Intersecting Minds

Stop Walking on Eggshells

by Denise Gawley

Multi-media art of watercolor and acrylic in blues and greens with burgundy drips down the left representing frayed nerves. Broken eggshells appear to the right attached to the blues and greens. Each eggshell has written feelings expressed by the artist as she processes childhood trauma. Some feelings include, reduced, fear, noise, unworthy, hate, unloved, and pain. The word less is found multiple times unintentionally by the artist.

Artist Statement

If you have never experienced parental trauma growing up, then you are a member of an exclusive club. If you have, you are among a different club of adults who share the need to fight your proverbial demons in order to live a happy and productive life. Part of my process for breaking the destructive patterns that hold me back includes multimedia art. Much of our personal narratives are silent stories in our minds, constantly bouncing around through our neural pathways manifesting in various ways, including physically, verbally,
and behaviorally. What is not said is often heard loud and clear by the outside world, and it is not always pretty.

Creating abstract pieces allows me to express my own silent narratives, including having been raised in a home by parents who constantly argued, and a mother who could only criticize, yell, and hit us. Saying she loved us was not in her vocabulary. I humbly submit Stop Walking on Eggshells as my contribution to “Sensing the Unseen.” This piece took me several weeks to complete as I reflected simultaneously through journaling on trauma for one of my doctoral classes at Drew University. It consists of a combination of acrylic and watercolor inks to represent my nervous system, while eggshells carry the verbiage of all my unsaid feelings and emotions. While I tried not to repeat words, I
found myself repeating “less.” Did I grow up with less in ways unseen?

Artist Bio

A lifelong maker and creator, Denise Gawley, RN MSN CCM, is a 1991 graduate of Montclair State University with a BA in philosophy. She obtained her MSN from Loyola University New Orleans in 2012 and has been a practicing registered nurse for 20 years. Most of her career was
spent advocating for the peaceful deaths of her patients and closure for their loved ones. During her tenure, she learned early through personal experience and the narratives of her hospice families that our childhood truly does shape our happiness in adulthood, and more often the negatives influence us far more than the positives. Denise is pursuing her doctorate in medical humanities from Drew University and lives with her husband, Jim, in New Jersey. They both find peace at their home on Cape Cod and enjoy spending time outdoors. They share three adult children, three dogs, two cats, and a ball python named Lucy.