House Rules

This series is a reflection on behavioral inheritance; what forms in a child when a guardian's capacity to engage can be shaped by their own interpretation of the value of a child and the guardian's ability to emotionally regulate themselves. It lives in the space where discipline and harm can become indistinguishable. A space where a child learns to absorb an experience as evidence of their own failure rather than a more knowledgable other's accountability. A space hosting the inability for a child to recognize whether what they are receiving is correction, punishment, a cruel joke, or the absence of love entirely.

House Rules was the loyalty code. What happened in that house was supposed to stay in that house. This series is an examination of the intense nature of excavating identity and the impact of what grounds its roots. What it looks like to question family dynamics that remain overlooked, expected, or accepted.

I have witnessed how unexamined and unresolved emotion can negatively transform a human. A deliberate choice to investigate the roots of an individual's response to others, especially minors, is a personal responsibility. When that responsibility goes unmet or is compared to a framework that has been provided, that unexamined and unresolved emotion can balloon and become a domino effect. The resulting impact has the potential to reveal itself through the erosion of character, spirit, and identity. This can look self-inflicted, be at the hands of another, or inflicted on another, thus contributing to and perpetuating dysfunctional generational cycles.

An abundance of life exists outside of bondage to any system that does not operate with grace and truth embedded in its core. Healthy disruption can lead to creating peace, rather than falling in line to maintain falsely perceived peace. Welcome to House Rules.