FALLING LEAVES
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STORY #54 - Anonymous
It’s OK. It's deciduous and natural. We are human and emotional and forget to tune into the cyclic nature of our lives. It’s OK to bow to what your environment has thrown at you. May my gentle autumn whispers help reassure you that we have survived many a winter and we will survive this one. Leave the deadwood behind, it has a purpose. Your tears will nourish the seeds blanketed with leaves and decompose your woes. Together we entwine, shelter, ground ourselves and rest. A time for stillness.
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STORY #36 - L Millhouse NSW
We were on an adventure, like two little ants walking around touching everything we could.. this world is so warm, colourful and inviting. I am holding his hand, mine feels strangely small but I don’t have time to dwell on it as he looks down at me, saying something funny as usual.. I am laughing from my belly. Not really paying attention, I trip over an invisible object and wake up smiling. It’s dark, quiet.. all the warmth and colour has drained as I realise my mind has tricked me again. Immediately overtaken by the grief I sit up with tears streaming down my face. My partner doesn’t ask what’s happened and he knows in these moments I don’t want to be suffocated, love right now.. is suffocating. He silently and gently places his hands on me almost as if not wanting to wake me and allows me to purge the weight and the disappointment, the sharpness and the darkness until I quieten and can again hear my father calling me his “darling little feather”.
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STORY #24 - S Defaux NSW
We sat in the car, crying, wailing, snot and tears mingled, holding each other tight. I remember this night, this exposure of ourselves to each other. We were little girls, navigating through madness, young women, clinging to life the best we could. Then this. Too young, too cruel. Deep grief and terror at what was ahead, barely spoken about, her fear stuffed down with a denial so tough. It had to be because she wasn’t. This life, with all its harsh edges, it’s dark sorrows, was all she wanted. She would've sold her soul for more years, more time. Leaving a child, a mother, a sister. None of us were able to do this. A wreckage.
Then she left us. The tears keep coming. The pain engulfs and swallows us whole. It’s been four years. Still, we float through life on rafts, clinging, screaming, and surging with the waves. These endless and merciless waves. I scream NO MORE! I speak her name because her silence burns. My sister, Oumani Browne, dies from ovarian cancer. We celebrated her 40th. Then we celebrated her life, and mourn. 1/1/75-21/7/15
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STORY #14 - V Thompson. Adolescent & Family Counsellor NSW
This piece for me symbolises the relationship between mother and daughter. The mother is comforting the daughter while letting her go and grow into adulthood
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STORY #38 - T Morris NSW
Time slowed that day. Maybe it was something I did unconsciously to deal with the shock and the reality I would never see him again.
We walked to the park across the road from my work and I fell to the ground in a sobbing, inconsolable mess. I needed to be close to the ground and to feel some assurance it wasn’t all a dream. We sat in the shade of a giant Fig tree for some time trying to understand what it all meant.
In the long, drawn-out moments under the tree, all my senses were in overdrive. My hearing and vision had become supersonic and I noticed every tiny thing around me in slow-motion. With my mind in a spin, going from how to why and is this really happening, I felt sick and I let myself curl up like a baby in his arms.
When the tears stopped for a bit, I looked up, perhaps just to see the sky and breathe again and at that moment, all I could see were leaves falling gently like tears all around us. Like that giant Fig tree must have known that this really was the worst day of my life.
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