Embracing failure and remembering WHY

Yesterday I found out I was UNSUCCESSFUL in a submission for publishing in Griffith Review 76: Acts of Reckoning (Poetry Only).

Griffith Review 76: Acts of Reckoning?is a wide-ranging discussion of the multifaceted issues at play in Australia’s fraught journey towards a full settlement with its Indigenous peoples.

Examining questions of history, truth-telling and decolonisation and revisiting colonial figures and their ongoing legacies,?Acts of Reckoning?reframes the past in order to form new futures – and celebrates how much work is already underway.

That said, I am really proud of what I had written. I really believed it was something special and so when the opportunity to submit it to the Griffith review came up, I knew I had to submit it. Its funny cause I was thinking about it this morning when I got the email, maybe it was an omen but the submission was ultimately unsuccessful and there's nothing changing that.

I totally felt my heart sink, to put so much of yourself into a piece of writing only for it to be rejected was really hard. First I was frustrated, wondering who the selection panel was, how much mob were on it and were they connected too and or understand the diversity of issues articulated throughout this piece, but that's neither here nor there.

After some time sitting with it, I realised that I was actually ok with it. Because why it was created was not to be published, it was a raw way of expressing and communicating an experience. And I just kept asking myself to remember WHY, why was this written, why was it submitted?

The same goes for work and business and life too I guess, I have been rejected. I have been sought out for advice and guidance only too be ghosted and I have just generally not won work for whatever the reason may be. Each and every time that happens I try and check back in with my values and remember my WHY. WHY I am or am not doing what I am doing.?and if those values are still aligned or my WHY is not being compromised then ultimately I think its going to be ok.

I am not a writer. Not a poet. But in the height of a crazy couple of weeks last year I felt compelled to pen something around the emotion inside me. The George Floyd verdict had recently come in, we had two deaths in custody again within a short period of time, it was the 30th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and days before a childhood friend had taken his life.

There were other things too, I didn’t realise how much it was affecting me. How much it triggered different things inside me around my own journey and experience.

I was working from home, and went to my local library to get some quiet time from my kids to focus. When I walked in I saw a poster for a the Sydney slam poetry heats, held the following week. I had always been a casual fan of slam poetry and had always liked the idea of one day sharing my ideas with the world.

So I sat down, and in one draft. This came out.

“How can we talk about healing when we cant see change, its only April we got five lives lost in a cage.

There’s a plague of truth, deep rooted in proof but somehow a royal commission systems findings are uncouth.

So we resist, revive our language never died. For our lore and our love lines the lands and the sky.

But we are in pain, daily reminders of the trauma that came. Passed down through out bloodlines of the nations they stained.

Have you ever awoken to screams in the night? Stolen as children while trying to hide, referred to as numbers and walking the line our old people describe our attempted genocide.

Caroline St, Redfern 2004. Friday night it’s the Gunjis kicking down my dads door. 69 the protection act fell? Who could of thought sis could be stolen as well?

Kept from family, community the mission was clear. The impacts on her will never disappear!

I saw this with our old people and was scared that it was true that this disconnection and lost could run so deep within you.

I love you my son, my daughters as well. So that you never have to know the pain your parents have felt, you see our generation serves to break a circuit. For our descendants whose journeys are not yet determined.

So that language and Country and justice and truth are the only medications our young people will choose.

But surviving the colony has its own implications, I know longer understand my ancestors great expectations.

But there is something I know to be true and just, its that there is no justice. It is just us.

40,000 years is a long time. 40,000 is still on my mind.

They say healing is non linear and I say that that’s true because some days I cant stop dreaming of you.”

A week later I was at the Sydney slam poetry heats in Randwick, Sydney. I was so nervous and they were pulling names out of hats so I had no idea when I was going to be, I was hoping I could just get up and get it over with. I was really nervous I would cry was I had gotten choked up abit already when sharing the piece with friends and family.

I ended up being the second to last name to get called and this is how it went

I ended up coming second and earnt a place at the state final later that year at Governors house. But I never went, I never even tried to write something again cause I felt like I wasn’t writing poetry but it was just a way to communicate to the world the pain I was feeling, every sentence is deeply connected me personally, my community and the stories I have sat with of our old people and their experience of being stolen.

It is my day in day out hauntings of surviving another day in the Colony and is a story of love, loss and hope.

So I haven’t yet wrote again. Maybe again I will, but it will be when I feel compelled again too I am sure, If you got this far in this piece please remember to check in with your values, LIVE by them and understand your WHY.

For me, it makes for navigating the losses bearable.?