Nov 10, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
JASMINE In the slick dark damp of winter London Through the smokey pallor and beer-soiled carpet Jasmine inhales the fresh rush of ocean waves, The infinite smell of freedom and possibility and childhood.
Nov 8, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
on the hidden delights of being an outsider, learning to disappear, and how searching for belonging from place can lead us astray When Alison grows up she wants to be a magenta bougainvillea. I met the award-winning author and performer at a writing conference in...
Sep 10, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
It’s a wet and rainy Friday in Sydney and I’m late for my meeting with the director of Sweatshop, a literacy movement homed at Western Sydney University. When I arrive at the small cafe that opens onto Marrickville Road, Michael Mohammed is just finishing his fifth...
Apr 22, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
My heartfelt thanks goes to Canadian author Judy McFarlane for writing this inaugural guest post on belonging: Almost every day for the past three years I’ve walked with my small white dog through the park near my home. Jasper and I know the dogs that are beyond...
Mar 28, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
on the existential nature of bridging distance I drive on roads flanked by huge up-ended trees, toppled like a line of sliced broccoli. Kathryn’s riverside suburb was one of the worst hit by the surprise supercell storm late last year in Brisbane. Cyclonic winds and...
Mar 12, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
on being an outsider, the ancient art of bell ringing, and the enduring relationship we have with our parents even after they die When people close to us die, we are left feeling unanchored, adrift. When it’s a parent, it doesn’t seem to matter that we are adults; we...
Nov 18, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
A few months ago I met author Alain de Botton in Brisbane and asked him about belonging. Being a jet-lagged philosopher he wanted time to ponder this question and suggested I email him. I had been saving this quote, this nugget of belonging, and now that I’ve come...
Oct 21, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
Yesterday as I was driving my daughter to ballet, I put on some music by Francis Cabrel, which I hadn’t heard in a while. The French lyrics, the inflection, the flow of the phrases and the cadence of the words wove through me, lifting me up out of the car of suburbia...
Oct 10, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
Poetry has long been used to search out and understand who we are and our place in the world. Concepts and emotions are whittled to their essence by the selection and sparsity of words, by sheeting together thoughts in a unique way so we are forced to slow down and...
Sep 20, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
Here, in a few beautiful sentences, Australian writer Lisa Southgate unknots the messy shoelaces of belonging and home. Perhaps the feeling of home is as unattainable as a feeling of real belonging especially when so many of us are part of what Pico Iyer calls the...
Mar 5, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
”The next idea, I guarantee, it can be yours. Just go and get it.’’ Elizabeth Gilbert talking to an audience in Brisbane, Australia. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, was in Brisbane for the first time today. She has an open face and a warmth...
Feb 26, 2014 | Belonging, Your Stories
‘‘To the contrary, one of the things that impels me to write is that my mind is huge with all the little stories I never told you.’’ Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin Here’s a little story: I met Lionel Shriver and we had a chat about belonging....
