Interviews, Publications

Interview: Vol. 1 Brooklyn

I was interviewed by Joanna Valente, along with Alexis Smithers, Lynn Melnick, Claudia Cortese, and Jason Phoebe Rusch, for Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

How were you able to write about your experience(s), and negotiate between empowering yourself and not exploiting your own experiences?

I don’t traffic in the details of my abuse. I find some way to communicate the feelings attached to them, the ghosts they leave behind, without sharing those details that are often demanded but are unnecessary to actually understanding what trauma is: a haunting. If we think of trauma this way, as a unique relationship between an entity and the building where the trauma occurred and still resides, then we understand that our bodies are the buildings and our traumas are the ghosts, and nobody else needs to know what the unfinished business is or help solve the mystery. There is no resolution to this kind of haunting. There is no exposition either. The ghost’s back story is fragmented and nobody else’s business. What is important is what is being communicated: the haunting. I am haunted and I want you to know, but also even ghosts still have boundaries.