Just Getting Out of the Blocks is An Achievement!

Just Getting out of The Blocks is An Achievement - So desperate was I to get my story down on  paper yet so emotionally guarded against intrusion of any kind; my heart was screaming for reprieve while the brain was working overtime to keep hidden whatever skeletons lay occupying my closet of fear and shame. An absolute tug-o-war between heart and mind.  

Hence the difficulty in trying to accurately recall let alone establish a timeline of sorts for the first seven or eight years of my life. The taxing weeks of memory recall that turned into months of emotional fall-out was draining…and I hadn’t even really started out on my Journey of Self-Discovery.

I walked away time and time again unable to cope with not just the emotional fall-out and recollection of my very young life but with the ‘fact-finding’ mission I’d have to fully commit to if I truly wanted to uncover my past: the prospect was exceedingly difficult for me until I remembered how tough and resilient my own experiences had made me over time. I absolutely knew in my heart I could do it; I just had to overcome my damning fear in discovery.

The well was deep…

So many pieces that made no sense at all and oh so many misconceptions about my natural family, the rampant and scathing untruths about aboriginals but more than that, the full scale war launched by authorities of the day hell bent on their eradication as a deeply spiritual race in their own right. In an extract from my book “When Time Means Nothing” first published in 2023, I expressed to the best of my ability at the time, the long term trauma and deep scarring effects upon myself, my siblings and thousands of other ‘Little people’ of the Stolen Generations.

For my family and other Aboriginal families in NSW and other States and Territories, it was always about aboriginal children being forced from infancy and childhood, to live out and endure a foreign upbringing with all paths of communication to their natural family, severed. And hopefully, forever. Profoundly, as a person trying to piece together the early days of her childhood, the saddest of all and the most difficult by far to ever come to terms with both as a child and as an adult:

“Coming to terms with my emotions, the Fear in Discovery. The idiosyncrasies that exist between denial and acceptance of my aboriginality. And the ever-present anxiety and depression in never wanting our dear mother Emily, to pass on before I found her, before I got to meet her.”

“Never getting to meet my father let alone, knowing who he was.”

“Never being given the chance to grow up with my brother Howard by my side.”

Fighting to reverse a deeply entrenched belief that being black, somehow made me unclean, unintelligent, unworthy and unlovable.”

Little did I realise at the time how long, how insanely difficult and how deeply traumatic those endeavours would become for me; especially since I had envisaged the entire process of discovery, coming to terms with never before known facts and subsequently creating the person I deserved to become, only taking perhaps one or two years. How wrong can one person be?

The Process of Self-Discovery and coming to terms with all of what you find is different for everyone with the level of fallout and spectrum of emotion varying significantly on the 1-10 Richter Scale of Emotion. For me I did not fare well on that scale and largely because of how I had learned to survive since early childhood – my survival mechanism of denial and fight back at all costs only ensured that when faced with any ‘punch to the face’ reality check I would implode and retreat back into my hidey-hole of denial. Hence the reason why it took me 17 gruelling years to get my story off my chest and into a book; by far the most onerous task I’d ever undertaken hence the need for a well-earned break following the first publication of my book entitled WHEN TIME MEANS NOTHING  www.judinash.com. But after some 16 months spent gazing into the ‘watering hole of reflection’ and wondering to some extent why my life still wasn’t heading in the direction I had envisaged from the start, the penny dropped:…..

MY PAST was done and dusted and if I was truly serious about becoming the person I wanted to become, then I would have to sever any existing ties with the emotional yoke or bondage to my past in order to move forward;  to progress forward into the ‘here and now’ of the present. In what had been a deeply sobering moment, I finally accepted the fact that it is only in the PRESENT that REAL CHANGE can happen. The HERE AND NOW of the present where FREEDOM OF CHOICE and DECISION MAKING PROCESSES are ours to own and embrace!

WOOHOO…such an elevating moment and one which let me know just how ready I was for the second leg of my journey!

I have enough within me

I am all that I need, to begin this journey

I know that now…

 

My want is real, my need is real…

But can I, and will I

Follow through with this?

 

Am I ready?

Judi Nash 2023 ©

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