“My arts-based research uses personal narratives and a deep re-looking towards my own lived memories to untangle threads of trauma, melancholy, and isolation, feelings that have been forbidden.I translate my memories to create pathways for self-healing and for the healing of an invisible community of survivors. The close observation and engagement with the agony of grief work inform my process. The focus is to look beyond the distractions of the conspicuous to the potential that is created through a dialogue with writing, painting, installation, and performance with shadows. The shadow is the repository of all the denied aspects of our lives. Having felt this dire urge to belong, I situate my work in relational aesthetics; Bourriaud’s theory of Relational Aesthetics opens a space for the viewers to become a part of the artwork by inviting conversation about these emotions that are socially unacceptable. We emphasize the damage these stigmatized emotions cause because we despise them but what we forget to acknowledge is how our bodies learn to bloom in all that gloom.”