This one-of-a-kind, hand-stitched tapestry was part of an online silent auction to benefit Finding Our Voices, a non-profit organization that educates the general public about the pervasiveness, insidiousness and complexity of domestic abuse (including that coercive control AKA emotional abuse can be at least as damaging as physical abuse). They also empower girls and women to recognize, avoid, safely leave and heal from dangerous relationships, and promote systemic change toward justice for victims, accountability for perpetrators and safety for all.

Do·mes·tic /dəˈmestik/ adjective 1. relating to the running of a home or to family relations.

“Safety is a Revolution” was created using scraps of clothing and a trove of vintage napkins I’ve collected over the years—setting the scene of domesticity and home as the under layer or base layer for the artwork. I adorned them using the historically feminine craft of embroidery. I first stitched the words Safety is a Revolution and then pieced the rest of the tapestry together from there, adding minuscule layers of visible stitches and a series of circles to mirror the way we often circle around and around in our own minds when we are facing a challenge or are mired in a difficult situation and do not know how to shift away from it. The text is from a poem I wrote years ago when I was circling my own personal fears and uncertainty and did not know which way to turn.

As I stitched each tiny stitch, I thought of the millions of women who are trapped in scenarios where typically comfortable spaces like the kitchen or the bedroom become nightmares rather than safe locations. The tapestry is imbued with the question “how might we mend our society if we make gender justice a priority and insist on safety for all women and children?”. The Finding Our Voices organization is a beacon, shedding light on so many women’s stories, which then become an essential tool for healing and hopefully achieving true transformative equality.