The featured image for April on our banner is by Paul Brian Tovey, an adult adoptee who was abused by his adoptive parents as a child.
Paul now campaigns for adoptees to have the legal right to revert back to their birth identities.
Researching Reform has been sharing his work for several months and he is, with affection, our “artist in residence.”
Paul’s paintings reflect his experiences as an adoptee including the loss of identity he suffered as a result of being forcibly adopted.
With our ongoing and deep thanks to Paul for allowing us to feature his work and his enormous talent on Researching Reform.
Researching Reform 
Very nice 🙂
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The picture you see is just part of long therapy …Natasha likes truth and it shows the truth .. Personal and social ..
I am very working class in my background and I never try to compete with the Middle Class world which through law and poor insights created my hell to live in with abusers called Adopters … To be truthful I see many more people around them though as creating the context of my nightmare called “adoption” ..
“If you need to make sense of madness look to the context of the relationships surrounding the person” . That was one of R.D. Llaing’s insights .. Simple really, but often overlooked by labeling and other ways to keep social sense mystified
So in private therapy (Feck the NHS) over many years I have built positions and places of great mourning to create “rested griefs” here and there … Jack De Bandages who you see above is a character like me who has to wear bandages to cover his bruised warped soul ..
It’s using Art positively to build sense and places I go to to cry … Simple really .. I had to make Art and then history (in a lifebook) to be able to find my feeling soul and tears again ..I was not encouraged or allowed to feel much as a child .. Too busy surviving and adapting to emotional impoverishment or abuses ..
So I am fekked if I am living in this world without a fekking voice… Distortions are caused in us by others … Self and Others when they relate without mirroring empathy caused children to warp and wear bandages forever in their adult lives …Underneath truth weeps it’s healings for a very long time ….. For me the picture is real .. It’s me ..
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Hi Paul, Sorry to hear of your living nightmare created by the corrupt system. i too am a Victim of it myself.
Have you ever thought of writing a book or doing a Video Vlog of your life story ?
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