Our mission is to create a powerful healing modality for domestic violence victims using art to process trauma, practice self-sovereignty, and self-determination, and increase their sense of self-efficacy. Participants will work through a series of abstract expressionist art exercises to increase their sense of unique and individual identity, boundaries, and self-esteem. Readings and discussions will be paired with the exercises. and either in-person or online support, will give participants opportunities to practice and gain a deeper understanding of the rights they have as a person to make their own decisions, to try new things, to trust their voice, to increase the confidence they have in themselves, to process trauma, to heal, and to bring beauty into the world. As an example of a session, we will explore past (and recently recurring) trauma, putting it on canvas through color, energetic mark-making, drawing, and then overwrite those using artistic expressions that bring the creator peace or catharsis. Self-expression and expelling traumatic events via physical manifestation are dynamic tools in building an individual's sense of control, identity, inclusion, and visibility. Each person will paint, draw, scrape, scratch and get the traumatic event on the canvas one way or another, and then layer over it or incorporate it into the final piece, much like we must incorporate grief into our psyche to keep living healthily after a loss.
We hope that through numerous interactions over a year, people will feel empowered and understood in new and important ways. The United States is the most dangerous country in the world for women, in 2022, according to world population review. Intimate partner violence (IPV) results in 1300 deaths and over 2 million injuries in the US, ANNUALLY. 75% of those deaths occur when a woman attempts to or has left. 1 in 3 women worldwide has been forced into sex, beaten, or abused by their partner.

Domestic violence affects women of color disproportionately, especially severe physical violence. Black women are the most likely to be beaten severely and to die from domestic violence in the US. Women ages 18-24 are the most likely to experience domestic violence, followed by teens between the ages of 11-17, and these are only the REPORTED cases.

“Getting away is a mother fucker. It is dangerous. It is TERRIFYING. I know because I've done it.” My ex-husband tried to kill me by pushing me down a flight of stairs to a concrete floor in view of our 4-year-old son. My daughter's father, a different man, dragged me out of bed by my hair, broke my finger, choked me, and squeezed my jaw so hard that I could barely open my mouth for 4 days. While I was pregnant. When I finally got him out of my house and had a restraining order, I woke up to him standing over me as I slept after breaking into my home. He was not arrested, despite the restraining order. Therapeutic art has been one of the most powerful tools in our recovery.” - Maaike

Programs exist but aren't sufficient.

There are domestic violence resources to leave. There are escape plans. There are advocates who will guide you through the court process. These resources are stretched thin as paper and require call after call to access them. Do you know who can’t make call after call and get return calls? Women who are living under the thumb of a domestic terrorist.

There are countless recovery programs for abusers that are paid for by the government and, usually, court-mandated. In addition, there are endless free (and paid) recovery/rehab programs for addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, and eating disorders, including many 12-step meetings across the US daily for these issues.

For people who have experienced abuse, recovery programs are few, not well structured, and underfunded. As a result, you often find people with good intentions running a circle of stories centered around the abuser (codependent behavior) that often turns into the suffering Olympics rather than focusing on the woman, her progress, and her well-being. Getting and staying in an abusive relationship results from not having a clear sense of self and firm boundaries. The red flags that typically occur long before abuse escalates to becoming physical would end the relationship for people with healthy boundaries. The problem with never having had any agency over yourself is that you don't understand that LEAVING is the correct response to abusive behavior or that you even have that as an option. While ending the relationship and respecting yourself is the right answer, no person alive can do those things if they don't know deep down that they CAN and have an intrinsic power over their own life. People who are raised with a lack of autonomy simply have no idea about personal boundaries, let alone how to apply them. Sometimes they don't even understand that a person who is hurting won't just decide to stop.

To be clear - abusers are 100% responsible for the abuse they dole out. There is no BLAME for the person who is abused.

People need to be taught how to move forward, and there is a glaring lack of help. To work their way up to leaving an abusive situation or to rebuild themselves after they have left, they need to discover their identity away and apart from the negative patterns of abuse, likely all they have ever known. This is the space we aim to fill.

