Retreat helps with the healing

Sydney
1 Dec 2002

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Retreat helps with the healing

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Retreat helps with the healing

The Healing House is set in tranquil gardens and spreading lawns in the Razorback Ranges, south of Sydney

The Healing House, situated in the Razorback Ranges, near Picton, south of Sydney, is a place where Aboriginal women go to heal their grief from such matters as the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their mothers.

A series of buildings that were once a family property, the Healing House is set in tranquil gardens and spreading lawns.

The house was set up by Aboriginal woman Barbra Asplet, who works as its co-ordinator.

The property was bought for this purpose by the Catholic Church.

Barbra Asplet had been associated as a healer with city-based buildings owned by the Church and - with the support of Fr Frank Fletcher - had suggested that an out-of-city retreat location would better meet the needs of Aboriginal women.

There are rooms set up in one of the houses, with single beds for those who need solitude, and others with a number of beds “so that other women who need to can talk late into the night, sharing their stories of pain, grief, loss and laughter”.

Asplet is revealed as passionate about her work as a healer.

“There is so much to be done … there is so much pain,” she is quoted as saying.

“The trauma caused when children were taken away is so big - so deep is the pain, and it goes on and on.

“When the (Stolen Generations) commission came, it opened up a can of worms.”

The healing weekends involve a range of experiences, such as deep breathing exercises, mediation, and group times to “acknowledge and gently share the pain”.

But Asplet realised long ago that before you can heal others you must heal yourself.

That is why the story opens with her at the 2000 Olympic Games Aboriginal tent embassy making an apology to white people “because of the way she had treated them; because of the way her anger with them had led to her to behave”.

Over time, she says later, she came to understand and accept that “it wasn’t the white people now who caused all the pain, but it was government policies.

“And yet,” says Asplet, “John Howard will not acknowledge that. His lack of ‘sorry’ is still painful for a lot of Aboriginal people. He just doesn’t get it.”