November 14, 2025 • 50 mins
In this Heart On My Sleeve episode, host Michaela Overman sits down with Paul Bennell, Manager of Fundraising & Relationships at children’s grief charity Feel the Magic. Paul shares what it was like losing his mum to suicide at age 10, being bullied for his loss, and growing up hiding both his grief and his queer identity.
Together they explore “winter” as a season of grief, shame as a bodyguard and handbrake, and the coping strategies that look “high-functioning” on the outside but quietly erode us inside.
Paul reflects on learning to separate his worth from his mum’s death, to have hard conversations instead of ostriching, and how Feel the Magic now helps hundreds of kids - and the 10-year-old version of himself - feel seen, safe and less alone.
Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and childhood bereavement.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
All right, run it. I wonder what you mean when you
use the word. I use the word.
I I, I I. Kick a break.
We have an aversion to ourselvesand to what's happening inside
(00:21):
us. Inside us.
I've been very interested in this problem for a long, long
time. Something settles.
Hi guys, and welcome back to theHeart of My Sleeve podcast.
I'm your host today, Michaela Overman, and today I'm joined
(00:42):
with Paul Vannell. He is the manager for
fundraising and relationships for the charity Feel the Magic.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday.
Thank you for having me. I would love to start this
podcast by asking you what is something that you wish that
more people knew about you? About me, I feel like I never
(01:03):
want people to know more information about me.
I think that's probably a personal one kind of for me,
right? So, but me personally, working
at Feel the Magic is something Ifeel really passionate about
because often I hide the fact that my mother passed away when
I was really, really young. And I want people, more people
(01:27):
to know that about me because it's part of who I am.
And I'm able to live that out through Feel the Magic a lot
more than I could in the past. People might ask, like, why is
that something you wish more people knew about me?
And for me, it's about it's kindof who I am.
It's kind of how I navigate the world.
It's how I think about the world.
It's how I make decisions about things.
(01:48):
So in some respects I wish that that little part of me that I
think is maybe a wee secret, I may wish more people knew about
me. Yeah, yeah.
And why do you think it has beena wee secret?
So if you could take took me a while to appreciate this when I
was a kid. So I was my mother to suicide
when I was 10. So that's a really young time
(02:11):
for that to happen to any we kid.
And it's kind of all of these maybe do, particularly when
we're talking about mother loss and you're surrounded by a
father and my brother at the time, you kind of suppress and
put those things down and just try to move on with life.
That not kind of manifested to me into being something I was
quite shameful about. It was a thing that had happened
(02:33):
to me. I was bullied at school to 70%
of the kids that we support for the magic of bullying, for
losing a parent or sibling, a guardian which is parent as I
was one of those kids. Only for losing.
Bullied for losing a parent? So we spoke to 153 of our kids
and 70% of them experienced bullying from kind of the ages
of 7 to 17 just for being who they are for something that they
(02:57):
had nothing or no control over. So for me, that was my
experience. So I felt really shameful about
that as well. So I kind of pushed it down,
didn't think about it, and realised in my kind of adult
life that was kind of maybe manifesting in things that
probably weren't helpful, safe, all those kind of things.
So I kind of had to get to the target of why I felt shameful
(03:20):
about that, kind of work my way through that, work through the
pain and actually get to a pointwhere I felt actually this is
part of who I am and I can support maybe all the people
that have been through this as well.
Talk to me a bit about what thatpain was presenting as.
When you say dangerous, not helpful kind of traits or
habits. What did that look like?
(03:42):
Yes, I mean we know kind of through feel the magic that
kids, so the one in 20 kids thatexperience parent guardian loss
before the age of 1718. So before they leave school, 6
times more likely to pass away from suicide, end up with
alcohol addiction, drug addiction, those terrible things
when they are adults. For me, that was kind of my
(04:02):
experience in my early kind of adult years.
So leaving school, getting my first job, getting money, all
that kind of stuff. Coming out as a queer person,
going out to the queer scene, alcohol was flowing, drugs were
flowing. And I wouldn't suggest that I
was in the the groups of alcoholaddiction or drug addiction, but
(04:24):
I would suggest that I was usingthose avenues to release maybe
something that was sitting inside of me.
And I think I probably wasn't really aware of it at the time,
but on reflection, I was just kind of using that as a way to
take myself something different than what I was probably
avoiding for a really long time.So I was definitely like one of
(04:46):
those six times more likely to end up into those spaces.
And I was lucky to dance around myself with the right people
that then kind of point me in a different direction.
So not only are you experiencingthe loss that you have and
trying to navigate what life looks like with that, with
bullying, I mean, that statisticblows my mind that children who
(05:09):
are in such a horrific situationup and bully for that situation.
But then you're also navigating,trying to figure out who you are
and being proud of of that and having the shame that you say
you've experienced, that you internalise with, with what
happened with your mum and then also having that with your own
(05:31):
identity. That's a really difficult
combination. Yeah, and I think so.
We see hundreds of kids that feel about it.
So we're gonna see 850 kids thisyear, 12150 next year.
And I think increasingly kids are asked to kind of be
themselves, be the most authentic self, right?
And with the kids at Westwood. And from my own experience, a
(05:52):
large part of that is the loss that you've experienced and then
kind of the new world you craft around that.
And I remember thinking as a kidbeing bullied and being kind of
the other kid, the not normal kid, you know, the one in 20 kid
that you have to or you were going to suppress it because
trying to protect yourself kind of out in the school yard
(06:12):
because you don't want to be that weird child out there.
And I wasn't sure about my sexuality, my queerness as a
growing child either. So I was trying to maybe
suppress 2 parts of myself all at once.
And I would suggest that probably I'd never censor my own
identity until I left school andfound great people, you know, in
(06:35):
corporate landscapes and in in the real world that really did
believe in kind of the originality that people kind of
bring to themselves. So it's an interesting
observation of kind of how to create safe spaces, particularly
in their education system, wherekids are celebrated for being
unique, diverse, or all the facets that make up them.
(06:55):
And I often wonder, what would Ihave been like?
That's cool. Could things have been different
if that constructing system? Was growing up.
Do you think that that younger version of yourself that you're
talking about now that was filled with shame and and
confusion? What?
What do you think they would think of adult version of you?
(07:16):
I like to think that they're proud of me now.
And look, I think particularly with myself and particularly
with kind of feel the magic, we try to create role models in our
eco system. So only 2700 volunteers that are
supporting our kids and their families.
And we our ambition in that space is to ensure that our kids
(07:37):
have adult role models to know that, you know, it gets better.
It doesn't mean that if you experience that loss and shame
and that guilt that that is wrong.
I think that's a very natural feeling for a lot of our kids to
have and a lot of people to havein that situation.
But what they are looking for out of this, people that have
(07:57):
got their way through whenever that grief is about through
those tough times and then emerged to become better
versions of themselves. People that use that uniqueness
to then make something really powerful out of that as well.
So I like to think, you know, a 10 year old version of Paul
looking at kind of a 37 year oldversion of Paul goes, you know
(08:19):
what? That kids now putting good back
into the universe through their own lived experience.
And where possible, they're trying to ensure that the, you
know, if a new 10 year old Paul is coming through the world,
that that kid is going to end upwith a better future, a better
upbringing, a more supported community than he grew up.
(08:39):
With yeah. And is 37 year old Paul putting
in that love and support and caring to himself?
I know you said you're putting it into helping other versions
of 10 year old you, but are you putting that into you now?
And I'd like to think that that's happening through the
community that I've surrounded myself with.
So the Field of Magic community in particular are a unique grade
(09:01):
of people. So 70% of people that are a part
of the field of the Magic familyhave lived experience of loss,
particularly when they were younger.
And it's a very unique loss to experience only one in 20 people
who experienced it. So actually having a community
of people that you feel like youcan actually talk to that
understand you, that get you actually is a really nice outlet
(09:26):
to be able to talk to. So I would say that the work is
actually coming through that community rather than being
seeking special support. It's actually about the right
people around me. I'm like an amazing husband, an
amazing family, an amazing groupof friends that I'm really,
really open with about my my children childhood.
They embrace that part of me as well.
(09:49):
So I would suggest have taken meuntil very recently to get that
kind of community of support around me that if I am having a
good day, bad day, I'm in winterfrom a grief perspective and I
might need a bit of extra care and I've got the right people
inside of my kind of bubble to help me out.
What does winter look like? Yeah, so I feel the magic.
(10:11):
We talk about grief being not a linear journey that we teach our
kids grief through the seasons and winter is often kind of when
you're in the grips of your grief and or your loss.
We're teach kids mechanisms and to support them with that.
For me, the most people, it's often kind of Christmas, it's
(10:34):
birthdays, it's the anniversary of someone's loss that can kind
of bring you back. For me, the winter version of
grief doesn't cut the stick because it's been a solid kind
of 25 years since my brother passed away, but it does take me
back every now and then I think,oh, I get a bit reflective about
that experience and I get in my head to get sour to get a bit
(10:56):
lost about kind of what I'm doing.
It's generally short for me because I know kind of what I
need to do to kind of get myselfout of there.
I talk about it for me being about a bit of a window shut
down moment. So there are times where I keep
keep grief and I just go a bit quiet and a bit, I'm not sure
what's going on here. And then I checked myself and
(11:17):
got called like, what have I learned?
And then kind of what I need to get out of that.
So for me it's very, very short lived and the bounce back, it's
quite quick. What about in your earlier life?
What? How long do those windows last
for? I would suggest I was probably
in winter for a really, really long time and I'm sure I got out
of winter for years on reflection.
(11:38):
And I think that that meant thaton the veneer, everything looked
cute. Everything looked fine.
I did great at school. I had good friends at school,
but deep down inside, like I knew I was hiding kind of who I
was. So I wouldn't necessarily
suggest that I was one of those kids that looked like they were
just showing symptoms of being depressed or anxious or, or
(12:00):
shameful about who they were because I had really good
masking to be able to make sure the world couldn't see that.
