DR MAREE ALDRIDGE

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IDENTITY / TRAUMA SPECIALIST 

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Maree’s heart has always been profoundly rooted in identity work. She likens it to being like a metamorphosis, where our familiar self dissolves and what emerges is our true authentic self (we discover that part of ourselves that went missing along our life journey). She understands that this transition can be really disorientating. It can be hard to let go of those things that are both unsustainable and detrimental and to embrace new ways of being and loving ourselves. Maree seeks to create a safe space where one's story can be found, told, made sense of and felt. She helps individual’s find a way to move through loss, grief and trauma towards a place of self-compassion and self-acceptance. It’s in this healing place that they’re able to reclaim their sacred self (a cultural, personal and spiritual identity of 'being').

 

Maree’s extended family story is one of intergenerational trauma (she comes from an orphaned and abused parent, this also includes her aunts and uncles). She grew up in an environment where she gained an intimate knowledge about the very real effects of childhood poverty and violence that was passed down from successive generations. Her loss of identity was profound. As an adult, she also recognised that she had been so marinated in the tragic story of her parent, that somewhere along the way she had gone missing in her own life. As she struggled through her own internal torment she realised she had bouts playing various roles, they included being a rescuer, an avoider and a runner. Maree discovered a healing pathway to both face and move through towards transforming her traumatised story into a healing legacy. It was the creative mediums of songwriting, poetry, drama, painting, writing stories, photography that gave her a voice and created a healing path through which might have otherwise consumed her.

 

Maree has been privileged to be involved in really rewarding training, education, social justice, public speaking and community art roles over a span of 30 years. She has enjoyed working in the diverse settings of community organisations, educational institutions and social services. For four years she worked in the Hamilton based social service agency, Anglican Action as a client educator and an artist who focused on finding meaning within personal stories in the quest to recover identity and inner attachment. These insights contributed to the larger conversations regarding social justice. She created art as a compassionate expression of witnessing the deep suffering that can be threaded through a life. Using that creativity she turned her skills towards those that needed space and processes to be heard and to heal from life’s tragedies and traumas while recovering their missing sense of self. She graduated in 2018 with a Doctor of Ministry from the Adelaide College of Divinity. Her dissertation was influenced by her experience in social services, and she focused on the difficult journey of moving through times of identity transition and renewal to finding one’s place in the community with an authentic voice.

 

Maree has a great love for creative expression, she loves film festivals, writing and illustrating stories, painting, photography, indie music, mixed media and digital art. She will never turn down a chance to go exploring on a road trip, she is an avid boogie boarder and she cherishes her time spent with her family.