🖌️ What if the most vulnerable parts of your story were painted on your skin? 🎨 

This can be a scary thought. We all navigate the sweet tension between wanting to be SEEN for who we are and wanting to hide 🙈 certain aspects we feel uncomfortable showing.

While the latter might apply to arguably “minor” things like bad moods, particular quirks we are embarrassed about, or our perceived weaknesses, it especially applies to more delicate parts of our story: 😨 😥 Traumatic experiences we survived, physical illnesses or mental health issues we suffer from, violence and abuse we had to go through et cetera. 

Shame and guilt can lure us into silence and isolation, which might not help our healing. 🤫 

Kristen Zamora (Adams), a professional face and body painter from 🐾 Paw Paw, Michigan (USA), breaks the silence and does the radical opposite: Painting people’s vulnerable stories 📖 in full scale on their naked bodies. 

It had started with artistic intentions at Grand Rapids🏆 ArtPrize 2017. It has evolved into much more: a healing modality, a full-on passion for Kristen, and an invitation to 🔍 look at her own hiding more closely… 

And she did it again: 5 years after the premiere, Kristen again contested at Grand Rapids Art Prize 2022... and won in the category "Time-Based Visitor Award Winner". Deservedly so. 

Congratulations, Kristen, and thank you for making invisible stories visible. and winding one, but we're proud of what we've accomplished so far.

 Step right up to get your face painted! What started out as a fun way to make a few extra bucks quickly turned into something that would heal both herself and others from past trauma. 

Kristen Zamora began working over 12 years ago at local arenas and parties painting kids faces with their favorite animal or sports team, but by 2017 she began full body painting with a different goal in mind. To use these painting as an experience for the subject being brushed upon to begin to shed the trauma in their life with every stroke. Whether it is painting things that ground someone who experienced sexual abuse or recreating the tattoos of a mother on the body of their son, she has taken this mission all the way to being awarded the ArtPrize. 

This is a powerful conversation about how a passion can become something so much more. 

This episode of Transfomational Tidbits , I had the privilege of interviewing Kristen Adams on my podcast Transformational Tidbits with Michele Coy.  Kristen is sharing her amazing journey to assisting women to tell their stories about past traumas through Body Art.  Kristen will feature these women and their stories at ArtPrize2022.

I trust you will catch some gold nuggets so that you realize that you are not alone in your journey.