In the curriculum we are outlining, the most important thing is developing a sense of self and the absolute value of each individual's perspective, expression, taste, and message, all of which happens in the inner world.

Neil Gaiman said, "The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision."

In my opinion, sparking the imagination of the inner world of an individual and repeatedly affirming the value of their voice is one of the most revolutionary things you can do, especially for someone who is being or has been oppressed. What happens inside of us belongs only to us.

To answer specific questions regarding suitability for the Web3 community round - this project will demonstrate to new users web3 benefits such as REAL privacy, NFT utility (we will not be selling any NFT’s) in regard to using them to access spaces, utilizing the metaverse for creativity and mental health benefits and creating an ever growing library of content that will ideally be accessible to whoever has suffered trauma and has need of it. Simultaneously, we will use these same tools to remove from our community bad actors and/or anyone who is dangerous to our participants.

Since GR15, I have been networking and found advocates for our project who already have ownership of and are building out metaverse spaces for various facets of mental health. We have been offered free space that we can have control of to create space for information seekers, participants and facilitators to gain varying levels of access. We have not yet begun building something others can SEE but laying a foundation of relationships and gaining understanding of what will best serve and how to accomplish these things. We are currently planning our first in-person workshop. It will be a stand alone 3 hour workshop that is paid but with sponsorships for some. This is one of the ways we have decided to work on-going funding as many people who want to do the workshop can afford to attend AND to sponsor someone else and want to do so.
Community based workshops will be free to attend and all materials will be provided free of charge. Children will be welcome and ideally we will serve nourishing food and beverage.

Curriculum development is moving forward.

We are planning to have a videographer but will carefully not film faces and will ensure in editing that no identifying visuals are in anything that will be made public.

Funding will go toward: Further Curriculum development Space and material costs for in-person workshops for women and children Filming demos and video editing for online use Creating a web3 platform whose functionality will include Managing the workshops Onboarding participants to web3 by helping them understand web3 better and get a digital wallet if they don't have one. Educating about the metaverse space and how to utilize it to build an archive of personal work that can be shared at a level of the owner’s discretion Future Goals: Additional curriculum material from a diverse group of artists - ongoing Gain widespread adoption of the curriculum for use by domestic violence services and individuals nationwide Create a variation of the curriculum to be used with kids as a DETERRENT to domestic violence Broaden the potential benefit to people who speak a wide range of languages beyond English Additional goals will be added as they become clearer

Maaike Fettah, Founder

Personal History & Experience I have been painting since 1995. I am a self-taught artist, gathering information and skills from a few college classes, a handful of online courses, YouTube tutorials, extensive reading, and art evaluation, and just DOING it. Painting has been many things to me, but it has been most relevant to therapy and life. I believe that art in all its forms is one of the most powerful means of personal transformation and restoration. While my current art practice is primarily about bringing beauty and joy into a world that can be very harsh, I have used art to process grief, build my sense of self, and exorcise traumatic events and their memories. I started in oils and worked sporadically in that, aerosol, and other mediums as a means of self-expression until 2010. At that time, I began to use art to process trauma, specifically domestic violence, and rape. The art therapy techniques my son was taught after witnessing his father try to kill me, were essential to his recovery, and led me down this path. I began working in acrylics/mixed media and found magic I had previously only known through making music. I have also worked in watercolors, primarily in 2011 and again in 2019, when we were in Morocco, during which time I created an entire body of work - 30+ pieces - over a 5-month period, and solidified my desire to move toward being a full-time artist. Abstract and emotional expressionist art is a profoundly impactful form of visual communication that allows both the creator and viewer to be moved in profound ways. My current work explores vibrant color, texture, shape, movement, and storytelling by imbuing the canvas with energy and emotion. The most significant history of my past and current work can be viewed on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/iMaakeArt. I have a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism with a minor in Psychology which informs my understanding of visual communication. In addition, I have studied brain and behavior correlation and taken a deep dive into PTSD, trauma, and recovery from it. I have taken several courses in Group Therapy and believe what I learned about group dynamics will be an asset. My track record connecting seemingly divergent groups of people through art and music spans nearly 3 decades. My career as a financial planner speaks to my ability to communicate complex ideas in an easily understandable way, manage numerous relationships simultaneously, network broadly, and steward resources responsibly. I am accustomed to floating between groups of vastly different socio-economic and cultural situations with consideration for all and an eye to my own internalized biases. Currently, I am the Chief Alchemist and Art Director of Sunshine Alchemists & Soap Co and Night Sun Candle Company, businesses I have founded over the past 7 years, as well as an artist. We employ women coming out of domestic violence and give them flexibility and support to maintain financial solvency while remaining available to their children. Receiving funding for this project will enable me to shift further into community healing and art and free up finances to create additional employment opportunities there. I have lived a great deal of life, which has given me tremendous compassion. My parents were Christian fundamentalist pastors with a church and school in Montana. Our family lived in the abandoned forest service building that also housed the church and school. We showered at the Y across the street. There was no real kitchen. Our power was turned off regularly. I know what it is to live out of a gym bag and rely on the kindness of others for food. I had my first job at 12, out of necessity, touching up frames in a factory. Thankfully, my path also led me to live in the Bay area, New York, here in New Mexico, and to spend time in New Orleans and Miami, with people from all over the world. I have learned that how I was raised and what I thought was normal was far from it and that unlearning is an intentional, ongoing process. I have lived through… way too many violent incidents of varying natures, and as Lin-Manuel Miranda says, “Wrote my way out.”

