As I reflect on what has led me to this decision to create Relational Matters, two crucial themes stand out - what it costs to live in the world without adequate support, and what becomes possible when we belong to communities vitally engaged in taking action. These two themes have shaped not only my personal history, but also my professional development.

One story from childhood stands out. I knew our family was moving. I didn't know where we were going, or even why. Boxes were piled up around the house, everything packed and ready to go. On the night before we were to leave, my mother sat down and told us that our father would not be coming with us and that instead we would have a new stepfather. With little space to respond, I recall my mother's confidence that she knew I would understand and look after my three younger siblings who couldn't understand. I was nine years old.

This story marks the beginning of a repetitive pattern throughout my life, where against a background of threat or urgency, I am propelled into taking action but with minimal support. The key lesson was that my survival depended on my capacity to provide caretaking and support. Sadly this also meant managing a range of difficult and abusive experiences on my own. The idea that support should or could be available, either encouragement to succeed or through emotional holding, was not something that really occurred to me as a possibility.

In my mid-teens I became involved in a large, vibrant church youth group. Here I had my first taste of what it meant to belong. Rather than being shunned or bullied, which had marked too much of my school experience, I felt welcomed and appreciated.

I have always intuitively understood the importance of this experience as a counter-point to my more impoverished family situation, and how necessary an experience of belonging is for building health and well-being. Not surprisingly I finished secondary school with a determination to continue my involvement in the church. It seemed the one place that offered a dependable sense of community. And so with a thought of pursuing pastoral care or chaplaincy work, I studied theology. Through the influence of a very supportive youth group leader, Greg Elsdon, I made the decision to attend Whitely College in Melbourne. During the 80's Whitely was considered radical, offering an education steeped in liberalism and the hermeneutic tradition of European philosophy. It was also a school profoundly influenced by the political and social commitments of Dr Athol Gill.

Athol founded the House of the Gentle Bunyip, an intentional community shaped by principles of radical discipleship and committed to serving marginalised members of the community. His uncompromising vision for justice furthered not only my own interest in building socially responsible, interdependent communities, but also my conviction that our capacity for empathy and appreciating others is determined by the limits of our own perspectives. The challenge before us is the unwavering commitment to extend the boundaries of our understanding. This enthusiasm for community, and for engaging the church in action practices that make a difference socially and politically, carried me somewhat naively into the realities of life as a suburban minister. Throughout this period I also maintained a part-time position in a government-funded agency that provided innovative education and support programs to the long-term unemployed and those with psychiatric illnesses.

But five years later, after struggling against increasingly conservative attitudes, I made the painful decision to leave the church. The inherent sexism, combined with the recognition that as a divorced woman my credibility was compromised, meant opportunities for leadership would always be limited. I also felt increasingly dissatisfied with the church's stance on homosexuality. A conditional acceptance based on abstinence seemed to me both unreasonable and hypocritical, and conveniently ignored higher order demands for justice and radical acceptance.

After leaving the church I continued for some time to work in the local community. While continuing to feel committed to this work, I also felt a growing frustration at the petty conflicts that often seemed to divide and distract my colleagues. Though it was a community, it lacked a rigorous commitment to collaboration, mutual support and shared understanding. My experience, painful in a way that was different to the church, didn't diminish my value of groups or organisations working for social change, but did contribute to my growing awareness of how communities can become compromised, often failing to realise the vision that stands at the heart of their mission.

It was during this period that I began my training in gestalt therapy. In contrast to other experiences, Gestalt stood like a beacon of possibility, embracing the broad sweep of human experience in a way that felt transformative. A commitment to dialogue created the ground for a more robust relational engagement, a balm after the narrow self-interest and lack of self-awareness so figural in other experiences.

My training eventually led me into private practice as a psychotherapist. Soon after completing my training I was invited to join the faculty of Gestalt Therapy Australia (GTA). Once again I found myself in a group, this time a learning community.

The GTA faculty embodied those aspects of community I most valued - vibrant, vital and with a shared commitment to excellence. It was a group bound together by deep ties of love and loyalty. My belonging to this group gave me a renewed appreciation of how generative people can be when they allow themselves to depend on each other, and work with a sense of shared vision and purpose in the service of others.

While much of the work I have done with individuals has been offered within the context of larger communities, I've increasingly had the sense of wanting to work towards the building of a 'relational movement'. This desire emerges from a recognition of the things I've struggled with: the shame and failure that come as a consequence of inadequate support, the anxiety that goes with feeling overwhelmed, the isolation of being too responsible, and the cost of inadequate resources. What I've learnt is that access to complex, dependable, dense networks of support makes the difference. What I want to do is support the development of sustainable communities of people involved in practices of social justice and community engagement.

My work with The Relational Center over the last six years has sharpened this sense and has laid the ground for me to step into a partnership with the The Relational Center in the U.S and Relational Change in Europe to found Relational Matters in Australia. At the heart of this decision is a knowing of what is possible when we make a radical commitment to stand side by side in supporting one another to make the kind of difference in the world that matters.

My invitation is to come and stand with us, and to explore what might be possible, and what difference we might make.

-- Leanne O'Shea