Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3: You've changed.
Speaker 2: It's an accusation, a spiky barb.
Speaker 3: How dare you?
Speaker 2: We all knew who you were, we'd got comfortable with
Speaker 2: the space and the shape you take up in our lives,
Speaker 2: and now you've gone and changed. You're spreading, moving, stretching, questioning,
Speaker 2: You're settling into yourself. You're accepting fewer excuses, you're offering
Speaker 2: fewer absolutions, you're giving fewer.
Speaker 3: You know the drill, don't change. Stay who you were.
Speaker 2: Please, all parts of you, your faith and your body,
Speaker 2: of course, will be strictly marked on how little or
Speaker 2: much they have altered over time. But also please keep
Speaker 2: a tight grip on actual you, on inside that matters.
Speaker 2: Please stay where you are and who you were, particularly
Speaker 2: if it suited us, nurtured us, made life easier for
Speaker 2: us at every turn, particularly if you being you and
Speaker 2: doing the things that you were doing allowed me to
Speaker 2: be me and do all the things that I wanted
Speaker 2: to do and just kept the world turning exactly as
Speaker 2: it was. Well, good luck with that, because they call
Speaker 2: it the change this time of life, and for many
Speaker 2: of us it can feel like something big is rolling
Speaker 2: in and stirring everything up. From this vantage point, when
Speaker 2: we have a minute to raise our heads and look back,
Speaker 2: we can see we've already transformed, many times already. We've
Speaker 2: bent ourselves to fit in. We've been pushed around by
Speaker 2: our hormones, our bodies. We've stifled ourselves for acceptance. We've
Speaker 2: opened ourselves for love. We've put ourselves back together after loss.
Speaker 2: Nothing was ever in exactly the same place again. We
Speaker 2: grew people inside us, or we fought with the bodies
Speaker 2: that could not. We've always been changing, it's been the
Speaker 2: only constant. We've just been pretending all this time to
Speaker 2: be static, smooth, reliable, steady. So yes, we've changed. We're
Speaker 2: changing still. We're learning how to be in this new
Speaker 2: version of ourselves, testing out our wobbly new grown up legs,
Speaker 2: realigning what matters, tapping into instincts we've pushed away for
Speaker 2: too long, the kind promised at the start of every year,
Speaker 2: free with a gym membership and a serve of shame.
Speaker 2: But the new you that understands that the time for
Speaker 2: standing still and playing nice is over.
Speaker 3: We've changed you. See. Hello, my name is.
Speaker 2: Holly Wainwright and I am Mid Midlife, mid Family, mid Change.
Speaker 2: This is season three of our show Mid for Generation
Speaker 2: X women who are anything but and look, it's not
Speaker 2: only for Generation X women, actually, but for anyone who
Speaker 2: wants to sit down with us and have the only
Speaker 2: kinds of conversations. We've got time for real ones, honest ones,
Speaker 2: funny ones, curious ones.
Speaker 3: No small talk here.
Speaker 2: Friends, and over the next eight episodes, the conversations we've
Speaker 2: got for you are so big it's going to be
Speaker 2: hard to keep them squeezed into that phone in your hand.
Speaker 2: We are talking about hormones, We're talking about divorce, We're
Speaker 2: talking about sexuality shifts. We're talking about invisible illness and
Speaker 2: dickheads and ambition. But today I am bringing you something
Speaker 2: that I have literally been biting my tongue and binding
Speaker 2: my fingers.
Speaker 3: Not to tell you about before. Now we are bringing you.
Speaker 2: A conversation about transformation and change and so much more.
Speaker 2: It's about bravery and being wild, and about trusting your gut,
Speaker 2: about facing reality with clear eyes, and about surviving the unsurvivable.
Speaker 3: It's about Gina Chick.
Speaker 1: What I found was that I could lit my instincts
Speaker 1: and teach me what I needed to know. I really
Speaker 1: wanted to show that there is a way of being
Speaker 1: at home in the wild.
Speaker 3: You know who Gina Chick is.
Speaker 2: She went into the Tasmanian wilderness for season one of
Speaker 2: the TVs shown alone Australia and almost immediately imprinted into
Speaker 2: the Australian psyche. It is And we talk about this
Speaker 2: today like we were just waiting for her, And in
Speaker 2: the flicker of firelight on an unforgiving beach, this incredible,
Speaker 2: capable older woman revealed herself to be as someone who
Speaker 2: had lived through so much and lost so much, but
Speaker 2: every bit of that experience had only made her grow stronger,
Speaker 2: love harder, live more. In this conversation inspired by her book,
Speaker 2: and it's a really good book. It's called We Are
Speaker 2: the Stars, we talk about all that loss, about all
Speaker 2: those different seasons of life she's lived through, from being
Speaker 2: a wild young girl with a baby bird in her pocket,
Speaker 2: mercilessly bullied at school, to being a starry eyed raver
Speaker 2: at the peak of Sydney's club scene.
Speaker 3: To being a survivalist who.
Speaker 2: Falls in love with a man from somewhere else gets
Speaker 2: diagnosed with cancer at the very moment she's about to
Speaker 2: become a mother and has three precious years with her
Speaker 2: baby girl before that sickness comes for her too, and
Speaker 2: the woman who chose, in the aftermath of unimaginable loss,
Speaker 2: to change again, to live and live big. This conversation
Speaker 2: literally changed me. In fact, quite a few of the
Speaker 2: conversations in this upcoming season have If I'm honest and
Speaker 2: I'm going to shut up about me now and introduce
Speaker 2: you to a truly extraordinary force of nature Gina Chick
Speaker 2: on transformation. Gina, this fucking book. This book is brilliant.
Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking, it really is. It's powerful, it's honest. It
Speaker 2: feels like you, so I want to read you just
Speaker 2: one little thing going to do?
Speaker 1: Lads, look at all of your.
Speaker 2: This is so so many like folded over PAGESLFA.
Speaker 1: Did you rip any well.
Speaker 2: I've got it, as I was going to say to you,
Speaker 2: because in your book you tell the story about how
Speaker 2: when you're a kid you love book so much, when
Speaker 2: you love them, you tear the pages.
Speaker 3: Out and eat them.
Speaker 2: I could have nibbled on this book, Gina, I could
Speaker 2: have nibbled on this book. But I want to read
Speaker 2: you this tiny bit. The context of this is actually
Speaker 2: very difficult time in your life. When you're telling your
Speaker 2: friend Kim Farrant, film director friend, you have cancer and
Speaker 2: you're pregnant, and she says to you, ge, she laughs,
Speaker 2: which seems you know, that's what good friends do. I
Speaker 2: guess in that situation. Gee, she says, when you're waiting
Speaker 2: to come into this body, the Angel at the gate
Speaker 2: stopped you with his clipboard and asked what experience you
Speaker 2: wanted in this life, and you just said, tick every box.
Speaker 2: That's what this book feels like. It feels to me
Speaker 2: like if you're going to do something, you don't do
Speaker 2: it half asked. It's not like a tick the boxes
Speaker 2: I was on TV kind of book. No, it's nothing
Speaker 2: like that. Do you think that is who you are?
Speaker 2: Are you just all in? And have you always been that?
