FULTON, Miss. (AP) - On canvas and wood, Dusty Steele channels survival and faith through her paintbrush.
“I journal through my artwork,” said the Itawamba County woman, who was sexually abused as a child. “My healing is through my painting and helping other people.”
Steele takes distressed wood, frames, found objects and old books and creates something new. She incorporates encouraging quotes onto the crosses and other pieces that she hopes speak to those who are traveling difficult roads.
“They might be having a bad day,” Steele said. “They can turn it over and know another survivor made this.”
The sexual abuse started when Steele was 8 years old at the hands of a close family member.
“I don’t remember being an innocent child,” Steele said.
It continued for years.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Steele said. “You start to believe it’s normal.”
Her abuser’s friends molested her as well, she said. When she was 13, an extended family member locked her in a camper and raped her over the course of a weekend.
Like many victims of child sexual abuse, Steele didn’t directly ask for help.
“My mother and grandmother didn’t know what was going on,” Steele said.
She acted out as a tween and teen, getting into fights and taking alcohol to school. Steele remembers cutting herself in middle school. When a counselor asked her about the cuts, she lied and said they were from shaving.
In seventh grade, she wrote a story about being molested, but no one asked why. She ran away from home. She was desperately hoping someone would push beyond the denials to see what was really happening, but no one did. The adults around her just saw an uncontrollable child.
“I was considered the bad influence,” Steele said.
The journey to heal from the wounds inflicted by the abuse has stretched nearly two decades.
When she was 16, Steele told her mother about one incident to protect her younger half-sisters, but she continued to hide most of it.
The sexual abuse stopped when she moved in with her grandmother. She immersed herself in church. Faith and the Bible gave her a vision of a righteous life, but she struggled with the idea that God’s grace extended to her. Steele sought to be baptized 10 times. She dressed modestly.
“I thought maybe I’ll be good enough,” Steele said.
The long-term repercussions of abuse continued to haunt Steele.
“It impacts your family and your choices in life,” Steele said. “Everybody around them suffers. It affects everything.”
In her early 20s, she was in an emotionally abusive relationship. She ended up fleeing with only the clothes on her back, she said. She attempted suicide. In the aftermath, she was able to get the care she needed to begin a journey back toward a healthy life.
“That’s when I came out about everything,” to her mother, Steele said. “It broke her heart.”
Steele was able to build an adult life, becoming a nurse, getting married and having a child. But her first marriage was sabotaged by lingering stress and severe depression from the abuse she suffered and the sorrow over a series of miscarriages.
Becoming a mother helped her grow deeper in her faith and heal a lingering wound.
“I couldn’t understand unconditional love,” Steele said. “Then I had my son, and I understood the unconditional love part.”
Now she feels God’s grace and wants to share that love with others who are hurting.
“I used to worry about what I wore to church,” Steele said. “Now I know it’s just me and my maker.”
She has now been married for three years to a man who is supportive and patient. There are good days and bad days, including being assaulted as an adult.
“He has carried me through that,” Steele said.
Steele didn’t grow up thinking of herself as artistic. She discovered a knack for it after her great-grandmother died at the age of 105 in 2009.
“I made scrapbooks with her old recipes,” for family members, Steele said.
In 2014, she started doing more artwork and began speaking out as a survivor. Sometimes people ask her why she speaks out about abuse.
“There has to be a purpose,” Steele said. “If I had heard a speaker, maybe things would have been different.”
In 2017, her art grew into a business, taking over the dining room. She finds raw materials at yard sales and estate sales.
Old wood is distressed and painted, becoming remarkable not just despite its scars but because of them. Pearls adorn a jewelry box, representing innocence lost and worth reclaimed through faith.
“Everything has a message, meaning or story to it,” Steele said.
In many of the old frames she buys, she ends up finding little time capsules, newspaper articles or cartoons from decades past. She has incorporated a few of her own, hidden behind the artwork.
“Whenever it falls and breaks, they’ll find more surprises,” Steele said.
This year, Steele has scaled back her hours nursing to be able to do more advocacy work. The art she sells from Dusty Roses helps support that work and covers travel costs. She will have a booth at the Bluegrass Festival in Fulton today and Saturday.
“I felt God leading me in this direction,” Steele said.
Steele joined the International Association for Forensic Nurses as a way to support victims of sexual assault professionally. She attended a leadership and advocacy event in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. Steele, who hopes to train as a forensic nurse in the future, would like to see more resources so hospitals have forensic nurses available to help assault victims and more resources for survivors to access as they leave the emergency department.
“I can speak as a nurse and a survivor of sexual assault,” Steele said.
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Information from: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, http://djournal.com
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