Thurston Gray

The Pendant Project: My Journey to Awareness Through Art Thurston Gray

It started as a simple project Create a pendant piece of jewelry by collage, or paint every day for a year. But when Thurston Gray decided to create a visual representation of an emotion she felt each day and journal those thoughts, that's when her healing manifested. After being raped in college, Thurston tucked the mental, spiritual, and emotional wounds aside. Even after starting talk therapy, she still found herself disconnected from her emotions. The Pendant Project challenged Thurston to acknowledge her feelings every single day-to own them, and to verbalize them-and what a challenging and difficult year it was! This book chronicles 100 days of Thurston's journey-the milestones and the simply ordinary days-as she learned acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion. Given together, the pendant and journal entry express that there is hope and healing after a sexual assault. Through Thurston's heartfelt admissions, other survivors will learn that feelings, all of them, are helpful and necessary to acknowledge for healing to occur.