In The Body Keeps the Score, the author explains that trauma, sometimes forgotten or buried, lives in the body. It isn’t always meant to be explained away; it wants to be felt, witnessed, and understood. Some say trauma even travels through generations. I believe that. Dysfunction teaches dysfunction, and the body remembers what the mind can’t quite name.
When I lifted my camera to the ruins of a famine house on the Irish coast, I felt it in my bones. My ancestors endured starvation, grief, and the wrenching choice to leave home for the unknown. Their longing and their courage felt familiar. In a less dramatic way, I also had to leave “home”—not just to survive, but to discover who I could be.
I grew up in a defunct factory town that felt too small for possibility.Right after college, a model agent invited me to move to New York City. I said yes and found myself in a new world. Yet trauma I was unaware of came along for the ride. Healing did not wait politely; it traveled with me until I was ready to feel it.
Over years of practicing Chinese Medicine, I’ve seen trauma surface in subtle and surprising ways. I have witnessed it coming to the surface in acupuncture sessions, or in moments of stillness. I’ve experienced it myself as well. But that is a story for another day.
And if you happen to be in Mystic, CT, I’d love for you to see my photograph Famine House, Ireland, now on view at the Mystic Museum of Art through December 14. Standing before that image, you might feel—just as I did—that some places hold memory, and some memories hold us until we are ready to feel.
