About Welcoming Hysteria :
Mission Statement.
Origin & Story behind the name.
Etymology & Story
MISSION STATEMENT:
Welcoming Hysteria has been formed to give permission to celebrate, liberate, and express our inner worlds. To give way to the exploration of creativity within the midst of chaos. All while welcoming and holding space for our most vulnerable stories.
This is a place of allowing art to speak to healing & transformation. Allowing art to be a form of cathartic release & a place to alchemize pain into beauty. Welcoming Hysteria is an ode to the full spectrum of the human experience. A space to give voice to the repressed, the confined, the silenced, & the shamed parts of ourselves and others. A place for our inner worlds to be claimed and witnessed through the Art of storytelling.
A reminder of what makes us human.
ORIGIN & STORY:
“Welcoming Hysteria” came to me in 2018 while I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, attending Massage school. The more I was entering into my body and becoming aware of my internal world, the more I noticed I needed to express creatively.
Through receiving bodywork & energy work daily, as well as forming a deep connection to plant medicine. I believe something was unlocked in my subconscious & wanted to be witnessed. To understand the story of how welcoming Hysteria came to be, we first have to understand that the image of her came first.
While taking notes in our classes I always found myself doodling amongst the writing. Slowly I recognized a pattern was arising, as the ear & eye I had doodled a couple days ago, became a drawing of a being. and I kept drawing her over and over again… & haven’t stopped since.
There was a day I was drawing and I thought to myself… “When does drawing the same woman over and over again become hysterical?”
I then began to ponder the word hysterical, and what it meant. It felt very important to me in that moment… So I did what I do with striking words and looked up the etymology.
ETYMOLOGY & STORY
Hysteria: originates from the Greek word Hystera, meaning womb.
Hysteria was created as a psychological diagnosis for women by Hippocrates, the founder of Western Medicine. It was believed that women’s wombs would wonder throughout their bodies, making her emotions extreme and uncontrollable. He also labeled this as “uterine fury”. Symptoms he attributed to hysteria were, mood swings - including weeping and anger. Having sexual desire… or not having sexual desire. If a woman had fertility issues. If a woman didn’t submit to her husband. If a woman had trouble sleeping. If a woman had a tendency to cause trouble. If a woman had visions/was intuitive etc. etc. etc…
The cure for this diagnosis… was forced sexual stimulation and prescribed orgasm by male doctors. And sometimes sending women off to insane asylums or forced hysterectomy.
As I read this… I became overwhelmed by what in the past might be called “uterine fury”. For multiple reasons… including the abuse and gaslighting of women into believing they have gone crazy if they experience being a human being… and also the extreme shame and control around emotional experience and release.
I decided I wanted to reclaim the word hysteria… and to welcome it. Welcome emotion as a part of our human experience. Welcome the array of sexual/sensual desire amongst humans. And to use creativity to express these natural states of being human… to welcome our humanity as a way of healing what has been controlled, oppressed, and shamed.