Speaker 1: It's a really good question and the answer I think
Speaker 1: is fairly obvious from my time on alone and also
Speaker 1: from this book. I am absolutely full throttle and have
Speaker 1: been ever since I can remember, so from the youngest age,
Speaker 1: I've always been Yeah, full on. I used to have
Speaker 1: a motto and I think I was in primary school
Speaker 1: and I wanted to have a T shirt that said this,
Speaker 1: which was grab life with both hands and stuff it
Speaker 1: in your mouth and on the back, don't choke. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was in high school, but I can remember like
Speaker 1: I've always whatever life has been offering, I've wanted it.
Speaker 1: I haven't wanted to miss any morsel of it. And
Speaker 1: I've never been afraid of life. And that's probably a
Speaker 1: lot to do with my parents, that lack of fear,
Speaker 1: but it means that whenever there's an opportunity, I'm much
Speaker 1: more likely to say yes than no. And if I
Speaker 1: am going to take that opportunity, I am going to
Speaker 1: do it to my last breath.
Speaker 2: I was going to say. I think one of the
Speaker 2: things about getting to this point of our lives and
Speaker 2: looking back that obviously you have had to do to
Speaker 2: write this book. Often we've lived many lives. You have
Speaker 2: definitely lived many lives. There's the life that you lived
Speaker 2: obviously as a child in Javis Bay, a wild child
Speaker 2: in the literal sense of the word. There's the bully
Speaker 2: kid in your teenage years at school. Then you find
Speaker 2: your family almost in Sydney in the queer rave scene
Speaker 2: in the nineties. Oh my god, I love those chapters
Speaker 2: so much, and then we'll get to midlife. But I
Speaker 2: wonder if when we look back at that, we think,
Speaker 2: did all those things make me who I am? Or
Speaker 2: was I always this person? And you think you were
Speaker 2: always this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think we come into life, into our bodies
Speaker 1: with like a fingerprint of our personality. And I've been
Speaker 1: lucky enough and blessed enough to be able to explore
Speaker 1: those I've had a life of privilege in that I
Speaker 1: grew up loved and I grew up in a house
Speaker 1: where time was a commodity that was valued with family,
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of family time. I grew
Speaker 1: up in a house where my creativity was fed and fostered.
Speaker 1: And I grew up in Jervis Bay, I grew up
Speaker 1: in Paradise. So I had the privilege of being able
Speaker 1: to express these facets of my personality and have them fed.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've been able to follow a lot
Speaker 1: of them, and just even one of them is unusual,
Speaker 1: but I've managed to be able to. You know, I
Speaker 1: have so many that are actually quite weird and weave
Speaker 1: them into a life.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, though, So you've got these different lives. One
Speaker 2: of the places I would love to ask you about
Speaker 2: jumping into is a lot of the big adventures. As established,
Speaker 2: you've always been having adventures, but it's somewhere in your
Speaker 2: late thirties forty ish after you actually have quite a
Speaker 2: terrifying health episode that you decide that you are going
Speaker 2: to go to tracking school and you're going to really
Speaker 2: jump into this sort of survivalist world. And that changes
Speaker 2: the direction of your life in several ways because you
Speaker 2: travel over there and you meet Lee and then he
Speaker 2: ends up being your husband and the father of Blaze.
Speaker 2: What made you decide at that point in your life
Speaker 2: to make that jump?
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I talk about in
Speaker 1: the book, and I probably I think I don't actually
Speaker 1: mention this explicitly. I trust my gut. The sort of
Speaker 1: scary health episode that happened when I was I think
Speaker 1: at thirty was after like a whole bunch of experiences
Speaker 1: where I didn't trust my gut, and I think it
Speaker 1: nearly killed me not doing that. And in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of that, I got it, I learned it. And so
Speaker 1: then after that, whenever I would sort of have an
Speaker 1: opportunity or a crossroads come up, I wouldn't ask my
Speaker 1: head what the right decision was. I'd actually ask my
Speaker 1: belly or the wolf in my belly, and if the
Speaker 1: wolf in my bally said do this, then I would
Speaker 1: do it. And I wouldn't even ask any questions. And
Speaker 1: so when it came to going to track a school,
Speaker 1: at that point, I think I would hear the name
Speaker 1: of a school, or i'd hear the name of a teacher.
Speaker 1: I'd hear the name of something, and it'd ring me
Speaker 1: like a bell, and I would know, Oh, I have
Speaker 1: to do this. I don't know why. I'll find out later.
Speaker 1: The first time I heard about track of school like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that is, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to do it, but it's not yet. And
Speaker 1: then I heard it again a year later, and it
Speaker 1: rang me even deeper. And that was when I said, oh,
Speaker 1: I really need to research this now. And I looked
Speaker 1: it up online and went, oh, my god, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: There's this school where you can learn how to track
Speaker 1: and how to stalk, and how to make fire by
Speaker 1: rubbing sticks together, and how to survive in the wilderness
Speaker 1: with only your hands. Basically, it just sang to me.
Speaker 1: So for me it became choiceless in that moment, I
Speaker 1: actually didn't have a choice. Then it was just a
Speaker 1: matter of, well, how am I going to get myself there?
Speaker 2: Because I guess if people who aren't super familiar with
Speaker 2: your story and who met you on alone and saw
Speaker 2: how capable you are in the bush, we've talked about
Speaker 2: how you were always massively drawn to nature, like in
Speaker 2: the book you talk about as a little child, how
Speaker 2: obsessed you were with creatures and bringing the outside inside
Speaker 2: and having a snake in a mouse cage and a
Speaker 2: bird in the thing in your pocket at school and
Speaker 2: all those things. But you had spent a good decade
Speaker 2: living a very urban Sydney life, like in the middle
Speaker 2: of Sydney, living near Taylor Square, partying every night, building
Speaker 2: this sort of tribe of very interesting, great artistic friends.
Speaker 2: But you were a city person at that point. And
Speaker 2: I wonder if it's I've heard you say that you've
Speaker 2: always felt like a wild thing in a human's body,
Speaker 2: and I reckon lots of women feel a bit like that,
Speaker 2: but they've spent a lifetime taming that wild thing. Is
Speaker 2: it trite to say that these moments where you were
Speaker 2: like getting to the end of that time where you'd
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to spoil everything for the book,
Speaker 2: but you had a bad relationship, you'd had to dig
Speaker 2: yourself out of a financial hole by working your butt off.
Speaker 2: Obviously it was always very determined in that the wild
Speaker 2: was calling you again. Was it about getting back in
Speaker 2: touch with that wild person? And how can some of
Speaker 2: the women listening to this learn how to listen to that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that you've asked me this. Anything I say,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is the way the world is.
