“It’s not a justice system. It’s a legal system. Even with him admitting to every single detail of the assault he got off. When people say I’ll let the legal system do its job, that is the biggest load of shit. It’s not there for the victims of sexual abuse, it’s there for the abusers and that’s what happened in this case. I was so disheartened and I really had to re-evaluate my idea of what justice was. I had to move my expectation and need for justice as an external factor and focus it in on myself. How can I give myself justice and how can I let this go because it’s going to kill me? Even thinking about my daughter being in my belly experiencing that trauma with me……. I did go for victims compensation claim and got some money. I bought a rental property in Lismore which I did up.
In 2010 I had decided that I would like to have our own place, our own property and I realised to do that I needed to get my income up. I was at the top of my level in Youth work because I’d started so young but I needed to get a Degree. With encouragement from my mentors I enrolled in a Social Science Degree in Counselling and worked at nights for 6 years on a distance education Degree. I had the 2 girls and my partner. I got a couple of HD’s but I was just trying to get by. I wanted that Degree and I wanted to build my dream home. After 6 years I finally got through. My Dad came over from NZ to the graduation. I was the first person in my family to have a Degree.
I bought 100 acres at Boorabee Park right on top of a mountain. Our views are of Mt Lindsay and Mt Barney from the verandah and if we walk down to the camp area we can see The Pinnacle and Mt Warning. We can’ believe how amazing it is. We bought a saw-mill and we milled all the timber and built our dream home. It’s beyond belief. I can’t believe how hard it is to doing everything proper. They make building a house so hard and it’s a basic human need. The system and the hoops you have to jump through but we got there.
My first job after my degree was with North Coast Community Housing. I had a job sustaining tenancy’s so when people were about to be evicted they would get referred to me and I would do intensive support to make sure they didn’t get kicked out. That’s when I was introduced to hoarding and squalor situations and years later I have become the specialist in the field. I’ve been running training for 7 years. I took the training to NZ this year and move around with it. I run hoarding and squalor training for professionals so they can work more effectively with people with hoarding and squalor behaviours. It’s such a complex issue and it’s so costly. The job I’ve just left was as a Counsellor at Head Space and at Social Futures. I worked in that role for 2 1/2 years and needed to go. It was like hearing my old childhood over and over again and my health was suffering.
My story behind stained glass runs alongside all the other stuff but in the positive side and maybe because it’s related to the positive times in my life. That’s part of my affection toward it. In New Zealand which was a very safe place for me, there was no abuse over there, my Uncle Ross had a stained glass shop in Auckland. I would go to his shop which was like heaven to me with all the coloured glass. I would watch hime work and it was so beautiful. My passion for stained glass started then and it started with feeling safe. I felt safe and accepted for who I was there.
I remember at 11 or 12 making my first sun catcher and tea light candle holder. I dabbled over the years and when I was building my rammed earth house I made a big window at the Eternity Springs Art Farm in The Channon. I ended up making this huge 130 piece window which is up in that house and it’s beautiful. I’d never crossed the bridge to setting up a workshop. A couple of years ago I started reading The Artists Way and it was like a spiritual awakening for me. It was this connection to creativity and it was so beautiful and descriptive. It was reading that book that gave me permission to set up a stained glass workshop. I found beautiful old collections of glass on Gumtree and around. I saw that there was nowhere in the region to buy the glass. I’ve since researched and Newcastle and Brisbane are the closest stained glass retail shops.
When the health stuff came up I had this feeling deep in my bones that I knew I had to stop so I put my resignation in. I had moved a bit into the field of sexual education and working with healthy relationships programmes. I was working in schools with programs I was calling reprogramming sessions with young people around their attitudes to do with gender roles and getting to the heart of the cases of disrespect. I really enjoyed running those groups and doing some equality stuff around sexual health and I worked at Splendour with PASH. I remember saying …What props have you got? Ah we’ve got these big blow up penis’s. No vulvas though so I made a big interactive Vulva cushion and took that along to teach them all about it. I let the other jobs go but I have kept the Hoarding and squalor workshops and I’ve been doing some comedy and MCing gigs. I did some comedy at Falls Festival and a few different places. My comedy is the angry feminist stuff and I find ways to make really awful stuff funny.
One of my favourite bits of information to share with people is that Gray’s Anatomy, the leading scientific educational textbook in the Western country for the past 150 years intentionally removed the complete Clitoris out of it’s 1947 book for social and moral reasons. They had this tiny part of the Clitoris in there and the full complete Clitoris has only been discovered about 15 years ago by a female Urologist. It has the same amount of erectile tissue as the Penis so there is no way they could have missed that. If you look through a Gray’s Anatomy book they map out the most detailed nerve, muscle and vein systems in the whole body, how the hell can they miss that on a Clitoris. I wish someone would sue them for the direct impact they had on female pleasure. To think they intentionally removed it. Don’t get me started! Everyone needs orgasms all the time (laughs).
I’ve been reading lots of books on running a business and it’s been a big learning curve. It’s kind of like the dream I am too scared to dream. I often do the …’What would I do if I wasn’t scared check?
We are opening on Monday 3rd June and we’ll have the shindig on the 27th June. I’m opening with Joy Spink who also worked at Social Futures. We both have these passions. She is the mosaic extraordinaire and is doing the mosaic/tile side of the business and I have the Stained Glass supplies and workshops. We will be selling art as well. My art is a collaboration with my partner who does rustic furniture and woodwork. We have all these red gum offcuts from when we built our house. We are going to do consignment with other artists as well. We will have some jewellery, pottery, creams and locally made teas.
I turned 40 the same week I finished at my work. It’s been 22 years of working with disadvantaged youth, this business started and we went to New Zealand and did this amazing journey down to my Maori Ancestry. I spoke to my Aunty about going to visit my family Marae so we ended up with 30 of us and it was probably the most amazing, spiritual thing I’ve done. We had a full traditional welcoming and there was a beautiful calling from a Maori woman with the traditional chin Ta Moko. I came back and made a piece inspired by her.
That’s where I’m at! I’m excited and I’m inspired and I’m open to whatever the universe wants to chuck at me. I’m ready to do this. The difference in stress here compared to …Oh, someone has just disclosed to me they are being sexually abused at home and we’ve made reports to everything and they are still getting sent home. I would lie in bed at night and think..Are they getting abused right now? The stress difference is times a million. My mum, daughter and husband have been amazing in helping with the set up.
My daughters are 12 and 21 and the most beautiful girls. They are strong, independent, ethical around diversity and kind. Everything you would hope for as a mother.”