"An Enduring Love"

Sara embraces storytelling in “An Enduring Love,” a piece full of reclaimed objects with levels of symbolism embedded throughout. She suggests “layered and chaotic” to describe both the piece and the experience of relational victimhood, using Jackie’s story as an anchor. Sara resonated with Jackie’s experience, having had family members make the same fatal mistake as Ron. The line between artist and relational victim disappeared for Sara, and opened up an opportunity to explore her own life experience from an outside perspective, through Jackie. Similar to the experience of the ‘fear and shame’ tutorial in SFU’s introduction to restorative justice course. As Sara found a piece of herself within Jackie’s life, a relational connection grew. The connections within this study once again expanding; the social echoes reaching farther than I could have imagined.

Sara roots the story in the framework of family, from using a kitchen door to represent the heart of the home, to the giant tree that makes up the centre of the art. The kitchen door for Sara is about strength, resiliency, and stability; these appear to be a theme that runs throughout the piece as it moves from pre to post harm, and beyond. As I look at this art piece, I can see the tree darken when tragedy befalls the family, again representing the before/after experience so common in relational victimhood, but behind it remains blue sky, a beacon of hope, the strength of the family remaining under the pressure of trauma. “Sturdy, strong and resilient” are words Sara chooses to describe the kitchen cabinet, and this translates to how she sees the family unit.

I was particularly moved by the objects Sara chose to include. The “Made in Occupied Japan” pieces almost knocked me off my feet. I did not know these pieces even existed nor what they represented; the parallel she drew between Occupy Japan and the oppression experienced by relational victims was striking. Similar to themes that arose within Kyla and Shar’s work, many people find themselves in traumatic situations beyond their control, bringing to the forefront the research that came up around the Holocaust and trauma (See for example: Storozhuk et al., 2023; Ellemers & Haslam, 2012; Hirschberger, 2018). While the research draws on large scale collective trauma (Hübl, 2023), it can be applied to the family unit. Jackie explored many familial impacts in her interview, from her mom’s health deterioration, to the tightening of the family unit, “forming a kind of inward refuge”. This aligns directly with what we know about trauma, that it can impact beyond time and space, change the ways we see the world, effecting ontological security – all aspects that can play on mental health (Storozhuk et al., 2023; Ellemers & Haslam, 2012, Hirschberger, 2018).

The “Black Dog” was another reclaimed object in Sara’s art that drew my attention. Sara worked her entire professional life as a mental health nurse. This concept of “The Black Dog” equating to depression was an analogy I had never heard. In building the framework for the current project, I came to realize that much of the recent work in the area of families of the incarcerated focused primarily on impacts on children of the offender, material loss, emotional turmoil, and mental health (see for example: Leonardi & Hannem, 2015; Hannem, 2012; Wildeman, Schnittker & Turney, 2012; Comfort, 2008; Condry, 2007; Christian, Mellow & Thomas, 2006; Braman, 2004; Withers, 2003). However, this was an area I did not unpack within the literature. I built the framework around a restorative inquiry, investigating relationship, emotion, healing, and belonging. Within that framework, we leave room for all impacts. It is surprising that Sara’s piece is the only one that directly mentioned mental health through the depression analogy. Although, considering the length of time since many of these interviews were conducted, and the stigma around mental health in the recent past, the lack of discussion around such a topic could be considered normal.

Two last items of interest are the totem and the British man. The totem speaks to the Metis culture in Jackie’s story, but also ties to culture in other ways. Sara uses the totem as a jumping off point to discuss Saskatchewan culture around drinking. I can attest, having lived here as well as other provinces, states, and countries, that there is indeed a unique culture around drinking and drunk driving in Saskatchewan, and indeed, other unsafe driving practices. Sara’s story highlights this, having had several relatives of her own impacted by the choice to drink and drive. In drawing our attention to this issue, Sara enters into relationship with Jackie, having shared a similar life experience and tapping deeper into the empathy needed to create such art.

The British man is framed by Sara saying, “For money, processes, and time served are required in this [justice] system. Often the person with the most coin is best served.” Her statement reminds me of J. B. Handelsman’s famous cartoon in The New Yorker in which the lawyer asks the client, “How much justice can you afford?”. Both images make visible a quiet but powerful truth: that justice is not only a moral ideal but a resource, distributed unevenly through access to money, time, and institutions. Sara’s piece does not simply accuse the justice system of inequality, it highlights the way legitimacy itself becomes skewed; those who can afford prolonged legal processes are more likely to experience justice as something that works for them.
Her artistic insight resonates with procedural justice theory, that has demonstrated people’s willingness to accept legal decisions and comply with the law is driven less by whether they “win” or “lose” and more by whether they believe the process was fair (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Tyler, 1990). These authors suggest procedural fairness (being heard, being treated with dignity, and believing that decision-makers are neutral and trustworthy) operates independently from outcome favourability. In other words, people can accept even deeply unfavorable outcomes if they feel that the process itself respected them as legitimate members of the community. What Sara’s figurine points to is the assumption that these procedural experiences are equally available to everyone. If justice requires money and time, then procedural fairness becomes contingent on resources.

Drawing on Lind and Tyler’s value-group model (1988), they argue that procedural justice signals inclusion, standing, and belonging within the group. When people are treated fairly by authorities, they infer that they are respected members of the collective, and in turn strengthens their identification with the legal system and motivates compliance. From this perspective, Sara’s piece takes on a deeper meaning: if only those with sufficient “coin” can fully access legal processes, then marginalized individuals may experience not just adverse outcomes but symbolic exclusion from the community the law claims to represent. Their diminished access to process becomes a message about their place in the social order.

Blader and Tyler (2003) later emphasize that procedural justice is not merely about interpersonal treatment in isolated encounters, but also about how formal rules, institutional practices, and decision-making structures communicate status and value. Rules that systematically advantage those with more financial resources do more than shape outcomes; they shape people’s sense of whether authorities are acting on their behalf at all. Sara’s figurine captures this dimension of procedural justice: the ways institutions create unequal pathways to dignity, voice, and recognition. Her figurine speaks to what procedural justice theory has long suggested, that when fairness is rationed, so too is belonging.

Sara ends her statement with an interesting comment on bias, as related to sewing. In using the sewing pattern as the shell of her statement, Sara signals her awareness that stories, like fabric, already have a grain. These interviews arrived to the artists, weighed down with love, grief, loyalty, harm, and endurance, and any attempt to interpret them will inevitably follow certain threads more easily than others. Her question about her art being biased toward a murderer is not about choosing sides, but about whether it is possible to witness a story without flattening its complexity. Bias then becomes framed not as a failure in objectivity, but a reminder that meaning-making is shaped by where we place our hands on the cloth.