The Lived Perspective

2023. Warts-and-all.

Rather than demanding the impossible, a sudden adoption of a radically different social construct to the current paradigm, built on hundreds of years of social conditioning dating back as far as the Industrial Revolution, I realised I needed to explore what I could do for myself to strengthen…

Representation minus mythologisation

“The souls in the sky only live as long as we remember their stories. Beyond that there is nothing, not for them nor for us.” Only The Animals. Ceridwen Dovey. My story is not the kind that knows marginalisation expressed in the battle to retain the cultural and…

Post-traumatic growth

I headed towards the light rail stop near my apartment block as Crazy Dreams shuffled into my headphones and tears of pride rolled town my cheeks as I walked. Less than 12 months ago, this kind of event would have had me careening towards the closest mental health…

Trust Fall

What if we just fall? I’m not going without you, and you’re not going alone. I fell so far ’til I found you, but you know what you know when you know. Trustfall, P!nk It has now been more than a month since Rebus Theatre’s production of “Systems…

Feel Your Rhythms – Sing Your Joy

How many times had I tried to take myself from this world of torturous pain? I had never found the strength to go back through my medical records and tally the attempts but those closest to me agreed that 50 attempts would be a modest estimation. I now…

Embrace Your Truths

content warning: Suicide, trauma, references to eating disorder Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for… I Can See Cleary Now (Jimmy Cliff) As I began moving on from my #100Suns Day 40 blogpost, I already knew something was stirring inside me, needing my attention, begging to be…

Mastering the updraft

And all I want to do is fly Fly To Paradise, Eric Whitacre In 2022 I was deeply humbled to become a recipient of one of the Women With Disability Australia (WWDA) LEAD scholarships. An organisation run by and for women, girls, feminine identifying and non-binary people with…

Follow Your Heart

content warning: suicide and trauma This is what it is to be loved and to know that the promise was when everything fell we’d be held. Held (Natalie Grant) Grief provides an interesting invitation into deep reflection. At the end of the first 20 days of the #100Suns…

Listen To Your Body

content warning: suicide and self-harm Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. The Road Not Taken (Robert Frost) On the 2nd of January, 2022 I woke up before the sunrise. I made my…

There is no unhinged

When art touches hearts and the soul sings in response, these are the accolations that justify the pursuit of passion. Deep gratitude to Laura Lewis for this beautiful reflexive piece in response to our Communities of Collaboration podcast.

Searching for Self

As the afternoon wore on, I rejoined the group again and we created vision boards for our futures. I forged friendships and reminded mySelf that I didn’t need to envision a future of my dreams, I was living it. I just needed to stop second-guessing whether I truly…

NDIS: Bad help not better than no help at all

As published in Independent Australia 25th August, 2022 AS A LIVED-experience recovery collaborator, peer workforce supervisor, co-design consultant and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) participant, I see a gaping disconnect between the vision of ‘choice and control’ embedded in the design of the scheme and how this aspirational ethos translates to direct…

Prima Ballerina Elephantina

content warning: domestic violence, suicide, systems abuse When the National Disability Insurance Scheme was rolled out in Our* town on the South Coast of NSW, Partners In Recovery was defunded. We were not considered at high enough “risk of homelessness” to be transferred to the Housing and Accommodation…

Creative Company

To find Our company amongst companies such as these is a gift that will last long after stage lights dim, theatre blacks are tossed into the laundry and the ripples of stardust are drawn into the spark of yet another idea to shimmer through the sacredness that carries…

Dear Psychiatry…

Your story with the system ends when you stop begging for the right to advocate for yourself from within the system.

