I’m officially off to Paris!

A good friend suggested that ‘maybe it is time for the trauma to speak?’. I was quick to reply ‘No, I don’t think so’.

But his words stayed with me.

A week later a research buddy sent me a message ‘please come to Paris with me and speak at this conference’. This buddy is an ideas girl who thinks big. I told her I would come if I was accepted—fully expecting I wouldn’t get in.

Christmas eve the email arrived congratulating me on being accepted. Next day, as planned, we headed off to Tassie to walk the Overland Track. Walking gave me time to think.

In order for the trauma to speak, I have to be ready for what it will say. I have to be healed and steady enough not to be triggered by I hear myself saying.

And I am.

I’m ready for the trauma to begin to speak, to say the things that needs to be said, and to speak on behalf of those who have no voice.

I find myself in a privileged position.

For starters, I survived. Many children don’t. Many adults haven’t. Even if their bodies continue, their sense of self is so destroyed as to seek comfort in alcohol or drugs, or their minds are lost in the depths of mental illness. I’m not correlating child abuse with adult mental illness because people do heal, they do recover, but some don’t. Some are lost to the depths of their minds.

The very thing that rescued me from my situation, my strong independent streak, is the very thing that gets me into loads of trouble. I have spent much of my adult life trying to deny this strength, seeing it as a weakness and a failing. But here I am, going to Paris, to say things that need to be said because I am an independent soul, brave and courageous, and I have a crazy friend who seems to believe in me.

Not everyone is an independent as I am. Not everyone can leave the source of their suffering. But if I can lend someone a little of my independence, I will. It takes so much to tear our lives apart, that even terrible, terrible known suffering feel safer than an unknown future.

But if I can do it, maybe you can, too—should you need to.

Speaking at this conference isn’t about addressing survivors, it is about educating others about the way that poetry can restore agency to a survivor.

Writing poetry about your suffering is one small action that can give back the power that was stolen. It isn’t the only thing. It certainly isn’t the answer. It is one answer. One place to find lost agency.

Here is the link to the details of my topic. The conference details are: https://thehumanities.com/2023-conference