“I’ve been thinking a lot about how much has changed since when we spoke last 10 years ago. The irony that we are right where we did my last story, outside Little Polly and the Blackbird and where we are now was once Caddies Coffee. It was a place I would come to frequently to meet up with my colleagues from the Community Legal Centre and Nimbin Neighbourhood Centre, who were the people who inspired me to start this organisation and who supported me in the early days. Little Polly has helped us many times with things we could raffle and it got me thinking how supportive this community is. I think I was reflecting on authenticity and if you are an authentic person this community will wrap around you and hold you. It has no place for the artificial or the superficial. Lismore seems to always have your back if you’re genuine.
I’ve also been thinking a lot recently about the things that I’ve received and not noticed, the gifts people have made to me that have supported and held me. I was also thinking about the gifts that people have donated and how that can affect the person who gives as much as the person who receives.
When my daughter Lucy was stillborn I was separated from the mothers who were giving birth to live babies, into the Zonta room. I don’t know if that room still exists anymore. It was a room that women in the past had thought about, thinking about women who were having still births and about how hard it would be to be in a room with babies who were crying and mothers breastfeeding, and having the challenges and joy of all that. I was able to not be amongst that when I was labouring and birthing but still have the support of the midwife team and also be separated from that extra agony. I could be with my baby when she died without being watched. How fundamental that was to how successful my journey through the early grief days was, what those woman had thought of. That inspired me to think about supporting women for the future and it’s given me so much.
Lucy’s Project is an organisation I founded in 2013 following the still birth of my daughter Lucy. It is an organisation that removes the roadblocks and systemic barriers to safety for people with animals experiencing domestic and family violence. We made the decision to not have a shelter and take in animals of our own but instead to look at the high level picture of how do we create permanent change so that the systems that are in place to support animals and people can work more effectively and more efficiently to support more people with their animals. Remove unnecessary barriers to safety.
My midwife Bronwyn Moir donated her fee for my pregnancy and birth to Lucy’s Project and that was actually the funds that kickstarted Lucy’s Project. I only told Bron that the other day as she didn’t know that. It made her cry and I realised she was our foundation and she never knew that.
I started to notice all these other people in my life who I had taken for granted. It made me look back on what some people had given and the effect that has had.
One of our long term advocacy projects was campaigning for pets in rental accommodation. That’s one of the hardest things, people having to surrender their pets, especially since the floods, especially with the cost of living crisis. We have one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the country as well as having one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the world. Rental reform, to be more pet inclusive is a huge issue and something I’ve been really supportive of and so thrilled about the recent changes to tenancy law. We can set up refuges for women that are supportive of animals as well as people but what happens when they leave the refuge? Do they then have to return to a violent home? We need pet inclusive rental properties too. Lucy’s Project tries to look at the entire picture, not just one aspect of the crisis but to remove all the road blocks so that people can have a smoother path, from leaving a violent relationship to long term permanent safety with their animals.
We know that women and children are living in cars so they don’t have to surrender their dogs or their cats or their animals. I know heartbreaking stories of women who chose to die rather than leave their animals, or suffer for years rather than leave an animal behind to suffer. When you’ve lost everything sometimes your animals are your reason to be.”