Charlie’s Fall is part hand drawn, part photography, and part digital manipulation. It was created in service of mental health advocacy and represents a dream-based processing of brother-sister incest. In this underwater dream scene, sister and brother have been transformed into a blowfish and an eel respectively. Toni, the blowfish, here is shooting her brother Charlie full of toxins. Although Toni awakens shaken up, she also feels empowered enough to bring the dream to her psychotherapist for further processing. While everyone has some degree of trauma, all too often the most severe traumas, especially incest, are the most difficult to discuss much less process. I and my New York City colleague Leanne Domash are creating a graphic novel called The Eel and the Blowfish: A Graphic Tale of Dreams, Trauma & Healing in hopes of bringing incest out of the shadows to normalize these kinds of narratives.
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