This year’s theme is Keep the Fire Burning! Loud, Blak and Proud.

It comes at a time where mob have been knocked around from the Voice Referendum and are still coming to terms with the results as well as remaining strong in their culture and identity.

As an Aboriginal woman I have been involved in spaces to give guidance on how to celebrate NAIDOC but also to share my story. I find that while in the moment I love telling my story and encouraging others to be allies and why we also need our non-Indigenous brothers and sisters to support us. While I get great strength from this – it also comes at a cost.

As you would know by now, I struggle with anxiety and often this propels me to push myself out of my comfort zone to make sure that I am not missing out on opportunities, but at the same time the same stories of inadequacies play out afterwards. I feel the ‘vulnerability hangover’ the most the day after I have given a speech or presentation. Mainly because I worry that I have gone to far and maybe I offended people by being “too staunch” or “too powerful.”  But I know that this is not the truth because there are people giving me great feedback and being supportive afterwards. I let all the small things that went wrong leading up to the event take over the actual power of my words.

But I know that I must use my voice if I want to feel like I have influenced any change.

I told the story of my grandmother who had her 3-month-old baby stolen from her (my mother). I explained that I found out she had passed at an in-patient unit not far from my workplace. There were no medical records because they had been burned. Her history lost. My mother was due to go and visit her, but her foster parents and the government kept stalling and saying that my grandmother wouldn’t understand who she was because she was mentally unwell. My grandmother was struggling with the loss of her only daughter. She most likely had perinatal anxiety and depression, which was beyond repair. I tell this story not to get pity but so that you can understand that the hardest days that I have are nothing compared to what my grandmother had to endure. This is my ‘why’ and the reason I want to help mothers, because no one should have to struggle with perinatal anxiety and depression.

Being a mother is one of the hardest things that we get to do in life. But just think that we GET to do this job. Yes, it’s so hard some days. But I can’t imagine the alternative.

This is also why I use my voice because I need to make changes for my girls who are going to have to live in this country and navigate living in two worlds, just like me. Yes, I am more fair-skinned and with that comes its own level of racism and discrimination. But I hope that they have more friends who are allies and people around them who can call this out, so that they do not have to navigate it alone.

So, we keep the fire burning because it is how we tell our stories and share our messages with one another, and it is through doing so that we feel less alone. Connection and belonging is the key to healing as well.