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.  

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.