Printing I AM ALIVE

I thought it was going to be an easy enough process. I was wrong.

The last few months putting the book together had been grueling. In retrospect, I should have got on a plane and finished the book with the designer and publisher in person. There is such value in working face to face. Another mistake learnt.

On May 5, earlier this year, I arrived in Stuttgart, Germany to print my latest book, I AM ALIVE: Creating Resilience and Healing Trauma through Art.

I had attended the printing of my catalogue, Love it and Leave it - Australia’s Creative Diaspora. We had printed in Singapore. It was black and white and a very smooth process. My imagination never went to the space that it could be a vastly different experience/

So what was the difference between the prints?

Very simply: the personal…

Love it and Leave was about other people’s stories.

I am Alive is my story.

Every drawing in the book has an aspect of my soul imprinted into it. There are the drawings from when I am being burnt alive. The drawing from when I am fighting for my life. The drawing from when I want it all to end. The drawing of not coping. There are drawings of trauma, depression, grief in all their colours. I lived them. Each of them is a part of me.

To see these images each with a fragment of my soul be spat out of the printing press at such a high speed was dizzying and overwhelming. The emotions of this triggered the sensations of going through cancer treatment again… How could I explain this to anyone around me? I couldn’t find the vocabulary. And printing this book was a professional setting: I needed to stay cool and centred. The machines were dedicated to bringing my book into reality that day. Tomorrow was reserved for another book. This was not the day to fall apart. All I wanted to do was hide and cry. At one part of the day I found myself in the toilet, gathering my sense of being. I wished so deeply that I was not going through this alone. I knew I really needed someone by my side… but how could I have known I was going to be triggered like this? I thought I was over the trauma of my treatment. That was 16 years ago… How could I be reacting this much? I reminded myself of how much I had worked to recover.

Breathe deeply. Come back to my body.

I got through the day and went to the main station to get a train to Frankfurt. I was early and sat on the platform. My head in my hands. I was enraged with how the day had gone. I should have been more careful, I should have foreseen to accompany me today, someone to help me through this. I was done. I called a friend, “I never ever want to see that book again. I want it all to be thrown away. This was not worth it. **** it.”

A month later, when the first book arrived, I felt no joy. I was still overcome by the experience that had happened in Stuttgart. This is a sign for that things are not OK and that I still need to pay attention to what is going on.

Time plays such an important part of healing. Time and focused attention on the issue - which is what I did. I took care of the parts of me that hadn’t felt safe, that were overwhelmed by time in the printing, that confused the printing with me being in radiation. Separated. Brought back together. Whole.

And now, two months later, I have come to befriend the book. I am ready to share it with others and let it reveal its journey to me.

Printing of I AM ALIVE in Stuttgart, Germany

Offset printing - I was being shown how each colour is measured.