Speaking out may help one other person, so how can I remain silent?

If one other person can feel some humanity, or feel less alone, then I will write.

Four years ago today...
Or was it four minutes?
Or maybe four centuries?

Once on an everyday sort of day, in a land far, far away, anger and power had overtaken the hearts of men. They had a missile, and they ended the lives of 300,

Shattering and wrenching apart my life, my family and my soul.

They were taken in the night time - in the harsh fluorescent light of the night time - somewhere it was night time... where... I don't remember... It was dark.

Condemned to darkness by the bully, I write...

A piece of my story

- the shroud of disbelief
- the wistful momentary echoes of a happiness, known and lost
- the isolation, and what we became...
- a curiosity show
- roll up roll up, I'll say
- A must see
- I miss them I miss them I miss them underlies everything
- I'll write of the visible and the invisible
- the bruise coloured flower of mother-love
- I'll write of being broken and putting the pieces of myself back together again
- and resilience
- and strength

Sometimes experiences from the past pop into my head and I can't move, rendered immobile by loss and horror, staring at nothing and inside, trauma is being re-lived.
The trauma of a loss so cataclysmic that it singled us out of all Australians, and made us different.

People stare.
People say how do you go on?

Connection
Signs from the universe
A love that can move mountains.
The kids hold me up with their golden ropes.
They help me when I feel I can't go on.
When I close my eyes, I can see their smiles.

To be different/ imperfect/ not normal is scary.
To be different/ imperfect/ not normal in a world where everyone projects 'perfect' is a fear

I tell my story here to confront that fear.
To show the world who I am.
I am Grief. This is me. Grief is me.
To look at me is to see your own fear reflected back at you.
To look at me is to also see strength.
The strength of us all.
All of those who stand behind me.
The strength of my fathers and grandmothers.
An ancient strength.
The strength of my land.
My land of burnt umber and dry sand.
The strength of laterite and million year old tears.
The strength of the broken who rebuilt.

What do you see when you look at the bully?