On Being A Dad
When Ed finally visited with his eight-year-old daughter at McDonalds, it was bittersweet.
After several years of court battles, he had finally obtained visitation rights to see the brown-eyed girl he had not laid eyes on since she was a newborn.
“It was very hard not to run over and hold her in a big bear hug,” recalls Ed, “but I didn’t want to overwhelm her. “ Instead, the 34-year-old father took the advice of other parents and coordinator at a C4 parenting class he had just enrolled in. He simply looked at his beautiful daughter and said hello.
“The other parents helped me deal with painful feelings, like why I wasn’t there for my daughter during those eight years,” Ed says. “They helped me realize that I couldn’t blame her mother if I wanted to avoid hurting my daughter.”
The North Side realtor took baby steps, inching back into his daughter’s life. Accompanied by other family members, the father and daughter met at local parks. He met her at the McDonalds’ Playspace. He talked to her. He grew to know her.
Other C4 parents gave Ed the advice and emotional support he needed to re-establish his relationship with Jadian. When his own father faced life-threatening heart surgery, Ed was initially angered by his former spouse's refusal to let his father see the granddaughter he had never met.
Taking the advice from the parenting class, Ed did not react angrily. Instead, he took his daughter's photo to his father’s bedside.
“Without C4, I would not have my daughter back in my life,” Ed observes.
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