Purpose & Poetry with Heidi van Rooyen

Welcome! Thank you for joining us in this 1st season of the The Soul Hum podcast. In this inaugural episode we have an enchanting conversation with Heidi van Rooyen. Heidi van Rooyen is an executive leader, professor, social scientist, psychologist and life coach. She is also the 9th child in a family of 11 from Wentworth in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa. Through her poem ‘last stop’ Heidi takes us on a journey back to her birthplace. She shares formative images, events and experiences of community that have shaped her sense of identity, belonging and purpose. 

Heidi has been writing poetry for more than a decade and is passionate about the use of poetry in research. She was first introduced to poetic enquiry in Gelvandale, Los Angeles and has been instrumental in bringing this approach to diverse audiences in South Africa. She uses poetic enquiry as a resource to navigate and make sense of self within the bigger systemic stories into which we are born. Her poems appear in national and international publications, and she has performed at several local poetry festivals. 

Heidi’s clarity about owning her gifts and living life fully is as invigorating as the cold-water swims which she regards as sacred. It evokes a sense of shared liberation, and rejoice, in us to hear her speak about giving herself ‘permission to own her gifts’. Own her talent, her work, her success. Yes!!! 

Heidi shares two poems with us on The Soul Hum namely ‘last stop’ and ‘belonging’ which are shared below. We are so pleased that we had this time to share with Heidi before she flies off on a new life adventure on Northern shores. We have no doubt that the magical 9th child will be causing some good poetic trouble in the name of creative decolonisation. Thank you Heidi. Our love is always available to you on the sacred waters, swim well in those Northern seas sister. 

Last Stop - Heidi van Rooyen  

The old white stork  
close to retirement  
feeling the weight 
of one too many deliveries  
in this old makeshift village, 
circles it one last time,
her final offering safe in 
her trusty pink pouch.  

She zig-zags across the four corners
of this 3.2 kilometre square    
of mean corrugated iron shanties
swampy informal settlement 
rows of long squat 
chicken coop houses 
30 000 children, dogs, families 
pouring out its edges.    

A red-brick postage stamp  
two-bedroom semi-detached house 
red bougainvillea tree 
bursting out its front yard, 
catches her eye.   
She flies in low and steady, 
drops her parcel, 
turns quickly, 
thoughts of tea  
whetting her lips.   

Mom shuffles over as she hears 
a soft thud at the wooden door.
Opens it a crack, 
sees that pale face
those bright eyes 
and feels a warmth 
settle across her chest.  

Dad shirtless, old grey shorts 
clasping his empty bottom 
wonders over at the fuss.  
Occasional bed-boy on the train  
world’s worst rent collector 
idle consumer of unrefined alcohol 
leans over, 
finds a breath, 
he didn’t know he’d lost.

The noisy clutch of siblings 
jostle to the door, 
take a look at that red, 
puckered face
and questioning eyes,
shut the door immediately,  
wonder:  
where she will sleep 
what she will wear
whose food will she eat? 

Belonging - Heidi van Rooyen 

I’m seeing a biokineticist for my knees. The left a mishmash of scars and a full knee replacement. The good one, not so good now. After years of compensation, its calling for attention. The bio works with pain and how it rests in our bodies and minds. Locked in my knees are my white forefathers plundering my black ancestors. Hunched in my back are generations of broken brown and black people, too afraid to stand. I discover sinews of contempt, long discarded bones, invisible muscles flexing with my past and present, figuring out how land, place, ancestry, identity come to live now in me. I’m surprised at how I can’t do simple movements, and others come easily, of how far back pain extends, where it lodges, how the unwiring of early scripts is constant, everyday work. I find release in the mountain pose. Standing straight and tall, arms at my sides, hands open, chest out, neck and head tilted up and forward, I’m everything and nothing, not my past or my future, this or that identity. In those moments, I belong fully and finally to myself.     

Thank you for joining us on The Soul Hum where we share story medicine, self-care and resilience strategies, practices that expand joy, and rituals that bring us back into intimate communion with soul, place and purpose. We explore and share the stories, prayers, praise poems, rituals and practices that reconnect us with our soul hum. We speak with peers, seekers and teachers who are living on purpose about what keeps their souls humming in the direction of love. Our following guests are Sonja Mckaiser on Friday 27 September. Malika Ndlovu on 11 October and Linda Kaoma on 25 October. Yay, yay, yay! Humming heart. 

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