21 Jun 2024
When my little sister started kindergarten, my mum and a group of other ‘mums*’ got together for a coffee. Or a cup of tea. Whatever old people** did back in the mid 80s for fun. Over weeks, months and then years, they continued to meet for drinks/lunch/dinner/whatevs, inviting other friends along the way. Some came regularly, some rarely, but by the time my mum died in early 2022, that particular group of friends (known colloquially as ‘The Kaleen Mums’) had been going strong for almost forty years.
****
Since we took our first steps into parenthood, we have relied heavily on our friendship circle for support. Neither of us live physically close to family members so the daily minutiae of real life has been bolstered by friends from the very beginning. For almost 14 years now, it has been friends that we have depended on as last minute babysitters, picked up groceries, or who soothed toddlers with skinned knees and black eyes who swore black and blue ‘I can do it’ before gravity proved them wrong, while you cried noisy tears of relief into the shoulders of another.
It is friends that have swooped in to pick up sick children when we’re away with work and can’t get back straight away. Friends who have dropped over sleeping bags for school camps, visited us to deliver books and treats for ailing children. It is friends that have left cocktails and biscuits on our doorstep during pandemic lockdowns and it is friends that have taken photos of our children when they unexpectedly get an award at assembly and they listen endlessly to the myriad of monologues on each of the passions that your children embrace as they hurtle towards adulthood at a speed which is terrifying. It is friends that hand out hugs and gentle words/profanity when life goes to shit and who bring the wine and cheese to the front door when it’s time to celebrate.
Friendships have been front and centre over the last couple of years as my children have navigated their way from primary school into high school. I have seen their friendship circles widening and diversifying. My chest has ached as they left behind friendships which were so crucial to their younger selves as they headed off into different schools and different interests. I have delighted in the new with them, the giddy excitement of finding people that get you (like really get you), the tumultuous to-ing and fro-ing of old friendships stretching to accommodate their new, longer legged, edgier and more vulnerable selves.
The thing is, friendship is always front and centre. For tweens, teens and adults of all ages.
Khalil Gibran writes in one poem:
Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance
between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond
of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from
one cup.
It’s a poem about marriage.
And love.
But I think in the spaces and movements and filled cups and talk of love, it speaks very much of friendships.
Friendships are so very rarely because we are ‘the same’. They are about shared experiences, memories and values. They are about love, and support. Friendships are full of grace. So very full of grace. Friends are people who believe in you, who are kind to you, who laugh with you. And at you. They are hold you accountable, without judgement. They also judge you very much about who you choose as your hall pass, what reality TV you watch and your reverse parking skills.
I would also like to drop in here that some of my friends are also very, very wrong about the Barbie movie.
Friendship is never about perfection. We are generally kinder to our friends than we are to ourselves. Friends know so very, very, very much about us and kind of nothing at all. And they love us because of what they know. In spite of what they know. And with a keen interest in getting the rest of it out of you at some point.
Tonight, I will join one group of my friends, and I will be surrounded by strong, supportive, and very tired women. We will drink wine and chat about the week that was, talk about our children, (potentially***) grumble about our partners, laugh at inappropriate tik-toks, wonder how our friend is going on her trip to her homeland and generally put the world to rights.
And yes, we will be very aware of the privilege we have to be able to do those things safely in a world where so many are unsafe.
We will return to our home with full hearts, a lighter step and what feels like less worries, pour ourselves into PJs and slump onto the couch with our families watching TV and vowing that next week we will definitely be (and do) all the things we just told our friends over that third glass of wine.
We won’t. But they won’t care.
So, on what would have been my mum’s 78th birthday, when I am surrounded by my merry bunch of ‘just mums’, I will be raising a glass to the OGs – The Kaleen Mums – the group of friends that loved my Mum through decades of adulting, children, marriage, highs, lows, and all the rest.
You were the glorious, generous, beautiful circle of love that let her be all the versions of herself she needed to be.
To all of mum’s friends. (And to all of mine. Who let ME be all the versions of myself I need to be)
Slainte! Salud! L’Chaim! Prost! Cin Cin! Cheers!
Yes yes….
