I Promise I Will Take Care of You
I am sitting on the beach with a large rag doll. She is slightly smaller than me. She wears a blue denim dress with white stars. I wear a black cotton dress with white stars. We both have our hair in buns. Her hair is yarn and her skin is pale cotton. She has a gaping hole instead of a face. We are barefoot. The camera points at us as we watch the ocean while the sun sets behind us. In the video, our hair shifts in the wind. The doll moves from sitting up next to me to leaning gently against me. We sit on a hand-me-down quilt from my grandparents.
When I first made her, I knew that I wanted to create a large faceless doll. I was thinking about dissociation and what that felt like. But as I worked with her, she took on more. She became an externalized self.
She represented the part of my brain that had protected me. She was the guard—able to navigate without emotional influence and could reject panic, at least until I was safe.
Once I settled into my new apartment, she became a roommate. I sat her at the counter while I cooked. I moved her to my great-grandmother’s rocking chair. She sits next to the television, so whenever I watch television, I am also watching her, watching me. I gave her a footstool. Right now, she’s wearing my house shoes and holding a teddy bear made by my great aunt.
I wonder what else she represents. I wonder if she is my inner child physicalized. Some hardened, adult-ified part.
This is my brain struggling to understand itself.
During quarantine, I took up collecting 1990s Polly Pockets. With every new arrival to The House, I would feel a sense of delight and wonder. Polly’s miniature world ignited my imagination. Even now, looking at my humble collection I feel sparks in the front of my brain. I am convinced the feeling is neurons firing up.
There’s the pizza shop, dress store, summer house with a pool, a small cottage with a perpetually full mailbox, and pet store. They are each designed for a doll no bigger than the pad of my finger. They are mostly empty, like stages between shows. This feeling of anticipation, that anything could play out in these spaces, is what tickles.
During the nationwide quarantine, toy sales increased 16%.1 At that time a soft, squishy craze was trending. Squishmallows, round, velvety, plush toys, became a source of community and comfort for individuals and families.2 I watched TikToks of people going hunting, looking for rare animals. They were an excuse to get out and a way to build community.3
I only have three. The one I purchased during quarantine is a soft pink snail with a pastel tie-dye shell. This toy craze and the general acceptance of it gave me access to toy-collecting communities.
Over time, I bought a few reproduction Bratz dolls, trendy LOL OMG fashion dolls, and a Rainbow High Doll all while keeping my eyes on eBay for Polly Pockets, Mimi and the Goo Goos, and other miniature compact brands.
Was I doing this for her?
Often credited with helping develop the idea of the inner child, Carl Jung once asked, “The small boy (himself) is still around and possesses a creative life which I lack. But how can I make my way to it?”4 He then found that engaging in the play he enjoyed as a child helped him reach new levels of creativity.5
“When relaxed in play, we often have an increased capacity for empathy and intimacy. Play is affirming.” It also offers a safe environment “in which the inner landscape can safely be explored.”6
That interior is the space I attempt to make work from. In adulthood, problem-solving through craft and material is play. Pushing form, color, and texture is play. Lifting my soft sculptures, feeling them flop or drag around me, engaging my muscles, and movement strategy is play.
During a studio visit, a curator once asked me who my influences were. I had the list I normally gave, an unsurprising cast of successful artists. But, for some reason, I decided to be honest.
“I mostly look at toys.”
Toys are social-emotional tools used to pretend and fantasize about different outcomes.7 In my work, the objects are made while I re-play the past as both participant and curious onlooker. These objects then are imbued with these playfields where I have hashed and re-hashed the past, offering more context and perspective to my own experience.
This ability to rehash with care and not self-criticism was initially developed through two and half years of therapy. It’s also a process of externalization where experiences are processed through and out of my limbic system to my cognitive brain sector.
Their existence then allows grief, pain, confusion and more to exist somewhere besides the deep underbelly of the limbic.
The process of sewing is also a grounding technique. Having to problem-solve and stay focused on the task at hand makes me practice being present.
Trauma acted upon my brain as a lightning strike carving deep ravines. These new neural pathways are now so large and so deep, that my brain finds and follows them first. This leads to panic attacks, nightmares, intense anxiety, and chronic fatigue—all symptoms of PTSD.
I talked to my counselor about creating new pathways. I cannot create new ones without acknowledging the ones already there. I must accept their presence for them to shrink. Then, with careful practice, I can make new pathways. These are the opposite of lightning strikes. They are slow, strategic, repeated motions. They are rhythmic. Like sewing by hand.
Tsai, Katie. “U.S. Toy Sales Surged 16% in 2020 as Parents Looked to Entertain Kids during Pandemic.” CNBC. CNBC, January 25, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/25/us-toy-sales-surged-16percent-in-2020.html.
Lorenz, Taylor. “Squishmallows Are Taking Over.” The New York Times. The New York Times, March 16, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/style/squishmallows.html.
Ibid
Schaefer, Charles E., and Dottie Ward-Wimmer. “Introduction: The Healing Potential of Adults at Play.” Essay. In Play Therapy with Adults. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003.
Ibid
Ibid
Hashmi, Salim, Ross E. Vanderwert, Hope A. Price, and Sarah A. Gerson. “Exploring the Benefits of Doll Play through Neuroscience.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 14 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.560176.