I ended up going over to Perth and we had what I called, her death party. It was her 59th birthday in the backyard. It was a weird one but I’m glad she got that in, felt important to have one last party. We closed Dusty at Christmas 2018 to 2019 that year as I was exhausted and so me my partner to get away. One of those weird protection things that parents do is they didn’t want to bother me so I was not kept updated. The progression was so fast with Mum and they didn’t want to hassle me with all the stuff I was going through with what was happening with Mum but that was not their decision to make so very quickly it went from fine to wheelchair to hospice but you better get on a plane.
I flew out New Year’s Day 2019 and 10 days later she died. That was such a gruelling time. It was a fast progression and I had started at that time on unravelling all the intergenerational stuff. I remember I walked in and they had warned me, she was bald, the tumours were so advanced and were protruding from her body. That was a shock and she looked at me and said, You look really good. I believe I had started to unravel from generations of unaware neglect and she could see it in my eyes which I think gave her some peace. I took charge in that week because Dad was so tired and I felt it was more my job.… I told her I could shower her and one of the nurses came in….Would you like a shower Mrs Stroud? And she was like…No my daughter’s going to do it. Washing her in the shower, it felt so important for me to show up and give her as much love as I could. Even though in my core I had unresolved anger, blame and hurt toward her for not taking accountabilty, it felt so important for me to show up and give her so much love because that’s how change is made, by doing different, by doing hard. It was so beautiful washing her body and it was like she was savouring every touch and really absorbing all the love. Things can be said without being said. She didn’t have the capacity to put things into words in a sober state, but I think especially when someone dies and you’re with the body after the soul has left, I feel like the soul knows everything and you don’t have to say anything. I felt peace between us for the first time once she was dead.
Mum died and I came back and ran Dusty for another year. I got to a point with Council that it was impossible to get anywhere here so I made the decision to end on the 2nd Feb 2020. I sold all my whitegoods off to pay my debts to creditors and a month later Covid hit and I would never have survived Covid. It was such a blessing for me after no income and I know it was hard for so many.
I started doing a lot of Graphic design for people and since them I’ve been putting my heart into that. I was so glad I did Dusty and the community is incredible and special but you can’t live off special. I’ve just been painting lots of walls and signs in Lismore. I think I inherited that from Mum. She was a great artist and our hands are exactly the same.
I’m really surprised how this has grown. It’s been very organic. I have a big project with Lismore City Council and Transport NSW. It’s called ‘Her Way, Safe City. Lismore is one of 10 cities in NSW that got one million dollars to upgrade areas that they’ve identified as being dangerous for women or gender diverse people to walk around at night, so there’s new infrastructure for lighting, cameras, making sure the paths are safe and also there’s an artwork component so I’m working on that one.
I think my journey to Lismore was about coming to Uni to study music which is a form of self expression and to find my voice that had been germinal suppressed. It always scared me so that’s why I feel like I had to lean into it. I was always going to get my degree and go home but then I found a community that I really love and love me back which is so special and I’ve made my home here.
We’ve been through so much as a community. I had my studio beneath my house in South Lismore which is the first home that Adzy and I bought. Like everyone in the 2022 flood we thought we were safe but my whole studio was completely submerged and then it was neck deep upstairs in our home. Like everyone else we were rescued out of our windows. I’ve been kind of picking up the pieces since. Lovely things happened though, I’ve ended up at a beautiful collective studio with 6 other female artists which is amazing. I may never have taken that leap so that’s been a beautiful positive.
After rebuilding our house and moving back in we’ve now moved to higher ground. It didn’t feel good for me to be there. The analogy I always use which I haven’t experienced in real life but it’s what I imagine it would feel like is, going back to a partner who had cheated on you. It feels really familiar, got a new haircut, looking fresh, like my house is the most beautiful it’s ever been but there’s that feeling underneath…I just can’t trust you. We had to make that hard decision, do we stay or go? We lost so many beautiful people, I don’t blame them, you need to feel safe and happy but it’s so sad for our town. We decided to move 15 minutes out of town but I can still come into town everyday and be a part of community.
I suppose for me, growing into the person I am becoming, I realised I was following similar paths to behaviours that I didn’t want to continue, behaviours that I had experienced and I could see that I was mirroring. I’ve been working really hard to break those cycles like using alcohol to soothe myself and getting black out drunk as a means to feel ‘normal’. Having positive relationships in my life to pull me up on that because I was in charge of my life from a young age with no-one telling me what to do. That has been the biggest gift that people who love me have done for me. To hold that mirror up and be like, Is this what you want?
I guess the last 10 years I’ve been working really hard to change those habits and to honour myself and my potential because it really holds you back. I think subliminally I had been searching down the artistic expression path of music and art and writing, trying to break those generational cycles that women in my family had issues with and I didn’t realise that’s what I was doing. I didn’t also realise that’s why it was so emotionally charged for me and difficult at times. I think that’s why my art in many different ways. Art for me, is how I process hard or challenging situations, it’s my rebellion to the darkness, my way to alchemise pain into light. It’s not a choice, but a means for survival
The deeper bigger work is that I’m 40,000 plus words into a book on that topic of Intergenerational trauma and epigenetics focussing on the women and the people in my family, again first and foremost as a tool to help myself and to understand things more deeply. I’ve noticed having these conversations with others has impacted people in really positive ways so I’ve decided to channel it into a body of work and again chuck it out into the world. If people love it…great! If not, it doesn’t matter. It is a selfish way but I kind of feel like its a really honourable way to summarise the women who came before me because they didn’t have voices to do that for themselves. To watch my Mum be so misunderstood, I feel like I have this opportunity….I mean I can’t speak for her but as a person who was once inside her body I can articulate my experience and shed light on it from my perspective. I had a conversation about it with her at her death party and I told her, I’m going to write about it all Mum and she’s like Hell yeah girl! So having her blessing makes it feel ok.”
@stroud_de_signs