But then at home, I was a kid that, again, would mask in front
of my my brother and my dad and my family, but then would go
into my room and then just kind of shut down just kind of in
(12:22):
there as well. So I was very much an
internalizer as a kid, which made it kind of difficult for
people to know that I needed that type of support as a kid.
So for me it was about actually just holding space by myself and
just keeping grief there, ratherthan being a really open,
(12:44):
visceral experience. Verifying it was very
internalised for me. And did you ever give yourself
that space to be able to have anopen, respirable response to the
grief that you've been through? And so it probably changed for
me when I, I found a couple of really good friends kind of in
my labour stages of high school where I kind of probably for the
(13:05):
first time let them know what was going on for me as well.
Because because I lost my motherwhen I was in primary school.
Kind of when you move into high school, you can kind of create a
new kind of version of who you are.
And I probably did that for 4/4 and 1/2 years or so and found a
really good group of friends year 11 and 12 who was able to
be like, this is actually kind of my back story and how I think
(13:27):
it is infecting me. And had a good cry, had a good
release, connected with these guys in a way that I was having
to be my true self with them. So it probably wasn't until I
was 17, potentially 18 before I was like, I'm not OK, this is
who I am. And the great thing is that that
(13:48):
group of friends I had at the time, it embraced what it was
like. It wasn't something to be
embarrassed about. It wasn't something to be
ashamed about. And I kind of wish that I'd
spoken about it well before thatactually reached out and spoken
to these guys. Yeah.
I mean, I think two things from what you're saying, 1 is that is
such a big burden for a 10 year old child to take on.
(14:11):
I mean, my stepson is 10 and I imagine him so young, feeling
that internal burden of I need to hide who I am and for him to
carry shame from something that his parent chose to do is also,
it's so heavy. That would have been such a big
(14:31):
burden for you to carry. Yeah.
And I think you don't realise that you're doing it as a 10
year old. Yeah, initially, right.
You're like just to growing up learning who you are, kind of
navigate the world trying to become, you know, make friends
and all those things starting toprioritise.
But I do remember because a lot of the time kind of at that age
(14:52):
and we see this with our kids that feel romantic as well.
Is that particularly with kind of lost my suicide, You think,
you know, I could have done something differently or I said
something wrong or what could I have done to stop that?
And so the grief is kind of twofold.
It's the loss of but then could I have done more and you kind of
interrogate your own life to go to like how I caused this.
(15:16):
So it's it's holding two kind ofspaces around that grief.
And I would suggest that Australian culture more
generally isn't fabulous about talking about grief, shame, all
those things. And the natural thing is about
it's all right, should be all right, it's OK.
Rather than kind of lifting themout and talking about them.
(15:37):
I'd also suggest that grief support more generally is
focused at older people, so adults or of the teenagers.
So there isn't a lot that is done for kind of really young
kids. So I think we think the best
approach is to just surround them with love, surround them
with cotton, rather than actually trying to have some
really tough conversations. And, and I'd suggest if I was
(16:00):
able to do that, I would have held my grief and held my shame
for a lot less time than I did. Yeah.
How did your dad interact with you after this experience?
So I think that I had a very kind of traditional kind of
upbringing in terms of kind of my father kind of situations,
traditional role structs and that kind of stuff.
And the one thing I would say that I love my kind of dad for
(16:23):
in all this context is he wantedthe best for his kids, right?
And what happens for a lot of our families and feel the magic
can happen for me as well, is that you go from kind of having
two parents or guardians to one that's hard enough to raise 2,
two kids like that. But then often you're going from
kind of dual income to a single income.
So how do you then continue to make sure that you have roofs at
(16:45):
your head, food on the plate, you know, getting your kids to
school? And my dad definitely
prioritised that to ensure that my brother and I still had a
fabulous education. Roofs over our head, you know,
clothes and about all that kind of stuff.
So work extra work, extra jobs to ensure that we have the right
level of support. It is kind of A2 edge sword
(17:07):
though, right? Because it's you're out there
doing those things, ensuring that your family is really,
really supportive, which I love,but then ensuring that how are
you supporting your kids? So it's one of the hardest
things that we also see that feel the magic is that how can I
do all of this as a single parent.
So I would say that we were distant in the conversations
(17:29):
around grief, you know, shame, trauma, all that kind of stuff,
but not for the black. And maybe wanting to do that.
It's it wasn't a priority for usas a family at that point in
time. Yeah, which probably as a child
made you internalise that shame even more.
Yeah. Because it's like, well, if it's
not being spoken about, then it's not meant to be spoken
about. And a lot of those things are
(17:50):
not conscious thoughts, especially as a 10 year old.
And I mean as a 10 year old, thenumber one priority for a
child's brain is to not view theparent in a negative light,
whether that be your mom in thisexperience or your dad.
And they instead internalise that there is something wrong
with me for this to have happened.
There is something wrong with mefor dad not to be able to spend
(18:11):
time with me or there is something wrong with me for mom
taking her own life. You know, and we don't think in
those moments, this is what I'm doing and I'm making dad or mom,
you know, putting them on a pedestal.
It's what our brain is wired to do because we're wired for
connection. Yeah.
And when we're wired for connection, we will get rid of
anything that gets in the way ofthat.
(18:32):
And that usually means saying, well, it's me, I'm the problem.
It's not them. They're great.
I want to be close to them still.
Yeah. I want to feel like they haven't
done anything wrong still. And then we internalise a lot of
those emotions. Yeah.
And carry them around on our shoulders of shame and, and, and
confusion. Yeah.
I think that's absolutely right.Like I think we, my brother and
(18:54):
I, and I distinctly remember this for myself, actually
achieved more in sport, we achieved more academically after
my mother passed away. And I think on reflection, what
that is with us trying to ensurethat everything's fine, we're
all good, we're still, you know,on the right track, we're not
(19:14):
abnormal and that we were tryingto do the best for our dad as
well. And it's, it was a deliberate
avoidance strategy. I believe on reflection that it
was grades needs to look good. You know, we're doing good
because I might have failed at this public thing, but these
things are still really good. So the future is still looking
(19:36):
bright and rosy. However, I know I might have
done something that caused my mother to pass away.
So there is that interesting tension that kids have.
You're absolutely right that youwant to do as much as possible
to make sure that you're in goodkeeping, for lack of better
term, with Dad, to make sure that he is happy.
Because also in the back of yourmind as a kid, you're wondering,
(19:56):
well, did I do this to mom? But they can also do this to dad
as well, right? Because you're not quite sure
how it all. You don't understand how.
Yeah, you difficult everything workers.
So you're not sure where to the extent where this is end.
Yeah, as well. So hard do you think about a
little 10 year old kid now like a 10 year old is so young about
(20:19):
them internalising that message I contributed to my mom dying
and not being here anymore. Could I do the same thing to
that? Think.
About the responsibility that you put on yourself, like you
think that you have that power to make them take their lives.
And you think about like a growing tenure brain, right?
I would suggest that it's as much rational as kind of, it's
(20:42):
not very rational, right? And so it's trying to pull bits
of things together to try and make sense of the world without
any experience and trying to be able to do that as well, which
is kind of why I feel the magic we think is important for kind
of kids to grieve together wherepossible, right?
So that we can create a space that kids can talk about how
(21:03):
they're feeling and talk about their emotions in a really safe
space where we're not there to fix these kids.
Good knocking is problem with these kids, but we want to
ensure that if they are having those thoughts that they can
externalise them as a starting point.
And then if they need our support framework to support
(21:24):
them with those thoughts or whether or not they're right
wrong or not that we're in thereto help them too.
So you know, we often say our kids are there's nothing wrong
with them, right? But what we want to ensure that
they do is sort of create a space where they can understand
their thoughts, they can understand their grief in a way
that we can support them with the right interventions to
(21:45):
ensure that they end up with thebest version of themselves
through their grief as well. So you internalise those
thoughts and feelings about yourself until you're around the
age of 1718 when you made these good friends at school.
There's some really pivotal years of your life and a long
season of winter as you described.
(22:07):
How do you think that shows up for you now in like maladaptive
coping mechanisms? Because what you described
before of like, you know, I'm achieving high grades and I'm
doing the best I can at sport and I'm doing all these things,
like you said to an outsider, Black kids not impacted at all
by this. They're doing so great.
But really, and this is maybe a weird comparison, but you had
(22:31):
potentially had the path of, youknow, being addicted to drugs
and drinking and you're actuallyin both those situations using
maladaptive hamburger mechanisms.
The outside world just assumes that that one's a good one to
get. Oh, great that you got that type
of coping. But really, the equally can be
as damaging to your internal dialogue and to your inner
(22:54):
critic in the way that you potentially show up in the
relationship with your husband or with your friends of make
sure that, you know, you're always people pleasing and
making sure they're OK or there's conflict here.
Make sure I fix that so that nothing bad happens to them.
Or, you know, do you feel like any of those kinds of messaging
internalised now for you? Yeah, I mean, so kind of last
(23:18):
week I was hanging out with Mitch and we we did the heart
obviously kind of who are you? What type of kind of
communicator are you? And I'm definitely the ostrich,
right? So put your head in the sand,
pretend nothing happens, right. So if I think about maladaptive
behaviours, it's actually about how I communicate around things
that are slightly more difficult, right?
(23:39):
So if I need to have a difficultconversation with my husband or
anyone, it's easier for me to say, oh, no, we don't need to
have that conversation. Like we're just kind of bury my
head in the sand and let's talk about something like nice, let's
talk about what we're doing on the weekend.
That's about a holiday, that's about something else other than
the really difficult conversation.
And I think that's what we sent it in that season of breakfast
(24:02):
so long where I actually pushed down all of the different
conversations, don't have those difficult conversations and
actually just talk about things that are not veneer, but things
that are happy and glossy things.
And I definitely do that still as an adult.
It is a lot more difficult for me to reach in, have more
difficult conversation. And often it's because you, you
(24:24):
fear the consequence of, I know by trying this a couple of times
that it's not the true fact. Most people want to, to ask them
about those difficult things. They want you to relate, they
want you to listen and then justbe with them and be what you
need to be for them in that moment.
