 The other day I received a letter from a Little, (meaning a girl who was not yet 6yrs old, part of the system of someone who has multiple personalities). She drew me a very stark picture with crayons that depicted how a certain person was very scary to her. There was no written letter, just the picture on a lined piece of paper. It was very clear who was the bad grownup, what they were doing and who was the terrified little girl. The story her picture told could not have been put into words with the vocabulary of so young a child and yet it needed no words to tell me what had happened. It is a practice of mine to ask my clients what way is easiest for them to share their stories. Some people do not find talking hard. Others like to write and bring their journals or pages of whatever they would like me to read and are too afraid, too shy, embarrassed or tongue-tied to talk about. I have had some folk who are very talented in using clay and sculpturing figures and scenes illustrating trauma. Still others make a collage or bring paintings and drawings I would be proud to hang in a gallery were the public able to appreciate with understanding what they were looking at. These ways of communicating have often nudged at my conscience in self-examination, asking myself if perhaps I tend to give more attention to one form more than another. I have a tendency to lean towards that which I am most familiar with and understand the best. I have always used writing as a way to express my most private thoughts when there was no one near or far with whom I could share my agonies of soul, mind and heart. I loved to draw but I could hide a pencil and piece of paper more easily than a box of crayons, or an etching pen and bottle of India Ink, and certainly there was no way I could tote a paintbox and brushes around unnoticed. We, survivors, learn very well how to be inconspicuous. So, my medium of expression has always been to write, though at times where others could not possibly guess at my reason, I played music from which I drew comfort, strength and some trace of peace, or through which my emotions could find release. Thus, with children, teens and adults whose way of communicating with me is so varied, some using more ways than one, I need to take a deep look at how I can miss important information by having less interest in one medium than another. Sometimes I forget that a person who molds clay and stutters when talking can have a history not only of being silenced from speaking, but had their hands and wrists, feet and ankles immobalized for long periods of time. In sculpting they can now move freely. Especially to use the once chained limbs to not only depict traumas inflicted but to mold figures any way they wish. To have power over the once powerful, to control the erstwhile controllers. It is so much more than my viewing their work as a piece of art and remarking on the visible scene. Be it in the long or near past depending on whether it is a child or adult sculptoring. To do this, I miss the underlying symbolism. Inquiring about how it feels to sculpt, to move the fingers so dextrously can lead to other memories than the more concrete evidence of abuse, rape or torture. I watch a child crayoning with intense lip-in- teeth concentration and remark on what lovely colors they are using and that I can see what they are forming on paper, and miss asking if the the colors mean anything important to them. A small child or youngster whose whole life was/is lived against a backdrop of deepest black with possible shades of grey bringing brief relief, the opportunity to draw Colored patterns unihibited in shape or brilliance creates a freedom from their memories of an ebon prison. The child tells me in her colors how she has held on to hope that some day she might know something different from nothing but dark gloomy days. Inquiring about the difference between colors can sometimes open up closed lips. Conversely, when the pictures are all black and morbid coloring, an inquiry as to whether they would like to choose some brighter colors can also lead to the symbolism of other memories. I have sometimes heard more from remarking on the form and coloring than speaking to what the picture is overtly saying. It seems to be less threatening and an indirect way of approaching a subject too scary to broach head on with the scene drawn or painted. Adults with such vulnerability, hand over their journal entries, prose or poetry for feared inspection. So well, I enter into their fears fom my own childhood experiences of these gifts rejected and torn to smithereens literally and metaphorically. I ask if they would like to talk about them in session or for me to read privately and discuss next time. The choice is theirs. Again, beneath the obvious, the ease of writing vs talking tells me how the person was silenced in the past. To verbalize was unallowed or directed as to content and expression. I had my dog I could talk to who did not reprove my tearful attempts to share my inner torments and terrors, but to TALK to another human was simply unthinkable. Writing was an escape, an opening of the floodgate of grief and unuttered pain in the watershed between the facade shown high Society and my hidden lowlands of Abuse. I hear more quickly, the messages beneath the written words as well as the concrete substance, for I learned the langauge from the time I could hold a pencil and write. For those whose communcation comes easily in verbalization I try to hone my listening skills. (see 'Listening'. on my site: www.goessoftlyishere.com). I am getting better but one can never be perfect ! Much has been written about, and studies done on interpretations of drawings, hand writing and the content of literary efforts, the meanings of creations in different mediums, clay, metal, wood, stone etc.. but my self- examination is all about what is NOT the obvious. Perhaps I have learned more from exploring the UNobvious and this little article is to set our minds pondering on these seemingly innocuous details, which, I have found, hold more liberating in sharing potential. I have been guilty of jumping in and addressing the obvious and totally missing the more subtle and more telling stories our clients give us in the ways they choose to communicate. Everything they say and do is a message - the skill is to pay close enough attention and not show symptoms of my self-imposed diagnosis of Therapist Attention Deficit. Communication is one of the hardest obstacles for abuse survivors to overcome, and they come to us with the hope we can find a way to communicate through whatever means they are best able to do it. They have known failure time and time again in their childhood where abusers taught them to only speak when spoken to and then, to the specifications of the authority figure. We have the privilege to help them break the silence not only of the abuse, but pull down the wall behind which they are trying to be heard, pleading through crayons, speech, pen and paper or unfettered hands . 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