Feeding Your Roots And Your Heart

Be patient as I share a recent experience with you, because it led to one of life’s amazing coincidences – as always the universe provided me with an amazing and insightful solution to a dilemma I faced and a quest I started earlier last year.

I have a confession to make…I try to write poetry. In 2005 I wrote the following piece:

TORN

Britain, my birth country

Part of my DNA

My roots are here

But not my heart

Africa, you fostered me

Nurtured me

My heart is here

It beats to your rhythms

I am incomplete always…

All ways.

In the months after writing this poem I began writing a number of articles on the 'Get Connected' theme. I never consciously made the connection between the poetry and the articles. Then the universe intervened...

Last year I went on a fabulous nostalgic holiday in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Although I was born in the UK, I grew up in Zimbabwe and my return after twenty years was a very emotional one. We had a fabulous guide called Pius, who looked after us during our stay at Victoria Falls. He is a member of the Cindebele tribe from the Bulawayo area, where I lived for a number of years in the 1970’s. One evening we were chatting, and I remarked that being born in one country and growing up in another led to a sense of never being complete in either place. Pius told me that in Cindebele culture a person’s roots would always belong in the place where their umbilical cord was buried but that their hearts would choose their places of belonging. ‘The wise person’ he said, ‘learns to feed both the roots and the heart for without either they must die.’

For a couple of seconds it felt as if the world fell silent to allow Pius’ words to seep into my consciousness. I realised that the universe had just presented me with a challenge – to find ways to feed my roots and my heart.

Ever since this conversation, my head has been bursting with exciting ideas - one of which is to run a ‘Get Connected’ event in Africa. I plan to run an ‘ Africa Connects Seminour’ – a combination tour, retreat and seminar. I love Africa, and would enjoy taking others to the places that feed my heart and soul and guiding them to reconnect with the things that feed their roots and hearts.

For those of you who have dreamt of visiting Africa, make a plan to do it this year and block out the period from the 6^th – 14^th May in your diaries. Then take a look at the teleseminars and events page on this website.