Speaker 1: It's the way my world is. But for me, what
Speaker 1: is true is that we are stone age creatures in
Speaker 1: modern bodies. You know, the vast majority of the information
Speaker 1: in our DNA comes from hunter gatherer ancestors. If we've
Speaker 1: been Homo sapiens for three hundred and fifty thousand years,
Speaker 1: the three hundred and forty thousand of those years we
Speaker 1: were hunter gatherers. Like that is this enormous like well
Speaker 1: of information that we contain within ourselves genetically. And now
Speaker 1: we're in this world where we live in boxes and
Speaker 1: we get our food in packets, and we can't hear
Speaker 1: the storms coming and we can't sense the information coming
Speaker 1: of the weather we're not hearing the birds telling us
Speaker 1: what's going on, but we're designed to connect in on
Speaker 1: that level. We are designed to connect infinitely with this
Speaker 1: web of life. So that is actually our birthright, and
Speaker 1: I think women can really understand that. I think that's
Speaker 1: why so many women garden. And it's not just women
Speaker 1: who garden. But the thing that I think happened when
Speaker 1: I was out on a loan and my journey resonated
Speaker 1: with so many women is because they could say, that's me,
Speaker 1: that's an extreme version, but I know I get that
Speaker 1: feeling when I'm out gardening, I get that feeling when
Speaker 1: I'm hanging out with my kids. It was more that
Speaker 1: there's this familiarity that we have with our wild essence,
Speaker 1: and we live in a world that tells us that
Speaker 1: it's suspect and dangerous. But women, deep down, we know
Speaker 1: that's who we are. We have that resonance. And the
Speaker 1: thing that I find really sad is that because we
Speaker 1: are on the tail end of this patriarchal culture that
Speaker 1: views women's wildness as suspect and other and dangerous. I
Speaker 1: like that you say we're at the tail end of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But because we are on that tail end. The messages
Speaker 1: that we have got as women are that our wildness,
Speaker 1: our uncontrollableness, our ferocity, our rage, our messiness, our creativity,
Speaker 1: our life force is terrifying. And so there are all
Speaker 1: of these structures in place to keep us small and
Speaker 1: obedient and behave and be good girls and behave, and
Speaker 1: you know, and so for me, what I see is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't take much for women to start to
Speaker 1: remember and for that wild creature that's in all of
Speaker 1: our bellies to wake up. It just needs to be
Speaker 1: whispered to and to have its ears scratched, and to
Speaker 1: be sort of like hab its nose pointed out to
Speaker 1: a full moon, and to be able to be let
Speaker 1: out on a wild beach at night, and to maybe
Speaker 1: go for a walk in the bush and maybe take
Speaker 1: its shoes off and get out in the garden. It
Speaker 1: doesn't take much, and we do start to like stretch
Speaker 1: out of our buy cages that we've been put into
Speaker 1: and to believe in that voice that we all have,
Speaker 1: because it's a bit like tinker Bell, you know, you
Speaker 1: know how tinker Bell. Everybody had to clap to wake
Speaker 1: tinker Bell up, that wild animal creature wise part of
Speaker 1: us just needs us to believe in it and then
Speaker 1: it starts to plump into life.
Speaker 2: I think I've seen you say that. After alone, there
Speaker 2: were a lot of women of a certain age, probably
Speaker 2: the a who are listening to this, would come up
Speaker 2: to you and say thank you, because also you were
Speaker 2: a representation of a grown up woman, as I like
Speaker 2: to say, rather than saying we're middle aged or any
Speaker 2: of those awful words. Who is competent, who is brave,
Speaker 2: who is unabashed and all those things. And it's something
Speaker 2: that we all sort of need to see because we're
Speaker 2: all being sort of pitied a little bit and told we're.
Speaker 3: A bit useless.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it drives me absolutely bomb because where
Speaker 1: do we get to see the real us on a billboard?
Speaker 1: Like we get told that Demi Moore looks amazing and
Speaker 1: she's had what seven hundred and fifty thousand, a million
Speaker 1: dollars worth of plastic surgery to look amazing. We get
Speaker 1: to see the news articles where someone of a woman
Speaker 1: of a certain age is like, Oh, she wows in
Speaker 1: her bikini body. That's how we get marketed as long
Speaker 1: as we can wow in a bikini body. For me,
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing things that happened from alone.
Speaker 1: Is I say this in the keynote speeches, that I'm
Speaker 1: in a lot. I feel like there was a jigsaw
Speaker 1: puzzle shaped piece in the zeitgeist and nobody knew it
Speaker 1: was there until I told my story and suddenly it
Speaker 1: was just suddenly like whoa. And because there was this
Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzle shaped piece in the zeitgeist, it meant that
Speaker 1: when alone happened, and it did happen, suddenly women got
Speaker 1: to see themselves. They got to see a postmenopausal woman
Speaker 1: who's got wobbly bits and wrinkles and silver feathers and
Speaker 1: swears and laughs and shows her rashy thighs and isn't
Speaker 1: interested in marketing and is barefoot and can connect with
Speaker 1: nature in the way they relate. But it's also vital
Speaker 1: and creative and sexy and articulate and beautiful in that
Speaker 1: raw way that an older woman is beautiful. And I
Speaker 1: say older and I own it. I'm not talking like,
Speaker 1: you know, let's all be like so glad.
Speaker 2: You brought that up, because I wanted to talk to
Speaker 2: you about this, Like change and transformation is part of nature, right,
Speaker 2: And it seems to me that you've always known that.
Speaker 2: We talked to the beginning like you are who you are,
Speaker 2: but you've also been through some extraordinary transformations and we'll
Speaker 2: get to some of them. But a lot of older
Speaker 2: women are told don't change, like your face shouldn't change,
Speaker 2: your body shouldn't change, your demeanor shouldn't change, don't be
Speaker 2: too scary, don't be too outspoken, don't be too experienced,
Speaker 2: all of those things. And I saw you saying I
Speaker 2: don't know where I saw you saying this, so excuse me,
Speaker 2: but that when you were younger, you were a bit
Speaker 2: glib about aging, and that you were like, it's going
Speaker 2: to be great. Who doesn't want to be wise? But
Speaker 2: it is confronting when you do see yourself changing, And
Speaker 2: you said something really great about that. You also have
Speaker 2: that voice that speaks to you unkindly sometimes but you've
Speaker 2: got to come back, So how have you reflection?
Speaker 1: So for me, that thing about the glib is so hilarious.
Speaker 1: And I get really annoyed because I'm around a lot
Speaker 1: of younger women all the time, and I say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, aging is great and women should just age
Speaker 1: naturally and blah blah blah blah blah, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I love the wrinkles, and I'm like, yeah, please don't
Speaker 1: tell me how to age until you've been here, and
Speaker 1: you know what it's like. I'm sorry, but your opinion
Speaker 1: actually doesn't mean squat saying how women should age or
Speaker 1: how we should feel about our aging bodies and our
Speaker 1: aging faces. You have no idea how confronic it is
Speaker 1: until the estrogen falls out of your body and with
Speaker 1: it collagen, and suddenly it's like time lapse photography of
Speaker 1: watching this, like this portrait is a portrait in the
Speaker 1: act attic and I'm it. And so I was that glib.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, because my face basically didn't change, It really didn't.
Speaker 1: I could have been generic something between twenty and fifty,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I was really glib. I was like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm fine with aging. And then menopause happened, and the
Speaker 1: time lapse of menopause changing things was super confronting. And
Speaker 1: I have an absolutely strong strand of vanity.
Speaker 2: Absolutely you have your adiva, which I, yes, I so
Speaker 2: do and I think many of us do. But that's
Speaker 2: something else I meant to be a bit ashamed of.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and again, so it can.
Speaker 2: Be hard to see yourself change.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it is. And so then to have
Speaker 1: that voice, because then there's this whole narrative of like,
Speaker 1: I should be okay with it, man, that the messages
Speaker 1: that I'm getting from billboards and from society are that
Speaker 1: women are attractive as long as they are botoxed and
Speaker 1: as long as they look twenty five. And to be
Speaker 1: an older woman, as long as you still look thirty five,
Speaker 1: then you're valued, and you're valuable and you're attractive. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm being told. But I should also be told
Speaker 1: that I should age naturally and I should be graceful
Speaker 1: in that, and I should be able to embrace that.
