Blog Voices from Our Community
Read stories, updates, and reflections from artists, staff, and survivors. Here, we share the heart of Awakenings — one post at a time.
An editorial with Megan Otto Rest We’d like to share with our Awakenings community that The Nightingale is taking a hiatus. We’re pausing this project,
- Prose
What if we imagined what we usually call “healing” as “building” or “rebuilding?” Ania Garcia suggests and analyzes this shift in language by imagining survivors
- Essay
Marieken Cochius is a prolific visual artist, deeply inspired by the natural world around her. A painter, sculptor, and photographer, Marieken is an expert in
- Interview
A familiar image: a bird circling in the sky. With a gentle metaphor, Krista Robey writes to describe survivors’ ongoing pain. A bird circling overhead
- Fiction
When we’re brought to city of Amman, Jordan with Shantha Bunyan, we’re briefly wrapped up in all the details, small and large, that make up
- Memoir
Bianca Thompson is a longtime friend of Awakenings and has participated in many areas of our programming, from backstage in a more administrative sense to
- Interview
Aodan is a fantastic artist currently exhibiting with Awakenings in Bloom, and she is a deeply thoughtful creative. Within her sculptures collectively entitled Hurting Spring,
- Interview
Sreyash Sarkar is one of the artists displaying work in Awakenings’ current exhibit, Bloom. His piece, Roots, is a beautiful network of brush strokes and
- Interview
Survivors and those who have experienced physical trauma can have a unique relationship with physical art. As an intern with Awakenings and an artist in
- Review
A familiar image: a bird circling in the sky. With a gentle metaphor, Krista Robey writes to describe survivors’ ongoing pain. A bird circling overhead
- Memoir
When survivors can turn to loved ones with the truth of what they experienced and be met with love and trust, they can then work
- Interview
An editorial with Megan Otto Language, Education, and Trauma: a Bloom Editorial Our understanding of sex and sexuality is muddled when we don’t have
- Essay, Letter
Shelley Wolf Harris shares some of the details of her experience with rape many years ago, while other memories surrounding this event remain missing-yet that
- Memoir
Our earliest discoveries of violence often hold a unique gravity in our memories. In this burst of awareness, Shneiderman comes face to face with the
- Memoir
As a digital literary magazine with a focus on art by and for survivors of sexual violence, Persephone’s Daughters is like a cousin to Awakened
- Interview
The strength and earnestness with which Martinez describes her incomplete memories serve to prove that strong feelings are just as powerful as concrete details. Feelings
- Memoir
Create, connect, & heal
Find your place in our circle of creators, where every artistic choice is valid and every emotion is welcome. Healing isn’t linear, nor a path you have to walk alone.