As with most things, it takes muscle memory to learn those
things. I'm trying to do that a lot
(24:45):
more. I've been doing it a lot more
over the past kind of 18 months,more deliberately to go, you
know what, I can learn this behaviour, I can unlearn some
past behaviours in this space. So looking at maladaptive stuff,
it's my actual ability to communicate around really
complex conversations is something I see manifest in me
as an adult very long. Because I noticed it even in
(25:07):
this podcast interview, right? Whenever we start talking about
you and your experience and yourgrief, you bring it back to the
charity. Like, it's here for a sales
pitch, right? Yeah.
Of Field Magic. Yeah.
Which is very understandable. But even that, it's like, oh,
we're going a little bit like deeper into your experience and
let's bring it back into how it relates to other kids going
(25:28):
through your experience. It's like, now I want to talk
about your experience, not otherkids going through your
experience. I think it's very understandable
that your brain jumps to worst case scenarios here of if this
conversation doesn't go well or goes too deep, what impact is
that going to have on somebody else?
And for a lot of people that have, let's call it people
(25:50):
placing tendencies or head in the sand tendencies, the worst
case scenario is like you break up with someone or something
like that. But for you, the worst case
scenario was somebody dies. That's a whole different ball
game. So for your brain to say, OK,
we're going to let you develop new communication techniques or
we're going to let you develop new thinking patterns, that's
(26:14):
going to take a lot of evidence to keep showing your brain, we
did this thing. Nobody died.
Yeah, we did this thing. Everybody's safe.
We did this thing. It felt really uncomfortable,
but I'm OK. Yeah, your brain's going to need
a lot of evidence of that beforeit says OK, what?
We can have difficult conversations.
(26:35):
I very much remember as a kid, and I can't remember where it
was in high school, I learned the concept that I was taught
about the catastrophe scale, right?
So, you know, if one was stubbing your toe and 10 might
be, you know, your own car accident, something like that,
Everyone has their own unique catastrophe scale.
I very distinctly remember my 10being someone dying, which in
(26:58):
the context of a, you know, kid growing up, that's probably not
a normal catastrophe to scale that.
I did have stuff in my toe because I hate to stuff in my
toe as as level 1, but I remember level 10 very much
being or if I do something wronghere, someone may die.
And I used that to kind of regulate myself at school in
terms of how, you know, if I go to bad grade or something in
(27:19):
math, it's OK, no one's died kind of from this.
So it was how do I self regulate?
How do I figure out where I am on this catastrophe scale?
But it was a definitely a learned behaviour in my 10 was
that end of the spectrum. So you're right, there's learned
behaviour that I wouldn't suggest the wrong learned
behaviour, but maybe that scale is not appropriate for them.
(27:43):
It's maybe not appropriate for now.
So how do I go back to going well?
Like what's actually more reasonable?
What's more realistic for measuring the stress?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely nothing wrong with your brain doing
that. It makes perfect sense.
It's how your brain is meant to protect you in those moments is
to avoid anything that can lead to that outcome.
(28:06):
And as a kid, your brain is going to internalise that as
saying no to someone or, you know, pushing back on I don't
want to do that dad or whatever it is.
That's very understandable that your brain did that to protect
you because every single one of these things is your brain
trying to protect you. I just think it's like when you
reflect on it and you think about that, there are kids whose
(28:29):
anxiety that I see, they will think 1110 is someone dying, but
they haven't experienced it. That's just because they have
anxiety, right? But for your brain, it's like,
no, I have the literal piece of evidence that someone can die
and be taken away from my life. That is a piece of evidence that
is astronomical for a brain to be able to let go of.
(28:54):
And there is nothing wrong with you now at all by the fact that
you are an ostrich. There's nothing that you need to
fix about yourself. You just need to learn to sit
back and gather enough evidence that you do do a little bit of
this conversation and nothing bad happened and then you do a
little bit more of it in a bit more of it.
It's not about you changing, it's about you slowing down
(29:16):
enough to gather enough evidencethat the worst case didn't
happen and doing it slowly and slowly and slowly enough that
your brain goes OK. That is something that no child
should ever go through, and it was the absolute worst case.
But I've seen enough Times Now that the worst case doesn't
happen. Yeah.
So helping a new muscle membraneto this, right, because the
(29:38):
brain itself has developed thosenewer pathways to go.
This is kind of how I consume the world.
It's fitting it with new information, new experiences to
go actually we can retrain the brain here to think about what
does that mean, right? And it's very much about edging
in slowly and then getting to a new way of the brain thinking
(30:00):
about all this. So something I've taken away
very much again the past 18 months to start to bridge into
these conversations because it'sunhealthy for myself.
It's also unhealthy for my relationships not to want to
have these conversation where people may be reaching out to
you too often and so it's more beneficial to have them.
It is it is it difficult for me?Yes.
(30:22):
But almost always it is the right thing to do.
Yeah. It's just the how to.
Do it. It also would be about creating
space between what happened to your mom and your contribution
to it. I mean, have you done, you have
great friends and a beautiful support network around you and
that started, you know, at the end of high school.
(30:44):
Have you done much work on truly100% believing that you have no
involvement or responsibility inwhat happened with your mom?
I would say that there's still always a little nugget inside of
you that believes it's a thing that you caused this or you were
part of this because that's whatyou you believed for so long.
(31:07):
So would I say that has been white clean completely?
No. Do I think it will ever be
completely white clean? My heart says no.
I think there's always going to be a small part of that that is
there. But the more that I speak to,
you know, I'm my dad, my brotherand all that kind of stuff,
there was a far more complex ecosystem going on, right?
(31:31):
So my mother lives with a mentalhealth condition, which I didn't
know about as a kid. She also lived with
uncontrollable epilepsy. So it was I'm very, very strong
medication for that, but a lot of the time that medication
wouldn't work. So I've been moving in a
terrible car accident with my mom and my brother where she
(31:52):
lost control of the car. We crashed into a building.
I have to go to hospital. I remember frequently waking up
in the morning to my mom having fits in the shower, which I'd
have to help and get her in an ambulance for at the end of the
day. I know that my mother passed
away from suicide because she found life too difficult to
continue to live. It wasn't because of me, it
(32:16):
wasn't because my brother, wasn't because my dad actually
existence was too much for her with the ecosystem of mental
health and her uncontrollable epilepsy.
That her only way out of all this was not to be here anymore.
That is something really hard toconceptualise as a as a small
kid, but as an adult that makes a lot more sense that it was a
(32:39):
multitude of things. The family construct is part of
that potentially. But the larger drivers probably
had nothing to do with me, probably had nothing to do with
my dad. We had nothing to do with my
brother. It was everything to do with how
my mum was consuming the world around her.
And largely, and this was kind of in the early 2000s, there was
(33:03):
no way out of this for her. So the only way out was to kind
of not be here anymore. So kind of answer the question
like, a small part of me, I think will always existed.
Part of this is me. But whereas that would have been
a huge nugget in my mind, it's one that's there in the
(33:24):
background, but very rarely comes to the foreground of my
mind thinking about something. I could have changed.
I could have done something, yeah.
Even the experience that you explained that you had with your
mom before she took her life sounds really, really difficult
for a child to have to go through that uncertainty.
And that again, your level 10 ofworst case is I wake up, my
(33:46):
mom's having an epileptic fit inthe shower and I have to call an
ambulance is far different to what most 10 year olds, 9 year
olds, 8 year olds, 7 year olds have to experience.
So even that, like in your most formative years of attachment
styles, even you're dealing with, I need to be on the
lookout, I need to be hyper vigilant and I need to make sure
(34:08):
that mom's OK. That's that in itself is a
really big burden for a child tohave to carry.
Yeah, and I often describe to people of my childhood kind of
around my mother passing away and kind of prior to that as
well is in this constant fly to fly response.
But you don't really understand that's what you're going through
(34:31):
is kind of like a, you know, 78910 year old because you don't
really understand kind of that concept.
But I remember being anxious butnot being not knowing why I was
anxious about the lot. And it's exactly what you're
saying, right? Like I wasn't sure if I would
wake up in what situation my momwould be in.
I wasn't sure that if we went out to the local shops, what was
(34:51):
going to happen? So you're constantly in this
space where you're like, am I going to need to do something?
Am I going to need to get support for something and around
supporting my mom? And that's a really tough space
to kind of be, you know, my brother was in a kind of with me
as well. Because when your dad was out
there working, doing everything so often we were a lot of we
(35:13):
were support. We almost care is in some
respect to my mother, which again is a lot for a really,
really young kid to do. So you're right, we're very much
in this nearly. We were geared towards flights
like something is going to happen.
We need to be prepared. And that probably just continued
(35:35):
on even after my mother passed away, right?
Because, well, that's happened. And then what next is this thing
going to be? And I think if you're in that
space, just such a long period of time, it's actually really
difficult to draw a path from feeling that way chemically.
And then more response. They actually managing your own
just normal world as well. And then the way that your brain
learned to cope with that, like avoiding tough conversations,
(35:59):
that in itself then becomes supportive evidence for your
brain that if I do these things,I make sure nothing bad happens.
And it's like this, you know, negative feedback loop to the
brain where it's like, it's because I didn't have that tough
conversation that that person isnow still together with me.
Or it's because I didn't have, you know, show my real self that
(36:24):
that person didn't die. You know, your brain starts then
reinforcing these maladaptive coping mechanisms because it's
gathering evidence where it genuinely believes.
It's because I held on like thiswith control and was hyper
vigilant, looking out for everything.
Things stopped going wrong. Yeah.
And that's why now as an adult, it's really hard to change those
neural pathways and to let go ofthose behaviours because your
(36:47):
brain is like, But that's what keeps everybody alive.
Yeah. That's what keeps you.
OK, Paul, You can't stop doing those things.
And it's almost about stepping into this position where you say
to your brain, I know that you think that, but I'm going to act
like somebody that doesn't believe that.