Speaker 1: And so there's all of these messages what ends up happening,
Speaker 1: and what ended up happening for me was like, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, my body looks different, my face looks different,
Speaker 1: and that unkind voice just starts going, oh my god,
Speaker 1: there's me, me, me, And so what I do when
Speaker 1: that happens is I've just like, for me, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing isn't that that voice is there, because I think
Speaker 1: we all have that. It's like, what do we do
Speaker 1: with it when that shows up? Instead of making that
Speaker 1: voice wrong? Well, I shouldn't feel that way. I do
Speaker 1: feel that way. It's not all of me, but I
Speaker 1: have that voice that is horrified on some mornings looking
Speaker 1: in the mirror, telling me I shouldn't care, or that
Speaker 1: they shouldn't have that vanity. I'm like, sorry, it's true,
Speaker 1: it's not in me. So for me, the part that
Speaker 1: I focus on is my vitality. It is how much
Speaker 1: life force is available to me. Now, if I am
Speaker 1: at a period in my life where I'm sick, I
Speaker 1: don't actually have much life force. If I've been through
Speaker 1: a huge time, I might not have much life force.
Speaker 1: So how do I feed the life force that I have?
Speaker 1: And those like small things like for me, asking what
Speaker 1: is the most nourishing thing I can do for myself today?
Speaker 1: Like instead of going how can I look after everyone
Speaker 1: else's needs? What is the most nourishing thing I can
Speaker 1: do for myself today? That is going to feed my vitality,
Speaker 1: because when someone has vitality, when we are brimming with vitality,
Speaker 1: it's like for me, it's the antidote to that voice
Speaker 1: that says you should look a certain way. And I
Speaker 1: notice when I notice someone who identifies having vitality, I
Speaker 1: don't judge them like I don't notice their looks so much.
Speaker 2: Thing about that is because I agree with you so much,
Speaker 2: is that when my cruel voice starts, I do the
Speaker 2: things that matter to me about holding onto whatever youth
Speaker 2: means is like staying curious, staying interested, staying creative, staying moving,
Speaker 2: like not atrifying like that's and I know that that's
Speaker 2: when I'm my happiest and I don't feel as bad
Speaker 2: about what's going on on the outside. But the mean
Speaker 2: trick there is sometimes feeling bad about what's happening on
Speaker 2: the outside stops you from viewing all those things because
Speaker 2: you're just solutely secure and absolutely and they should hie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like I don't want to go outside because
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm basically just a potato sack with
Speaker 1: eyeballs at the moment, Like, you know, why would I
Speaker 1: possibly go out? And I think that then to be
Speaker 1: able to have some practices that we can do inside
Speaker 1: that are gentle and that do feed our creativity, because
Speaker 1: for me, our creativity that is life force, our creative force,
Speaker 1: especially as women, that is our life force, is our
Speaker 1: creative function. And so to find the smallest ways that
Speaker 1: we can actually feed that and you know, just those
Speaker 1: tiny little baby steps, and it might mean that like
Speaker 1: yet today I don't want to go outside. Tomorrow I
Speaker 1: don't want to go outside, But maybe I can go
Speaker 1: out in the garden and get my fingers in the dirt.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can just get into the practice of just weeding.
Speaker 1: I love that beautiful focus where we can bring all
Speaker 1: of our presence to some creative act, and that for
Speaker 1: me is such an antidote and a way to build
Speaker 1: our inner fire and our inner resources to then be
Speaker 1: able to take the bigger steps into the world.
Speaker 2: What has nature taught you about aging? Because I wonder
Speaker 2: if that's given you some perspective on that the rest
Speaker 2: of us might not have.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so for me, being in connection with nature means
Speaker 1: being in connection with cycles of death and rebirth. Everything
Speaker 1: in nature has a season. Everything you know, a mountain
Speaker 1: sees and takes a bit longer than a flowers season,
Speaker 1: but everything has a season. So when we're out in nature,
Speaker 1: nature is this amazing mirror that shows us us, whatever
Speaker 1: the story is, whatever our hamsters in our heads. We
Speaker 1: can go outside and we can sit quietly and put
Speaker 1: the phone off and let our eyes go soft and
Speaker 1: let nature come to us with its stories, and we
Speaker 1: will find our own stories reflected as metaphors wherever we look.
Speaker 1: So I find that when we're in walls and when
Speaker 1: we're on social media and on our devices, we're in
Speaker 1: the echo chamber of the algorithm. We're either in the
Speaker 1: echo chamber of our own algorithm or in the algorithm
Speaker 1: of our culture. And it's completely artificial, completely artificial, and
Speaker 1: it's nothing to do with capital our reality. None of
Speaker 1: those stories are true, but we believe them because we
Speaker 1: don't have a greater context. But when we go out
Speaker 1: in nature, we are designed to be able to see
Speaker 1: to a horizon, an infinite edge. And when we see
Speaker 1: an infinite edge, whether it's a horizon or whether it stars,
Speaker 1: we get a sense of ourselves as a speck of
Speaker 1: dust in an expanding universe. We have a sense of
Speaker 1: context where we are not the most important thing, and
Speaker 1: that then gives us some space to be able to
Speaker 1: put our own timeline and our own stories and our
Speaker 1: own aging in the context, in greater context, in greater timelines,
Speaker 1: in geological time, in the tree life cycle, in the
Speaker 1: forest life cycle, in the things that are rotting away
Speaker 1: in the leaves, at our feet. And I find that
Speaker 1: the more we open ourselves up to the wisdom of
Speaker 1: nature as it is unfolding, and it doesn't care about us,
Speaker 1: it's not prioritizing us for those lessons. They're just there.
Speaker 1: And what we see is a There are no mirrors
Speaker 1: in nature, so we don't ever get to see ourselves
Speaker 1: in the way we see ourselves in mirrors. We don't
Speaker 1: get to judge our own appearance in that way. In nature.
Speaker 1: The best we can do is look into a pull
Speaker 1: or a creek or a river or something like that,
Speaker 1: and then you've still got ripples, You've still got nature
Speaker 1: all around. One breath of wind and it's gone, it's distorted.
Speaker 1: So we don't have that judgment and that value system.
Speaker 1: We also in nature, we don't have the value system
Speaker 1: of anything being more important than anything else, which is
Speaker 1: part of our the echo chamber of our own algorithm,
Speaker 1: is that we're more important, or some lives are more important,
Speaker 1: or some stories are more important, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But when we're in nature, that all burns away. And
Speaker 1: so what I find is that if the hamsters and
Speaker 1: the head miles are happening, if I get out and
Speaker 1: get into nature and take myself for a walk for
Speaker 1: an hour or two hours. Those lessons and that context
Speaker 1: has given me such a completely different perspective. I have
Speaker 1: a sense of myself. I have a sense of myself
Speaker 1: in relationship with capital, our reality, rather than in the
Speaker 1: fantasy of my own crazy stories.
