24-year-old Shromona Das was seven when she was sexually abused by her uncle, someone her parents knew well enough to leave her in his care. Years later, her brother-in-law tried to rape her and instead of getting her justice, her family asked to never talk about it. 17 years later, Shromona has finally gathered the strength to call out her abusers via her powerful illustrations.

A student of the arts and aesthetics school of JNU currently, Shromona has suffered silently with the burden of keeping her trauma a secret. Talking with HuffPost, she shared that she had started drawing in pen and ink after her cousin’s husband abused her. When her cousin found that Shromona had sent text messages of what had happened to her counselor, her cousin called Das’ mother requesting her to make sure that no one ever came to know about what had happened.

“The white paper was my only friend—I was afraid of being betrayed similarly, that is, in terms of silencing my voice, by my family members. So I started channeling it all through my black Parker pen—for the longest time, I’ve never parted with that pen. That pen was my one true friend,” Das shared

Hailing from Shantiniketan in West Bengal, Shromona coped with her trauma via her painting. As the #MeToo movement finally hit India and many women came out with their stories of sexual abuse, she gained the confidence to illustrate her experience of abuse and her partner shared the illustrations on Facebook.

“For the largest part of my life, black and white became my language—all of these paintings were about domestic settings, everyday objects, toys, and violence. I don’t remember a single one that didn’t talk about violence—and death,” she said. But now she is finally starting to use colors in her paintings again.

She decided to name and shame her abusers and phoned her mother to tell her that she was finally putting herself before the ‘family’.

 H/T: Huffington Post