Even if every part of my being in that moment is like, if you
(37:10):
do XY is going to happen, you might still think that because
you can't just tell your brain don't think that, but you still
act like a person who doesn't. And then your brain starts
getting evidence of the opposite.
You know, like to put that in a more simple term, it's like when
when I had a really strong fear of flying, my solution, I would
be on the aeroplane and I would want to ask the flight attendant
(37:32):
1,000,000 times, like what was that noise?
What was this? But instead I would still sit
there and in my head be like, what was that noise?
What is this, I want to ask? But I would keep my headphones
in and I would keep watching themovie and I'll act like someone
who wasn't afraid of the aeroplane.
I would act like someone who didn't think the worst case was
going to happen, even if in my head I kept saying it's going to
(37:55):
fucking crash. And then eventually I got enough
evidence that, hey, I landed andI'm alive.
It's not actually because I keptgiving my brain for years the
evidence that you land and you're OK because you asked what
every single sound was. You check what the flight path
was. You check this, you check that
you're doing the same thing in your own life, right?
Where all of these little thingsreinforced that little nugget
(38:18):
you were talking about of maybe I did have a role here.
And when you do that, it's impossible for that brain to let
go of feeling responsibility forsomething like that.
Yeah. And it's I think probably wasn't
until I became like I was going to think proper job.
What I mean by that is like, youknow, you spend your first years
(38:41):
in your 20s just experiencing the mess life has to offer that
I learned that shame was what's that next to pain after it tries
to protect the things that hurt you the most.
So we often have to get through to get to pain 1st.
And for me, obviously that shadebucket was like, you know, I've
(39:03):
done this right? But the pain actually is that
you've lost this person. And that is a hard thing to kind
of get to, right? Because you want to say, well, I
feel ashamed about this and it'smy fault.
And that's the the tough thing you actually need to get
through. And you get through that thing
and you go, this is fine. But actually getting to the
(39:24):
point they actually miss someoneand you wish they were here and
they're not going to come back is actually where you're trying
to get to. And that's what you're
protecting yourself from. And it wasn't until I, yeah, it
was in probably my mid 20s, probably even late 20s, that I
admitted to myself that I missedthis person, which is a strange
thing to think about, right? Because you'd suggest that I
(39:46):
should miss them all the time. But I didn't want to miss them
because I felt shameful about mycontribution to their death.
So it took me a while to be like, cool, this isn't my fault.
And once I got through, it's notfor my fault.
Even there's a small nugget thatsays maybe.
To go actually, what's painful is this person not here anymore.
(40:08):
And I hadn't even thought about that probably for like 1520
years because I've been protecting myself for that long.
So I'm actually point point now where I have a really healthy
relationship with the grief where I can't talk to my mom in
a way that, you know, I let her know how I'm going with life,
what I'm doing, what great things are happening, what bad
(40:29):
things are happening, which is something I would never have
felt comfortable doing before because I felt shameful going to
the space where I missed this person.
I should be able to communicate with this person.
So I feel like there's these maladapt behaviours that I
created around all this. I've got to a point now where
I'm like, actually, I just want to grieve in the way that I
missed this person in the same way I would miss her if she
(40:50):
passed away from cancer or, or anything.
And I think that's a really nicespace to kind of big at now.
Absolutely. It's a beautiful space
transition too. Yeah.
I think that the experience thatyou've been through will make
such a difference to so many children that are going through
Feel the Magic programme or listen to this podcast or you
(41:13):
stumble across in in your life. And I think using that pain to
help other people is is beautiful as long as we spend
time also reflecting on our own deeper story.
And it sounds like you are doingthat and allowing yourself to
truly feel the whole spectrum ofemotions and not just the ones
(41:33):
that like shame. I often describe this is like
concrete. You get stuck in it.
And then when you start to crackthat concrete up and you
actually get to the deeper, deeper emotion behind it, like
you said. It's painting, yeah.
And I think we learn really quickly that, like shame, I
learned quite a very long time for me to learn it.
But what I try to help people with now is that shame is
(41:54):
largely helpful emotion, right? It's trying to protect
something, but what it's creating is worse than what's on
the inside of that thing. And it might not feel like it at
that time. It might feel like it's doing
the right thing. It's protecting you from pain.
However, in my broad experience,that is not the case at all.
(42:16):
What it's protected, trying to protect you from something is
something that is harder and is slightly more painful, but what
is on the other side of that pain is often better once you
kind of get through that as well.
And I'm happy that I'm in the space now that I can openly talk
to people about this. I'm so grateful for my husband,
my family, kind of the field magic community.
(42:37):
I have my friends that kind of, they know this about me.
I feel comfortable talking to them about it and they are
supportive of me kind of throughthat as well.
And I can talk openly with them.I think what it then does,
particularly shame isn't a unique thing to call in my
experience, right? We all do it to ourselves.
(42:59):
And it's often the leading part of conversations I have with
people when I'm not ostrich in myself, right, Is to go like,
what is it that we're talking about here?
Are you embarrassed that you're painful?
Is it about paying? What's going on?
Because often people are just embarrassed about this situation
and can't happen. We have a better conversation to
support them as well. So I like to think that the my
(43:20):
healing has come kind of full circle in a way that I felt
embarrassed about my own experience that hopefully I'm
able to kind of turn the mirror slightly and go, well, this is
how I got through what I got through.
It may look similar for you. Let's explore whether or not it
is the same. If it is, this is how I navigate
(43:40):
to the world is how I thought about doing things, rightly or
wrongly. But I'd like to feel like
they're making a much better universe now than I was probably
five years ago. Definitely 10 years get
definitely better than was 25 years ago, for sure.
Yeah. I love that.
And I think that's a beautiful message to end this episode on.
If anybody is experiencing that emotion of shame, to maybe ask
(44:05):
themselves the question, what amI actually trying to protect?
What is the pain that is actually there that I'm trying
to avoid? Because shame is sitting like a
big bodyguard at the front of it.
But you're going to stay stuck there and it's not actually
going to better your life. But the irony is, I mean, people
(44:26):
think being in pain and feeling sadness, how's that going to
better my life? But 99% of emotions, except for
shame, even when they're really,really freaking tough, they can
still get you out the other sideto something that is so much
nicer and better for you. But if you stay with shame at
(44:47):
the door, it's going to be impossible to do that.
So asking yourself, all right, what is this big bad boy
protecting? You know what is shame?
Actually trying to stand in front of and reflect on that.
Yeah, 100% right. Like it's I love the kind of
idea of it thing, kind of the bodyguard, right?
And my natural thought to that was like the bodyguard of what?
(45:09):
Right, Like what is it protecting?
Because in my unique circumstance, I know it wasn't
protecting anything. It was protecting itself in some
regard. It was trying to createspace in
my mind that it was doing something.
I now know that it wasn't protecting anything, was just
creating a barrier to getting tohave a conversation with
(45:30):
something that's set more deeplykind of behind that.
And you're right, it can feel hard to get to what is sitting
beneath. But if you can't kind of get
there and live out that emotion,then you're going to going to be
playing with a handbrake the whole time.
And that's often I described it as well, I felt like a handbrake
(45:52):
in my life that couldn't be my authentic self.
I couldn't live out how I wantedto experience the world because
I had this kind of handbrake going on.
So I feel like shame is both thethe bodyguard, but also the
handbrake to you actually livingan authentic, happy, full life
as well. Yeah.
(46:13):
There's a potential that shame in that situation specifically,
which then makes your mind thinkthat you played a role in what
happened. There's a potential when you're
that young that your brain did that as well because if it
didn't and thought that you had no role in this, that that in
(46:34):
itself is almost too overwhelming for a young brain
because then it has to live in this reality that something so
catastrophic can happen and you don't have any control over it.
Like, no, I have to think to myself that there is some part
that I can control there. Because how do you get through
life thinking that something that catastrophic can happen and
(46:57):
you just don't have a choice about it?
It's just nothing in your control.
It's almost like protecting you in that standpoint too, that you
can try and avoid these things from happening because our
alternative is overwhelming in itself.
Yeah. And I would suggest that most
people that are kind of using shame of the wall and people
that experience loss that is really quick, unexpected end up
(47:23):
in avoidance, right. And I was kind of in that space
as well, Avoidance of the thing that happened.
But then create a new universe. Yeah, of things that will
distract from what's happening over here because avoidance is a
really strong way to go. Well, yes, that is, that's
(47:44):
gross. That's ugly.
I don't want to deal with that right now.
But if I have a shiny grade overhere, if I'm doing grade at
school over here, or if I've, you know, done a really great
piece of pottery. So I was grade pottery at
school, then to grade school, then that is going to become the
new focus point of attention andtherefore the world is good.
(48:07):
And it's hard to know what levelwas necessary.
For me, it was very much create these shiny things over here.
Working with kids now, I think it is a balance of both, right?
You need to try and give them great and lovely things to be
able to experience in a life, but also dig into that deep
conversation on a sandwich. It's behind that as well.
(48:29):
So we had the absolutely wrong balance, but now working with
kids it's probably a balance of the 2 events.
Yeah, I love that. It's a beautiful place to come
out the other side too. Yeah, for sure.
I'm very blessed to be part of kind of the field of community
more generally to help me with continued grieving, right?
(48:49):
Continued work on myself and surrounding myself with people
that understand what that is like.
But then also to be able to sit down on a swing with an 8 year
old and for them to be able to connect with me through their
own lived experience and for them to be able to have really
(49:09):
honest and open conversations with someone that truly
understands what they're going through.
It's one of those kind of pinch me moments that you had to have
in my universe at the moment where you can see yourself
reflected back. So often people ask me that what
would you say to your own 10 year old self?
I get to do that all the time, which is incredibly enriching to
(49:34):
go that you know, maybe I didn'thave the best experience for
myself, but I have a way a bit of calf path forward for future
young poles coming through. That's beautiful.
I love that. Thanks.
Thank you so much for sharing your story today and wearing
your heart on your sleeve and for joining me.
Thank you for having me. Thank you so much guys.
(49:55):
I will see you in the next episode.
