Reclaiming My Public Online Spaces

This week has been very difficult for me emotionally as I worry when trust has been broken with toxic relatives, it scares me that there was trust gained in the first place. This time around I briefly gave away my website address. He probably wasn't paying that much attention but keeping privacy from these people is vitally important to me.

Keeping a low profile from toxic people can be difficult especially when you are an artist but it's not impossible to have privacy from these people. Online platforms and social media has always provided opportunities for people to share whatever parts of their lives that they want to and so I considered this when I decided to create my most recent blog posts.

The important thing is to not let controlling personality types scare you and no matter what they say they can never take their autonomy and power away from you once you have gained these things. You see, I am prepared for toxic family to stumble on these posts and I thought that this could present itself as an opportunity for me to make things clear to them without having to make contact to make these things clear.

This fact in itself has turned from a fear based insecurity into an empowered armoury. I have made decisions not to share certain things online long ago for the protection of me and my immediate family and no amount of social media stalking can ever reveal this type of information. Although keeping a low online profile is important, you don't have to totally disappear if you don't want to. Being selective of what you share can be just as successful as invisibility.

It's also important to know that if someone takes something from you there are ways you can reclaim these things in your own way that is both empowering and self affirming. I explore this concept a lot in my work. The work I made last year about my brother was me reclaiming memories of my brother which not only brought his memory energy into my life but became more sacred because these sculptural objects had more autonomy than 2D photography.

Also my textile sculptural work Keep Your Photo's: I am the Archive part 1 is about reclaiming images and memories of my childhood that my parents use as leverage to get me to talk to them. There is a part 2 of this work that is more durational too which I am excited to exhibit at some point. Sometimes not having too many of these photo's are good for our mental health if we have to break free from these toxic family ties, too many photos of our childhood can be painful because the majority of our childhood photo's have biological family in them. It's things like these that make it easier to focus on the memories you are making now with the people that truely matter in your life.

So it hasn't taken me long to feel confident and safe because I had to remind myself that I have this autonomy and that my life I have created is my own. Everything I have achieved and my strength is because of my hard work on my self and has nothing to do with my biological family. My body is mine, my mind is mine and what I create is mine and no-one can take that away from me. This is the life I have created for myself and I couldn't be more proud of my bravery, silence breaking and strength to continue the fight to prevent and stop domestic family violence.

I've said it once and I will say it again. I have agency, power and autonomy and I'm proud to share these strengths so that anyone who has experienced family violence can break free, find themselves and be supported and most importantly to be believed. You are not alone and you are stronger than you think.

If any of this has been a trigger for you call 1800 Respect and/or check out their website at:

https://www.1800respect.org.au/