DAY SEVENTEEN: Solidarity

An unconventional day at Adelaide convention centre. The conference was opened with didgeridoo, more music and poetry followed. Throughout the day, this shared humanity continued, people spontaneously sang before their lectures to strengthen this space of safety and honest reflection that the hosts had built. By 'morning tea' we had considered Foucault, mass human rights violations and eight kinds of power. By the end of the day, stories of the 'spirit-breaking' work of systems reform had been cathartically shared, leaving space for dispair without reaching for solutions. 

One song humoursly suggested we all blame 'them, whoever they are' for the state of things.

Taking up this PhD opportunity was always, on one level, an act of running away from my work in inpatient mental health (from being 'them'). The fact that a PhD felt like the 'easier' option says something about the challenges of working in those environments. 

I don't mean that I thought a PhD would be easy. Instead, this research sounded like an opportunity to uncomplicatedly 'do no harm' for a while. This is something it wasn't always easy to gauge if I was managing whilst offering therapeutic interventions in locked wards. 
 
Nevertheless, one of my resolutions in this shift was to remember and honour the compassion and commitment I saw daily from colleagues in those services. Healing which did happen often stemmed from the trust and relationships built, against the odds, between individuals in these temporary communities full of power imbalance and trauma, healing which stemmed from shared humanity. 

Somehow I have to find space for these multiple truths even when they seem at odds and the simple explanations are tempting.