I held a young soul suffering, and my Achilles heal I bared. I hugged a breaking heart and it punched right through my chest. I held a breath of deep despair and shared a lifeless void. Surrendered to a stolen moment and entered a sacred place.
I allowed words to pierce my guard and a trembling hand met mine. I shed a tear as pain took hold and it softened another’s fall. We sat with silence, moved with fear, and together we returned. We captured moments of relief, and I held the hand of hope.
( Poem written for a young person on a Youth Focus camp. Reposted from 2014. ‘In My Room’ book. Art by Harley Manifold, original in colour.)
Miiesha (Pronounced My-ee-sha) is from the small Aboriginal community of Woorabinda in Central Queensland comes a 21 year old with a voice ready to be heard. A strong, Anangu/Torres Strait Islander woman, Miiesha has been singing for her family and her community since the age of 8, and has since been developing her songwriting as a teenager.
Miiesha’s music seeks to bring people together to help educate and inspire. She sings of her people and her community with the words of a leader and a teacher. Her late Grandmother’s interludes provide a thread between the tracks, highlighting the passing down of knowledge from Elders through the generations.
Rose does things her own peculiar way, never relinquishing personal plans of the most unconventional type. She confidently makes unadvised decisions which often place her outside of all things mainstream. Rose fully embraces this difference, the unique directions she plots, and the independence her own decision making affords her. She works within a space-like time frame, creating objects galore that keep her safe and sound in mind – and well outside the orbit of others. Long Live Rose.
Footnote: ‘Taking her life into her own hands’ may be about not only about being self reliant but also keeping all the good things safe and close. Protecting those things from the tendency many of us have of self sabotaging and diminishing our own worth. Protecting all parts of ourselves from the horrible habit of comparison maybe? And within that small, precious space, setting our own limits. Being less our own enemy and dimmer of our potential.
Rose was accustomed to more – but settle for one none-the-less.
Rose finds decision making difficult, so she limits her choices to alleviate herself from the tiresome chore of selection. The fact that this leaves her with very little, is of no great loss to Rose – she has (and is), enough. Long Live Rose.
Footnote: The virtue of being small is not one of popularity, but in a world that’s constantly promoting big, and potentially making us feel more insignificant, we have to champion a little harder for the small stuff. And with consumerism and mass media constantly knocking, our lives can potentially become a merry-go-round of decision making. Even if it’s the conscious decision not to buy into it. This Rose seems aware of the trappings of ‘wanting more’ yet holds firmly onto her single cone. She settles for less and feels so much more for it.
Like getting out of bed in the morning … making a long put off phone call … taking the next step … or a difiicult one … venturing into unknown or familiar but rather not go places … facing a lurking fear … a dreaded occasion … but always, always well prepared for the consequences of her actions … or that which might be thrust upon her by those both, unexpected … and expected that could happen at any undesignated moment in time. This made her relatively secure in the knowledge of all subsequent happenings. Phew. No wonder her head was spinning.
