Walking the Never-When

Nerak Coven

Description

Walking the Never When is creative bait for conversation, connection, and change. That writing was constructive therapy for me, as I hope reading it will create emotional coinage which can be spent for the betterment of you.
As a mother for many and a victim of workplace trauma and abuse at the hands of corporate care. There comes a time when you bend, break, or use art therapy to warp reality and rebuilt yourself to be the catalyst for the change that you desire. Change that has a purpose, when the spiritual representative of the continental land mass of Australia, turns up in a borrowed body, to motivate this multi-tasking mother to leave the arms of her lover and orchestrate universal expansion with the aid of cookies and cold tea. This story may be strange or an obvious repeat, of what you know. To have been written in code upon your DNA. With a spoonful of therapy to aid conversation and community connectivity. You will find this tale weird, yet to feel it strangely to be true.
Weird they had called me as I sit amongst the fringe. Weird but good my co-workers said when I was the mouthpiece for their concerns. Weird but ours the family boasts as I worked myself to the bone to create for others a Sanctuary and for them a loving home.
Now facing menopause and with a midlife crisis long overdue.
I am embracing my weirdness to write stories to ignite change and conversation in people like you. I am the sober driver who will get you safely home. I am an Australian survivor and walked with the ME2 movement beating a drum.
Why are we still burning fossil fuel instead of harnessing the sun.
I am a frustrated woman who is raising her voice because my country has told me that climate change is no longer a choice.
I am Nerak Coven. (Artist, Activist, Author)

Sujets

• Climate Change
• Reduce
• Something Different
• Therapy
• Gather
• Reuse
• Connection
• Weird
• Sisterhood
• Equality
• Foster care
• Luck
• Responsibility
• Culture of Australia
• Wildlife
• Recycling
• Compromise
• Reduction
• Marriage
• Greens
• Community
• Wild Life
• Lotto
• Empathy
• Care
• Fun
• Dreamtime
• Identity
• Dreamer
• Therapy?
• Sex
• Creative
• Love
• Loutsk
• Walker
• Support
• Connexion
• Recyclage
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press AU
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781982295202
• Langue: English

Extrait

WALKING THE NEVER-WHEN
 
 
 
 
 
 
NERAK COVEN
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 Nerak Coven.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
Balboa Press
A Division of Hay House
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.balboapress.com.au
AU TFN: 1 800 844 925 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-9822-9519-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-9822-9520-2 (e)
 
Balboa Press rev. date:  09/15/2022
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Also By the Author
PROLOGUE
T he grass is brown, paving hot. Wilted, hang the leaves awaiting the monsoon, months from now. Tree roots stretch down to the water table, deep below. As bores suck from above, returning the nectar of life, filtered through septic tanks, tucked out of sight in their bed of earth.
My mind wanders. My reality has evolved to appreciate the interconnectedness of chemicals, woven together to form the mass of tissue that I recognise as me. With personal change through trauma, arthritic wear and tear and the birth of my three, now teenage and adult children, I can visualise the flow and interchanging reactions of substances all around me. Obviously not with my own eyes, but thanks to science and nature documentaries on the ABC, I can pause to appreciate what is going on, unseen, under the surface.
These are the thoughts that I distract myself with as I hang the washing on the line, ignoring the constant pain of middle age and my social irrelevance to the world at large, while wishing for something to change.

CHAPTER 1
I wish I could express anger as childishly as some. Only I would not because it is dumb. I watch the red flushed face of my husband, spittle flying from his mouth, speaking at me with a furious tone, regarding my technical incomprehension. I now regret asking him how to work the functions on this new TV remote. Though not exactly new, it is an older TV borrowed from family, after lightning spiked our own.
As Warren rants, I maintain a practiced calm expression. A look that lets him know that I appreciate that, yes, this TV remote is also new to him, that it is true I have had no desire nor inclination to read the material about its function and, yes, it is like our previous remote which I had also asked similar questions about, but obviously not committed to memory. Must he speak to me like I am an idiot though?
I feel like an observer of my own life, mentally taking notes on what an unhinged and crazy person looks like. We have all been stressed from recent events. Scared from finding their wife and mother bruised and bleeding, comforted by the police, after an incident between siblings. It had escalated and I, defending the youngest child from harm, had received the beating on their behalf.
After decades of working from home as a 24/7 early childhood educator, which enabled me to maintain a car, essential for our rural address, I had successfully managed to raise our own three children, whilst caring for others who were wards of the state. Children who needed care for days or years, within the supportive structure of our family home. They all learnt to read, write, and participate within the community; through sport, music and events. Our home offered good food and hygiene within a positive domestic environment, space for them all to grow.
Being a 24/7 example of domestic virtue had its rewards, but also meant I was no stranger to a temper tantrum. The children I cared for found themselves often confused by external structural inconsistencies, being retraumatised during the visits to family or places relevant to their reason for care. Add to that, hormones. Then, when they returned to the safety that our home represented, they had felt able to be vulnerable, often expressing it verbally and physically via a meltdown. An abundance of calm, repetitive support was needed to build these children back up. With extreme behaviour escalation depending on the child’s age, historical emotional damage, disconnection, and the lack of true support from the outsourced profit-driven system of long-term care, for whom I had once worked.
Instead of stability and consistency from which to grow a healthy productive adult, regrettably these children in long-term care were being shaped by a revolving welfare wheel, driven by corporate care, whose inconsistencies undermined those of us on the front line. A system ghosted by historic racial regret, that repeatedly retraumatise fragile children with the pretence of connectivity. Thus, leaving the carers and families vulnerable to generic, bureaucratic solutions that are inexpertly wielded by box-ticking officials, who do not wear the repercussions of their decisions.
With Warren’s out of character aggressive response reminding me that the rest of the house was also harmed by these events.
When the beating I had received resulted with the children both being removed from my care against the wishes of the youngest, until this incident could be investigated. With no goodbye or concern for my family and our other foster child, who had formed bonds, after months of them living here as one of us. These babes leave with issues unresolved and the violent behaviour likely to be repeated at current and future placements I was angered by the entire process.
Mentally struggling to navigate the PTSD that colours my current unemployed status, I am in pain from the recent surgery I had to the platelets of my back and I mourn the hope I once had for the children I had cared for.
Remembering the day after when I was admitted to hospital, for what was to be routine spinal surgery. Until decorated with the abuse of domestic violence. That had me relive the trauma of this and many other incidents, questioning and defending my career choices every three hours, as the hospital staff changed and required reassurance that it was not my husband who had mottled my body with these marks of violent assault, but a child, in my care.
The years I now felt I had languished as a willing participant, only for my family to again feel betrayed the day after I returned from hospital. With the final straw plucked by the boy whom I had considered my own. With hormones racing and mixed messages received by peers over the phone, whom he was arguing with, as he threw himself out the back door, where to his surprise we collided. He looked at me, confused and scared by my still beaten appearance but resenting the removal of these other children and possibly fearing a similar fate. Our collision knocking my unbalanced, bandaged self, with howls of agony, hard upon the paved, veranda floor. His phone suffering the same fate, now with shattered screen. Conflicted with emotion and the stress of these events, my last child from care started to bang his head upon the wall. Family came to restrain him, to calm him down and talk sense before giving first aid to him and me once I was scraped up off the floor.
But the incident report that had to follow saw our child of many years also removed until another investigation could clear my name. Whilst waiting the months as if in detention this ensured my silence and the ability, I would have had to change the care organisation for the better, from within. When finally cleared by the investigation and tired of corporate manipulation. It was too late for this child to return. He was enrolled in another school, in the suburbs where being in a gan