The creation of these pieces provided me with an opportunity to poke around in my soul and personal history looking for answers, clarity, and some healing of the childhood trauma I endured at the hands of my parents. Mom had childhood trauma of her own and serious mental health issues. She struggled to keep above the fear, depression and the overwhelm of her eight children, my father’s single working-class paycheck, her mid-century idealism, and the weight of her religious and politically extreme conservatism. I never knew when the ground under my feet would give way and Mom and her world would come crashing down around me, literally. This led me to be hypervigilant, watching for danger to appear at any time and so I managed by learning to walk on eggshells. As an adult, I’ve looked for ways to reconcile the challenges of loving parents with their own trials in life and finding a way home to a safe and stable platform of my own for the rest of my life to play out on.