* I know they were more than ‘mums’ but I was a child and like all children I generally only knew who people were in relation to other children. This is why I knew people like “Kate’s Mum” and “Cate with a C’s mum” who would probably have been friends with “Katie’s Mum who has blonde hair not Katie’s Mum that drives the red car”
** When you are ten everybody is an old person.
*** Undoubtedly. Sorry husband of mine but even perfect partners can be annoying.
10 Jan 2022
I spend a lot of time thinking about stories. A lot. Some of that is because I’m a voracious reader. Some of that is because I am a content creator and so I tell a lot of stories. Some mine, some for clients, some to justify why the tooth fairy was such a stingy bastard this time round.
But mostly because stories are literally at the heart of everything. And that fascinates me.
Stories are defined by the dictionary as accounts of imaginary or real people, accounts of events, reports, plots, a particular person’s representation of the facts of a matter, information, rumours, news and more.
Countries are basically stories – they are literally imaginary lines in many cases. Imaginary lines where maybe one side speaks one language and the other a different one. Within a single country, different stories define culture, customs and dialect.
Currency is simply a story about how different people value metal and paper. Without the story there is no difference between a $50 note and wrapping paper. The story is what deems the wrapping paper to have a decorative use and the $50 a value.
Religion is made up of hundreds of different stories which overlap almost imperceptibly to some. In fact, very loosely, religions can be summarised by who you think the main character is and how important his/her story is to you.
Families are stories and often they are stories without happy endings despite our Hallmark tendency to eulogise the unit as the most important of all.
In the song Trial Before Pilate (from the Jesus Christ Superstar musical), Pilate sings to Jesus – “We all have truths, are yours the same as mine?” and I have always loved that challenge in stories, because all truths are different. As human beings we bring our own stories to every shared moment, thus imbuing it with a truth that is unique to us. Our own story, our own truth, is ours and ours alone. There is not a single other person on the planet that has the same perception of you, the same perception of the same events. Every single person you meet has a version of you that is entirely their own.
So if you meet one million people in your life time – there are one million true versions of you out there. You feature in one million stories. Sometimes you’re a lead character, and other times you are so insignificant you don’t rate a mention. Sometimes you’re in the story for a while, and other times, but a moment – but perhaps a moment of import, a moment that lingers, and shapes another story.
When we talk about brands having a story and the room rolls their eyes at what they deem your marketing wankspeak, they are contributing to the brand story. Their perceptions of a brand matter to its success. The people the brand hires become characters in the brand’s story. As businesses, we think long and hard about the people we employ because they are so critical to the story arc.
But we rarely employ the same stringent critique to our personal relationships, to the characters in our own story. It typically takes an incident, a tragedy if you will allow me to be so dramatic, before we assess how critical, how impactful they are, on our own story and the arc of the main character.
I’m fascinated by people that claim to know their partner or children better than they know themselves. It’s not possible. That is a story they tell to keep power in their own narrative irrespective of its truth. You can’t know anybody better than they know themselves, but you can tell your story more loudly, more repetitively, so that your story is the most heard. That ultimately is what history is – the retention of the stories told most loudly, by those who believe their version of events to be the most important.
Each and every one of us is a character that is fleshed out bit by bit, chapter by chapter, moulded by other characters, events and experiences. All of us impactful in small ways and big ways and good ways and bad ways. We are, at all times, both the storyteller and the story itself.
Stories are spoken. Stories are sung. Stories are written. Stories are painted. Turned into poems and movies and gardens and news reports and gossip and innuendo and inspiration and policy and the list goes on. And on.
Stories endure. That is their power.
Make yours one that you are proud to tell.
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4 Sep 2021
It seems like a minute ago my babies were tiny enough to be snuggled into my neck, 18 months ago their cheeks still bore the chubbiness of childhood, and now they stretch almost from my chin to my toes, transforming into young women even though they have had to learn to keep their world small, just for the moment, and then one moment more.
I have friendships that are over 40 years old, yet I don’t feel any different from how I felt when I was 17 full of unrealised dreams and aspirations and nary a moment to waste. I am almost 47 now and I am in lockdown, but still with at least 30 more years of unrealised dreams and aspirations that leave me feeling restless, as I put them on hold, just for the moment and then one moment more.
