Roaming

June 2022

Displacement is an obscure feeling.

Presently, it’s an intangible and unruly emotion for me. My metaphorical tree roots are currently bare, unearthed, fragile. I roam each weekend, searching for a place to call my home, to plant my roots, to lay my hat, to stay.

I’m accustomed to being with…sitting with…allowing…unhooking…utilising numerous strategies to work with strong feelings. What is so ferociously entrenched in my being that this one pulls and pushes me almost every waking hour?

Recently, I was fortunate to attend a workshop at The Living Kaurna Cultural Centre with my SEDA College colleagues; each one of us moved to our core with grief and powerlessness, as we experienced a role play which uncovered brutal slayings, death, disease, stolen children, demoralisation, force and complex trauma that our Indigenous people experienced at the hands of white settlers for many years. Their displacement has occurred for thousands of years. Mine for only a few. Yet, as I chat with my Italian parents about their migration to Australia, their discrimination, their loss of family in WWII, my maternal grandfather a POW, I am reminded that we all experience levels of displacement, and generational trauma is evident in our genes and a prominent and significant factor that impacts stability. Around the globe, people are displaced through war, famine, natural disasters, religious conflict and poverty.

Nature calls me each day. Nature is the sacred land of our First Australians. Nature knows.

I can now more easily sit with my first world problem. The sense that I am connected to something larger is somewhat unnerving as well as settling.

May our Indigenous Australians plant and re-plant their generational roots firmly into Country, and may we all acknowledge the spiritual connection to the land, fertilise others with empathy and compassion, reverently walk alongside rivers, majestically climb mountains and mindfully breathe, to fuel personal freedom and healing.

If you would like to learn how to be more present in your everyday life, connect with me.