I am on this land carrying wounds of
Displacement.
Loss.
Trauma.
And on arriving here,
Before I heard the words to understand it..
I felt,
That this land,
too,
carries entrenched wounds.
In her red blood-stained sand.
In her rivers.
In the ancient rocks of her mountains.
And in the memories of her fractured people.
With every walk,
She speaks.
In what remains.
In what was taken.
And I wonder..
How am I supposed to heal?
When her colonial shackles surround me,
and echo through the very ground beneath my
feet?
This land speaks so deeply
to the very forces of the wounds
I carry on her.
How do I make peace with this entanglement?
I want to meet my Aboriginal brothers and
sisters.
To sit.
To listen.
To share.
I imagine myself, standing in the arms of the Aboriginal aunties,
finally allowing my tears to pour..
For me, for us.
Shattering the depth of this engulfing pain.
And releasing these emotions wide across her
skies, and burying them where it heals.
Maybe there,
in the space between listening and
understanding,
between our grief and responsibility,
Between their sharing and mine,
between what was taken
and what might still be reclaimed,
we can build a solidarity,
that builds this land a stronger future.
My healing will mean one day..
I walk this land differently.
Not as someone who is triggered,
With every step from beneath their feet..
But,
As someone who loves her enough to honour her and to call her a home.