The increasing numbers are meaning nothing now because I am doing what I can, and it’s not enough. None of it is enough. Control is just an illusion. I don’t have control. You don’t have control. They don’t have control. We will have to learn to live with it. We will. In the same way we learn to live with other things that senselessly destroy lives. We will learn to live with it for just for the moment, and then one moment more.
I lie awake at night thinking of the refugees that have been locked up for eight years. The 15 year old boys who have become 23 year old men. And I feel chest aching sorrow. Because if I hurt this much because my daughters, all of us, are missing out on so much because of this pandemic, how have they felt, how have their families felt as they hold on, just for the moment, and then one moment more?
I ponder gratitude, this determination people have for us to be thankful for the time we are ‘forced’ to spend with their partners and children. I don’t need to be forced to spend time with them. I like them. But they are missing out on their wider family. Their friends. The people they love and who make their lives better just for being in the world. I am missing out on mine. I know, I know. It’s just for the moment. And then one moment more.
I ruminate about touch. I think about how so many people are missing out on touch. A quick hug as a greeting. A casual hand on the shoulder as a point is made during dinner. A handshake at the start of a meeting. A jokey hip bump on the dance floor. A high five from a team mate. Those small casual moments where two people show affection and connection. Those ones we pull back from now. Those ones we avoid. Just for the moment and then one moment more.
I think about all those people who lack my privilege. Not just in Australia but worldwide. The ones who don’t have jobs they can stay home and do. The ones that keep the world moving. The ones most likely to end up with Covid. The unsung heroes as well as the widely lauded ones. The cleaner, the shelf stacker, the bin collectors as well as the nurses, the doctors, the teachers. All of them getting on with it, just for the moment and then one moment more.
I don’t like this perpetual state of being on hold. I don’t like it at all. But even as my chest tightens with the discomfort of it all, as my anxiety roars loudly, and I panic about all the memory making we are all missing out on, I know that I will go with it. I will do it. Just for the moment and then one moment more.
14 Jul 2021
Yes. Lockdown sucks.
But you know what doesn’t suck? Most people.
So this is for them. The woman baking cookies and leaving them on the doorstep of her neighbours. The people in their houses who have teddy bears shoved in the front window for you to smile at as you go for your walk to break the monotony of being at home. This is for the children chalking the pavement with brightly coloured messages (and the poor parents ordering chalk deliveries in bulk to keep it happening). This is for the people who are walking their dogs and giving you a big smile and a cheery ‘hello’ as you pass them on the path.
This is for the café owners that are churning out coffees and hot chocolates for takeaway with a big fat smile even though they barely survived the last lockdown and don’t know how they’re going to make through this one. This is for the post delivery driver ringing your bell with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for the mosh pit in the olden days when we socialised. This is for all those that are pivoting so fast they’re practically human helicopters.
This is for the friends posting pictures of their pets rugged up to peak adorable on a rainy day. It’s for the people in your Facebook feed sharing the truth bombs lobbed at them by their very own offspring. This is for the people who have started new jobs and haven’t yet had a chance to meet their colleagues in person. This is for those colleagues that set up Zoom drinks to welcome them. This is for that guy you met at a gig who has set up a regular Zoom music quiz for all the music nerds unable to go and see live music.
This is for the teachers putting together lesson plans at a moment’s notice but still finding the time to add sweet messages of joy for their students. It’s for the nurses still wearing their coloured scrubs to cheer up their patients when this lockdown just makes more and more work for them. It’s for all those singers and musicians thrown under a bus by our government that continue to produce music and share it live (and free) on their social feeds. It’s for Jimmy Barnes and his green and gold pavlova in honour of Ash Barty.
It’s for those creative geniuses out there that keep making hella funny content and sharing it so that we can share it on and cheer up other people as well. It’s for all those contact tracers that are working their guts out. It’s for the CHOs who are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, but they do it anyway. It’s for the supermarket workers who ask you to mask up and manage to do it with such grace it’s like the first time they’ve said it, not the 2903850398th time. It’s for the guys in Aldi who still ask if you want a catalogue even as the middle aisle is full of snow gear because it turns out none of us are going anywhere.
