22 Oct 2021
It often seems like the most wankerish of things to do to self identify as an ‘ally’ but one thing life has taught me to be absolutely true is that EVERY HUMAN is completely shit at mind reading. So, if you don’t tell people you are there for them – they don’t know.
People who experience bigotry have encountered enough hateful people to never assume somebody is an ally. They are not going to think that you support them, or will speak up for them, unless you do.
And yes – obviously it’d be great if we lived in a world where people had a lot less opinions about people’s race, religion, sexuality or disability but since I have strong feelings against velour, I’m also cognisant of the fact that humans are strange, variable creatures shaped by their own experiences and learnings.
I’m not saying that being a bigot is on par with disliking velour – my point here is that we bring our own experiences into everything. The work for all of us is to learn and do better.
I find it extremely annoying when people say things like ‘they’re old, they’re entitled to their beliefs’. No. It just means that having lived a really long time they’ve done nothing about being a better human which quite frankly strikes me as a wasted life.
Or the other one, “if you knew what they’ve been through….” – Bullshit. I’ve met some people who have experienced loss, tragedy and trauma on such a grandiose scale that I truly can’t fathom it (and I have a VERY active and empathetic imagination) and yet they’re some of the best f**king people on the planet.
Anyway, let me take this tangent firmly in hand and return to my point.
I think that part of being a good ally is to accept that you are a constant work in progress.
As an ally that did the bulk of my schooling in 1980s Australia and entered adulthood in the early 1990s I was exposed to the same tomfuckery as many of a similar age. The jokes that were the school yard currency were frequently at the expense of anybody that looked different. I learned poems for drama that seemed a clever take on racism. I remember the kind of insults that came about following the Grim Reaper advert. I knew very few people of colour and used terms like ‘Paki’ or ‘Japs’ without a glimmer of awareness. I dressed up as Whoopi Goldberg and “blackfaced” like I’d grown up watching “Hey, hey It’s Saturday”. I don’t list these things proudly, nor to follow with a justification – I list these things because I look back at them and I know, no matter what, these things were wrong.
People often say, ‘it was a different time’. But just because ‘everybody’ did it/thought it/said it does not mean it was right or just. It just meant that collectively a lot of us were ignorant and hurtful. And we were definitely causing harm.
While 46 year old me can look back and see where I started from and where I am now, and can feel some comfort in knowing that I am better than I was, I also know that I’ve not yet got ‘it’ right.
With the best of intentions I have initiated the most awkward and banal conversation starters ever in the history of mankind to show that I am ‘onside’. I have used humour to let people know that I’ve seen the racism they have experienced rather than just addressing it front on. My inclusive language needs a lot of work. Sometimes I let racist or homophobic comments pass by rather than risk causing an upset in a group of people I don’t know well. I fully subscribe to the adage that the standard you walk by is the standard you accept and yet I know full well I fail at it sometimes.
I see and hear the frustration of individuals and groups with lived experience of something not wanting to be responsible for continually educating people who purport to be allies. As allies – I know that we should do our own research even when I feel frustrated by what I do not understand fully and wish that somebody could just explain it to me. (Though I do want to make it clear that the last two years can’t have left anybody truly comfortable with letting white, heteronormative people do their own research considering the number of people who invested in Invermectin instead of just getting the Covid vaccine)
The simple truth is we DO need to take responsibility for our own growth. We do need to put aside our own discomfort with having gotten it wrong and keep trying. But we also need to be okay with being an imperfect ally. We need to be okay with the people we are supporting sometimes saying “WTAF was that” or “No, for the love of Colin please never ever do that again.”
We also have to be okay as imperfect allies to see ourselves in some of the behaviour that people call out. Michelle Law (on Twitter) recently described some post lockdown privilege in action in a nail bar. As I read what had happened, part of me, the bit people refer to as a ‘gut reaction’ thought, “Maybe that was just their manner?”. But gut reactions, or first reactions, are often just your ingrained prejudices trying to lurch out of your chest in an Alienlike manner. The second reaction, the one that said, “If an Asian woman, surrounded by more Asian women, says that the interaction came across as extremely entitled, this is a great time to make note of that to make sure you don’t behave in the same way”, well that was the reaction I needed to listen to.
