21/11/2025
Some "bytes" from this article as shared by Cathy Malchiodi:
🐝🐝 "Creative expression works beneath language, engaging the senses and the body to reach parts of the brain that store traumatic memory. Through mark-making, building, and movement, children can begin to tell their stories symbolically, at their own pace, and with a sense of control."
🐝🐝 "Through mirroring, rhythm, and gentle collaboration, the therapist helps the child’s nervous system attune to another person in safety.”
🐝🐝 "Bilateral drawing, using both hands or crossing the midline of the body while drawing, helps re-integrate these fragments. By engaging both hemispheres of the brain, children can begin to connect thought and feeling, logic and emotion, word and image."
For children who have lived through domestic abuse, language can feel unsafe. Words might have been used as weapons, or silence might have been their only protection. Art therapy offers a way through this silence, allowing children to express what their voices cannot yet hold.