It’s for the friends who did 112 days of lockdown that reach out to check in. It’s for the people who watched England lose the football and didn’t post racist crap on the internet. It’s for the people that reach out via text to say they love you. It’s for the people that make the time to listen to those that have nothing but time at the moment. It’s for the people (who albeit apologetically) post pictures of their holidays in parts of the country that aren’t in lockdown reminding you of how gloriously gorgeous this country is. This is for the friends abroad who slide into your DMs in the night so when you wake there are cheery messages. This is for the parents that are getting uber creative about celebrating birthdays in lockdown and it’s for the tooth fairy who keeps delivering coins even though nobody has used real money for as long as you can remember.
It’s for the people recommending good books and great TV series. It’s for the businesses posting workout routines online for people to follow. It’s for whoever invented Zoom, Lego, Minecraft, Sims, YouTube and TikTok enabling our small people to remain both connected and engaged. Have all our money. It’s for the person who has painted rocks with friendly messages and left them all over the suburb for you to find. It’s for our children who have once again accepted more cancelled holidays, not seeing their friends face to face and the cessation of all their extra-curricular activities with a shrug and a brief ‘I hate Covid’.
It’s for the people that ruthlessly police all of us in Facebook groups making sure that we play nicely even when the world doesn’t seem to be playing nice with us. It’s for all the people who have to keep going into their ‘real jobs’ because they can’t work for home. It’s for all those people that swallow their exasperation when somebody spreads the virus they didn’t know they had. It’s for all those that recognise that it could just as easily be us making mistakes. It’s for those that choose grace when hurling the profanity into the ether would have been much more cathartic.
It’s for you and it’s for me. It might not seem it, but we are surrounded by so many people that are lovely and kind and a special kind of wonderful.
It’s just that those people won’t make it into your newsfeed or into your favourite newspapers. But they are there.
I promise.
3 Mar 2021
I’ve joked more than once recently that if I was to release a memoir it would have to be titled ‘Unexplained’.
That’s the official medical diagnosis for the stroke I had two years ago today.
It’s the official medical diagnosis for the weird butt thing I have which has resulted in three surgeries so far in the last two years and one more next month.
It aptly describes the fact that it took me almost my whole life to learn I was loveable. Just as I am.
It also aptly describes the love I have for my daughters. That deep inexplicable contortion of the heart that goes so far beyond words as to never be correctly described. Completely inexplicable as so many parents know.
It describes the xenophobic push of Australian politics resulting in the unfathomable and completely unjustifiable trajectory of our refugee and asylum seeker policies.
It describes my understanding of bigotry – the casual racism that pulses through the heart of this country and many others. It describes people’s casual unkindnesses in the name of religion, the rejection of friends and families of people on the basis of who they love, what they believe in, their gender, the colour of skins.
It is the right word for friendship. That mysterious connection between two people that transcends logic or description. It is the right word for a life-long love because when you know, you know. And I absolutely concur that is a frustratingly vague answer but there isn’t anything explicable about it.
It’s the right word for joy. That trickle of euphoria which edges along your veins, blooming into a feeling that is all encompassing. Moments when happiness is more than the people in the room, the warmth of the sun or the beat of the music.
It’s the perfect explanation for all those sliding door moments that have brought me to where I am now. Scarred. Imperfect. But with nothing I would change because even the smallest change would not have put me here, right now. Right now, it is not perfect, nothing is, but right now sees me alive, surrounded by the three greatest loves of my life, and beautiful friends and family.
Even now, two years on later, small things like the long lengths of my daughters stretched out beside me on the couch as we watch TV can bring me to tears when out of nowhere it strikes me that I could have missed this moment. That the two years since I inexplicably lived rather than died, well, those two years and the rest of their lives could have happened without me.
Not dying doesn’t make you care more; in some ways it makes you care less. I would even say that not dying makes you more selfish in some ways, not less. Not dying, it means you give a lot less fucks about things – like other people’s opinions. Not dying, it helps you sort out boundaries like no amount of therapy ever did.
But not dying is something that stays with you every single day of your life. When the cause of your brain bleed is unexplained, when your brain bleed stopped for reasons that are unexplained, when there is nothing you can do to change what happened, when there is no avenue for you to control anything, you just have to learn to live with the uncertainty. Every single day.
