RENÉE UBA, BA
Renée Uba is currently obtaining her MS in Marriage and Family Therapist Trainee at the University of Southern California. She earned her BA in Psychology and Studio Arts. She recognizes the complexity of integrating an identity that has been woven together through pain and desire. She has been witness to the difficult process of change. Through experience working with a variety of populations, such as unhoused individuals, transitional aged youth and birth to 5. Renée is falling in love with the beauty in the invitation to walk along an individual as they are becoming. When given the opportunity, we all have the potential to soar and live amongst the stars. Just as much as we have the potential to exist void of hopes, dreams, joy and even love. As a fellow human, we all understand that this is all part of our natural existence. Despite the turbulent times we are currently living in, Renée’s goal as a trainee MFT is to develop the capacity, insight and skill to guide others towards their personal oasis. Renee is a multicultural artist whose uses the medium of photography to explore identity, mental heath and wellness and connection. Many of times, you may hear her say: let me show you a picture. Although, she talks for a living, there is so much a picture can say in an instant that a thousand words could never. Exploring life through a cameras lens has taught Renee that capturing a pivotal moment has the ability transcend space and time. Just like how trauma is stored in our bodies in our limbic system and nerves; a photograph encapsulates the essence of a thing. In an instant, life can change. Trauma occurs and your body, brain and spirit are forever molded around it. The photograph can tell you exactly where you have been and it’s up to you to decide where you’re going.
Mentally (Ill)uminated
(Giclée Print, 40” x 60”)
An excerpt from Mentally (Ill)uminated
The first time she attempted to take her own life was at nine years old. You may think nine sounds a bit young, but how old were you when you had to sit with your first bout of negative emotions? A decade would go by before she would be diagnosed with her first mental health condition.
A second decade would go by before she would begin to master the practice of self-love. You see, she had unwittingly learned that self-preservation was the modus operandi and that it looked like cultural assimilation, which expressed itself as an identity disturbance, which resulted in a deeply misaligned internal dialogue.
She read somewhere that most people spend the majority of their adult lives trying to rebuild the faulty foundations of their childhood. The thought of being in the majority did comfort her. However, the term “displaced anger” had taken root in her psyche as she began to unravel the societal pressures, which she had realized that she and so many around her had succumbed to.
She began to think that maybe the anger directed inwards could be redirected towards the state of the Motherland, whose political, social and economic well-being, had been dismantled and manipulated for capitalistic gain.
In other words, colonization or colonialism, well it’s both really, but whichever you prefer, had left its mark way before she had even had a chance to appreciate the dysfunction that would be her saving grace.
p.24
#mentalhealthawareness #blackgirlshealing #trusttheprocess