The Personal Bill of Rights

Lots of my art in this one!

The personal bill of rights was first given to me in a printout from the leader of my group therapy outpatient partial hospitalization program back in 2020. Number 19 completely altered my perspective on the program and freed me from the shame my mom continually inflicted upon me while I was in treatment: 

19. I have the right to be healthier than those around me.

Raised by a borderline parent is to be gaslit your entire existence. Three years sober of my mom and I still question my own experiences. The gaslighting lives deep in my body, because I was trained

A friend brought up the phrase recently, “I can be healthier than the people around me.” Thus, I’m sharing with you.

I’m desperately trying to not go into full FREEZE mode.

Overwhelm is back, because I face the second payment of my art retreat and I am struggling to believe I’ll be able to make that happen. I think it’s due May 29th, but I’m too scared to check my email for this info. “Knowledge is power,” my guides say, but Fiona says:

Here are some ideas on how I can come up with $850 within the next 16 days:
1. Sell art
2. Sell my plasma (but my weight might be too low right now b/c stress and not eating enough snacks when I go to my girlfriend’s house. I’m working on this.)
3. Sell monthly sticker ✅ Order May’s dope Lava Lamp Lady Sticker by joining my Patreon.
4. Make a consistent and thoughtful and good enough Substack that you lovely readers want to pay for it. I swear to you I have suck great ideas, but then the fears come rushing in, because I was raised by a psycho lady who wove self-sabotage deep into my being. You know what, here’s an unfinished/rough draft of a comic of sorts about me trying to escape the ickiness that is my mom’s awful, neglectful, evilness out of my body.

This is how I feel as I work so hard to unlearn 28 years of fucked up shit and delusion and evilness that my mom infused into me. I’m the red. Black is the sludge that is my mother who still has a tiny voice inside my head. FUCK HER.

AND FUCK ALL THE ABUSIVE PARENTS WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO LOVE THEIR CHILDREN UNCONDITIONALLY, BUT DON’T.

Mother’s Day sucked harder than I imagined.

I’d mostly forgotten about it, and consciously chose not to take part in anything around it (selling baclloons or helping my dear, sweet, talented friends at Flower and Festivities with Mother’s Day deliverers like I usually would). This year, I listened to my intuition and protected myself, my heart.

Heather stayed the weekend in Scituate with me and maybe I shouldn’t have left the house Sunday, because I’d forgotten when I awoke next to my beautiful girlfriend. How am I supposed to have thoughts when I sleep next to an angel? She helped me go through a massive pile of mail (my mom avoided the mail like the plague, thus SAME, GURL!!). Sorted things out, threw away junk and things I had no business being distracted by. She even paid a couple of $5 tolls for me. I sorted my shells while she did the mail and by the end she helped me come up with a plan.

Today I pay my excise tax, which was $90 this year and I was thrilled! But that was in February, and now I owe $132. Fiona!! No, let’s not blame our selves for the past mistakes. I’m paying it within three months of receiving the bill, a major improvement. Luckily I found a cash stash the other day and guess what?! There was $140 in there for me to take to the deputy collector’s office. Inconveniently located two minutes from my house; so unfortunately out of the way that I tend drive by almost daily….

I haven’t told you about my shell obsession yet, have I? That would one a simple enough newsletter to send. I don’t have a normal baseline, as someone who was raised in a secure house hold. I had an insecure childhood, so my circle of needs is like three times the size of people who had secure childhoods. I have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, because my trauma was repetitive, consistent, and I’ve held fear in my tiny little body since I was five years old.

It sucks, and I hate it so much. I hate that my moms such an evil shit to treat her own children as she did. To manipulate us so deeply. To isolate us. Look at her, does she have friends? No. Were we allowed to have friends? Only in elementary and middle school, when it meant we could be pawned off on other families so she could go to the club.

One night in Nashville, I was probably 11, I called my dad to tell him Maddie and I were so hungry and my mom was at the club and we didn’t have any food. From Scituate, he called a pizza place and had it delivered to our door. Madeline’s dad has almost the exact same story, from when Maddie was with out other sister and my mom was out doing god knows what and they had no food.

We had a fucking KILN in our home when I was in elementary school. in the early 2000s- A FUCKING KILN. She always had the latest clothes, but we didn’t have heat. She made us sleep with multiple coats and layers of pants, so we’d “stay warm”. I didn’t even have a real mattress from 6th grade until 19 when I left for college. It was an Ikea futon pad made of compressed cottony stuff. I felt every slat of my bunk bed in the room I shared with my sister (sisters once the third came along) for eight years.

Another lie my mom told was that my dad didn’t send child support checks; this tale began in middle school. I was too young to realize the checks were actually funding all of her art endeavors: hundreds of dollars worth of pottery for her to paint and put into that kiln, there were plates, vases, pitchers, serving dishes, tons of paint; we had 10 pound bags of glitter for her oil painting phase—which she did inside the home, on our dining room table and let us all inhale the fumes—then covered 3x3 foot tomatoes and “psycho cats” in the glitter; she purchased the Chanel hula hoop bag ($3,100 in 2013) and told us not to tell anyone (probably “anyone” meant our dad’s since Maddie’s is an anesthesiologist and those child support checks probably walked right into the Chanel store to recieve her special order), because she wouldn’t buy Maddie new clothes. Only the youngest mattered, because I had introduced my mom to the world of musicians and models through my jobs at Third Man Records and Venus and Mar’s Vintage. She had appearance to keep up, I guess. OH! AND SHE SELLS HULA HOOPS FOR A LIVING so why the hell not drop three-grand on a purse you don’t want most people to know exists.

There are so many things and I want to draw them all.

This newsletter really took a turn, didn’t it. Can you tell I'm still hurting? My kitty can. Pretzel has requested to be held and given lots of pets, probably because I spent the last 20 minutes crying while writing. With that I bid you adieu.

I hope you have a wonderful Tuesday and if you have any art commissions you would like to send my way please do. I have many skills.

Enjoy some of my art, please!! For you, dear friend, I’ll create any quote, logo, kawaii pet portrait, fashion human portrait, tattoo, physical or digital art requests are welcome. Hopefully some shell-inspired or shell-INCLUDED art will be available soon!