ABOUT SOPHIA JEWELL CAMPBELL

Hello Dear Hearts

Thank you for joining. My name is Sophia Jewell Campbell.

I have learned two main lessons on this path of healing.

The first one is; You are not alone! We all have survived some sort of trauma. Our pain comes from being alone as we struggled to understand and survive!

The second is; Trauma is a wound! Wounds can heal! Trauma is not the acts done to you; like war, child abuse, deaths, prison, etc. We cannot undo the acts of trauma but we can heal the wounds and the pain.

I was fifty-one years old when my repressed memories came roaring back into my consciousness. Flashes of pictures began to appear to me, lasting only seconds. I would cry for no apparent reason. This led me to a therapist who uncovered that I had lived through ritual abuse early in my life and suffered sexual, physical, and emotional childhood trauma.

As I began to work with the therapist, I simply did not have the words for the bits and pieces of what I remembered happening to me. So, one day I went to an art store and picked out a large canvas that felt "right" to me, along with some paint and brushes. I had never painted or taken an art class before. However, I felt great relief as I began to tell my story through my paintings.

I continued to paint while seeing several therapists who used different modalities for healing. Some of these modalities included Recovery of Your Inner Child, Sufi healing, talk therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS) by Dr. Richard Schwartz, and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg.

During the healing process of painting each picture, needs surfaced, and I labeled each painting and accompanying poem accordingly, as classified by the NVC “Needs Inventory.”

Some of those needs are: safety, connection with others, autonomy, and peace.

My poetry also uses NVC words to name the feelings that came up when my needs were not met.

Some of those words are: fear, aloneness disconnection, and despair.

It has taken me many years and many loving teachers

to heal from this and learn good coping skills.

I mainly used 3 healing paths to heal my trauma over the last 20 years.

I painted my feelings when no words would come.
I learned to name my feelings and the profound needs that were not met and then finally met. I learned this through teachings by Marshall Rosenberg, “Nonviolent Communication”.
I learned, through Internal Family Systems by Richard C. Schwartz about my sub personalities and how to integrate them into a whole.

As a part of my healing journey I published a book containing pictures of original paintings that I have painted over 20 years, along with a poem for each picture. The poems name my feelings and are titled with the heart’s longings/needs portrayed by the painting.

The name of my book is “The Need to Heal, changing the darkness to light".

| see this book as my community-based action. Today I feel such compassion for myself as a little powerless girl and for my two brothers who also were very young-all of us under seven years old. Empathy wells up in my body as I think of all who have experienced and survived even some of what I have, and for those who were led to pick up my book as part of their own healing journey.

My intent is to share my life without shame, with vulnerability, and with compassion. I also want to share that lives can change for the better-if, and if only if, we so choose. We have the power!

My book is about hope.

You are not alone.