Michael's Story

Michael was just 5 when he and his mother entered a domestic abuse shelter. For years Michael witnessed his father abusing his mother. Then Michael's father began beating him too. It was a black eye and a broken arm, suffered at the hands of his father, that finally gave Michael's mother the courage to leave him.

The trauma that the boy lived with for much of his life was difficult to overcome. In Free Arts Minnesota, Michael said little, but his drawings were commonly of monsters. The sound of the doorbell sent young Michael running for shelter under the stairs fearing his dad had returned. However, after several weeks of continued support in the Free Arts Minnesota program, the doorbell stopped being so scary. Eventually, the monsters in his drawings made way for bright, colorful rainbows.