Larissa Muir

VP: Hi there. My name is Vuma Phiri, coming to you from Centre for Stories in Boorloo/Perth 

Today we present to you City of Stirling Backstories at Perth Festival: stories from residents living in the City of Stirling. Here, we showcase local residents sharing their most memorable lived experiences from the neighborhood. What connects them to this place? What connects them to their neighbours and community? 

In partnership with the City of Stirling and Perth Festival, Centre for Stories captured these experiences of connection to community and place on Whadjuk Nyungar boodjar. We pay our respect to Whadjuk Elders, and all Aboriginal people from the beginning, who are the knowledge-keepers and custodians of this place. 

In this episode, you will hear Larissa Muir’s story. Larissa is the CEO of 12 Buckets, a local charity operating within the City of Stirling. She has over 15 years of experience in the not-for-profit sector. This is Larissa.  

LM: I’m originally from Melbourne. Please don’t hold that against me. And growing up as a little girl, I always thought that everyone around me knew a little bit of information that I didn’t know. What this felt like was that we’re all playing a game of Snap. We each had a deck of cards with 52 cards in it, and we knew the rules that when your two cards matched, you needed to slap on the deck and yell out “Snap!” And be the first one to do it. All around me, I could see everyone snapping and ending the game, but for whatever reason, my cards never matched, and I was stuck playing Snap forever. Well, that’s what it felt like. 

What this looked like was, I remember this one time where I was walking back from the shops with my sister and I could see just ahead of us about 200 meters away. There were these two young boys that was standing at the bus stop. I turned to my sister, and I said, “What are we gonna do? They’re gonna talk to us. They’re gonna try and talk to us. What do we say? What do we do?” She was really calm about it, and she said, “Larissa, don’t worry about it. They’re probably not even gonna try and say anything. Just forget about it.” But I couldn’t because I knew that they would. Couldn’t tell you why at the time, but I just knew. So, we’re 150 meters away. The boys are still there, and in my head, I’m trying to figure out what is the perfect line that I could say to them. And so, I landed on, “no thank you”, and sticking my hand out in front of me and just wanting to walk past really confidently. I was 10 at the time. And so, I’m practicing this line in my head. “No Thank you. No thank you. No, thank you”. We’re about 50 meters away and the boys turned, and they’ve clocked us, they’ve seen us, so there’s definitely a higher chance that they’re gonna start talking to us. So, I’m practicing this line in my head. We’re about five meters away, and the closest boy to us inches forward, as if he was about to say something. Before he could even open his mouth, confidently, I stuck my hand out and said, “no thank you!” And kept on walking, turning the corner to my street and only stopping just a few doors down from my house. 

My sister casually walked around the corner, and I watched her, and it was so painful because she was just walking really slowly. As she approached me, she said, “Larissa, you are so weird. All they wanted to know was what was the time? Because they were waiting for the bus”. In that moment, my numbers didn’t match, and I was stuck playing the game of Snap. I had lots of these experiences growing up in primary school. However, in high school, things seemed to settle down. I felt like I was really close to my numbers matching and finally being able to end this game of Snap. In the year 2000, though, my parents had different ideas and they decided it was time for a sea change. Not just any sea change. We’re about to move from Melbourne, all the way to a place called Perth, which I’d never seen before on a map or even been to. And they’d bought a house in Karrinyup in the City of Stirling. All of a sudden it felt like I had to restart the game again. In Melbourne, I got into the rowing team, and I was actually quite good. In Perth, though, the high school that I was going to, they didn’t have a rowing team, and so, I needed to find something else that I’d invest my time in. In Melbourne, me and my friends had so many different places to go. We’d go to Chapel Street; we’d go into the city. It always felt like there was something interesting and fun to do. In Perth, I needed to get used to being outside a lot and going to the beach. And I love being in the water, don’t get me wrong. But it was afterwards where I was wet and had sand all over me, that was the part that I really hated. 

I guess the biggest difference, though, was that in Melbourne, we never had to think about whether the shops were gonna be open. They were always open. But back in the year 2000, we had to get used to Thursday night, late night shopping, and we only tried going out on a Sunday once before 11 o’clock, and that was because all we saw were tumbleweeds. So, we learned our lesson there. Again, throughout high school, getting into university, these are all things that I got really used to, and I felt like, again, my numbers were about to match. I felt really grounded and connected within the City of Stirling. And so, when I met my husband, we actually didn’t leave, we just stayed within the City of Stirling. We welcomed our twins in 2016, Jacob and Sienna, and they were great. They hit all of their developmental milestones. There was nothing of concern, nothing that I could see. And when the twins turned three, I thought, “Great. This is that time where we’re gonna go out into the community. I can share with them the City of Stirling and the way that I see it”. However, after one dance class, the next day I was told, “This class isn’t for kids like Jacob, so please don’t come back”. 

And this happened a lot. And so, I would be at home looking at Jacob going, “what is it that everybody else sees?” Never being able to understand. We had lots of doctor’s appointments, lots of therapist appointments that we went to. And when Jacob was six, he was diagnosed with autism. We were suddenly flung into a world of trying to understand “what is autism?” What does this mean for Jacob? What does this mean for his future? School became a bit of a nightmare because we knew that after school, most probably we’d be met with meltdowns. And there was this one particular meltdown where I just knew from picking him up from school that there was something different. Couldn’t put my finger on it. But there was something different about Jacob. And as soon as he took one step into the house, it was the meltdown of all meltdowns. I had to quickly put my other kids away, so we’re safe and we have them settled. And me and Jacob proceeded to navigate his meltdown in his room. 

Now for Jacob, there’s no reasoning with him when he’s in a meltdown, all you can do is just wait for the steam to run out. So that’s what we did. For a whole 60 minutes, sat on the floor and watched Jacob destroy his bedroom. He finally sat down, and he was just heavy breathing. There was lots of silence in the air. And I just remember watching this one feather, and I just slowly drifted to the ground and just settled. Usually, I’d stop, and I’d ask Jacob, “Tell me what’s going on? Why are you doing this? What do you need?” But I knew in this moment that those questions weren’t gonna work. And so instead, I asked him, “What’s it like being you?” He told me that “It’s really hard that his brain is broken, and he wants his brain to be the same as everybody else’s. And he just wishes that people could look through his eyes”. I sat there as a parent like any parent would, hearing their kid, kid talking about pain, and thinking about “How can I protect you? How can I protect you through this pain?” But also having this thought of “Me too, bud, me too”. And so, at one of his therapy sessions, the therapist was explaining to Jacob about the importance of asking questions when you are connecting with friends or you’re trying to build new relationships. And in pure Jacob style, he just turned her and said, “But what if what they have to say is really boring?” And the therapist said, “Well, that’s just what we do. We ask questions”. She was teaching him the art of small talk, something that as an adult I dread sometimes as well, because once you’ve run out of that last question, you’re sort of left in this awkward silence. Jacob’s response to her was, “Well, that sucks, doesn’t it?” 

And I knew in that moment that there was more to me and Jacob, more things that we shared in common than just being mother and son. I went on a journey of exploring “Who could I speak to about this?” And I found a psychologist who I could speak to. And it involved three sessions, with the first two sessions speaking about the challenges I faced in childhood, speaking about the challenges I face now as an adult. And then the last session was her being able to share with me what her thoughts were. And so, I had my last session booked, but the night before, for whatever reason, I just couldn’t go through with it. So, I had to cancel. But for the next two weeks, it just sat in the back of my head around “What is it that she knows? What is it that she can tell me?” And so, I rebooked my session, and it was as if she knew that I might back out. And so, before I could even say anything, what she said to me was, “Larissa, I’m gonna tell you something now because I know that you’re not going to listen to anything until you know. You’ve got autism”. 