Speaker 2: In a moment, more of conversation with the Mighty Gina Chick,
Speaker 2: but first this short break. So Blaze's story begins, and
Speaker 2: you're I think you're forty when you have Blaze. You're
Speaker 2: nearly forty one, yes, And you have Blaze. And you
Speaker 2: and Lee had been living in Bondai with your beautiful
Speaker 2: friend Stevie, and you move back down the coast, and
Speaker 2: it seems for a while idyllic, so idyllic the way
Speaker 2: you describe. You were living on a property for a while,
Speaker 2: and you'd started beginning to run what will become the
Speaker 2: Rewilding camps. Am I right? And so kids are coming
Speaker 2: to the camps, your friends can come. You're living this
Speaker 2: beautiful life, Blaze. Well, tell me about Blaze.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't. My little munchkin. So Blaze was a really
Speaker 1: extraordinary kid, and everybody says that about their kids. But
Speaker 1: like she really was an extraordinary kid. I think because
Speaker 1: I went through so much to get her here, and
Speaker 1: I did so much work on myself when I was
Speaker 1: going through, you know, pregnancy with cancer.
Speaker 2: So you were diagnosed with cancer when you were in
Speaker 2: the early stages of pregnancy with Blaze. And you explain
Speaker 2: this so in such beautiful detail in the book, the
Speaker 2: decisions you had to make about what treatment to take
Speaker 2: in order to save your life. Said that she wasn't
Speaker 2: an orphan when she was born. Almost, well, the other
Speaker 2: that's when she was born and you have the treatment,
Speaker 2: as you say, when she was born, you lost your hair.
Speaker 1: You were both, we were both born from them and
Speaker 1: the chemo.
Speaker 2: But then you're in remission and you're.
Speaker 1: And then we were down. Then we were living in
Speaker 1: the country. But she always had this silence to her,
Speaker 1: you know, that thing of they you know, babies come
Speaker 1: in with the personality they've got. She was like a universe,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a universe looking out of her eyes.
Speaker 1: She had this incredible stillness to her, the incredible calm,
Speaker 1: and this incredible presence. And so when we were living
Speaker 1: in the bush, and of course babies will take the
Speaker 1: life of the parents. They've got and we were living
Speaker 1: in the bush, and so she would know the calls
Speaker 1: of all the birds and she'd say hello to them,
Speaker 1: and she would know the scat of all the animals
Speaker 1: because Lee would say, oh, that's from a bandicoot, and
Speaker 1: that's from a wombat, and so she would just point
Speaker 1: them out, and she became so connected to the bush
Speaker 1: that the bush wasn't afraid of her, and then animals
Speaker 1: would just come, and the birds would just come, and
Speaker 1: she had this incredibly rich life of connection with nature.
Speaker 1: And that was our life as well. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was incredibly idyllic, and it'll come to an end.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about your wonderful parents later
Speaker 2: because I love the descriptions of Christmas at Javis Bay.
Speaker 2: But that is when you find out that Blaze has
Speaker 2: cancer in her stomach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it wasn't actually at Christmas. No, it wasn't
Speaker 1: long after. So, yeah, but finding out, I saw the
Speaker 1: lump in her and I'd been sort of going, oh,
Speaker 1: belly's a bit big, and then I felt it, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like I knew immediately because I'd felt the
Speaker 1: cancer in my own breast, and you know, when I
Speaker 1: talk with people who've had cancer. Once you've felt cancer,
Speaker 1: once you've felt what that feels like, then it's your
Speaker 1: fingers know. And as soon as I felt it in her,
Speaker 1: I knew, and yeah, that was big.
Speaker 2: You write again so beautifully and clearly about this looking
Speaker 2: the unimaginable in the eye. Well, it's not unimaginable to you,
Speaker 2: of course, about how you had to become very clear,
Speaker 2: very centered, very calm, like I'm the one who's dealing
Speaker 2: with this. You stay in ronin McDonald house, You have
Speaker 2: all these different experiences. I wanted to thank you for
Speaker 2: when you write the chapter about the day you had
Speaker 2: to say goodbye to Blaze is obviously it goes without
Speaker 2: saying that that's just the most unimaginable chapter, but the
Speaker 2: respects you show for the reader you also you actually
Speaker 2: write in the book this bit's going to be really
Speaker 2: hard if you want to skip ahead. And I know
Speaker 2: personally so many people who are going to be very
Speaker 2: grateful to you for writing what follows. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 2: not only you, like, it's not only you and your family.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of family stories, and they because people
Speaker 2: are so scared to look that in the eye, that
Speaker 2: the unthinkable loss I think they're going to feel very
Speaker 2: seen by that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope. So. I mean, my my attitude and
Speaker 1: my process with death is that it is horrifying and
Speaker 1: unutterably beautiful, and it is both is it is that
Speaker 1: all at once, and so whenever I'm writing this, it
Speaker 1: is bringing all of it, you know. That's and that's
Speaker 1: how I do it. And after we lost Blaze, I
Speaker 1: did write, you know, quite a lot of posts on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and very quickly in the beginning, people would say, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry for your loss, and I don't need that. Let's
Speaker 1: have a conversation. And so I would write these posts
Speaker 1: and each post would be going into the grief but
Speaker 1: then coming out of it, and like the people who
Speaker 1: would read them would start to trust me that it
Speaker 1: was like, well, this is going to be hard, but
Speaker 1: where we're going to go on the other side is
Speaker 1: actually going to be beautiful. And so it very quickly
Speaker 1: turned into these amazing conversations with people sharing their own
Speaker 1: grief and their own loss and speaking about grief in
Speaker 1: a way that I think our culture doesn't. You know,
Speaker 1: that there isn't a we don't have what I would
Speaker 1: call nourishing rituals and conversations for grief, like we have
Speaker 1: a very like our whitey way of doing it is
Speaker 1: so disconnected from indigenous ceremonies and rituals and the wisdom
Speaker 1: that comes with those ceremonies and rituals and what people
Speaker 1: actually need to be able to metabolize grief. Like we've
Speaker 1: stuck it in a box and we've you know, put
Speaker 1: flowers on it, and we've said I'm sorry for your
Speaker 1: loss because it's all too hard. And for some people
Speaker 1: it is too hard, and I totally respect that, which
Speaker 1: is why I write in that bit of the book,
Speaker 1: you know, if this is too hard, just you know,
Speaker 1: skip ahead. We'll catch up with you. But for those
Speaker 1: who do want to find a language for their own
Speaker 1: grief and their own loss, there's something about losing a
Speaker 1: child that lets us access our own grief. And I
Speaker 1: find that if conversations about grief are held well, it's
Speaker 1: like there's so it's such a part, it is such
Speaker 1: a part of our lives. It is such a part
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about with menopause, Like we're grieving
Speaker 1: our faces, we're grieving our bodies, we're grieving our sexuality,
Speaker 1: we're grieving our birthing ability. We're grieving at like it's like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, death's coming up fast. Like we're grieving just
Speaker 1: in that one way, and in every day, in every way,
Speaker 1: things are dying. Every moment is dying into every other.
Speaker 1: My picture of myself is dying in every moment. But
Speaker 1: because we're so terrified to have those conversations, we're actually
Speaker 1: hanging on to the things that hurt us instead of
Speaker 1: having like a fluid and dancers language for letting go
Speaker 1: that has to come from talking about death. That's the
Speaker 1: root of it. And if we can talk about death
Speaker 1: and just shift our perspective a little and shift our
Speaker 1: our sort of our fluidity a little, that then ripples
Speaker 1: out into every corner of our lives. And that is
Speaker 1: one of the main things I wanted to do with
Speaker 1: this book. I really wanted to do that.
