“Adventure makes the soul sing”. It also drives passion and creativity and there is nothing quite like embracing the unknown in order to shake everything up. I have found there is nothing quite as liberating as throwing off the security blanket and feeling the freshness that rushes in.
In 2004 I migrated to the other side of the world and in 2009 I took a massive leap to break out of a toxic relationship and make it on my own with my children. It was a heart stopping period of my life. At times I felt like my heart would explode in my chest from fear and my throat close up in panic, but those feelings gradually dissolved and instead l came to feel as if my heart would explode from sheer joy and freedom. Instead of feeling that my throat would close in panic, I finally found my voice and myself. Me, my voice, mine! My heart and soul learned how to sing, it has never stopped actually and along the way I fell in love with this beautiful country.
My children and I quickly became accustomed to the beach at the end of the road and the salty sting of the sea water on our sunburned skin. We have spent so many wonderful days there soaking up the sunshine trying to infuse our milky white skin with some golden Australian colour. I fell instantly in love with the sea breeze that still blows throw my bedroom on hot summer nights and makes white sheer curtains float in the air like gossamer wings. My heart and soul have long been soothed by the rolling waves and I never fail to pull the freshness of the ocean deep into my lungs when it fills the air in a salty statement of being.
We have walked through haunting Stringybark forests and hugged huge gum trees too fat to even get our arms halfway around their trunks. On country drives we still open the car windows to breathe in the intoxicating smell of wood burning, the same way burning logs fires in neighbouring homes entice us in the crisp winter air.
We have stood on the top of volcanic rims as if standing on top of the world and found red dust as fine as talcum powder in our boots, socks and undies after a day quad biking in the dry bush-land. But what I love most about this beautiful country is the stunning wide indigo skies filled to bursting with never ending starlight. Even on cloudy nights we never fail to gaze towards the heavens hoping to be blessed with the sight of peeking stars.
It is in moments such as these that my heart fills to bursting as I look at the enormity of the universe above me and remember the enormity of the journey I embarked on all those years ago. It is in these moments that I give thanks for the sheer delights and pleasures that I have experienced with my children by my side in this incredible land. I have long washed off the life that once held me, the life which I clung to from a cocktail of obligation, ignorance and fear. This growth has given me a blanket of stars to sleep under as a replacement for the blanket of self-doubt and stagnation that once cocooned me. I feel that in shedding the old me, the one who bloomed on very rare occasions if ever, I have matured to an evergreen in this wonderful sunburnt country.
“and the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful that the risk it took to blossom” Anais Nin.