My little boy and I went around the yard gathering sticks and twigs and built a nest under the Catalpa tree. We wove and circled our branches just like birds. After it was built, I knew I needed to get in. It felt only natural and right to take my clothes off first. It felt liberating to strip it all down and let it all go. — Debbie Baxter
As I start to write this, I have Debbie Baxter’s photographic tribute to healing open on my lap. I am sitting comfortably in my favorite chair by a roaring fire, but my cheeks are damp. Not with sadness, but with swelling admiration and hope. Her book, NEST, is a tribute to courage — the courage of trauma survivors to grapple with their demons and learn to trust, to feel, and to face their pain. This is no ordinary book of art photographs.
nesting
I first met Baxter when I had the good fortune to sit next to her on a flight to Portland. We introduced ourselves and began to chat. I soon learned that she was an artist and documentary photographer and was engaged in a project to photograph trauma survivors — often victims of child abuse — in life-sized nests she had built around the country: The Nest Project.
As a lawyer, I have had long experience representing child abuse victims, as both children in need of a safe and loving home and, later in my career, as adult survivors seeking accountability. I know these stories.
A nest is symbolic — a safe place, a refuge of nurture and protection. It is also a portal to our deep body-memory of the womb. We can’t describe it, but we know it. Baxter’s nests are experienced through a return to the fetal self-embrace, a naked posture that unlocks primal memories of the rhythm of a mother’s heartbeat. It is a place to curl up, feel the comfort of your own body, and grow.
We are not always held by our mothers. In fact, many of us are not.” — Debbie Baxter…