“When you take a child, you are taking sovereignty, their role, their connection – you are taking whole communities that live inside that little being,” writes Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts.
Her memoir, Long Yarn Short, imprinted on my mind and heart. In a warm, inviting voice, this proud Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul woman paints an unflinchingly honest picture of her life as a child stolen by the state, at just ten years old, in the mid-2000s. She describes being “tucked up in bed” by her dad and “about to close [her] eyes” when it happened.
“I want you to imagine your dad going out onto the balcony, terrified,” she writes. “I want you to hear him yelling, ‘Bub … Big girl. I am so sorry, but they are coming to get you’.”