Speaker 2: You've done it because it's not in any way like
Speaker 2: glossing over it or being God. No, it's the opposite.
Speaker 2: But you talk about some of the rituals that you
Speaker 2: know that you and Lee and your family, and it's
Speaker 2: actually beautiful. You write about how the women and your
Speaker 2: family just kind of came together on the day that
Speaker 2: you have your ritual for Blaze at home and looking
Speaker 2: around and seeing the women cooking and bringing all these
Speaker 2: things together and thinking about all that losses, and it's amazing.
Speaker 2: I want to read you a little bit about because
Speaker 2: you also write amazingly about how other people's reactions to
Speaker 2: your grief, which you've just touched on, really is that,
Speaker 2: especially in the immediate aftermath, they all wanted you, almost
Speaker 2: expected you to fall apart. And you live in a
Speaker 2: small community. Everybody knows you, and everybody knows Blaze, and
Speaker 2: everybody is devastated they were, And you're kind of like,
Speaker 2: in public, I didn't do that. That wasn't what I
Speaker 2: needed to do. But you also don't shy away from
Speaker 2: saying you know in private you absolutely have keened and
Speaker 2: wailed and screamed and screamed for the will to bring
Speaker 2: her back. You write about choices and change transformations. You're
Speaker 2: talking about the decision to leave the home where you'd
Speaker 2: lived in with Blaze, not always obviously you'd been in
Speaker 2: the bush, but then in her in in the last
Speaker 2: period of her life, And you say, I see a
Speaker 2: future where I choose this path keeping a house as
Speaker 2: a shrine to her three year old self, tending and
Speaker 2: dusting and trimming its lawns and lighting its candles, house
Speaker 2: where neither of us ages. I could hide here forever,
Speaker 2: cutting myself open again and again on memories and regrets
Speaker 2: and the shame of the undone and the unset and
Speaker 2: the actions I can never rescind. And when I read that,
Speaker 2: I was like, you chose to absolutely do the opposite
Speaker 2: of that, and you lived on, and you and Lee
Speaker 2: made the decision to separate, which you also look at
Speaker 2: with a very clear eye. There's a portion in the
Speaker 2: book where you say that, even though you think you
Speaker 2: might be imagining it, you can see in his eye
Speaker 2: that maybe there's a tiny part of him that blames you.
Speaker 2: You talk about knowing that you're too old in inverted
Speaker 2: commas to give him a baby. So you decide to
Speaker 2: separate so he can move on with that and you
Speaker 2: can move on to something new. Talk about change and transformation.
Speaker 2: Tell me a bit about that process.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, the thing with Lee and I is,
Speaker 1: from the moment we met, we made a choice to
Speaker 1: show up and take responsibility for whatever our part was
Speaker 1: in our dynamic. And we have done that over and
Speaker 1: over and over thousands and thousands of times, and that
Speaker 1: level of honesty is so confronting, and at various times
Speaker 1: it's probably been confronting for both of us. I know
Speaker 1: it's been confronting for me. But also when there's that
Speaker 1: level of honesty, it means that you can trust the
Speaker 1: other person because I can trust, I will absolutely trust
Speaker 1: that he will tell the truth. Well, what about marketing?
Speaker 1: There is no, Nope, they're no, absolutely none. And there
Speaker 1: was well sometimes a little bit of a gloss and
Speaker 1: an airbrush for Bill Lovely, but nope, there was no
Speaker 1: marketing and still isn't. And what that means is that
Speaker 1: level of conscious relating meant that no matter what was
Speaker 1: going on, we would both turn up and tell the truth,
Speaker 1: even if it hurt the other person, no matter what
Speaker 1: that was. And so for me there was like there
Speaker 1: was hugely confronting because there was the like, I can't
Speaker 1: have any more children and he desperately wanted to be
Speaker 1: a dad again, and that capital reality of that is
Speaker 1: I can't change that. I can't hate him for that.
Speaker 1: That is who he is, This is who I am,
Speaker 1: and so like, I just have this thing that I
Speaker 1: don't want to waste energy on a fantasy ever, Ever,
Speaker 1: no matter what my story is, no matter what I
Speaker 1: reality I think I should have or I deserve or whatever,
Speaker 1: if it's not capital reality, it's a fantasy. And if
Speaker 1: it's a fantasy and I'm wasting energy on it, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be able to move forward in my life.
Speaker 1: The choices I make are not going to be effective.
Speaker 1: And so even though it was painful to see that,
Speaker 1: you know, and we tried every possible way to make
Speaker 1: it work, but I like, ultimately he needed to be
Speaker 1: a dad, and I wanted the best for him and me,
Speaker 1: which means there's like, wow, we got to points like, well,
Speaker 1: actually this is it. We can't we just can't. You know,
Speaker 1: these ovaries are not going to be doing anything anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, they might make Homo Simpsons three Eyed Fish,
Speaker 1: but that's about it.
Speaker 2: And as people who are a little bit familiar with
Speaker 2: this story know that you and Lee continue to be
Speaker 2: very much family and run a business together too. And
Speaker 2: he went on to meet Hannah, and there's a bit
Speaker 2: in the book where you're like you were there when
Speaker 2: he first meets her and she's walking away and you
Speaker 2: can feel the energy and you're like, are you gonna
Speaker 2: let that ass.
Speaker 1: Walk out of your life, and he didn't. He didn't.
Speaker 2: And you talk about how you and she a family too,
Speaker 2: and yeah, they've got beautiful girls and you have. And
Speaker 2: the thing that I didn't know and loved reading about
Speaker 2: a little bit towards the end of the book is
Speaker 2: what your life was like before we all met you alone,
Speaker 2: because the book actually finishes before alone. Yes it does,
Speaker 2: which I like, the writer in me is like, I
Speaker 2: wonder what the publishers thought about that. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 2: really interesting. But your life was You moved back to Sydney,
Speaker 2: am I right? And you were basically breaking your year
Speaker 2: up into traveling, into running the workshops with Lee, into
Speaker 2: doing your dance workshops, dance meditation workshops and all those things,
Speaker 2: and having like your life. I don't know, I just
Speaker 2: got this sense of a life well lived. At every
Speaker 2: turn you've lived, You've not lived through because it's still
Speaker 2: obviously with you, this unimaginable loss of your child and
Speaker 2: your relationship, but your life was still moving ahead and you.
Speaker 1: Absolutely my life was great. And I didn't move back
Speaker 1: to Sydney, so I'd have four months of the year
Speaker 1: in the Northern Hemisphere, running five rhythms programs, five rhythms
Speaker 1: workshops part of the Huntress like taking women out shooting
Speaker 1: bows and arrows and looking at archetypes of power and
Speaker 1: dancing in the dancing in retreat centers and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: So four months of the year doing that, then four
Speaker 1: months of the year with Lee running the Rewild your
Speaker 1: Child programs and vision quests and rites of Passage and
Speaker 1: the wilderness and sleeping next to a fire, which was amazing.
Speaker 1: And then four months of the year I'd been my
Speaker 1: bus and my bus would be up and down the
Speaker 1: coast and I'd go and visit people in various different places.
Speaker 1: But I didn't actually have a fixed abode at all.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was really like before alone, I was
Speaker 1: really happy with my life. My life was great.
