And, so it was for thousands upon thousands of young children who like myself, would come to be known as the Stolen Generations; the official term used for aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families between 1883 – 1969. The innocent lives of children, shattered, exposed, vulnerable and raw, at the mercy of the powers that be. A government with barely a thought or concern for the lifelong ramifications they’d imposed on children who were left to cope with no family, no roots, and no identity!

I was born at La Perouse 13 February 1952…

I was horrified beyond comprehension! As a child I was witnessing first-hand just how cruel she could be when really fired up and angry. My foster mother’s act of so-called discipline was terrifyingly worse than anything I had ever witnessed in the Children’s Home.

“What if she had set my sister on fire?” Totally off my face, I would be jumping up and down on the bed, crashing into the wall and screaming hysterically for her to stop, but she wouldn’t until Patricia had been taught a lesson that was most probably in her eyes, the harshest and cruellest of lessons that she was capable of delving out.

It was John who encouraged me to take a hold of her lifeless hand. Despite being afraid, I did it. And then, the slightest and most gentle of all squeezes from her cold fingers, and in those defining seconds I finally received the message that my heart had been for so long been yearning for:

“She loved me; she really did love me!”
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All those years I had waited and yearned for it and now that it was mine, I was utterly distraught and mad as hell. Mad as hell!

“Did she have any idea how much I had needed that, any idea at all?”

For three long years, I cried whenever thoughts of my father came to mind. My one regret to this day, is that I never got to know him as the father he could have been. And if the pain of loving him so deeply has taught me one thing, it is this:

“Forgiveness and Peace are not just one, they are in fact inseparable.
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You cannot truly have one without the other”.

Anyone who has ever lived with a War Veteran suffering with PTSD knows what it is like to get hammered while you are sleeping: those flying fists, desperate and bobe jarring kicks to the stomach that never ever miss their mark. The endless twitching, night sweats, and fearful screams at the enemy that let you know just how capable they are in that precise moment, of not just hurting you, but hurting you bad!

Her heart was broken and there was never anything that anyone would ever be to do to mend it. I learned something about stoicism and about its white-anting capabilities; it eats you alive as you seek to contain the fall-out of any major catastrophic events in your life. I tried desperately to help Oma as did her psychologist but for Oma, her experience in court rang like a broken record inside her head. We knew she was done when she said:

“He is going to get it all anyway.
And this, the most painful for her:
“He destroyed my family!”

After so many long, draining and emotional years of endless soul searching, marking time, and mental gymnastics resulting from events and discoveries about myself and history regarding my past, I now find myself left only with questions:

“What happened, why has it taken forever to complete my journey of self-development, and what can I honestly say, I have learned most from the experience?”

“The truth is, I haven’t completed my journey at all. It is far from over!”

“Where I am now, is but a watering hole; a pool of reflection.”