My emotions have a natural tendency to dissipate unless
they get reinforced. And so if there's more thoughts,
more stories, more intentions that come along, so the act of.
How am I leaving it alone? It is an act of not act, adding
more stories, adding fuel to it.So it might not go away in 2
(50:15):
minutes, but it then begins to relax and dissipate.
And so rather than being the person who has to fix, it would
become the person who makes space for the heart, the mind,
to relax and settle away itself.
All right, run it. I wonder what you mean when you
use the word. I use the word.
I I, I I. Kick a break.
We have an aversion to ourselvesand to what's happening inside
(00:21):
us. Inside us.
I've been very interested in this problem for a long, long
time. Something settles.
Hi guys, and welcome back to theHeart of My Sleeve podcast.
I'm your host today, Michaela Overman, and today I'm joined
(00:42):
with Paul Vannell. He is the manager for
fundraising and relationships for the charity Feel the Magic.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday.
Thank you for having me. I would love to start this
podcast by asking you what is something that you wish that
more people knew about you? About me, I feel like I never
(01:03):
want people to know more information about me.
I think that's probably a personal one kind of for me,
right? So, but me personally, working
at Feel the Magic is something Ifeel really passionate about
because often I hide the fact that my mother passed away when
I was really, really young. And I want people, more people
(01:27):
to know that about me because it's part of who I am.
And I'm able to live that out through Feel the Magic a lot
more than I could in the past. People might ask, like, why is
that something you wish more people knew about me?
And for me, it's about it's kindof who I am.
It's kind of how I navigate the world.
It's how I think about the world.
It's how I make decisions about things.
(01:48):
So in some respects I wish that that little part of me that I
think is maybe a wee secret, I may wish more people knew about
me. Yeah, yeah.
And why do you think it has beena wee secret?
So if you could take took me a while to appreciate this when I
was a kid. So I was my mother to suicide
when I was 10. So that's a really young time
(02:11):
for that to happen to any we kid.
And it's kind of all of these maybe do, particularly when
we're talking about mother loss and you're surrounded by a
father and my brother at the time, you kind of suppress and
put those things down and just try to move on with life.
That not kind of manifested to me into being something I was
quite shameful about. It was a thing that had happened
(02:33):
to me. I was bullied at school to 70%
of the kids that we support for the magic of bullying, for
losing a parent or sibling, a guardian which is parent as I
was one of those kids. Only for losing.
Bullied for losing a parent? So we spoke to 153 of our kids
and 70% of them experienced bullying from kind of the ages
of 7 to 17 just for being who they are for something that they
(02:57):
had nothing or no control over. So for me, that was my
experience. So I felt really shameful about
that as well. So I kind of pushed it down,
didn't think about it, and realised in my kind of adult
life that was kind of maybe manifesting in things that
probably weren't helpful, safe, all those kind of things.
So I kind of had to get to the target of why I felt shameful
(03:20):
about that, kind of work my way through that, work through the
pain and actually get to a pointwhere I felt actually this is
part of who I am and I can support maybe all the people
that have been through this as well.
Talk to me a bit about what thatpain was presenting as.
When you say dangerous, not helpful kind of traits or
habits. What did that look like?
(03:42):
Yes, I mean we know kind of through feel the magic that
kids, so the one in 20 kids thatexperience parent guardian loss
before the age of 1718. So before they leave school, 6
times more likely to pass away from suicide, end up with
alcohol addiction, drug addiction, those terrible things
when they are adults. For me, that was kind of my
(04:02):
experience in my early kind of adult years.
So leaving school, getting my first job, getting money, all
that kind of stuff. Coming out as a queer person,
going out to the queer scene, alcohol was flowing, drugs were
flowing. And I wouldn't suggest that I
was in the the groups of alcoholaddiction or drug addiction, but
(04:24):
I would suggest that I was usingthose avenues to release maybe
something that was sitting inside of me.
And I think I probably wasn't really aware of it at the time,
but on reflection, I was just kind of using that as a way to
take myself something different than what I was probably
avoiding for a really long time.So I was definitely like one of
(04:46):
those six times more likely to end up into those spaces.
And I was lucky to dance around myself with the right people
that then kind of point me in a different direction.
So not only are you experiencingthe loss that you have and
trying to navigate what life looks like with that, with
bullying, I mean, that statisticblows my mind that children who
(05:09):
are in such a horrific situationup and bully for that situation.
But then you're also navigating,trying to figure out who you are
and being proud of of that and having the shame that you say
you've experienced, that you internalise with, with what
happened with your mum and then also having that with your own
(05:31):
identity. That's a really difficult
combination. Yeah, and I think so.
We see hundreds of kids that feel about it.
So we're gonna see 850 kids thisyear, 12150 next year.
And I think increasingly kids are asked to kind of be
themselves, be the most authentic self, right?
And with the kids at Westwood. And from my own experience, a
(05:52):
large part of that is the loss that you've experienced and then
kind of the new world you craft around that.
And I remember thinking as a kidbeing bullied and being kind of
the other kid, the not normal kid, you know, the one in 20 kid
that you have to or you were going to suppress it because
trying to protect yourself kind of out in the school yard
(06:12):
because you don't want to be that weird child out there.
And I wasn't sure about my sexuality, my queerness as a
growing child either. So I was trying to maybe
suppress 2 parts of myself all at once.
And I would suggest that probably I'd never censor my own
identity until I left school andfound great people, you know, in
(06:35):
corporate landscapes and in in the real world that really did
believe in kind of the originality that people kind of
bring to themselves. So it's an interesting
observation of kind of how to create safe spaces, particularly
in their education system, wherekids are celebrated for being
unique, diverse, or all the facets that make up them.
(06:55):
And I often wonder, what would Ihave been like?
That's cool. Could things have been different
if that constructing system? Was growing up.
Do you think that that younger version of yourself that you're
talking about now that was filled with shame and and
confusion? What?
What do you think they would think of adult version of you?
(07:16):
I like to think that they're proud of me now.
And look, I think particularly with myself and particularly
with kind of feel the magic, we try to create role models in our
eco system. So only 2700 volunteers that are
supporting our kids and their families.
And we our ambition in that space is to ensure that our kids
(07:37):
have adult role models to know that, you know, it gets better.
It doesn't mean that if you experience that loss and shame
and that guilt that that is wrong.
I think that's a very natural feeling for a lot of our kids to
have and a lot of people to havein that situation.
But what they are looking for out of this, people that have
(07:57):
got their way through whenever that grief is about through
those tough times and then emerged to become better
versions of themselves. People that use that uniqueness
to then make something really powerful out of that as well.
So I like to think, you know, a 10 year old version of Paul
looking at kind of a 37 year oldversion of Paul goes, you know
(08:19):
what? That kids now putting good back
into the universe through their own lived experience.
And where possible, they're trying to ensure that the, you
know, if a new 10 year old Paul is coming through the world,
that that kid is going to end upwith a better future, a better
upbringing, a more supported community than he grew up.
(08:39):
With yeah. And is 37 year old Paul putting
in that love and support and caring to himself?
I know you said you're putting it into helping other versions
of 10 year old you, but are you putting that into you now?
And I'd like to think that that's happening through the
community that I've surrounded myself with.
So the Field of Magic community in particular are a unique grade
(09:01):
of people. So 70% of people that are a part
of the field of the Magic familyhave lived experience of loss,
particularly when they were younger.
And it's a very unique loss to experience only one in 20 people
who experienced it. So actually having a community
of people that you feel like youcan actually talk to that
understand you, that get you actually is a really nice outlet
(09:26):
to be able to talk to. So I would say that the work is
actually coming through that community rather than being
seeking special support. It's actually about the right
people around me. I'm like an amazing husband, an
amazing family, an amazing groupof friends that I'm really,
really open with about my my children childhood.
They embrace that part of me as well.
(09:49):
So I would suggest have taken meuntil very recently to get that
kind of community of support around me that if I am having a
good day, bad day, I'm in winterfrom a grief perspective and I
might need a bit of extra care and I've got the right people
inside of my kind of bubble to help me out.
What does winter look like? Yeah, so I feel the magic.
(10:11):
We talk about grief being not a linear journey that we teach our
kids grief through the seasons and winter is often kind of when
you're in the grips of your grief and or your loss.
We're teach kids mechanisms and to support them with that.
For me, the most people, it's often kind of Christmas, it's
(10:34):
birthdays, it's the anniversary of someone's loss that can kind
of bring you back. For me, the winter version of
grief doesn't cut the stick because it's been a solid kind
of 25 years since my brother passed away, but it does take me
back every now and then I think,oh, I get a bit reflective about
that experience and I get in my head to get sour to get a bit
(10:56):
lost about kind of what I'm doing.
It's generally short for me because I know kind of what I
need to do to kind of get myselfout of there.
I talk about it for me being about a bit of a window shut
down moment. So there are times where I keep
keep grief and I just go a bit quiet and a bit, I'm not sure
what's going on here. And then I checked myself and
(11:17):
got called like, what have I learned?
And then kind of what I need to get out of that.
So for me it's very, very short lived and the bounce back, it's
quite quick. What about in your earlier life?
What? How long do those windows last
for? I would suggest I was probably
in winter for a really, really long time and I'm sure I got out
of winter for years on reflection.
(11:38):
And I think that that meant thaton the veneer, everything looked
cute. Everything looked fine.
I did great at school. I had good friends at school,
but deep down inside, like I knew I was hiding kind of who I
was. So I wouldn't necessarily
suggest that I was one of those kids that looked like they were
just showing symptoms of being depressed or anxious or, or
(12:00):
shameful about who they were because I had really good
masking to be able to make sure the world couldn't see that.
But then at home, I was a kid that, again, would mask in front
of my my brother and my dad and my family, but then would go
into my room and then just kind of shut down just kind of in
(12:22):
there as well. So I was very much an
internalizer as a kid, which made it kind of difficult for
people to know that I needed that type of support as a kid.