We have the gift of words. Stop casting pearls before swine, it will only ever offer up an invitation to debate the uniqueness of who We have…

Interrupted Cadence

We burst into tears. The man who had seen us through worst, had watched almost everything we cognitively possessed absent itself during a dissociative fugue that had followed a discontinued round of misplaced electroconvulsive therapy, knew our battles and our scars inch by inch. Chuck had held our…

Mental health: Why Our Voice Matters

As published in Independent Australia 22nd May, 2022 Content warning: Suicide DURING THE first wave of COVID lockdowns, my life began to change. For the better. In December 2019, following escape from domestic violence, I survived the worst suicide attempt I had ever experienced in a 13-year-long battle with suicidal ideation.…

legacy

content warning: battle trauma And the news reporters set the blame, to the people who don’t think the same. I wonder what they’re trying to acheive? Belief (Alexander Sage Oyen) a child at ten in eighty seven i cheered my dad and mates all even in ninety two…

In the Shadow of a Steel Coathanger

Opening up to the possibility there was as much light in the world as there was darkness. That truth that might ring out with a crystal clarity that I still seek to expertly harness with my voice. It is one thing to hope that trust might be rebuilt.…

Ripped off: NDIS users failed by clueless Coalition

As published in Independent Australia 23th January, 2022 IN JULY OF 2021, I was living in a small hamlet in the Blue Mountains just outside of the originally demarcated COVID-19 “red zone” local government areas. I had been settling into a new home that I had hoped would signal, then end, my…

Xerophyte

I reset my sights for the year 2021. My eldest daughter was to turn 21 and I had been reflecting on the coming of age process. It struck Me, as I turned the nature of my own trauma on around in my mind and examined it from various…

To improve mental health systems we must connect with their users

As published in Independent Australia 17th October, 2021 I RECENTLY attended an online webinar with Mental Health Services Learning Network titled ‘Seeking Connection: What is really happening on the frontline of mental health systems support?’ There were three panellists: Dr Adrian Plaskitt, a general practitioner from the Hunter/New England region who had recently had an article published…

Hope Rising

“I have been so confused. I thought I was the first persona to arise at the point of what I knew to be the first traumatic experience. That I had somehow been created to take care of the core, to be the mouthpiece. To protect the artist. But…

The Right Regrets…

As I considered the first of the five domains outlined in this document, also forming the overarching principle the entire framework hinges upon – “Promoting a culture and language of hope and optimism” I realised the core catch point that kept tripping up my warrior self all week.…

Opening Doors…

While the dream of shaking Mr Sondheim’s hand and thanking him for the multiplicity of ways he had carried me through my darkest moments was evidenced through his many references dotted throughout my social media posts, blog posts, performances and even the musical theatre script I had…

NSW mental health crisis grows while Berejiklian plays blame game

Had the NSW Government taken heed and satisfactorily addressed these legitimate logistic concerns, hundreds of thousands of people across the most densely populated areas of our state might not have had their freedoms ripped from their slowly steadying hands.

Give Us More To See

Until now the bouncing around across a wide array of disciplinary areas of study at uni as I insisted on dreaming and chasing the impossible dream felt like, and certainly looked to the outside observer, impulsive, restless and fickle. I am only just now beginning to appreciate the…

AM I OK?

Lived experience is not a marketing brand to which to attach a link for more information. It goes way beyond the professional labels in that post which were treated with similar hyperlinks and shiny promotional kudos. It is something that is rich with pain and promise, resilience and…

Formative Foundations

The arborist had not simply needed to remove dead branches, there were significant pathogens that the young sapling had been exposed to as a result of pruning whilst during transmission. During each transplant the strength of the plant had been weakened and was in desperate need of regenerative…

It All Starts Here

We live in a world where we define others by our own assumptions, according to categories and sub-types. According to deeply ingrained beliefs that many never truly examine. It only ever creates division in our society. And in ourselves. It’s time to challenge the assumptions and rewrite the…

Ripple Effects

I smile these days when I recognise the growth journey that has begun to transpire. To move from thought processes where the sight of an ambulance flying down the street en-route to the next emergency triggered a desire to access what I long believed was my only crisis…

Sacred Spaces

The idea that there was something in this painful, heart-rending existence that could take a million shattered fragments, whip them up into a transformational vortex that left at its centre, as the sparks of stardust drifted away, core elements of humanity reworked into a stunningly whole and beautiful…

How You Have To Finish The Hat

What you feel when voices that come through the window go until they distance and die. Until there’s nothing but sky… Finishing The Hat (Sunday In The Park With George) The midpoint of 2020 represented a significant shift in my life. It was almost as if the Divine…

