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

Since a child cannot make sense of his or her own trauma, the pain must be buried, locked away. But no matter how deep the cave, it tends to sneak out, secretly subverting and infecting its host, often leaving behind misdirected resentments and fear of closeness. Returning to the nest can be a haven for healing and reflection, a safe place to confront that pain, take back control, and proclaim: “You are just bad memories. You can no longer hurt me, and you are not in charge of my life.” Baxter put it this way:

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“I couldn’t keep running from my demons. They were getting faster and faster, and I was getting slower and slower as I aged and cared for a family. In the nest, I let go of my demons. Then, I started offering my nest to others. Over the course of four years, I built about 50 nests and photographed about 400 people . . . asking them to bring their vulnerable selves.”

Childhood trauma comes in many shapes and colors. There is the overt physical and sexual abuse we may read about in The Oregonian when an offender is sentenced to prison. But often it is more subtle. Even without blows, a dysfunctional family can leave a child deeply wounded, unable to trust, to talk, or to feel. In NEST, the subjects’ trauma is sometimes explicit in the text and sometimes only hinted at. It doesn’t matter. It is there—as is the craving for safety and shelter.

Healing is a process — much like construction. For Baxter, healing started with her first nest emerging from random twigs and branches and tufts of grass. And each nest she has built since has been another step on her journey. Just watching it happen is a joyful experience:

I met with Baxter again at Double Dragon, a Southeast Portland café. She shared more about her childhood and her life-long “fascination with other people’s worlds,” always wanting to “know their stories.” In time, that drew her to documentary photography. A post-graduate program at Black Mountain College let her immerse herself in the images of Sally Mann, Diane Arbus, and Annie Liebowitz. She was hooked.

As we parted, I asked who among her subjects I should talk to. She suggested Ati and Codie.

These are their nest stories.

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ati

The wounds have become the holes where the new flowers have grown. — Ati

Ati was raised in a Hare Krishna community in Santiago, Chile. Loyalty was paramount. One day, at age seven, she saw a monk about to strike a child. Ati grabbed a broom and “hit him really hard” — the same monk had been molesting Ati. She was punished, locked in a dark room and deprived of food. At the age of ten, she made her escape from the commune but kept her connection to the community. When Ati later disclosed the abuse to her guru, she was silenced. With no chance to grieve, she kept her trauma sealed inside for ten more years. At age 38, Ati heard about The Nest Project and volunteered. She took off her clothes and jumped in. “That was when my process began.” Now she can say, “This happened and I am not broken.”

These are people who were brave and willing to be vulnerable, ready to face their pain and embrace themselves through it. It is about people who let down their walls and shed their clothes and shame to share who they are underneath it all. — Debbie Baxter

codie

They told me I was special. That it was a secret between them and me. — Codie

Codie was nine when she began to realize that the “special” attention was not about love. Her mother wanted to “sweep everything under the rug” and instructed her not to talk about it. Her uncle told her to accept “Jesus Christ into my heart and beg for forgiveness.” She blamed herself for “having made them do it.” It was then that she gained a lot of weight so she wouldn’t be “wanted in the same way anymore.” She trusted too much . . . and then not at all. And she felt too much . . . and then nothing at all.

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When Codie was in her late thirties, a friend heard about one of Baxter’s Nest Workshops. Codie was skeptical but attended. Hearing the experience of other participants, she felt safe to start to share her own — to risk saying it out loud. Curled up in the twigs, she began slowly, at last, to forgive herself, to “stop living in the past.” The nest became a comfort station on her voyage to trusting, to feeling, and to facing the pain. And, over time, to be able to say, “I still feel like I’m hovering in the doorway, but it’s open.”

It may take a while to wrangle with those emotions and find comfort in the storm. It may take a while to remove the barriers and the shame and allow ourselves to be seen and held. And it may take a while to give ourselves and others a safe, cozy space to heal, grow, and develop. — Debbie Baxter

Baxter’s NEST photographs are not just impactful works of art. They are a chronicle of courageous personal voyages, of demons being confronted and the struggle to tame them. Mann, Arbus, and Liebowitz would be proud.

the next nest

Baxter’s Nest Project is ongoing, and she is currently engaged in a Kickstart Campaign to raise funds for a new nest in Portland dedicated to survivors of child sexual abuse. She will be reading from NEST and showcasing images at Jackson Bottom Wetlands Preserve Nature Center, 2600 S.W. Hillsboro Highway, Hillsboro, Oregon, 5:30-8 p.m. Wednesday, April 9.

NEST can be ordered at https://debbiebaxter.com/product/nest-book/.

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