November 10, 2025 • 45 mins
She’s helped distribute over 5.6 million donated period products, led more than 4,000 volunteers, changed government policy to save Australian women $30million collectively per year, and become a voice for women who often go unseen.
Today on Reset, I’m joined by Rochelle Courtenay AKA Pad Lady, Founder of Share the Dignity and the woman behind one of Australia’s most impactful movements.
In this powerful conversation, we dive into the reality of period poverty in Australia, how Share the Dignity grew from one idea into a nationwide charity, and what each of us can do to make a meaningful difference especially as we head into the “It’s In The Bag” season.
We explore:
- What period poverty really looks like
- Why donating a bag this November matters more than ever
- The gaps in education and the steps we can take to change them
- The Bloody Big Survey results and what they reveal
- Dignity Vending Machines and how they work
- How to support 150,000 women in need this Christmas
- Leadership, advocacy and the reality of building a national charity
This episode is for anyone who wants to be part of the change and understand the power of one woman’s courage to create a movement that’s helping millions.
Website: https://www.sharethedignity.org.au/home
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rochelle-courtenay-6769156b/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SharetheDignityAustralia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sharethedignityaustralia/
BloodyBig Survey Results: https://www.sharethedignity.org.au/end-period-poverty/bloody-big-survey-2024
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
My guest today has built a charity that has donated over 5
million period products to womenand girls in need across the
country. She also saves Aussie women like
you and I over $30 million collectively because she lobbied
the government to make sure thatthey absolutely remove taxes on
period products. She is an Australian of the Year
nominee. She is also the proud mother of
(00:24):
two daughters and she has a bunch of gorgeous grandkids.
I am so excited to welcome Rochelle AKA Pad Lady and I saw
her car coming in. It is also the number place Pad
Lady, the founder of Share the Dignity charity here into the
studio with me today. Rochelle, welcome to Reset.
Thank you, I'm super excited to have a chat to you.
(00:44):
Oh, this is so good. Look, I told you before we
started recording that I am really inspired by your story
and in the past 10 years you have had more positive impact on
the world than some people couldwish to have 10 lifetimes.
Thank you. Can you kick us off with some
more big numbers? I've shared a couple in the
intro, but can you tell me what are the latest impact stats that
(01:06):
share the Dignity has had? Yeah, I'll share the Dignity
sexy stats as I call them. Yes, that we've had Australian
public donate 5.6 million packetsuperior products that we've
distributed to our 3 1/2 thousand charities that we work
with. We also have around 4000
volunteers that we call Shiros. They're the backbone of Share
(01:27):
the Dignity. We've collected more than
1,000,000, It's in the bag donations and we have 1200
dignity vending machines out there in Australia doing what
they should be doing, which is giving people access.
So the very basic of essentials without needing to ask anybody
for them. I love that and I wanna jump
(01:47):
into a little bit later what what's in the bag is, but can
you tell it take us back to the start now.
What inspired you to start Sharethe Dignity.
Yeah, so Share the Dignity started when I read an article
that talked about the fact that women were using socks and
newspaper to deal with their period.
Now this was back in 2015, I hadsuffered severely from
(02:10):
endometriosis. So for me a period wasn't just a
period. I'm sure the dignity probably
wouldn't exist if that wasn't the case for me because whilst I
was never rich, I'd never not had access to period products.
So really, in actual fact, I wasprivileged, right?
It really spun a different worldfor me, to be honest.
(02:34):
But then when I Google searched,it wasn't the first article to
ever be written. This had been a topic that had
been discussed before and I justcouldn't jog on at that stage.
My daughters were like 15 and 16and I just didn't want them to
ever read an article about that and wonder why no one had done
anything about it? I had my own personal training
(02:54):
business back then and I'd askedall my clients to bring me a
packet of pads or tampons for every wine they had in the month
of March 2015. Oh, that's creative.
I like. Wow, it worked because some of
them would just bring me a a bagand say, oh, let's not count
them babe, let's just cut start training.
It was really that I didn't believe, and I still don't
believe that there isn't one of us who wouldn't give somebody we
(03:16):
don't know, don't even see a pador a tampon under a toilet door.
So how could we ensure that we all knew to share the dignity
because we would all want to play a role in in doing that.
Yeah, beautiful. And since that initial reach out
to your clients, things have just grown Sky rocketed sky.
Rocketed. So in saying that, no one ever
(03:39):
talked about it, right? So it wasn't, it wasn't, it
wasn't easy, but it was also oneof those things that people had
never heard about before. Yeah.
And they were like, oh, yeah, ofcourse I could help.
So there's not been very many people that I've asked to help
me where they haven't said, oh, no, yeah.
Do you know what I mean? Like if you look at the
charities that are out there, there are lots of charities who
(04:01):
work in, in cancer or homelessness or DV.
Yeah. This is a problem that we
actually can solve. Yeah, too, though, Right.
So I feel like people came on board with that.
They came on board with the factthat this shouldn't be a
problem, that that exists and that if I could get people to
donate them, that we could actually eradicate period
poverty. Yeah.
(04:21):
That wasn't even a word when I started either, Right.
