The failure of justice is the reason I create justice where I can, through my own expression, which carries its own undeniable power and transforms my experience into something real, seen, and felt.
The non-consensual surgery was years ago, and while it was by far the worst violation, I’ve had many healthcare practitioner attempts to invalidate me. Very unfortunately, the most recent was with a midwife, the kind of practitioner I trusted with both of my pregnancies and births. The midwife’s inability to attune and meet me where I was caused me significant harm. As in too many prior encounters, responsibility is denied, and there is no attempt to repair. The midwife answered my email with excuses instead of an authentic apology. The director brushed me off. I’m left with no choice but to integrate this betrayal myself. My nervous system feels it, my body carries it, and I have to respond.
The process involves ongoing integration in small bits. Each begins when I notice the signals, the emotional and physical echoes, and I do something that supports integration. I write. I post on Facebook. I sketch. I begin to paint a watercolor. I illustrate my lived experience so people can understand it, because otherwise it is invisible and impossible to explain.
This is where Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) comes in, even if I’m not thinking about it. Our nervous systems are built for connection. They need compassionate witnessing to integrate distressing experiences. When that witnessing isn’t available from the people who caused harm, or the systems that should protect us, the nervous system remains unsettled, frozen in a loop of stress, alertness, and planning. Expressing my experience through words and watercolors is how I give my own nervous system what it needs: acknowledgment, validation, and release. It’s how I repair a relational rupture with myself when relational repair from others isn’t possible.
Every sketch, watercolor, or blog post expresses what happened and what I need now. It’s me giving form to the pain, anger, and confusion. It’s me showing my experience to the world because otherwise it disappears into isolation. This is what it means to create accountability when no one else will: to be your own witness, to find your own compassion, and to offer your story so others can witness it, too.
Sharing my watercolors with my healthcare practitioners is especially powerful because it gives them access to the reality of my experience in a way words can’t. These images carry the impact of what I’ve lived through, and they appeal for acknowledgment where there is often avoidance or denial. When I show them my work, I’m not asking for permission or pity, but offering a direct, undeniable witness to my truth. It shifts the dynamic from one of passive being done unto into one of active recognition. It creates a space where my nervous system can feel seen and validated, even within the healthcare system that most often fails to provide for this need.
I don’t have the justice I want from the institutions that failed me. But I do have the ability to respond to what my body, nervous system, and mind need. I survive by continuing to be me, despite the pressure to shut up and go away, and that, in its own way, is a kind of justice, too.