You learn to live with the deficits caused by a brain bleed. You do. You also learn to live with the terror. You learn to live with an unexplained diagnosis. You learn to live with the rage. You learn to live with the relief. The unrelenting rage and relief.
You learn to live a life that is inexplicable
10 Nov 2020
Let me start by stating that I am a white cis heterosexual woman. Since birth, I have benefited from the way the world works here in Australia (and most, if not all, other first world countries)
Was I aware of this as a child? No.
Am I aware of this as an adult? Yes.
Was I always? No.
Am I always conscious of it, now that I am aware of it? No.
Like a lot of people, I was gripped by the recent US election, hopeful that a change of president would happen but also trying not to be too hopeful since it had once seemed ridiculous to me that Trump would be elected even once.
And I was not blind to the fact that the people perpetuating the cries of “stop the vote” were overwhelmingly the same colour as the people recently calling out “all lives matter” – that is to say, white.
And I was not blind to the fact that the people dancing in the street when the election was finally called were overwhelmingly, not white.
And I have not been blind to the disproportionate number of people dying in custody both in America and here in Australia that are not white.
And I have not been blind to the xenophobic policies of my own country when dealing with asylum seekers and refugees and visa overstayers. The ones that are demonised, deemed illegal and persecuted are overwhelmingly, not white.
And I have not been blind to the discriminatory nature of our media that names and shames young black girls that flouted Covid restrictions, but did not do the same for the rich, white people who flouted Covid restrictions.
I try to be a good ally. I do. I do not always get it right. Like all humans I’m a work in progress.
But what I was blind to is how many of my friends identify as people of colour.
Not wilfully. I’m not saying anything daft like “I don’t see colour”, of course I do.
I love the diversity of my friendship circles. I love how their own life experiences, cultural identities, the different countries in which they were raised, their education, their families and their friends, all combine to make them the unique individuals that they are.
But I make friends with people with whom I share values and interests. I make friends with people who I connect with. I do not make friends with people based on the colour of their skin.
How f*cking privileged is that that I can just be friends with people because I like them and assume that they are going about in the world with the same nonchalance as I do?
The colour of my skin has never caused me any grief apart from its capacity to burn when the sun even glances at me. It has never closed any doors. My name has never been sighted on a resume and discarded. I have never needed to learn another language to get by in the world because the world by and large speaks my native tongue.
Colour is irrelevant to me because it doesn’t need to be relevant. And while I try very hard to be cognisant of my privilege, I clearly have work to do.
How do I know this?
Because while I wanted Biden and Harris to win, while I loved the idea of a female VP, especially a black, Asian-American, female VP, it was because of what I see her standing for and the impact she’ll have on America moving forward.
What I had failed to see is how many of my friends, the friends that I have that inhabit the same first world countries that I do, had never had somebody that looked like them represented in the leadership of their country.
White women are all over the place when it comes to the leadership of countries. From Thatcher in the UK and Merkel in Germany, through to Arden in NZ and Gillard here in Australia, white women in leadership positions are effectively old news. That is not to say that there is not much more to be done but me, me and my white skinned daughters, can see what we can be.
And then Kamala Harris become VP elect of the USA.
And all of a sudden, I could see what I had missed.
And that was how many of my friends are women of colour.
I repeat what I said before, it is not that I don’t see colour, but I can honestly say that despite being surrounded by so many amazing women whom I love, admire, learn from, laugh with, spend time with, I have had no need to identify them by the colour of their skin.
How f*cking privileged am I?
It astounds me that I was so blind to how important, and how powerful, seeing yourself represented in the leadership of your own country is.
It astounds me that I was surprised by the flood of updates by friends across all my social platforms talking about the profound impact and emotion they felt on seeing themselves reflected in that election result.
And that surprise humbles me. Because if I identify as an ally, I have a lot of work to do.
Congratulations to Kamala Harris (and Joe of course)
And congratulations to all of you that see yourself reflected in the results.
I will do better, and encourage those around me to do better, to make sure a result like this becomes the norm and not the exception.
(Image source: Bria Goeller)
