Like a Poem, Like a Prayer

Giving thanks for the alchemy of art, storytelling, and our voices.

“move toward the cracks in your heart there you’ll find a portal a window a door a god-shaped hole”

Charcoal, graphite, watercolor, ink, and acrylic collage on bristol paper. 17 x 14 inches. 2025.

Dearest Doodle Soupsters,

Last week, I made the piece above. I ripped up drawings and paintings, experiments on paper. Arranged them on a sheet of bristol like puzzle pieces, or piles of fallen leaves. A little tape here. A little tape there. Arrange some more.

Then, I painted over with watery white acrylic, plus a pinch from a tiny mustardy yellow watercolor paint tube. It felt like stirring a pot of soup. Main ingredients already there. Now a bit of this, a bit of that. Bring it together as a whole. Transform the pieces into one nutritious concoction.

Finally, I added a few words. Like a poem. Like a prayer.

move toward the cracks in your heart

there you’ll find

a portal

a window

a door

a god-shaped hole

The words come from a flash fiction story I wrote a day or so before. The words come from something mystical. Something I keep saying again and again in old and new ways.

This artwork is a part of my upcoming series, secret messages. secret messages is like a part two to my Whispers Among the Trees series (for which I’m simultaneously still working on new pieces!) focused on turning toward nature, art, and expression as a pathway to freeing myself from the impacts of childhood sexual abuse.

Almost exactly two years ago, I tried to write about my first experience with sexual abuse (which was by a family member) on my art Instagram account alongside an artwork titled, “I'm tired, of this, kids shouldn't be taught to keep adults' secrets” from my In the raw series.

“I'm tired, of this, kids shouldn't be taught to keep adults' secrets”

Mixed media on paper. 12 x 9 inches. 2023.

Another family member contacted me, angry, threatening to involve a lawyer. I took down the post. Not being believed and fearing how that threat could not only impact me but people I love — it set off a learned response in me.

My anxiety and safety behaviors increased. I kept healing but alongside that, there was this shift.

It’s how I survived from the beginning: keep yourself small to keep them in line, so they don’t hurt you more than they already have. 

Watching childhood sexual abuse being taken seriously last week, watching an interview with Epstein survivor Danielle Bensky on All In with Chris Hayes— I cried tears of joy. Regardless of what comes of their efforts, this is the impact of standing in the truth. It has a ripple effect.

The past few weeks and months, bit by bit, I’ve been getting closer to naming the learned response. It can go by many names but these are the mechanisms that keep survivors scared, ashamed, and silent.

I’ve been working on the art of secret messages, my upcoming series, on and off for the past year or two. I’m excited to share more in the coming months.

Many of the pieces have overlapping or obscured words, expressing this need to get the words out but then all the internal and external messages that keep it down, keep it clogged, kept me stuck in cycles of sexual abuse, kept me vulnerable to more perpetrators.

I’m grateful to all the survivors out there and people who are listening. These memories can be so hard and lonely to live with and yet, here we are standing in the sun, in the truth, letting ourselves be seen.

I won’t hide myself.

I take my pain and my grief and my anger and I alchemize it into art.

Honoring the alchemy of art, storytelling, and our voices, pouring another drop of gratitude into this pot of Chicken Doodle Soup, thanking you for being here with me,

Nicole Sylvia Javorsky