Anyone who has survived trauma knows all too well that the healing process is non-linear; it moves like a circle, going around and around again in a cycle that can sometimes feel like it is spiraling out of control. For many sexual assault survivors, social stigmas and victim-blaming cause them to retreat into a state of isolation that further harms the healing process.
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With the understanding that photography can be a therapeutic tool, American photographer Sarah Rose Smiley and collaborator Taewee Kahrs — both sexual assault survivors — created the project “Coming Home: Milk, Honey, Healing“. In drawing from their own experiences, they have created a series of intimate images of vulnerability, pain, loss, joy, and triumph that reflect their inner states and disrupt the buttoned-down images of survivors that mainstream media has constructed as “respectable” in order to make themselves visible to the people who need to see them most — other survivors struggling to heal themselves.
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“Photography has always been a therapeutic tool and survival skill because it gave me an outlet when hard things were happening in my life,” says Smiley. “It showed me a type of world-building and laid the foundation for storytelling combined with social justice to share my experiences and those of others in a way that wasn’t speaking for them, but rather uplifting them.”
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