About Joanna

Some photographs show the essence of who we are. Many years ago I was sitting in my mother’s matchbox apartment in Poland, surrounded by books, dreaming my life into being. I was fantasising about leaving for faraway lands, discovering the world of great travellers, studying at universities all over the globe, and discovering what life was about. But most of all, I wanted to be a writer and share my ideas with others.

And so the story began … Through the sheer power of desire I managed to leave for Paris with ten American dollars in my pocket and a borrowed suitcase. I travelled to Toronto, studied philosophy, and published my first short story in English. Then I left for Mexico and South East Asia, teaching at universities, writing and tripping over gurus until I arrived in Australia.

Although through my university education I was groomed to be a Catholic intellectual with degrees from the Pontifical Institute, the story I was told at the time made less and less sense.

I subscribe to no religion and yet I am a passionate believer in spiritual evolution and the presence of spirituality in all aspects of our lives. Not rigid, fear-based religion but a spirituality which expands us by embracing every aspect of our humanity and divinising it. This calls for redefining spirituality and freeing it from old constraints and limitations imposed by past cultural conditioning.

I am now settled in Brisbane with my partner Shamir and, most importantly, I keep writing, publishing and giving talks on things I am passionate about: Mary Magdalene and the Gnostic Gospels, the Divine Feminine, Sexuality and Spirituality and New Spirituality.

If you would like to learn more about me, watch this interview by Medea Films for the Migrant Stories series.

To be continued …