It’s possible that I might have or could have or will do something like those women. While all that I have learned in my adult years has made me very aware of my privilege, it is so much part of me, I don’t always think on it which means that like many others, I can be very careless with it.
There are so many ways we can be careless with our privilege. Privilege is thinking somebody’s sexuality ‘is just a phase’, it’s wondering why she was walking alone at night if she was drunk, it’s being annoyed that somebody’s English isn’t easy to understand, it’s using ableist language, it’s…. well it is so many things.
If even now, as an outspoken advocate for equality, and somebody who really, really rages against injustice, discrimination, homophobia, racism or bigotry of any kind, I experience those ‘gut reactions’ – am I actually an ally?
And yes, yes I am. I’m an imperfect ally. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a good ally. I will always be learning. I will not always get it right irrespective of my good intentions. But if the world is to truly change for the better, if we are to be true allies, than we need to allow for our own humanity. Our own chaotic, flawed humanity. And when I say allow – I don’t mean justify. I mean acknowledge that being human means making mistakes.
It is uncomfortable to be an imperfect ally. I think it is natural to want to be the best ally possible and it might seem strange to have written about the mis-steps, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a good ally, and I kept coming back to a comment someone made that it was easy for me, it was just part of who I was. But it wasn’t always. I had to start somewhere. I’m still working on it. All the time. Reading. Learning. Listening. Trying to do better.
Done is better than perfect sure. But we still need to keep moving forward. Keep growing. Keep speaking up. Keep speaking out. Keep listening. Keep learning. Keep elevating others.
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)
10 Oct 2020
The call to arms for 2020’s World Mental Health Day is ‘Invest in mental health’. Trust me, as somebody who lives with depression and anxiety I’ve bloody invested in it. Firstly, my time…. living with depression and anxiety is quite time consuming and secondly, financially… years of therapy with a qualified clinical psychologist doesn’t come cheap.
But I absolutely recognise my privilege here. I have an incredibly supportive partner and daughters, I have the means to visit my psych, I live in a country which has made considerable inroads into providing affordable and accessible mental health services over the last twenty years, and people are getting better at talking about it. I mean that last bit is the hardest bit to change. And that’s where I think we can all invest some energy.
We also need to stop thinking about mental health as some weird arse abstract thing. We’re basically talking about the brain. And if bits of the brain are broken, either temporarily or permanently, we need to be as considerate and caring as we are when we’re talking about broken limbs or cancer or whatever other physical ailment you’re perfectly okay talking about.
I like to joke that my brain has tried to kill me twice – firstly via suicidal ideation in 2017 and then a brain bleed (stroke) in 2019. Sucks to be my brain though because I won both times. It also means that 2020 for me hasn’t been as scary as it has for some as 2019 was about as crappy as it could get in my view.
Basically for those that have never experienced depression or anxiety – 2020 is a bit like living through an episode. Academically there is a lot you know for a fact, you feel incredibly isolated no matter what, the brain doesn’t necessarily act in a rational manner and everybody is an expert on what you can do to get over it. The fact is though – every single person has a unique experience of 2020 which is exactly the same as most mental health conditions…. you can lump them in generally, but the individual experiences are in no way alike.
So yes, let’s invest in mental health. Let’s invest in getting comfortable with having feelings. Let’s invest in walking away from relationships which aren’t good for us. Let’s invest in taking responsibility for the people around us. Let’s invest in voting in governments that support the most vulnerable in the community. Let’s invest in policies that don’t result in the incarceration of already traumatised people. Let’s invest in adapting our colloquialisms and vernacular to eliminate hurtful and harmful generalisations. Let’s invest in understanding how our words and actions impact on others.
Let’s invest in kindness. To others yes.
But first of all to ourselves.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
In an emergency – please call 000
Other services operating 24/7 are:
