INTRO: Backstories is an annual multi-sited storytelling festival located in backyards across Western Australia. Produced by the team at Centre for Stories, Backstories gives community members the chance to spend an afternoon with family and friends in the comfort of a neighbour’s backyard to enjoy local music, and stories from trained storytellers. Backstories 2022 was possible with generous support from our sponsors, the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, and Centre for Stories Founders Circle. This is a live recording from Backstories Kununurra, which was delivered in partnership with Kimberley Jiyigas (Birds) on the afternoon of Sunday the 19th of March 2022.

The story you’re about to hear is from Rowena. Enjoy.

RA: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me. And thank you, Tash, for the introduction, and for the opportunity to be here. It’s pretty special to be doing this on home soil, and yeah, with really important people, so thanks so much for coming out. So, as Tash mentioned, I wanna share, I guess, my story of resilience and what that means to me, and how I think- I’ve come to a place among life to own what I think is resilience to me. I have to look up the definition, because I couldn’t recall what those word was, but it was something along the lines of, “the ability to go through and overcome a really difficult situation- or situations.” So, that’s the textbook definition I guess, of resilience. I think to everybody here, when we talk about difficult situations, that scale is very big. What does that mean? It’s gotta be very personal to each one of us. But, look, before I go any further, I couldn’t talk about my story and my place in resilience without acknowledging the resilient and strong women in my life before me. In particular, my grandmothers and my mother. So, my grandmother on my mother’s side had her child taken from her when my mother was very young, she was stolen- a member of the Stolen Generation.

So, the trauma in my family really started from there, I feel, without knowing what happened in generations beyond- before that. On my grandmother’s side of my father’s family, I saw my grandmother put up with some really unordinary behaviour for a very long time. And that was- and saw her carry herself with absolute poise and prim and proper the way that generation was grown to do. Suck it up, keep on, carry on. My mother, again, ripped away from her mother, had a really hard life. And those challenges from those generations, absolutely filters down to the next generations, which is what we call intergenerational trauma, of course. It’s not a buzzword, it’s a very real thing, it’s a very tangible thing, particularly to Aboriginal people, and it’s alive and well. So, this word “resilience,” I really only started using it in the last couple of years and understanding what it means for me, and how it’s relevant in my life. Before that, I [thought] it was just another buzzword that’s thrown around, I didn’t care much for it.

About four and-a-half years ago now, I lost my first-born child, my oldest daughter. I’ve got my youngest daughter here, Skye, here tonight, who’s ten. I thought it was really important for Skye to come here tonight and to hear me talk, hear people up here speak, I think that one of the biggest parts of healing that we can all share and do for each other, is this, share each other’s stories. And I don’t think, you know, the topic that kids are too young to hear this stuff, and I understand how people get through these difficult situations. So, that was obviously the biggest knock that any family can take, any mother can take. And again, my daughter, she was six at the time, six and-a-bit, had a front row seat to watch me get through this difficult time. Which was obviously a more than a difficult time, so yeah. And I knew that, I was very conscious of that. I was a single mother, and we were living away from home, so we were a team. Where I go, she goes. What I see, she sees. What I hear, she hears. And it was all of a sudden, very stark to me that I have to own this.

I don’t know how I’m gonna get through this, and I know it’s not gonna be easy, I don’t know what getting through this looks like, but there’s a kid here that’s way too young. So, I owe it to her to try and make it look like this is possible, even though- but there’s no roadmap, I’ve got no idea what I’m doing- or how I’m going to do it. And it was a really interesting first twelve months, going through that and being away from home, and not being here when my family and my support networks are. So that was, I guess, the moment when I really had to think about how you’re carrying yourself, how are you going to get through this, you have to pay the rent, so you can take your time off and deal with what you’re going to deal with. Come home, bury your child- which is something no parent should ever have to do- then you need to go back to your life in Melbourne and figure this out somehow. And, that’s what we did. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t pretty. I took a bit of time off work, and I thought I knew how long I could take off work for myself, I was wrong. There’s no wrong or right, so I got that bit wrong, but I went back to work and- but I turned up. If there’s something that I want everyone here to take away tonight, is that whatever that difficult situation is that you’re going through, you’re just going to have to keep turning up to whatever it is you need to turn up to. Whether it’s to get your kid to school, get yourself out of the bed and into the shower and back into bed, that’s a success, that’s an achievement. If you can do that, that’s okay, you don’t have to go out there and, you know, be spectacular.

But I went back to work, and I went back to work too early, but I turned up. And I kid you not, the first day that I was back at work, I’d been working on a project, and I had to- the outstanding action for me was to write to a consultant and let her know that her quote was approved, and she’s got the job. It was a ten-word sentence. It was a very small job. It took me eight hours to find the words and, back to one thing of typing, because I forgot how to do this, I forgot the touch-typing, it took me eight hours to send one email. And I sat there at the keyboard, pretending to do stuff, somebody walked past- shuffle some paper. Do what it takes, it wasn’t pretty. And I got home that night, and I was really hard on myself for that. “What is wrong with you?” It felt like- and I speak about this quite often- it felt like I’d gone stupid. Like everything that I knew, everything I- you know, I had all these words before. I could do stuff that shouldn’t of taken me eight hours, that should have taken me five minutes.

And I realised, that what was happening inside my body, probably at a cellular level, was that everything in my being was working to get me through that. To just get me up, and that energy that we have to go read a book and learn something new, all of those types of things, that extra energy that you have to do, you know? I’m gonna bake a cake. I don’t need to, but it’s an extra thing I’m going to do with my day because I want to. All of those things were gone. It was like everything I needed to do was just focused on helping me sit there, and just be there, thinking about how you’re going to drive home safely in this crazy Melbourne traffic, and just those basic things. So, at that point in time, for the next couple of weeks, I didn’t have to learn-, I didn’t have to know how to touch type, I didn’t have to know how to read something and focus on it. What my soul was telling me, is that’s not necessary. What’s necessary for you is to do one small step at a time to get through this bigger challenge. And that’s when I started thinking about this thing of resilience, and what is it to me? There was a period where I used to get really quite angry and annoyed when people would say, “Oh, you’ve done so well, you’re so strong… And you’re so this, and you’re so that, and you’re getting up, and you’re back and work and doing stuff…” It used to annoy the crap out of me, because I guess I knew what people couldn’t see. I knew what 10 o’clock at night was like when nobody was around.

But, at the same time, those people were being genuine, and they honestly felt like what they were seeing is- and people would say that, “I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t go back and do that, there’s- or I couldn’t… you know, get through what you [got through].” Actually, every single one of us can. Anyone can get through anything, it’s all about choice. The choices you make, and that lends itself to resilience, I think. So, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about that and thinking about my anger that generated of people thinking they were praising me up. And, what I got out of that was being able to own my own resilience and recognise, that actually, we are still going through- we never get over the events in our family’s life, many of the events right back from the Stolen Generation. You don’t get over it, it’s always there, and grief- it’s always there. These things that we feel, you never get over it. You don’t overcome it, you just learn to live and manage it every day, do what you need to do. For me, being part of that is doing things like this.

As hard as it is, it might seem like I’m sitting here cool, calm, and collected, [but] this cycle and tracings going on inside. It is hard to tell your story- your personal stories, but I think the hardest conversation’s the most important to have. So, we just have to do it. And we have to turn up and support each other when we do have these opportunities to hear people’s way. So that’s, I guess, my story of resilience, and what it means to me. I was a part of a project- so coming back to all the donation- when my daughter passed away, she was able to be an organ donor to three people. So, she changed the lives of three women around the country. Which is massive part of managing my grief, and coping with it, knowing there’s people out there my daughter’s living on in them. It’s a very special thing. Last year I was asked to write a chapter in a book called, “Life After,” and this book is a collection of stories from all corners of Australia, about just that- stories are how people manage their grief, and what that grief was. And, it’s not always the loss of a person. Grief comes in many, many forms. It wasn’t until the book came out, and I read other people’s stories- and there’s over 60 people, so I haven’t gotten through this book yet. It’s not a hard book to read, it’s not a sad book to read, it’s very uplifting. And what I found in the stories that I’ve read so far, [is] there’s people I- Old Uncle Archie wrote in this book, and he talks about the trauma of losing his wife.

There’s a whole host of people, and really quickly you see these themes, these themes are coming through. And reading Linda Burney, politician Linda Burney, reading her story was almost like we sat in a room and wrote our stories together, and it was an assignment- because it was so similar, it was really unbelievable because I’ve never met this woman in my life, and our stories were quite similar, but our words and how we expressed them, and how we moved through our grief, was quite incredible. So, I found this; I look at that book, and whatever it’s called, this is a book of resilience. All of these people are here, they’re sharing their stories, and to me, that’s the best thing you can do for each other, for the next generation.  These kids are growing up with COVID, and you know, a whole host of awful, awful things happening in the world. These are what we need to become the most resilient generation in our time. It’s a really important, and for us to be able to set them up to do that, we’ve got to be able to talk about the hard stuff.

So, look. Yeah, if there’s one thing I want people to take away, everyone in this room is going through something. There’s no doubt about that. Every single person, because nobody has a perfect life, we’re all going through something. Support each other, talk about the hard stuff, and I can’t not say this in a room, in a form like this, if you haven’t yet registered as an organ donor, please do so. Australians that [can be an] organ donor, register in Australia, because we need more people to register so more people’s lives can be saved. I’ll leave you with that, thank you for listening.

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