And in that moment, there was this wave of energy that started from my toes made its way up my legs to my belly, up through my chest, and came out of my eyes in the form of tears. Now, these weren’t tears of sadness. These were tears of joy and happiness. Because I finally found the piece of information that I was looking for Snap! I was able to exit this game. And overnight, I became Jacob’s translator. Together, we navigated the world of what it was to be autistic and to navigate a world that wasn’t built for people like us. At home, it was our happy place. It was our safe place, because we could stim, we could eat the foods how we wanted to, we could have the conversations that we wanted to in the way that we wanted to. No small talk required. But as soon as we went out in the community, I was met with comments like “A little bit of discipline never hurt anyone”. And “Why would you bring a child to a space like this?” Now, I could have been really angry at those community members, but I wasn’t because they didn’t know what they didn’t know. 

Now, I’m a massive Richmond Tigers fan, and I know we didn’t do too well last year, but there’s always hope for 2025. And I’m really lucky that Jacob is a massive Tigers fan as well. And it just so happens that the North Beach Junior Football Club, their mascot is a tiger. And so Jacob was raring to get into this team and to be part of the community. 

So, I signed him up, and we went to our first training session just down at Lake Gwelup. I walked up to his coach, Thumper, introduced ourselves, said, “Hey, Larissa, this is my son Jacob. He’s got autism”. And before I could say anything else, Thumper said, “Listen, I don’t have the resources that Jacob needs for one-to-one support. You know, I’m just a parent volunteer. I’ve got 20 other kids that I’ve gotta try and include in this game. And if he needs to sit out or if he just needs to sit on the bench, then that’s just what has to happen”. Again, as a parent, I could have been really angry, had every right to be. But Thumper didn’t know what he didn’t know. And so, I remember awkwardly putting some words together, walking backwards where all the other parents were, and just hoping and praying that the session would go really well. The first thing that Thumper did was pull all the kids together and say, right, we’re gonna go and do a warmup. We’re all gonna run together. If you see any of your teammates falling behind, fall back and encourage them to keep up with the rest of the team. 

And so that’s what all the kids did, including Jacob. They moved on to a handball drill where they needed to handball to the other side where the rest of their teammates were. And as they were running past their teammates, they just needed to high-five each other and introduce themselves, just say their first name. And so that’s what all the kids did, including Jacob. And at the end, Thumper made sure that there was at least 15-20 minutes for a scratch match. Before the game started, he said, “Now when someone does something really good, whether they kick a goal, it’s a point, they mark the ball, get around them and celebrate them”. And so that’s what all the kids did, including Jacob. And there was this one moment where one of the other kids – he dropped the ball and all of a sudden, the other side had grabbed him and kicked a goal, and he started to hang his head. And you could see that there wasn’t that motivation to keep going. He was feeling really sorry for himself. And Thumper stopped the game and said to them all, “You’re going to make mistakes, and that’s okay. And if you see your teammate hang their head, get around him, support him, remind him that we’re there for the next point and to keep going”. And so that’s what all the kids did, including Jacob. 

So, during the season, we had some really great wins that were super exciting. We also had some really challenging losses where we only lost by a couple of points. We also had some games we don’t talk about. But throughout the season, what never wavered was Thumper’s commitment to making sure that every single child in that team knew that they were part of it. And so, Thumper was wrong when he said he didn’t have the resources because he had everything that he needed to create a space for all kids to feel included, especially kids like Jacob. “Snap!”. Thank you. 

VP: This story collection was funded by the City of Stirling and Perth Festival and produced by Centre for Stories.  

Centre for Stories is a not-for-profit organization with charitable status. Our team is small and nimble, and we love what we do. To help us to continue to support diverse storytellers, consider a small donation. You can donate at centreforstories.com.  

This podcast was produced by Centre for Stories with story training from Vuma Phiri and sound engineering by Mason Vellios. Thank you.