Transport, transform and heal

I loved the monthly train journey to Manchester for my Cranio-Sacral Therapy training. A couple of hours watching the English countryside unfold culminating with the view of the Peaks always helped to reset my nervous system. (The daily London commute on the tube was a lot less pleasurable and makes me shudder now when I think of it). 

Waiting for the steam train to depart at Nicholas Abbey Heritage Railway, was another level of excitement. Every wave of excitement came with a flashback of being at the Abbey as a small child with my family. After the train snaked around the luscious grounds in St Peter, we took a tour of the main house, and it suddenly felt as though we had been transported to another time in history.  

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Barbados’ involvement in the slave trade and its development as the first British slave colony is well documented. I had always viewed this history from a safe distance in books or documentaries. However, living here brings that history and its modern-day repercussions to the forefront. St Nicholas Abbey is a former sugar plantation that was established in the 1600s, and an excavation of the site in 2007 revealed evidence of a slave village. In the main house there is a ledger with the names and prices of enslaved people and a map with the names of the plantation owners on the island. Searching on the map, I wasn’t sure if I did want to find my families’ surname – their presence would be validation and tragic at the same time. I couldn’t find any family names and the tour continued.  

The heady smell of rum coming from the gift shop was ironically a sobering reminder of what had come before. I didn’t want to come away from the experience with feelings of anger, as I often feel my move to Barbados was a part of healing generational trauma. Standing in sites like St Nicholas Abbey brings history to life in a way the books and documentaries never could. The experiences become sensual – full body experiences that transport, transform and heal.  

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