"Scarf"

Shar’s painting and poetry evoke emotion for me in the movement of the scarf, and the sharp words jumping off the canvas. What first hit me, before hearing Shar’s statement, when I saw it was the shape. The scarf is formed on canvas into a circle – sure with the tassels poking out and hanging down, but a circle none-the-less. And not just one circle, but two. The inner circle when I looked at it made me think of our own inner strength and our closest inner circle. The outside of the scarf, the second circle, jumped out at me as our circle of belonging, our communities. And those pieces of the tassel sticking out reminded me of those looks you get when someone finds out you are a relational victim. Abby perhaps said it best, “As soon as you say your husband is in prison, you go from low life to pond scum.” Those frayed pieces are the broken or damaged relationships that can impact a sense of belonging. Shar mentions, “The fringe once was knotted on for additional decoration, now it too is suffering from time and wear. Like friends, some strands are hanging on, some are missing, leaving holes in the fabric and in me.” She points out that relational victims go through a shift and perhaps even a loss; changing the way one shows up in the world, and who shows up with and for them.

The larger discussion within Shar’s piece is about experience without choice, something that was mentioned by Kyla, when she ponders a choice one didn’t make. Going back to past research in this area (e.g., Codd, 2008), it is no wonder relational victims have a difficult time identifying their own experiences from that of their relative. Someone made a choice beyond your choosing, creating those ripples Moroney (2010) so eloquently describes. This certainly creates a complex sense of identity, impacted by the closeness of relationship to the person who caused harm and how central the event was to the relational victim’s sense of self (Berman et al., 2020).

“Twisted and tangled,” Shar explores the depths of the impact on one’s thoughts and emotions. On one hand, in mentioning warmth and comfort, she reminds us of a key aspect of Kristine’s story; being a protector. As the scarf protects the neck, many of the stories stewarded feature protection such as Jackie’s sense of being her brother’s keeper, or Abby gently unwinding the story to her son, or Stan building a sanctuary for healing. Our sense of responsibility to one another impacts both: how we respond to harm and those who cause it, and how those harms affect us. On the other hand, Shar chooses the word “noose” to describe the scarf around her neck, suggesting an oppression, a suffocation, or even an end. An “end” speaks to a sharp line of before and after, similar to Kyla’s dance where she showcases a life changed in tragedy, or the poignant imagery of Abby “losing one of [her] lives right there…”. Toren (2015) suggests that once a person decides they have become a victim, there is a separation within their identity/existence into two categories – one pre-crime and one post-crime. Drawing on Toren (2015), that victimization is a subjective process beyond one’s choosing, he supposes impacts that lead the individual to decide if they identify as a victim. However, as I suspected when engaging with the literature and preparing for this study, most people who are in the relational victim category, do not identify as victims, despite experiencing harm. It is of note then, that the artists picked up on a narrative of before and after; that there was indeed an impact on relational victim identities.

Condry’s (2010) participant explores how annoying it must for be the primary victim(s), to have relational victims claim any form of victimhood, stating, “… we’re a victim once removed, aren’t we?” (p. 234). I suspect that many relational victims do not wish to claim the status for various and complex reasons, including but not limited to: a fear of not being seen as a harmed party by others and thus further rejected, shamed, or ridiculed; a desire to remain loyal to their families; and fear of an imposition to others, where they actually feel somewhat responsible for their loved one’s actions. Shar spoke to this responsibility when she discussed the colours in the scarf and the red/pink representing the blood and life lost. The imagery of red fading to pink, reminiscent of innumerable lives changing whenever a life is taken.

Shar speaks to the function of the scarf in terms of survival or fashion. The scarf becomes an analogy for the way relational victims meet the world each day; with armour and appropriate outward appearances, or as protection and comfort when one is barely hanging on. Even how the scarf is worn represents various states of being; loosely draped and “left to chance” can be inferred as a state of free-falling where nothing is within one’s control and life is chaotic and disordered. But she says it depends on the day, where sometimes the scarf is “neat”, “pressed” and “centred”. These are the days where a full breath is achievable and one foot moves a little easier in front of the other. This game of survival when life bumps up against the justice system, greatly impacts many lives beyond what is evident when we witness “justice” play out in a public setting. One of the tenets of our modern legal system is that it is transparent, yet little attention is paid beyond those directly involved, leaving many to suffer invisibly, drawing back to my assertion that the legal system is an offender in and of itself, as supported by Maki, Florestal, McCallum and Wright (2023) and Perrin (2023).