Tell your story.
Let it nourish you, sustain you and claim you.
Tell your story.
Let it feed you, heal you and release you.
Tell your story.
Let it twist and re-mix your shadowed heart.
Tell your story,
Until your past stops tearing your present apart.

I heard the above words recently on Radio 4’s Spoken Word programme “Writing a new South Africa”. You can hear it here at 14.38 minutes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053bsfm
Spoken aloud, with all the power of someone who knows the potency of the words, it struck me that this is precisely what I have been doing in the past years.

I know I bang on about Germany; about WW2; about Remembrance and Commemoration. And over the next months, particularly from 8th May, the 70th Anniversary of the official ending of WW2, until 11th November, the UK’s Remembrance Day, I will be talking even more than ever about these things. Why? Because they are all part of my story. And I will be telling it through a series of talks and lectures, blogs, discussions, conversations and an exhibition all under the loose title: The Other Side.

The story I will be telling is based on my family’s story, but I am just one voice of millions who have similar stories that haven’t been told. All of them are intrinsically linked to the huge events of 1930’s and 40’s Germany, the main facts of which are largely known. But not all the facts are acknowledged in the UK, for they could interrupt the smoother narrative we prefer to pass on to our children and threaten the clean cut position we cherish as the benevolent victors over evil.

It took a long time to excavate the story of my German roots from beneath the collective silence under which it, and so many other German or European stories like it, have been buried. Now brought into the light of day I can see clearly how stories that remain unearthed, untold, “tear your present apart”.

If you want to hear the story I have to tell, follow this blog or follow me on Facebook and Twitter @angelas_talks or keep an eye on my website http://www.angelafindlaytalks.com for news of talks near you.