My mother's hands holding a plant from her garden. When I asked her if she had ever been abused, even though I already had an intuitive answer. She said yes, but that she preferred to bury those memories.

"I'm hidden between sheets obscuring my dirty knees and cowering on the floor. "Don't make noise" my mind whispers to me. I hear footsteps outside, everything blurs. " Selfportrati.

"I spoke to my sister about the abuse for the first time, I told her that I wanted to portrait her and to ask about what happened. Out of shame or not knowing how to handle my words in the face of her injuries, I had never asked her. She told me how she felt at that time, when she couldn’t take it anymore and it exploded, my father told her that she would be paid by a psychologist, the next day he forgot it. My mom tearfully told her to bury him, to pretend it never happened."

"I went out to turn off the light on the terrace and observed the river in the distance, my eyes were slow to recognize it in its darkness, drowned in its loneliness and meaninglessness, that was his ending."

Portrait to the river that is next to my house, after the drowning of a drug addict from my street.

"When I was a child everyone wanted to touch me, the first time I was abused I was 6 years old, it was my neighbor's son. When I was 8 years old my mother sent me to ask the neighbor for money when we had nothing to eat, when I went he told me that just for touching me he was well paid. When I was 15 years old I was kidnapped, to this day from time to time I meet my abuser, he lives a few streets away from my house, he put me to sleep and put me in a car when I was walking through a vacant lot, I woke up with him on top of me, I managed to run away, the authorities said they could not do anything against him because he did not penetrate me." Iara's words.

Portrait of Iara, during the time she was abused. Family file photo. “I’m going to insert a stick in you, it’s going to hurt a little bit, don’t scream”.

"I myself would go to the store for the piña colada yogurt, I don't remember/understand, why he always asked for the same flavor, otherwise he was the one who drank it. When he asked me to go buy it, it was a hidden message to me, it meant that when he came back he would spend the next few minutes in his room. Yogurt was his proposal to my excuse: "I don't like the way it tastes, it makes me sick". For many years I avoided piña colada because of all the memories it carried"
Reyna was sexually abused by a close family member from the age of 7 to 12, at 16 she attempted suicide with rat poison.

Portrait of Reyna, during the time she was abused. Family file photo.

Self-portrait. "My cousin touched my breasts, they were like raisins. His touch woke me up, the discomfort of that touch made me get up. I went to the bathroom, when I came back I lay down on the other end of the bed. I said nothing, my mind was also of sweets and raisins.