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Dear Reader Waking ThoughtsI woke up this morning with thoughts running through my mind that I am burning to share with you. I left school at 15 but I didn’t leave my love of learning behind. When we moved to New Zealand in 1978, the opportunity was there for me to attend university. I’ll be forever grateful for the New Start programme (as it was called then). The programme invited those who left school before qualifying to enter university to undertake a short course to see if the study life was for them. After a successful first year of full time study, participants were then able to continue to complete their degree. I took to the course and university study like the proverbial duck to water, enrolling in full time study in 1980 and finally completing my Masters Degree in Geography and Politics in 1989. Now that’s a memoir begging to be written! But that’s not the point of sharing this today. At university I was exposed to a range of experiences that highlighted incongruencies in what I thought about the world I was raised in. In my first year course on history, I learned that before initiating apartheid, the South African government went to my home state of Queensland to see how they administered the pass laws for Aboriginal people. This was a lightening bolt revelation for me, destroying the core of what I’d been taught about the benevolence of governmental management of Aboriginal People. In my second year during a Maori studies course, I attended a hui – a meeting or conference – where a woman stood in the middle of the room and pointed at every white face and angrily said “Go home!” Perhaps it was the context, or my own thoughts at the time, but I didn’t take offence at her words. Instead I started visualising myself “going home” to Australia where I was born. Where there would be another with more rights to be there than I who would offer the same directive. And where would I go then? Where eventually was home? Was it in Ireland, or northern England, or Norway? I had to face it. There was nowhere I belonged. No “home” to return to. My body was filled with a mixture of at least six ethnicities. When I was little, we lived behind a piece of bush. I would scramble through the fence, climb a tree as high as I dared, and call out as loud as I could “I want to go home!” So the concept this woman levelled at me wasn’t knew to me. Inside, I knew I never belonged. New Zealand has been a healing place for me. It’s green, and the environment softens my spirit. But it’s the culture and the comparative acceptance of differences that have been most healing. Here there is one word that rolls off the tongue and fills my soul: Tūrangawaewae translated as “a place to stand”. In the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Tūrangawaewae are the places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home. So that little girl, high in the tree, crying out for home, was seeking to find her place in the world. But more than a physical place, she was seeking the foundation of who she is. Who would have known that such a longing would take me away from the place of my birth to find where my physical and spiritual Tūrangawaewae lie. When Ancestry.com finetuned my DNA results to include a percentage of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples I was confused and excited. Confused because I’d never picked up the signals that there was an indigenous heritage. Excited because here was an opportunity to explore whether this new knowledge was a link to finding home. Last year, with daughter Amy and my 3rd cousins Anne and Annette, I visited Goorangoola, the place where my great-great grandmother Mary Ann lived. It was a magical experience, being able to see the area, visit the sites mentioned in the documents about her life, and hearing the stories of the Wonnarua people of the Singleton area. The picture is of the church yard where we felt Mary Ann’s presence the most. None of the names on the headstones were familiar to us, but the energy was unmistakable.
I came away from that trip with a greater sense of where home, my Tūrangawaewae, is. I know what my little girl heart cried out for. I know why I often felt “Trees and water. Without them I die”. I know who I am in a way that is profoundly deep and personal and nothing to do with my physical self. Now, having found my Tūrangawaewae, the place where I feel especially empowered and connected, I stand strong and secure in my foundation, in knowing my home, my place in the world. Through this knowing, I gained a new perspective that helped me sit down and, over two days, finish the memoir An Addict in the Family which I hadn’t been able to write one word more for a year. Tūrangawaewae is such a powerful concept. It has given me the resolve to scope and write the books that are burning inside waiting to see the light of day. And it’s given me an understanding that I have a lot to be grateful for. My experiences in life have given me a lot to share. Especially am I grateful to be able to share my journey with others who are struggling to make sense of the addiction that has hit their loved ones. My little Memoir is the beginning of that sharing. An Update on Suraya’s JourneySuraya features on this week’s issue of IdeaLog – New Zealand’s voice of creative business, representing a community of innovators and entrepreneurs who are using the transformative power of creativity to affect change. It’s worth checking out the site for inspiration, as well as reading the article about Suraya’s success.
Till next time, may your lives and hearts also be full of joy. My thoughts for Living Life in 2024 and beyond: “Write it on my heart that every day is Ralph Waldo Emerson “Remember that sometimes not getting “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave [person] is not [the one] who does not feel afraid, but [the one] who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela Read past Newsletters and, if you enjoy them, please share with your friends and encourage them to subscribe http://www.StephanieHammondAuthor.com Join my Reader’s Group on Facebook. FOLLOW ME Like, post and comment at any of |
Finding my Tūrangawaewae
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