“You’re allowed to leave any story you don’t find yourself in. You’re allowed to leave any story you don’t love yourself in.

You’re allowed to leave a city that has dimmed your light instead making you shine brighter. You’re allowed to pack all of your bags and start over somewhere else and you’re allowed to redefine the meaning of your life.

You’re allowed to quit the job you hate even if the world tells you not to and you’re allowed to search for something that makes you look forward to tomorrow and the rest of your life.

You’re allowed to leave someone you love if they’re treating you poorly, you’re allowed to put yourself first if you’re settling and you’re allowed to walk away when you’ve tried over and over again but nothing has changed.

You’re allowed to let toxic friends go, you’re allowed to surround yourself with love, and people who encourage and nurture you. You’re allowed to pick the kind of energy you need in your life.

You’re allowed to forgive yourself for your biggest and smallest mistakes and you’re allowed to be kind to yourself, you’re allowed to look in the mirror and actually like the person you see.

You’re allowed to set yourself free from your own expectations.

We sometimes look at leaving as a bad thing or associate it with giving up or quitting, but sometimes leaving is the best thing you can do for yourself. Leaving allows you to change directions, to start over, to rediscover yourself and the world. Leaving sometimes saves you from staying stuck in the wrong place with the wrong people.

Leaving opens the door for change, growth, opportunities and redemption.

You always have the choice to leave until you find where you belong and what makes you happy.

You’re even allowed to leave the old you behind and reinvent yourself.

Author: Rania Naim

Farewell to Brisbane

I wonder… is this it…?

Sitting looking west across treetops and buildings

Toward the suburbs I’ve lived-in and know

Where my kids were born

Where I’ve walked and learned to swim

Where I’ve studied and taught

Where I’ve loved and lost…

The welcome rain hits the car through open windows

Little high-pitched droplet noises, and the deeper-tones on the roof

Spattering my leg and arm as I write in the driver’s seat

And hitting the windscreen, merging slowly to blur the view

Of green and grey and distant light-blue beneath low clouds.

Such a relief to see rain! The country cries for it…

And, as the traffic dwindles and people make their way to the café

The crows and lorikeets and miner birds call,

A pair of butcher-birds whistle from the flowering gums,

And the magpies walk, upright as ever, through the wet grass, picking and probing.

This is why I came here…

To re-centre….

So thankful for these moments,

Moments of creative outpouring, that free me, temporarily

From the hustle and bustle of my topsy-turvy recent past

Where memories drop from the sky, remind me of who I am, what made me,

And blur my vision, like wet drops of rain on a windscreen.

Above the trees, huge airliners slowly descend into Brisbane, To the airport I will leave from in less than a week,

On a willing journey, to a new love, a new life, in Belgium,

Far, far away from all of this.

Centre…

For soon I will have to enter

A less-friendly space, a shopping centre

– I’ve always hated them; unnatural…

None of what I love is there,…

Except for my former lover, partner and wife…

And this was the place we chose to say farewell…

And… as I start the car and reverse-out,

I wonder…

And turn down the hill….

One, last, time…

Is this it…?

Neil Davidson

10.42am, 15 January 2020, Mt Gravatt Lookout (Kaggur-madul*)

*About this place: Mount Gravatt was known by local Aboriginal Turrbal and Yuggera Peoples as ‘kaggur-madul’, meaning place of echidna or echidna mountain or ‘caggara-mahbill’ echidna rests here. I used to walk up to the summit from the Griffith University nestled in Toohey Forest below.

About this Poem: this poem was written on the last day I saw and spoke to my former wife, in the minutes before I was to meet her after separating 6 months earlier.

About the Quote above: My relationship wasn’t toxic… however, with my degree of collapse-awareness, my willingness to speak truth to power, my systemic insights (sometimes, though not universally well-received) I had become ‘less than an ideal fit’ with my family, society (not generating income… why work in a meaningless job that’s not assisting in slowing collapse?), academia (why not challenge them when they are not doing enough, but think they are?), and government roles (same as academia)… so, on behalf of myself, my purpose, and my ability to bring my gifts to the world (on behalf of the whole system) I had to decide to leave… not easy, letting go… leaving everything, except 35kg of luggage, to start again with a new love, in Belgium.