So for me it was about actually just holding space by myself and
just keeping grief there, ratherthan being a really open,
(12:44):
visceral experience. Verifying it was very
internalised for me. And did you ever give yourself
that space to be able to have anopen, respirable response to the
grief that you've been through? And so it probably changed for
me when I, I found a couple of really good friends kind of in
my labour stages of high school where I kind of probably for the
(13:05):
first time let them know what was going on for me as well.
Because because I lost my motherwhen I was in primary school.
Kind of when you move into high school, you can kind of create a
new kind of version of who you are.
And I probably did that for 4/4 and 1/2 years or so and found a
really good group of friends year 11 and 12 who was able to
be like, this is actually kind of my back story and how I think
(13:27):
it is infecting me. And had a good cry, had a good
release, connected with these guys in a way that I was having
to be my true self with them. So it probably wasn't until I
was 17, potentially 18 before I was like, I'm not OK, this is
who I am. And the great thing is that that
(13:48):
group of friends I had at the time, it embraced what it was
like. It wasn't something to be
embarrassed about. It wasn't something to be
ashamed about. And I kind of wish that I'd
spoken about it well before thatactually reached out and spoken
to these guys. Yeah.
I mean, I think two things from what you're saying, 1 is that is
such a big burden for a 10 year old child to take on.
(14:11):
I mean, my stepson is 10 and I imagine him so young, feeling
that internal burden of I need to hide who I am and for him to
carry shame from something that his parent chose to do is also,
it's so heavy. That would have been such a big
(14:31):
burden for you to carry. Yeah.
And I think you don't realise that you're doing it as a 10
year old. Yeah, initially, right.
You're like just to growing up learning who you are, kind of
navigate the world trying to become, you know, make friends
and all those things starting toprioritise.
But I do remember because a lot of the time kind of at that age
(14:52):
and we see this with our kids that feel romantic as well.
Is that particularly with kind of lost my suicide, You think,
you know, I could have done something differently or I said
something wrong or what could I have done to stop that?
And so the grief is kind of twofold.
It's the loss of but then could I have done more and you kind of
interrogate your own life to go to like how I caused this.
(15:16):
So it's it's holding two kind ofspaces around that grief.
And I would suggest that Australian culture more
generally isn't fabulous about talking about grief, shame, all
those things. And the natural thing is about
it's all right, should be all right, it's OK.
Rather than kind of lifting themout and talking about them.
(15:37):
I'd also suggest that grief support more generally is
focused at older people, so adults or of the teenagers.
So there isn't a lot that is done for kind of really young
kids. So I think we think the best
approach is to just surround them with love, surround them
with cotton, rather than actually trying to have some
really tough conversations. And, and I'd suggest if I was
(16:00):
able to do that, I would have held my grief and held my shame
for a lot less time than I did. Yeah.
How did your dad interact with you after this experience?
So I think that I had a very kind of traditional kind of
upbringing in terms of kind of my father kind of situations,
traditional role structs and that kind of stuff.
And the one thing I would say that I love my kind of dad for
(16:23):
in all this context is he wantedthe best for his kids, right?
And what happens for a lot of our families and feel the magic
can happen for me as well, is that you go from kind of having
two parents or guardians to one that's hard enough to raise 2,
two kids like that. But then often you're going from
kind of dual income to a single income.
So how do you then continue to make sure that you have roofs at
(16:45):
your head, food on the plate, you know, getting your kids to
school? And my dad definitely
prioritised that to ensure that my brother and I still had a
fabulous education. Roofs over our head, you know,
clothes and about all that kind of stuff.
So work extra work, extra jobs to ensure that we have the right
level of support. It is kind of A2 edge sword
(17:07):
though, right? Because it's you're out there
doing those things, ensuring that your family is really,
really supportive, which I love,but then ensuring that how are
you supporting your kids? So it's one of the hardest
things that we also see that feel the magic is that how can I
do all of this as a single parent.
So I would say that we were distant in the conversations
(17:29):
around grief, you know, shame, trauma, all that kind of stuff,
but not for the black. And maybe wanting to do that.
It's it wasn't a priority for usas a family at that point in
time. Yeah, which probably as a child
made you internalise that shame even more.
Yeah. Because it's like, well, if it's
not being spoken about, then it's not meant to be spoken
about. And a lot of those things are
(17:50):
not conscious thoughts, especially as a 10 year old.
And I mean as a 10 year old, thenumber one priority for a
child's brain is to not view theparent in a negative light,
whether that be your mom in thisexperience or your dad.
And they instead internalise that there is something wrong
with me for this to have happened.
There is something wrong with mefor dad not to be able to spend
(18:11):
time with me or there is something wrong with me for mom
taking her own life. You know, and we don't think in
those moments, this is what I'm doing and I'm making dad or mom,
you know, putting them on a pedestal.
It's what our brain is wired to do because we're wired for
connection. Yeah.
And when we're wired for connection, we will get rid of
anything that gets in the way ofthat.
(18:32):
And that usually means saying, well, it's me, I'm the problem.
It's not them. They're great.
I want to be close to them still.
Yeah. I want to feel like they haven't
done anything wrong still. And then we internalise a lot of
those emotions. Yeah.
And carry them around on our shoulders of shame and, and, and
confusion. Yeah.
I think that's absolutely right.Like I think we, my brother and
(18:54):
I, and I distinctly remember this for myself, actually
achieved more in sport, we achieved more academically after
my mother passed away. And I think on reflection, what
that is with us trying to ensurethat everything's fine, we're
all good, we're still, you know,on the right track, we're not
(19:14):
abnormal and that we were tryingto do the best for our dad as
well. And it's, it was a deliberate
avoidance strategy. I believe on reflection that it
was grades needs to look good. You know, we're doing good
because I might have failed at this public thing, but these
things are still really good. So the future is still looking
(19:36):
bright and rosy. However, I know I might have
done something that caused my mother to pass away.
So there is that interesting tension that kids have.
You're absolutely right that youwant to do as much as possible
to make sure that you're in goodkeeping, for lack of better
term, with Dad, to make sure that he is happy.
Because also in the back of yourmind as a kid, you're wondering,
(19:56):
well, did I do this to mom? But they can also do this to dad
as well, right? Because you're not quite sure
how it all. You don't understand how.
Yeah, you difficult everything workers.
So you're not sure where to the extent where this is end.
Yeah, as well. So hard do you think about a
little 10 year old kid now like a 10 year old is so young about
(20:19):
them internalising that message I contributed to my mom dying
and not being here anymore. Could I do the same thing to
that? Think.
About the responsibility that you put on yourself, like you
think that you have that power to make them take their lives.
And you think about like a growing tenure brain, right?
I would suggest that it's as much rational as kind of, it's
(20:42):
not very rational, right? And so it's trying to pull bits
of things together to try and make sense of the world without
any experience and trying to be able to do that as well, which
is kind of why I feel the magic we think is important for kind
of kids to grieve together wherepossible, right?
So that we can create a space that kids can talk about how
(21:03):
they're feeling and talk about their emotions in a really safe
space where we're not there to fix these kids.
Good knocking is problem with these kids, but we want to
ensure that if they are having those thoughts that they can
externalise them as a starting point.
And then if they need our support framework to support
(21:24):
them with those thoughts or whether or not they're right
wrong or not that we're in thereto help them too.
So you know, we often say our kids are there's nothing wrong
with them, right? But what we want to ensure that
they do is sort of create a space where they can understand
their thoughts, they can understand their grief in a way
that we can support them with the right interventions to
(21:45):
ensure that they end up with thebest version of themselves
through their grief as well. So you internalise those
thoughts and feelings about yourself until you're around the
age of 1718 when you made these good friends at school.
There's some really pivotal years of your life and a long
season of winter as you described.
(22:07):
How do you think that shows up for you now in like maladaptive
coping mechanisms? Because what you described
before of like, you know, I'm achieving high grades and I'm
doing the best I can at sport and I'm doing all these things,
like you said to an outsider, Black kids not impacted at all
by this. They're doing so great.
But really, and this is maybe a weird comparison, but you had
(22:31):
potentially had the path of, youknow, being addicted to drugs
and drinking and you're actuallyin both those situations using
maladaptive hamburger mechanisms.
The outside world just assumes that that one's a good one to
get. Oh, great that you got that type
of coping. But really, the equally can be
as damaging to your internal dialogue and to your inner
(22:54):
critic in the way that you potentially show up in the
relationship with your husband or with your friends of make
sure that, you know, you're always people pleasing and
making sure they're OK or there's conflict here.
Make sure I fix that so that nothing bad happens to them.
Or, you know, do you feel like any of those kinds of messaging
internalised now for you? Yeah, I mean, so kind of last
(23:18):
week I was hanging out with Mitch and we we did the heart
obviously kind of who are you? What type of kind of
communicator are you? And I'm definitely the ostrich,
right? So put your head in the sand,
pretend nothing happens, right. So if I think about maladaptive
behaviours, it's actually about how I communicate around things
that are slightly more difficult, right?
(23:39):
So if I need to have a difficultconversation with my husband or
anyone, it's easier for me to say, oh, no, we don't need to
have that conversation. Like we're just kind of bury my
head in the sand and let's talk about something like nice, let's
talk about what we're doing on the weekend.
That's about a holiday, that's about something else other than
the really difficult conversation.
And I think that's what we sent it in that season of breakfast
(24:02):
so long where I actually pushed down all of the different
conversations, don't have those difficult conversations and
actually just talk about things that are not veneer, but things
that are happy and glossy things.
And I definitely do that still as an adult.
It is a lot more difficult for me to reach in, have more
difficult conversation. And often it's because you, you
(24:24):
fear the consequence of, I know by trying this a couple of times
that it's not the true fact. Most people want to, to ask them
about those difficult things. They want you to relate, they
want you to listen and then justbe with them and be what you
need to be for them in that moment.
As with most things, it takes muscle memory to learn those
things. I'm trying to do that a lot
(24:45):
more. I've been doing it a lot more
over the past kind of 18 months,more deliberately to go, you
know what, I can learn this behaviour, I can unlearn some
past behaviours in this space. So looking at maladaptive stuff,
it's my actual ability to communicate around really
complex conversations is something I see manifest in me
as an adult very long. Because I noticed it even in
(25:07):
this podcast interview, right? Whenever we start talking about
you and your experience and yourgrief, you bring it back to the
charity. Like, it's here for a sales
pitch, right? Yeah.