Angela Steffens, aka wonderwomancode

Co-founder Personal History ## As a woman who has had a long career in tech, I'm excited to be involved with a project that I feel will significantly impact bringing more DEI to the space. But, more importantly, I am confident it will reduce the suffering caused by domestic violence and hopefully it will reduce the numbers by ending what can sometimes be generational patterns. I started my career more than 20 years ago when I graduated with a degree in computer science. Since then, I have worked as a full-stack developer, architect, consultant, engineering lead, and founder. As a result, I have the skills necessary to help bring organization and coordination to this project to ensure the funding received is used as efficiently as possible and to guide development on the web3 platform in a way that will see actual results. I've been involved in the web3 space since 2018; currently, I work for a web3 protocol, belong to many DAOs, including several others with a focus on DEI, and serve on the board of advisors for several other web3 companies.

ABOUT DEI:

We are aware that currently we are two white women working on a project that we would consider a DEI project. Currently, this is a teeny tiny project. The amount of funding TOTAL that we have raised is less than $2K. In New Mexico, where this project is currently based, the largest group of people who are experiencing domestic violence are Indigenous women. I have a dear friend who is an Apache two-spirit artist. They are fully on board with this project and we have had many discussions about how to best proceed to serve the community with workshops in the Pueblos. To be clear, that looks like them taking the lead entirely in terms of instruction and us showing up to support behind the scenes. That being said, it isn’t right to ask them to do labor without providing income so until we have funds to provide, we are doing the work. Hopefully by the next round we will be able to report materials sponsorships, workshops having been held, and a NEW PROJECT PARTNER.

Access to wifi in general has been identified as a primary barrier to using websites of any kind, let alone web3. Providing Pueblo wide wifi and then jumping into how to use our web3 space after that will likely be the order of operations. We will be bringing written materials with resources for planning and executing an escape from domestic violence within a tight knit community to be distributed discreetly as well as contact information for Indigenous led safe houses and hotlines. I would like to note that my nuclear family encompasses a Muslim, a semi-Christian seeker, an atheist and myself and I would say I personally am in a constant state of accepting that there’s no way any group is solely right.

My kids are both bi-racial (yes, I am 1,000% aware that doesn’t change me or my privilege) and I have been with both of them through many struggles.
I am deeply committed to decolonizing my own mentality and as much of the world around me as I can touch. My network is incredibly diverse. I seek out conversations with people who’s lived experiences are different than my own and try my best to accept critiques without defensiveness and to stand up for what is right. Both Angela and my family are neurospicy in a variety of ways, as are we. Gender and sexuality are fluid concepts around here. We champion diversity in every facet.

In closing, trying to do good work and not accidentally be an asshole along the way.