Speaker 2: After this break, the rest of my life changing, DNA
Speaker 2: altering conversation with Gina Chick, well, I want to get
Speaker 2: to alone because, as we say, it isn't in the book,
Speaker 2: but speaking about change and transformation, I can't imagine very
Speaker 2: many more profound changes also happen to you. At around
Speaker 2: fifty van you become and I know you'd hate the word,
Speaker 2: but a celebrity basically because as you expressed at the
Speaker 2: beginning of this, and I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 2: There was a hole in the culture with your name
Speaker 2: on it. You captured that imagination from here. What did
Speaker 2: that experience have suddenly becoming very visible give you and
Speaker 2: what did it take?
Speaker 1: Great question? Yes, I still laugh when I hear celebrity.
Speaker 1: I keep looking around going wait, what, oh you mean me?
Speaker 1: Or when I'm doing TV stuff and they do this
Speaker 1: thing in TV which I didn't know where they call
Speaker 1: whoever the people are who are going to be in
Speaker 1: front of the camera the talent do They call you
Speaker 1: the talent and they're like, oh, the talent's over here,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh wait, that's me. Oh I'm talent.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. It's just so strange. So Alone was
Speaker 1: really beautiful. When I went out on Alone, I made
Speaker 1: a vow of veracity. I thought, the only way I
Speaker 1: can do this is if I tell the truth and
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep the camera rolling no matter what.
Speaker 1: That's the only way this is going to work. Because
Speaker 1: if I'm editing in my head, if I'm second guessing,
Speaker 1: if I'm filtering, then you're only going to get half
Speaker 1: of me. And I can't do half of me. Not
Speaker 1: capable of half of me. I can't even do like,
Speaker 1: you know, eighty or ninety percent. I mean, I only
Speaker 1: know how to do all of me, which meant alone
Speaker 1: was terrifying because to be able to say, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be out there and I'm going to
Speaker 1: film myself for five or six hours a day and
Speaker 1: hand it over to other people to turn into stories.
Speaker 1: But all I knew was that if I just tell
Speaker 1: the truth, then whatever those stories are, they going to
Speaker 1: be me. They're just going to be me. So that
Speaker 1: was a big choice. That was a big decision. But
Speaker 1: it also meant that once I'd made that decision, there
Speaker 1: was only one course of action, which was to show
Speaker 1: all my inn its, you know, to show everything, to
Speaker 1: show every part of me, because that's how I live.
Speaker 1: And what that meant then was as my journey unfolded
Speaker 1: during those ten weeks, people because it was once a week,
Speaker 1: people got to actually, in the beginning, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that hippie chick, she's dancing in the mosque. We give
Speaker 1: her a day and I'm like, you know, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that hippie chick.
Speaker 2: Id you.
Speaker 1: But then week by week they started saying wait, there's
Speaker 1: something what she doing, There's something really different. And what
Speaker 1: it was was like, what I was doing is what
Speaker 1: all the women who are out there in their gardens
Speaker 1: and hanging out with their kids know, which is just
Speaker 1: like I was just connecting. I was receptive and because
Speaker 1: there was that jigsaw puzzle shaped piece in the zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: And then I told my story and then that conversation
Speaker 1: got loud for the first time, and women started hearing
Speaker 1: each other having that conversation. And the way I see
Speaker 1: it is it is actually nothing to do with me.
Speaker 1: It is nothing to do with me. It is about
Speaker 1: the story. It is about that story that needed to
Speaker 1: be told. You know, in our culture that women are
Speaker 1: either young and hot or crone, you know, and that
Speaker 1: there's this whole strata of fucking amazing womanhood where where
Speaker 1: wise and we're fierce and we're creative and we're receptive,
Speaker 1: but we also pretty much have no fucks left to give,
Speaker 1: and we've been refined and we've been sort of hammered
Speaker 1: by the anvil of either child rearing or just life
Speaker 1: as a you know, in our twenties and thirties, and
Speaker 1: now here we are with these gifts to bring to
Speaker 1: the world, and we get told by the world that
Speaker 1: we're invisible. Fuck that as absolutely fuck that. And so
Speaker 1: by not being that, by making the choice to sow
Speaker 1: myself a possum coat from forty possum pelts and wear
Speaker 1: the thing in like Aela from you know, Clan of
Speaker 1: the Cave Bear, it's saying, yeah, you know, you what,
Speaker 1: we can be iconic. We might have some wrinkles and
Speaker 1: some things and a fat ass and all the rest
Speaker 1: of it, but we can still bring our own magic
Speaker 1: to the world. And it's actually not about me. I'm
Speaker 1: a placeholder for something that I think women all get
Speaker 1: to in our fifties when we're like, okay, well we've
Speaker 1: done the thing where we're looking after everyone else. We've
Speaker 1: graduated from that. Now what what We're just supposed to
Speaker 1: just curl up and be invisible and die. No, like,
Speaker 1: now we're actually we've got it all. And so the
Speaker 1: amazing thing that's happened is that because that tuning fork
Speaker 1: in the zeitgeist rang so strongly and so loudly, I
Speaker 1: keep on being given a platform because the story wants
Speaker 1: to be told. It's not my story, it's everyone's story.
Speaker 1: I just happened to be the placeholder. I happen to
Speaker 1: be the one that can actually, you know, sity with
Speaker 1: you and make worse.
Speaker 2: You're very good at doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, like I believe in the story, but I'm also
Speaker 1: I really know it's not about me. And so this book,
Speaker 1: even though it's my story, it's actually not about me,
Speaker 1: that Journey On Alone, is not about me. It is
Speaker 1: about what I want to do is to in my
Speaker 1: words and in my offerings and in the places that
Speaker 1: I do get invited to speak or to share, or
Speaker 1: to sing or to dance, is to help women wake
Speaker 1: up to what is alive and possible, because it's really
Speaker 1: hard to aspire to that which we haven't seen true.
Speaker 1: It's really hard. And so by being this wild, weird, messy, barefoot,
Speaker 1: you know, hippie kind of freak, what's happening is women
Speaker 1: are saying, oh my god, that's me. I can do that,
Speaker 1: and that's why they're coming to approach me. And that's
Speaker 1: why every single person who approaches me, I will look
Speaker 1: them in the eye and I will ask them their name,
Speaker 1: and I will say would you like a hug? I
Speaker 1: see you. It's not just oh yeah, okay, we can
Speaker 1: do the selfie. It's like, I see you like you
Speaker 1: are me and I am you, and you're having the
Speaker 1: vulnerability to come up and say hi. Then that is
Speaker 1: fucking a gift and amazing and so let's do this together.
Speaker 1: And so together we get to stitch a new story.
Speaker 1: And that that is how alone has changed my life.
Speaker 1: And that is where I get the energy to keep
Speaker 1: doing this thing, because because I know this story wants
Speaker 1: to be told, and it has chosen me in this moment.
Speaker 1: And who knows how long this moment will last. Maybe
Speaker 1: this will be over in six months. Okay, great, but
Speaker 1: I'll just keep writing books and hanging out in the bush.
Speaker 2: When I asked my daughter what I should ask you,
Speaker 2: because she obviously watched alone with me and she may
Speaker 2: or may not go to your odd school, she said,
Speaker 2: which is a very simple question, But I think it
Speaker 2: actually isn't because I think it's to do with another
Speaker 2: reason why I think you resonated so hard with people?
