Pilgrimmage...

After a significant year of ‘mixed blessings’ I find myself at a juncture in my life where I am having to stop and reflect on the life path that I have been on to date; and the further journeys that I am about to undertake this coming year. Reflecting on the last couple of years, two key journeys I have found myself on are that long harrowing road to recovery and wholeness after a devastating illness; and more positively that of falling in love (at the ripe ‘old age’ of thirty four), and subsequently getting married last July. Interestingly, since September (2007) I have been engaged in a creative writing course, which has catapulted me into starting my first novel, a project that remains very much a ‘work-in-progress’, and it is an extract from this novel, that I commence my blogging adventure. The reason for this is because this novel has in many ways, and continues to be part of my healing process (through grief and reconciliation) as I make sense of my world after several traumas in my life in recent years. I really have found my writing – both my poetry and prose, very therapeutic in terms of working through ‘past stuff’, and feel that the process of journaling the next phase of my life - the ‘hope and future’ by way of blogging - will also be a satisfying endeavour, as I look to share this pilgrimage that I am on while connecting with others through this forum. Thus, the focus of walumba.blogspot.com is two-fold, to journal both my re-location to Melbourne, Australia, in December 2008; and the spiritual journey that I am on (linked to many of the issues that I have touched on in this entry). Like Madeleine (the protagonist in my up-and-coming novel) who finds herself confronted by twists and turns of varying degrees and severity in her travels, and has to find a way through to her final destination (wherever that may be); I too have to meander through a personal ‘walkabout’ as I take the plunge of uprooting myself from my home in Birmingham to starting a new chapter, and a different life ‘Down Under’. And, like the flying-foxes, in the extract, who help Madeleine during a particular stage in a strange world she finds herself in, I see the discovery of my ‘inner self and strength’ and ‘the strangers and friends that I am yet to meet along the way’ as the ‘walumbas’ (or the flying foxes) who will emerge as ‘helpers’ in my coming journey.