Of Field Magic. Yeah.
Which is very understandable. But even that, it's like, oh,
we're going a little bit like deeper into your experience and
let's bring it back into how it relates to other kids going
(25:28):
through your experience. It's like, now I want to talk
about your experience, not otherkids going through your
experience. I think it's very understandable
that your brain jumps to worst case scenarios here of if this
conversation doesn't go well or goes too deep, what impact is
that going to have on somebody else?
And for a lot of people that have, let's call it people
(25:50):
placing tendencies or head in the sand tendencies, the worst
case scenario is like you break up with someone or something
like that. But for you, the worst case
scenario was somebody dies. That's a whole different ball
game. So for your brain to say, OK,
we're going to let you develop new communication techniques or
we're going to let you develop new thinking patterns, that's
(26:14):
going to take a lot of evidence to keep showing your brain, we
did this thing. Nobody died.
Yeah, we did this thing. Everybody's safe.
We did this thing. It felt really uncomfortable,
but I'm OK. Yeah, your brain's going to need
a lot of evidence of that beforeit says OK, what?
We can have difficult conversations.
(26:35):
I very much remember as a kid, and I can't remember where it
was in high school, I learned the concept that I was taught
about the catastrophe scale, right?
So, you know, if one was stubbing your toe and 10 might
be, you know, your own car accident, something like that,
Everyone has their own unique catastrophe scale.
I very distinctly remember my 10being someone dying, which in
(26:58):
the context of a, you know, kid growing up, that's probably not
a normal catastrophe to scale that.
I did have stuff in my toe because I hate to stuff in my
toe as as level 1, but I remember level 10 very much
being or if I do something wronghere, someone may die.
And I used that to kind of regulate myself at school in
terms of how, you know, if I go to bad grade or something in
(27:19):
math, it's OK, no one's died kind of from this.
So it was how do I self regulate?
How do I figure out where I am on this catastrophe scale?
But it was a definitely a learned behaviour in my 10 was
that end of the spectrum. So you're right, there's learned
behaviour that I wouldn't suggest the wrong learned
behaviour, but maybe that scale is not appropriate for them.
(27:43):
It's maybe not appropriate for now.
So how do I go back to going well?
Like what's actually more reasonable?
What's more realistic for measuring the stress?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely nothing wrong with your brain doing
that. It makes perfect sense.
It's how your brain is meant to protect you in those moments is
to avoid anything that can lead to that outcome.
(28:06):
And as a kid, your brain is going to internalise that as
saying no to someone or, you know, pushing back on I don't
want to do that dad or whatever it is.
That's very understandable that your brain did that to protect
you because every single one of these things is your brain
trying to protect you. I just think it's like when you
reflect on it and you think about that, there are kids whose
(28:29):
anxiety that I see, they will think 1110 is someone dying, but
they haven't experienced it. That's just because they have
anxiety, right? But for your brain, it's like,
no, I have the literal piece of evidence that someone can die
and be taken away from my life. That is a piece of evidence that
is astronomical for a brain to be able to let go of.
(28:54):
And there is nothing wrong with you now at all by the fact that
you are an ostrich. There's nothing that you need to
fix about yourself. You just need to learn to sit
back and gather enough evidence that you do do a little bit of
this conversation and nothing bad happened and then you do a
little bit more of it in a bit more of it.
It's not about you changing, it's about you slowing down
(29:16):
enough to gather enough evidencethat the worst case didn't
happen and doing it slowly and slowly and slowly enough that
your brain goes OK. That is something that no child
should ever go through, and it was the absolute worst case.
But I've seen enough Times Now that the worst case doesn't
happen. Yeah.
So helping a new muscle membraneto this, right, because the
(29:38):
brain itself has developed thosenewer pathways to go.
This is kind of how I consume the world.
It's fitting it with new information, new experiences to
go actually we can retrain the brain here to think about what
does that mean, right? And it's very much about edging
in slowly and then getting to a new way of the brain thinking
(30:00):
about all this. So something I've taken away
very much again the past 18 months to start to bridge into
these conversations because it'sunhealthy for myself.
It's also unhealthy for my relationships not to want to
have these conversation where people may be reaching out to
you too often and so it's more beneficial to have them.
It is it is it difficult for me?Yes.
(30:22):
But almost always it is the right thing to do.
Yeah. It's just the how to.
Do it. It also would be about creating
space between what happened to your mom and your contribution
to it. I mean, have you done, you have
great friends and a beautiful support network around you and
that started, you know, at the end of high school.
(30:44):
Have you done much work on truly100% believing that you have no
involvement or responsibility inwhat happened with your mom?
I would say that there's still always a little nugget inside of
you that believes it's a thing that you caused this or you were
part of this because that's whatyou you believed for so long.
(31:07):
So would I say that has been white clean completely?
No. Do I think it will ever be
completely white clean? My heart says no.
I think there's always going to be a small part of that that is
there. But the more that I speak to,
you know, I'm my dad, my brotherand all that kind of stuff,
there was a far more complex ecosystem going on, right?
(31:31):
So my mother lives with a mentalhealth condition, which I didn't
know about as a kid. She also lived with
uncontrollable epilepsy. So it was I'm very, very strong
medication for that, but a lot of the time that medication
wouldn't work. So I've been moving in a
terrible car accident with my mom and my brother where she
(31:52):
lost control of the car. We crashed into a building.
I have to go to hospital. I remember frequently waking up
in the morning to my mom having fits in the shower, which I'd
have to help and get her in an ambulance for at the end of the
day. I know that my mother passed
away from suicide because she found life too difficult to
continue to live. It wasn't because of me, it
(32:16):
wasn't because my brother, wasn't because my dad actually
existence was too much for her with the ecosystem of mental
health and her uncontrollable epilepsy.
That her only way out of all this was not to be here anymore.
That is something really hard toconceptualise as a as a small
kid, but as an adult that makes a lot more sense that it was a
(32:39):
multitude of things. The family construct is part of
that potentially. But the larger drivers probably
had nothing to do with me, probably had nothing to do with
my dad. We had nothing to do with my
brother. It was everything to do with how
my mum was consuming the world around her.
And largely, and this was kind of in the early 2000s, there was
(33:03):
no way out of this for her. So the only way out was to kind
of not be here anymore. So kind of answer the question
like, a small part of me, I think will always existed.
Part of this is me. But whereas that would have been
a huge nugget in my mind, it's one that's there in the
(33:24):
background, but very rarely comes to the foreground of my
mind thinking about something. I could have changed.
I could have done something, yeah.
Even the experience that you explained that you had with your
mom before she took her life sounds really, really difficult
for a child to have to go through that uncertainty.
And that again, your level 10 ofworst case is I wake up, my
(33:46):
mom's having an epileptic fit inthe shower and I have to call an
ambulance is far different to what most 10 year olds, 9 year
olds, 8 year olds, 7 year olds have to experience.
So even that, like in your most formative years of attachment
styles, even you're dealing with, I need to be on the
lookout, I need to be hyper vigilant and I need to make sure
(34:08):
that mom's OK. That's that in itself is a
really big burden for a child tohave to carry.
Yeah, and I often describe to people of my childhood kind of
around my mother passing away and kind of prior to that as
well is in this constant fly to fly response.
But you don't really understand that's what you're going through
(34:31):
is kind of like a, you know, 78910 year old because you don't
really understand kind of that concept.
But I remember being anxious butnot being not knowing why I was
anxious about the lot. And it's exactly what you're
saying, right? Like I wasn't sure if I would
wake up in what situation my momwould be in.
I wasn't sure that if we went out to the local shops, what was
(34:51):
going to happen? So you're constantly in this
space where you're like, am I going to need to do something?
Am I going to need to get support for something and around
supporting my mom? And that's a really tough space
to kind of be, you know, my brother was in a kind of with me
as well. Because when your dad was out
there working, doing everything so often we were a lot of we
(35:13):
were support. We almost care is in some
respect to my mother, which again is a lot for a really,
really young kid to do. So you're right, we're very much
in this nearly. We were geared towards flights
like something is going to happen.
We need to be prepared. And that probably just continued
(35:35):
on even after my mother passed away, right?
Because, well, that's happened. And then what next is this thing
going to be? And I think if you're in that
space, just such a long period of time, it's actually really
difficult to draw a path from feeling that way chemically.
And then more response. They actually managing your own
just normal world as well. And then the way that your brain
learned to cope with that, like avoiding tough conversations,
(35:59):
that in itself then becomes supportive evidence for your
brain that if I do these things,I make sure nothing bad happens.
And it's like this, you know, negative feedback loop to the
brain where it's like, it's because I didn't have that tough
conversation that that person isnow still together with me.
Or it's because I didn't have, you know, show my real self that
(36:24):
that person didn't die. You know, your brain starts then
reinforcing these maladaptive coping mechanisms because it's
gathering evidence where it genuinely believes.
It's because I held on like thiswith control and was hyper
vigilant, looking out for everything.
Things stopped going wrong. Yeah.
And that's why now as an adult, it's really hard to change those
neural pathways and to let go ofthose behaviours because your
(36:47):
brain is like, But that's what keeps everybody alive.
Yeah. That's what keeps you.
OK, Paul, You can't stop doing those things.
And it's almost about stepping into this position where you say
to your brain, I know that you think that, but I'm going to act
like somebody that doesn't believe that.
Even if every part of my being in that moment is like, if you
(37:10):
do XY is going to happen, you might still think that because
you can't just tell your brain don't think that, but you still
act like a person who doesn't. And then your brain starts
getting evidence of the opposite.
You know, like to put that in a more simple term, it's like when
when I had a really strong fear of flying, my solution, I would
be on the aeroplane and I would want to ask the flight attendant
(37:32):
1,000,000 times, like what was that noise?
