Sabrina (2021) Painting by Cyrielle Recoura

What strikes me first about Sabrina is the light she radiates. That smile in her eyes, that confident voice, that uninhibited laugh… I feel all this via my computer screen, face-to-face on Zoom.

Sabrina lives in Belgium, I in Germany, we don’t know each other, and yet she agreed to tell me her story. An extremely intimate story, as difficult to live as it is to transcribe in words.

Sabrina was raped by her great-grandfather when she was 6 years old. When the rest of the family were busy and “he managed to catch her, he was having fun with a little girl’s body.” Ashamed, paralyzed at the idea of ​​someone opening the door and finding them, she kept it for herself, enduring her abuse until age finally took her great-grandfather to his grave.

After incest, she tells me, there are two possible paths: reproducing the same pattern or mistreating your body, disrespecting it. She took the second, alternating between phases of anorexia and bulimia, hiding her body, mutilating herself. She felt “dirty, destroyed”. For years, she refused to let her body be a source of desire for others or pleasure for herself.

Growing up, she is haunted in her sexual relationships. The men she meets find it hard to accept her blockages, show little empathy. For thirteen years, she lives with the father of her children, a jealous and violent man, before divorcing and falling into the hands of a narcissistic pervert. Followed 24 hours a day – thanks to the location on her phone and laptop – demeaned, humiliated, she begins a long descent into hell until an unexpected event saves her life: she has a near-death experience.

This is the click. During her NDE, she thinks about her children. The one she lost and those who remain. “Life isn’t that”, she realizes.

Then begins a long process of reconstruction. She loses her job, her home, divorces a second time. She is “stripped”, but regains her freedom. Like a second birth. Thanks to a few hypnotherapy sessions, but above all a long independent work on herself, Sabrina finds the road to recovery. She educates herself on energy healing, alternative medicine and quantum therapy. She develops a capacity for clairvoyance, is finally able to put words on her trauma.

The colors of her canvas, she was one the one who chose them: blue, green and mauve, colors of three of the main chakras. And especially the words, painted on her body: touching, beatings, hell, rape, threats, suffering… So many witnesses to a dark past, which she has chosen to put behind her. She sees the present and future full of light: confident, strong, creative, radiant…

Today, Sabrina is training to become a therapist. To “help, in peace“. She is no longer afraid, she is passionate, filled with joy and gratitude for life. She wants to talk about her story so that it doesn’t repeat itself. So that her daughter can grow up dancing with life, because “every woman has the right to be beautiful in safety“…

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NudeNudesFeminineFeministFeminism