Speaker 2: She said, why does she think she lasted so long
Speaker 2: out there? And I wonder if one of the things
Speaker 2: that people also really loved about you is that. And
Speaker 2: I saw your friend Stevie saying this on Australian story.
Speaker 2: He said she wasn't surviving out there, she was living
Speaker 2: like it was like you weren't just ticking down the days.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure you were. Sometimes you weren't just
Speaker 2: ticking down the days. You were existing in the moment.
Speaker 2: And that's something that a lot of women wish they
Speaker 2: could do more. Rather than rushing through the list of
Speaker 2: the things I've got to do today, tomorrow, right now,
Speaker 2: before I'm forty, before I'm fifty, before I'm da da dah,
Speaker 2: before while I'm still relevant and interesting, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: you were there in the moment. And it it also feels,
Speaker 2: especially having read your beautiful book, that it was also
Speaker 2: apparent that all these experiences, these very profound experiences that
Speaker 2: lots of us have had in different levels, in different ways,
Speaker 2: that was why you could do it. Oh yeah, it's
Speaker 2: the levels of experience that meant that you could be
Speaker 2: in that space. You weren't sort of out there and
Speaker 2: obviously also knowing how to handle yourself in the bush
Speaker 2: was very helpful, But you weren't sort of out there
Speaker 2: just going got to get through this, gota win the money,
Speaker 2: got to get through this, got to win the money.
Speaker 2: You were living. Yeah, how do we all get a
Speaker 2: bit better at that? Oh?
Speaker 1: So, yes I was living, and yes I was in
Speaker 1: the moment. One of the things I realized out there
Speaker 1: is that discomfort is necessary for resilience, and our ability
Speaker 1: to be with discomfort is actually that is our resilience there,
Speaker 1: And in a society that pathologizes discomfort, where we have
Speaker 1: infinite distracts available, as soon as we feel even remotely uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: we are being dumbed down. We are being you know,
Speaker 1: our skills of being able to respond to challenges are shrinking.
Speaker 1: And then what happens is it's very hard for us
Speaker 1: to be in the moment because the moment is often
Speaker 1: fucking uncomfortable. Being in the moment doesn't mean skipping around
Speaker 1: in bliss. It means being able to be with every
Speaker 1: single feeling that is inside me right now. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of feelings, like we have golf, there's a
Speaker 1: whole universe of them in there. And so for me,
Speaker 1: what that meant was whatever I was feeling, I just
Speaker 1: gave it permission to be. And I think that the
Speaker 1: more we can allow that whatever our emotional state is,
Speaker 1: it's not wrong, it's not bad. It's not broken, it's
Speaker 1: not suspect, it's just who we are. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I love saying on my workshops is like,
Speaker 1: is there ever a tree that's the wrong shape? Is
Speaker 1: there ever a cloud that's too cloud? You know, we
Speaker 1: are part of nature, We are grown from nature's essence,
Speaker 1: and we are no more or less important or weird
Speaker 1: or strange than any tree or bird or fish. But
Speaker 1: a meaning generating function tells us that what we're doing
Speaker 1: or we're feeling is wrong or bad or suspect. As
Speaker 1: soon as we hear what we should be doing, we
Speaker 1: are getting told that how we are is not okay.
Speaker 1: And so for me, part of being able to deprogram
Speaker 1: that is to start to turn that thing around that
Speaker 1: says that I should be different. Whenever I hear that
Speaker 1: word should, I'm like, no, that's not my voice, that's
Speaker 1: someone else's voice. No, go away, what's the need that's
Speaker 1: underneath that? Because if I can take responsibility for my
Speaker 1: own needs, no one's going to rescue me. That's nobody's job.
Speaker 1: No one's responsible for my needs. I'm responsible for my needs.
Speaker 1: And so by taking that authority and that autonomy, then
Speaker 1: I'm reclaiming that part of myself, and then by you know,
Speaker 1: looking at what I should be doing and actually is
Speaker 1: this what I need? No it's not. Then fuck it off,
Speaker 1: you know who? Like, No, life's too short, our energy
Speaker 1: is too precious to be doing stuff that actually isn't
Speaker 1: giving us nourishment. So for me, like, the more we
Speaker 1: can say, what is the most nourishing thing I can
Speaker 1: do for myself right now, one hundred times a day,
Speaker 1: not for someone else, not for my kids, not for
Speaker 1: my mum, not for bloody world peace. What is the
Speaker 1: most nourishing thing I can do for myself right now?
Speaker 1: Means that I am taking care of the organism that
Speaker 1: is going to be doing all of the looking after.
Speaker 1: But I'm feeding myself and I'm filling up my own batteries,
Speaker 1: taking responsibility for my own needs, which means I'm much
Speaker 1: more able to be in this moment, in all of
Speaker 1: its emotions, in all of us, all of its strangeness,
Speaker 1: in all of its wiggliness. And then from that, because
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to run away from whatever's in here,
Speaker 1: I also have access to the joy. I'll suddenly start
Speaker 1: hearing the bird, I'll have this creative impulse. I am
Speaker 1: now engaging with Capital our reality and life as it
Speaker 1: really is, and myself as a being connected to life,
Speaker 1: and that is a moment I want to be in
Speaker 1: love that. Thank you, Gina.
Speaker 3: This has been amazing. I could talk to you for
Speaker 3: a week.
Speaker 2: If you're anything like me, you're going to be thinking
Speaker 2: about that conversation for a while. I fell in love
Speaker 2: with Gina chick joining that chat, as everyone who meets
Speaker 2: as surely does just a little bit, because being around
Speaker 2: someone with so much vitality and life force is seductive
Speaker 2: and inspiring. But I told you that it had changed me,
Speaker 2: and then so I'd better tell you how it was.
Speaker 2: Capital our reality, as you heard in that conversation. The
Speaker 2: way that Gina can walk up to some of the
Speaker 2: most heartbreaking, complicated issues and just call it like it
Speaker 2: is is extraordinary. We're so caught up always in how
Speaker 2: things should be, the way we should behave, and how
Speaker 2: other people should behave, and whatever everyone else thinks about
Speaker 2: our choices. But living in Gina's Capital our reality world
Speaker 2: is to push that off and make calls based on
Speaker 2: what is. And I'm doing that now. I am all
Speaker 2: what would Gina do Whenever something comes up and it's
Speaker 2: remarkably free anyway, if you love that as much as
Speaker 2: I did by Gina's book, it's really bloody good, as
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've gathered by now. There's a link in
Speaker 2: the show notes for where and how, and if you
Speaker 2: really loved it, tell your friends, share this episode with someone,
Speaker 2: review it, leave a star or five.
Speaker 3: I would be very grateful.
Speaker 2: And look, I'm learning to ask for what I need
Speaker 2: And welcome back to your show mid next week. I'm
Speaker 2: talking to a formidable international fashion guru who's well ordered
Speaker 2: and picture perfect world was suddenly smashed to smithereens by.
Speaker 3: You guessed it, hormones. See you there.
Speaker 2: Massive thanks to my Mid's team. My EP name of
Speaker 2: Brown Our produces tolysabezaz Andal black Man, sound design and
Speaker 2: audio production of Tom Lyon, and social media video production
Speaker 2: by Josh Green