“I grew up in the Dandenongs, Victoria. The truth is it never really felt home and it stems from my childhood. I was a child who felt like the world was broken because I was in it. I grew up believing that I was broken. I had beautiful Grandparents who supported me but from a very young age I felt very alone. My closest friend in the world, who I believe with all my heart would have been with me forever, took his own life before he turned 15. He did that because I was in hospital with chronic lung disease and he was convinced I would die.
I found myself out of home at 13 and I was in a place called Parkway Adolescent Centre. Everyone who knows me knows that I have an enormous case of ADHD. I was way too much for my family and probably the whole world and I think I tire people.
I remember when I was about 12 I saw on 60 minutes an interview with two men. One man was a millionaire with two kids and a wife, goes to church on Sunday and ran a business. The interviewer says to him, Tell us how you got to be where you are today? I remember the man responded with:- My father was an alcoholic and my father gambled and beat my mother. My brother and I used to fight over things like shoes and we didn’t have food. We were the smelly kids at school. Eventually my father gambled everything and we were homeless and Mum had to raise us as a single mum which back then was not really heard of. The words that struck me were, ‘I decided to never be the man my father was.’ Here inside of me this light went on….we can choose. The interviewer spoke to the other man who also had a family and he had lost it all through gambling, had beat up his wife, was an alcoholic and was now homeless. The interviewer said to him…Tell us how you got to where you are today? The man was spitting anger. How dare you, with your fancy life judge me. He said:- When I was a kid my father beat my mother, I fought my brother for shoes. We had no food and ended up homeless. It turned out this two men were fraternal twins. That story showed me that everything is about choice and it’s where I started paying attention to the world around me.
It was the most important turning point for me at that moment. I was an anomaly, I was different to most kids. It’s kind of normal now as every second kid is walking around with a label but back then ADHD was….’Your kid was naughty and you are a bad parent’ and that reflection in society created that dynamic in which you became broken and your family became broken as a result of you, so there was lot of discord. I was also profoundly dyslexic, very intelligent but people didn’t understand that.
I found myself married at 17 to a man who assaulted me. I had a number of children in that marriage and found myself running from domestic violence. We lived in 33 places in five states and eventually another country so it was a very rough start. When my son, my fourth born was 9 months old I ended up on life support in Intensive Care. I couldn’t see for nearly a year, I had to learn to hold a toothbrush, I was semi-quad to start with. I had 4 children and was wheel chair bound. I was stuck in this awful marriage and I remember I had to prove to my children, two of whom are impacted, that disability is not a limitation. We get to choose who we are. It was a big turning point. For me leaving domestic violence was a very long journey. It was incredibly hard, there was a lot of judgement. I was working in the field of Autism at the time. I created a company called Autism Australia.
I got up, started teaching and training across Australia and across the world. I created a lot of programmes known as The Learning Curve series. I ended up having a shift in working in Autism to focussing on domestic violence and wanting to see changes for the better. One of the things I started doing was working on exposing and looking at all the different facets of the sector. I was very keen on understanding my own role, how I’ve played a part, how I’ve impacted on the lives of other people trying to help or trying to understand, the way I’ve impacted on the judicial system, the way my presence in the situation has impacted on my children’s lives growing up. I wanted to compile this together in a place where people could understand every facet. What makes a perpetrator? How they got to be there? I wrote it into a book in the end. It was 158,000 words and it was this cross sector of domestic violence woven into a fictional tale so that it was more palatable. I brought that to the table and started developing a PhD around it. The book is called The Confessions of a Battered Wife and is being used by the Victorian Police Force as an educational tool.
My children and I found ourselves homeless after the 2022 flood. Everything I’d worked for and created was gone. I was in North and we lived on a hill so should never have been impacted but my house was set 2 1/2 metres down off the road and all the backlog of water coming down from Dunoon blocked up the drainage system and the water couldn’t get away. It came down through my roof and exploded through the house. My beautiful home on the ridge was decimated. I’d planted 230 odd fruiting trees which all got washed away. We were told we couldn’t go back in because of the mould. My kids became extremely ill and we are still dealing with the consequences of that. I’ve had eight children all together and when the flood came I had four little girls with me in a van on site. We didn’t have a toilet or shower. One of our neighbours let us use their outside toilet while they were away which was really nice of them. The insurance company told us to use a bucket and I had two 12 year old, an 11 year old and an 8 year old still at home.
At the time of the flood my husband left and I had to clean up the mess and gut my house on my own. I think I felt more alone then than what I felt as a child. After splitting the proceeds of the land value I didn’t have enough to put us back into a home. I knew I’d be renting again. It was a really dark time. For two years my little girl had asked Santa for one thing and that was a bed and a toilet and as a Mum who’s always looking for the joy, not being able to provide the necessities…. They’d lost their school too. The school, Our Lady Help of Christians in South Lismore was rebuilt at a new site very quickly and the Principal Michael Piccoli was incredibly instrumental in making sure all the children had a place that was safe, consistent and good, even though they didn’t have homes. The respect I have for the staff at that school is immense. It’s moved to East Lismore and it’s a gift that’s immeasurable and integral to our families survival throughout this process. I managed to get my kids a house in Goonellabah.
I still wanted to be a part of South and North Lismore. I wanted to be a part of the recovery so I went and bought myself a Post Office.”