What was this? But instead I would still sit
there and in my head be like, what was that noise?
What is this, I want to ask? But I would keep my headphones
in and I would keep watching themovie and I'll act like someone
who wasn't afraid of the aeroplane.
I would act like someone who didn't think the worst case was
going to happen, even if in my head I kept saying it's going to
(37:55):
fucking crash. And then eventually I got enough
evidence that, hey, I landed andI'm alive.
It's not actually because I keptgiving my brain for years the
evidence that you land and you're OK because you asked what
every single sound was. You check what the flight path
was. You check this, you check that
you're doing the same thing in your own life, right?
Where all of these little thingsreinforced that little nugget
(38:18):
you were talking about of maybe I did have a role here.
And when you do that, it's impossible for that brain to let
go of feeling responsibility forsomething like that.
Yeah. And it's I think probably wasn't
until I became like I was going to think proper job.
What I mean by that is like, youknow, you spend your first years
(38:41):
in your 20s just experiencing the mess life has to offer that
I learned that shame was what's that next to pain after it tries
to protect the things that hurt you the most.
So we often have to get through to get to pain 1st.
And for me, obviously that shadebucket was like, you know, I've
(39:03):
done this right? But the pain actually is that
you've lost this person. And that is a hard thing to kind
of get to, right? Because you want to say, well, I
feel ashamed about this and it'smy fault.
And that's the the tough thing you actually need to get
through. And you get through that thing
and you go, this is fine. But actually getting to the
(39:24):
point they actually miss someoneand you wish they were here and
they're not going to come back is actually where you're trying
to get to. And that's what you're
protecting yourself from. And it wasn't until I, yeah, it
was in probably my mid 20s, probably even late 20s, that I
admitted to myself that I missedthis person, which is a strange
thing to think about, right? Because you'd suggest that I
(39:46):
should miss them all the time. But I didn't want to miss them
because I felt shameful about mycontribution to their death.
So it took me a while to be like, cool, this isn't my fault.
And once I got through, it's notfor my fault.
Even there's a small nugget thatsays maybe.
To go actually, what's painful is this person not here anymore.
(40:08):
And I hadn't even thought about that probably for like 1520
years because I've been protecting myself for that long.
So I'm actually point point now where I have a really healthy
relationship with the grief where I can't talk to my mom in
a way that, you know, I let her know how I'm going with life,
what I'm doing, what great things are happening, what bad
(40:29):
things are happening, which is something I would never have
felt comfortable doing before because I felt shameful going to
the space where I missed this person.
I should be able to communicate with this person.
So I feel like there's these maladapt behaviours that I
created around all this. I've got to a point now where
I'm like, actually, I just want to grieve in the way that I
missed this person in the same way I would miss her if she
(40:50):
passed away from cancer or, or anything.
And I think that's a really nicespace to kind of big at now.
Absolutely. It's a beautiful space
transition too. Yeah.
I think that the experience thatyou've been through will make
such a difference to so many children that are going through
Feel the Magic programme or listen to this podcast or you
(41:13):
stumble across in in your life. And I think using that pain to
help other people is is beautiful as long as we spend
time also reflecting on our own deeper story.
And it sounds like you are doingthat and allowing yourself to
truly feel the whole spectrum ofemotions and not just the ones
(41:33):
that like shame. I often describe this is like
concrete. You get stuck in it.
And then when you start to crackthat concrete up and you
actually get to the deeper, deeper emotion behind it, like
you said. It's painting, yeah.
And I think we learn really quickly that, like shame, I
learned quite a very long time for me to learn it.
But what I try to help people with now is that shame is
(41:54):
largely helpful emotion, right? It's trying to protect
something, but what it's creating is worse than what's on
the inside of that thing. And it might not feel like it at
that time. It might feel like it's doing
the right thing. It's protecting you from pain.
However, in my broad experience,that is not the case at all.
(42:16):
What it's protected, trying to protect you from something is
something that is harder and is slightly more painful, but what
is on the other side of that pain is often better once you
kind of get through that as well.
And I'm happy that I'm in the space now that I can openly talk
to people about this. I'm so grateful for my husband,
my family, kind of the field magic community.
(42:37):
I have my friends that kind of, they know this about me.
I feel comfortable talking to them about it and they are
supportive of me kind of throughthat as well.
And I can talk openly with them.I think what it then does,
particularly shame isn't a unique thing to call in my
experience, right? We all do it to ourselves.
(42:59):
And it's often the leading part of conversations I have with
people when I'm not ostrich in myself, right, Is to go like,
what is it that we're talking about here?
Are you embarrassed that you're painful?
Is it about paying? What's going on?
Because often people are just embarrassed about this situation
and can't happen. We have a better conversation to
support them as well. So I like to think that the my
(43:20):
healing has come kind of full circle in a way that I felt
embarrassed about my own experience that hopefully I'm
able to kind of turn the mirror slightly and go, well, this is
how I got through what I got through.
It may look similar for you. Let's explore whether or not it
is the same. If it is, this is how I navigate
(43:40):
to the world is how I thought about doing things, rightly or
wrongly. But I'd like to feel like
they're making a much better universe now than I was probably
five years ago. Definitely 10 years get
definitely better than was 25 years ago, for sure.
Yeah. I love that.
And I think that's a beautiful message to end this episode on.
If anybody is experiencing that emotion of shame, to maybe ask
(44:05):
themselves the question, what amI actually trying to protect?
What is the pain that is actually there that I'm trying
to avoid? Because shame is sitting like a
big bodyguard at the front of it.
But you're going to stay stuck there and it's not actually
going to better your life. But the irony is, I mean, people
(44:26):
think being in pain and feeling sadness, how's that going to
better my life? But 99% of emotions, except for
shame, even when they're really,really freaking tough, they can
still get you out the other sideto something that is so much
nicer and better for you. But if you stay with shame at
(44:47):
the door, it's going to be impossible to do that.
So asking yourself, all right, what is this big bad boy
protecting? You know what is shame?
Actually trying to stand in front of and reflect on that.
Yeah, 100% right. Like it's I love the kind of
idea of it thing, kind of the bodyguard, right?
And my natural thought to that was like the bodyguard of what?
(45:09):
Right, Like what is it protecting?
Because in my unique circumstance, I know it wasn't
protecting anything. It was protecting itself in some
regard. It was trying to createspace in
my mind that it was doing something.
I now know that it wasn't protecting anything, was just
creating a barrier to getting tohave a conversation with
(45:30):
something that's set more deeplykind of behind that.
And you're right, it can feel hard to get to what is sitting
beneath. But if you can't kind of get
there and live out that emotion,then you're going to going to be
playing with a handbrake the whole time.
And that's often I described it as well, I felt like a handbrake
(45:52):
in my life that couldn't be my authentic self.
I couldn't live out how I wantedto experience the world because
I had this kind of handbrake going on.
So I feel like shame is both thethe bodyguard, but also the
handbrake to you actually livingan authentic, happy, full life
as well. Yeah.
(46:13):
There's a potential that shame in that situation specifically,
which then makes your mind thinkthat you played a role in what
happened. There's a potential when you're
that young that your brain did that as well because if it
didn't and thought that you had no role in this, that that in
(46:34):
itself is almost too overwhelming for a young brain
because then it has to live in this reality that something so
catastrophic can happen and you don't have any control over it.
Like, no, I have to think to myself that there is some part
that I can control there. Because how do you get through
life thinking that something that catastrophic can happen and
(46:57):
you just don't have a choice about it?
It's just nothing in your control.
It's almost like protecting you in that standpoint too, that you
can try and avoid these things from happening because our
alternative is overwhelming in itself.
Yeah. And I would suggest that most
people that are kind of using shame of the wall and people
that experience loss that is really quick, unexpected end up
(47:23):
in avoidance, right. And I was kind of in that space
as well, Avoidance of the thing that happened.
But then create a new universe. Yeah, of things that will
distract from what's happening over here because avoidance is a
really strong way to go. Well, yes, that is, that's
(47:44):
gross. That's ugly.
I don't want to deal with that right now.
But if I have a shiny grade overhere, if I'm doing grade at
school over here, or if I've, you know, done a really great
piece of pottery. So I was grade pottery at
school, then to grade school, then that is going to become the
new focus point of attention andtherefore the world is good.
(48:07):
And it's hard to know what levelwas necessary.
For me, it was very much create these shiny things over here.
Working with kids now, I think it is a balance of both, right?
You need to try and give them great and lovely things to be
able to experience in a life, but also dig into that deep
conversation on a sandwich. It's behind that as well.
(48:29):
So we had the absolutely wrong balance, but now working with
kids it's probably a balance of the 2 events.
Yeah, I love that. It's a beautiful place to come
out the other side too. Yeah, for sure.
I'm very blessed to be part of kind of the field of community
more generally to help me with continued grieving, right?
(48:49):
Continued work on myself and surrounding myself with people
that understand what that is like.
But then also to be able to sit down on a swing with an 8 year
old and for them to be able to connect with me through their
own lived experience and for them to be able to have really
(49:09):
honest and open conversations with someone that truly
understands what they're going through.
It's one of those kind of pinch me moments that you had to have
in my universe at the moment where you can see yourself
reflected back. So often people ask me that what
would you say to your own 10 year old self?
I get to do that all the time, which is incredibly enriching to
(49:34):
go that you know, maybe I didn'thave the best experience for
myself, but I have a way a bit of calf path forward for future
young poles coming through. That's beautiful.
I love that. Thanks.
Thank you so much for sharing your story today and wearing
your heart on your sleeve and for joining me.
Thank you for having me. Thank you so much guys.
(49:55):
I will see you in the next episode.
My emotions have a natural tendency to dissipate unless
they get reinforced. And so if there's more thoughts,
more stories, more intentions that come along, so the act of.
How am I leaving it alone? It is an act of not act, adding
more stories, adding fuel to it.So it might not go away in 2
(50:15):
minutes, but it then begins to relax and dissipate.
And so rather than being the person who has to fix, it would
become the person who makes space for the heart, the mind,
to relax and settle away itself.
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