About the quote

I love Star Wars. It’s one of my go-to self-soothing, self-care kinds of series of films to watch. I’m also steadily working my way through the books related to the films, that fill in the gaps and build a rich galaxy of tales, myths, and great deeds. I can lose myself in them, and escape from everyday life into realms where good eventually overcomes evil.

The same is true for Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter for me too, amongst others. Worlds where there seems so little hope of overthrowing evil, yet hope remains kindled and the underdogs overcome an overbearing, cruel order.

There are so many wonderful quotes from these books and films.

Of course, I’m on the side of the rebels, the underdogs. The Jedi, wizards and witches, the fellowship and all the free peoples of Middle Earth.

I can apply the metaphor to my own journey to recovery from cPTSD. I’m rebelling against all the programming I had from a young age that made me believe I was stupid, useless, weak, a failure, unlovable, ugly, friendless, worthless and more.

For a long time, I held on to the hope that EMDR would help me overthrow the dominion of my past. Now, that hope has turned int a trust that I have done that and will overthrow the last vestiges of the erroneous and harmful views and beliefs I have of myself.

I’ve been a rebellion of my own, rebelling against my past and becoming the person I was always meant to be and not limited by the self-serving beliefs of others who sought to control and manipulate me.

About the art

I used one of the borders from yesterday’s collection to decorate the background for the quote, which I typeset in Affinity Publisher.

I do like a dark, grungy background, and this one just felt ‘right’ to use. I chose colours from the background to add colour to the border design. I used Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to add the colour and highlights/shadows to the text and border. The border was drawn with Uniball Unipin pens on ClaireFontaine dot grid paper.

I made sure I had plenty of places where light was being gathered and reflected, representing the hope that is always there if we look for it, even when everything is covered in shadow.

I’m actually quite pleased with the border and the depth and dimension I’ve achieved. I could’ve made the highlights even brighter, but I wanted it to look like hope was being kindled, gently gathering in the shadow.

I do have to say I also like the limited colour palette I used for the border. I used white and four other colours (dark shades of green, raspberry, blue and purple). This isn’t something I do easily, but I think it’s really worked out well here.