Lessons and Essences

Private Musings Of A Transient Intellectual In June of last year, I decided to start second blog. It’s intended focus was to be distinct and different to The Lived Perspective. At that point in time I understood my recovery journey as enabling greater freedom to empower the chasing…

Open Up Your Heart And Let The Love Shine In

Content warning: Suicide When I awoke today, suddenly nothing happened, but in my dreams I slew the dragon, and down this beaten path, up this cobbled lane, I’m walking in my old footsteps once again Waiting For My Real Life To Begin, Colin Hay Sitting with my eldest…

Love Overflowing

For Leah, Hannah and Caleb Suddenly my world has gone and changed it’s pace but I still know where I’m going, I have had my mind spun around in space, yet I’ve watched it glowing Home (The Wiz) A new month arrives in line with the beginning of…

The Gift That Was 2020

Content warning: Suicide Just to share it’s pleasures and belong. That’s what I’ve been here for all along. A New Life (Jekyll and Hyde) Personally speaking, 2020 was full of so much beautiful unexpectedness. A new community. New friendships and restoration of old ones. Revival of old hopes…

Sanism: Ideas That Changed Me

Content warning: Suicide, sexual violence, abortion As published in The Activist Practitioner Issue No. 4, Dec 2020 Life is not a simple song. If you sing along you will sing it wrong if it is not your tune. La Belle Dame Sans Regret arr. Idea Of North I…

And So This Is Christmas…

Content warning: Suicide When you think you’ve had too much of this life to hang on… Everybody Hurts, R.E.M. I live in hope. Hope that we will one day come to a place as a society where the need for posts like these become obsolete. Christmas Day is…

#theuncommonchallenge: on soul singing

To do good work one must eat well, be well housed, have one’s fling from time to time, smoke one’s pipe, and drink one’s coffee in peace. Vincent Van Gogh. A section of my 100 day incremental goal setting journey which began on 1st October this year as…

#theuncommonchallenge: halfway mark

Dream until your dreams come true Dream On, Aerosmith More than halfway through the final month of the most glorious spring also finds me halfway through #theuncommonchallenge. My original post focused on the particulars of the intentional incremental changes I intended to make. It was structured. It was…

When Your World Begins To Expand…

Content warning: Suicide In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. Albert Camus When…

#theuncommonchallenge: 25 days in

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage Anais Nin So here I am. One quarter of the way through the 100 day challenge known as #theuncommonchallenge. A journey of personal improvement via incremental change inspired by a man whom I have been honoured to spend the…

The Danger Of Stigma

Content warning: Suicide When I came to Bathurst at the start of this year, I realised that for the first time in my life I had a chance to truly reinvent myself. I knew no one here apart from my daughter who was studying at CSU. I had…

#theuncommonchallenge

For Amy… We are now less than three weeks away from the TIMBA Bathurst Show – a theatrical storytelling event I was delighted to take up the role of local producer for back in May. Not only has it allowed me to embrace production philosophies that have developed…

Activism Is Not A Dirty Word

We Are The World first hit the charts when I was a kid still living in Sydney. It was written and recorded as part of an international effort to raise funds for people dying in the thousands as a result of the African famine. It was resonating in…

To Eric Whitacre, Meg Davies, Claire Long, Sam Glicklich, Jack Rowland, the talented string quartet, the incredible production team and technicians, the 22,377 strong Virtual Choir Facebook Community and the 17,571 singers with whom I have shared this amazing experience…

Content warning: Suicide As I pulled myself out of bed at 9am last Monday morning, plunged my coffee and settled in on my lounge to watch the premiere that I ended up sleeping through at 3:30am I was still so exhausted. And as the music swept over me,…

I’ll Meet You There

Having spent most of my life on the South Coast of NSW, I thought I knew what I was talking about when I said that mental health support in regional NSW was bad. Until I moved to the Central West. Within the first few days of having arrived…

When An Old Foe Resurfaces

Content warning: Suicide The past month or so has been difficult. Covid-19 restrictions. My first Easter alone. A brief return to and then deferment of uni (yet again). Challenging new ideas that I had never given myself the space to consider which hold within them liberating and yet…