Art as Coping Strategy

Once when my son was a very small child, his stepmother snatched the pink wand he'd brought to his father's house and broke it and threw it in the garbage in front of him. Because it was pink and glittery, which was what caught his eye in Target on the day I bought it for him. She cut his hair off because she said only girls had long hair. She told him Muslims were bad and gay people were sick in the head. I took him to a mosque. I talked about the people in our life who were LGBTQ, who we loved, who we admired, who were not "sick in the head." I lost sleep with each meanness inflicted on my child, each act of hate he was forced to endure. For so long, I spent time trying to understand what this woman and my ex-husband were so afraid of. I spent time trying to get inside their heads, trying to understand why they thought the way they did. It's been years now and I don't care. I don't think I'll ever understand some of the things they did and I don't think I should. Some things are just wrong.