![]() ![]() Ana is a child, and early in the novel, she comes home to find her mother, Gloria, missing. The novel also follows Ana and Gloria, Jeanette and Carmen’s neighbors. Of Women and Salt opens with Jeanette, in the present, in a coma resulting from her substance use disorder Carmen is praying over her in her hospital room, hoping for the chance to speak to her daughter again. Throughout the novel, women are cut off from their kin, tragedy and death preventing connection and an open dialogue while these conflicts are particular to individual women, they are also connected to the women who struggled before them. The stories aren’t told in chronological order-the order they occurred in time doesn’t matter. Of Women and Salt follows generations of women in two separate families (the narrative spans over 150 years) who are dealing with exile and trauma. ![]() In Of Women and Salt, we see how daughters inherit the trauma experienced by their mothers and grandmothers, from the structural, such as political strife and exile, to the personal, such as losing a mother or father as a child. In We Cast a Shadow, the inherited trauma passed from the narrator to his son is a result of the structural racism he and his family and his peoples have experienced for generations. This pain and hurt is alleviated through the knowledge we share in our connection to our land, sea, culture and families.Early on in Gabriela Garcia’s novel Of Women and Salt, out earlier this year, one of the protagonists, Jeanette, a Cuban American born and raised in Miami after her mother, Carmen, leaves Cuba under mysterious circumstances, wonders “whether loss unspoken becomes an inherited trait.” A couple of years ago I wrote about inherited trauma in Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow (2019) inherited trauma is the concept that trauma experienced by generations past can become embedded within their kin’s body. Through improved acknowledgement of our connection to our history, country and culture, our future generations can grow strong, with a full recognition by Australian society of the wrongs of the past.Īlthough we still live with the pain of colonisation and the hurt of forced removals, we reach back to our ancestral past and look forward to brighter futures for our young people. The top layer represents our brighter future. The middle section is symbolic of the days following colonisation and the pain that our families and communities went through, in particular, the removal of our children and dismantling of our families. The lower part of the design depicts our ancestral past, which we celebrate. ![]() The eight icons throughout the design are symbolic of the sharing of these stories with the broader Australian people, in seeking an acknowledgement and understanding of what our people have been through over more than 230 years. The heart symbol also depicts how we heal each other’s pain together as families and communities. The central element depicts the healing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples throughout our nation.Īs a main focal point of the design, the heart is symbolic of the shared pain we feel as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, families and communities. ![]() Designed in collaboration with young design student Catherine Curnow, the overall design for the Healing Foundation’s Intergenerational Trauma Campaign depicts healing through the acknowledgement of the pains of the past. ![]()
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