A Persona To Survive

<p>Raven's childhood was never ordinary-raised by a mother whose cruelty masqueraded as a performance who thrived on fear with witchcraft rituals horror skits and manipulation. Raven's childhood became a stage of cruelty where love was twisted into control. She learned early that safety was a fragile illusion that was always short-lived. Her only ally was Liam her younger brother by two years. Together they clung to each other the last defense against a world designed to break them. But even that bond was threatened as their mother worked to pin them against each other planting seeds of mistrust and resentment until the siblings stood on opposite sides of pain. The fractures widened as they stumbled through the pain and chaos trying to forget or find a way through.<br>But survival came at a cost. The scars of their upbringing carved jagged paths: psych wards SA abuse DV addiction and teen motherhood. While Liam drifted into addiction crime and a revolving door of cells. Both carried the weight of having the same mother but it shaped them differently. Despite their paths not being the exact same they were still twined together as their mother's voice echoed in both their downfalls her power to divide still haunting them long after they left her house.<br>Raven clawed her way through toxic relationships child loss and the weight of all her trauma. Through it all she discovered fragments of herself in the art she made: poems songs paint and clay-each piece a fragile step toward healing. Each creation became a form of resistance proof that her spirit had not been extinguished. It was proof that she could carve beauty out of brokenness. Yet the ties of family are never simple and the love she carried for her brother-tangled painful unshakable-remained her greatest burden and her fiercest hope-hope not only to escape the past but to build a future worth living.<br>This is the story about what it means to carry scars that do not fade and to fight for a self your past told you you didn't deserve. A story of survival of a girl who refused to let her past define her and of the unbreakable complicated bond between siblings bound by pain yet tethered by love. Their story is one of darkness but also of endurance-refusing to be defined by fear clawing the way toward something better-and it shows that even in the deepest shadows there can be fragments of light.</p>