After the 2022 Northern Rivers floods, First Nations community members and others came together to create a safe space to support each other on the journey to regional recovery. The Healing Hub (created by Associate Professor Carlie Atkinson) emerged from this space to provide non-clinical informal approaches in promoting community connections through trauma-informed, grounded, and cultural informed practices.
The development of weaving circles has been around for years, embraced traditional healing practices to re-weave people’s stories of strength and wellbeing. The weaving circles grew to be a space where young and old could weave community stories to rebuild a sense of hope, connection and belonging while all around was chaos. More than 18 months after the floods, the Healing Hub and weaving circles continue to grow and support connections between community members and organisations.
The weaving circles highlighted the importance of having safe spaces following natural disasters for people to connect, self-organise, share, listen and to weave new stories together – as Mehil-Madrona says, ‘we live storied lives… we are born into stories.’ Over time, as we learned to weave, we found our stories connecting us together in ways unexpected; healing our relationships with each other and nature, binding us and bringing our theories and practice together to create a unique praxis based on ancient principles.
Weaving provides a resonant structure for storytelling, lightening our spirits while restoring hope and weaving renewed intergenerational stories of home and family post devastation. Participants in the workshop will experience our four-part yarning circle process while weaving with us while we share the collective story of hope and healing.