So it was really about periods and poverty and putting them
together and making people realise, like me.
Oh my God, I never knew that that was a problem.
Yeah, and you're right. There's so many charities out
there that do wonderful things and donate food and shelter and
whatnot, but your period is something you don't get a choice
(04:42):
in having as a woman. And so how many women and girls
are living in period poverty around the country?
Well, interestingly enough, in 2021 we did our very first
bloody big survey. So and that came about in this
long winded way. I always say I'm like the
Stephen Bradbury of charity, right?
(05:02):
It just stumble and fall and it just seems to happen.
In saying that, I surround myself with incredible people.
Yeah, and it's those incredible people that allows and open
stores and you're always learning, right?
Yeah. So in 2021 we did bloody big
survey so we had a 125,000 responses.
So that made that the biggest body of data the world had ever
(05:22):
seen on menstruation ever. Let's.
Celebrate that for a second. Yeah, that is huge.
And when I was on your website and seeing the bloody big
survey, I was looking at your numbers and I thought it is so
hard to get five people to do a survey, let alone over 100,000.
Yeah, well, the last. Survey we had 153,000 people so.
Huge. Huge numbers.
Huge. Numbers.
(05:42):
I actually had to wear a dress completely made of pads for 30
days to convince people I wouldn't take it off unless you
did it. So maybe people just got sick of
seeing it. But yeah, it is really hard to
get people to do that. But people, I think women knew
that if they gave us that 5 minutes, that that actually
could change the world for theirdaughters and their daughters.
(06:03):
Daughters, right? And that's what it's about.
And that data actually has changed the world, right.
So when we look at the first survey, our intent was really
clear. We wanted to find out how many
girls were missing school, how many people had not felt like
they were adequately educated onmenstruation and who had been
through period poverty. That data surprised us.
(06:24):
It told us that one in five of us have been through period
poverty. Yeah, nobody talks about it.
No, it's such a taboo topic. Periods in general.
Yeah, and to find out that womenwho identify as indigenous with
73% that haven't been able to afford period products, that is
(06:44):
so wrong. It shouldn't matter where you
live, you should have access to period products, right?
So that data that we utilised inthe 1st place was to speak the
language of politicians, was to say, you know what, here's the
data you've been asking me for years.
You didn't want anecdotal, you wanted data.
So here's the data. So now proudly in every state
(07:04):
and territory there is provisionof period products at every
primary and secondary school, excluding NT and Tasmania, which
we're still working on. Okay, okay.
But how great is that? That is huge and if that was all
you did that would be impressive.
But like, you and your team justkeep kicking goals in all areas.
(07:25):
It's easy to look at things now 10 years on and think like, it's
amazing and you've built this huge platform, and you can keep
moving and growing from there. But in the early days, was there
ever a point where you started to unravel just how big this
challenge was and think, like, you know what?
Too hard, too big. What can I do as one person?
Yeah. Even now, sometimes, like a
(07:45):
couple of weeks ago, I just sat in front of my computer and
cried. Because sometimes it is
overwhelming, right? Sometimes there was an e-mail
that came through which was it was a mental health unit in
South Australia who'd found out that we were helping with bags
for a mental health unit in Queensland and said can we
please get some? Can we get about 50 bags for
(08:08):
those women who turn up with nothing, not even underwear on.
Now there's somebody's baby, there's somebody, somebody,
right? And they mean something.
And I'm like, how do you say no?But you know what, We're not
going to collect enough bags to be able to do that.
But I still can't say no. And so I just sat there and
cried. And one of my team came in and
was talking about, it's in the bag.
(08:29):
We were talking about the planning of that.
And I was crying and I was just sitting there crying because
what's wrong? And then I started telling the
story and she snapped this photo.
It is the ugliest photo in the history of the world and put it
on LinkedIn. And we just wrote that this is
gut wrenching. And how do you not?
And sometimes I just sit there and think, what else can I do
when people rely on me? At the beginning, people didn't
(08:51):
rely on me, so I didn't have anything to lose.
Now I feel like if I don't, not that one person won't know that
I haven't done that, but I will know.
So yeah, things are hard. At the very beginning, I don't
think it was hard. I was so filled with adrenaline
and I was to the point I wouldn't even say I burnt out.
(09:13):
I actually just got recharged byit over and over and over again,
right? My health didn't come first
though, in retrospect, right? I loved that people needed me.
I loved that it challenged my brain and every.
I loved the relationships that we built.
I loved the challenges that werethere.
But Oh my God, I had no idea of you'd pull a string and then
(09:36):
more would just come and more would just come and it just, you
know, here we are 10 years laterand there are still 100 problems
that I need to solve. But we'll get there.
I don't feel like I'm, I, I willsay this, it's in the bag.
I will die trying to get 150,000donations so that no woman
(09:56):
misses out. Yeah.
Can you take me back to the beginning?
Where did Share the Dignity begin?
What's its origin story? How did you get started?
We've already discussed how it started with me asking my
clients to bring me pads and tampons.
Now, that was in the March. Now in the May, another friend
who worked in a hospital asked me if she could get some more
(10:17):
period products. So it's not like I started off
with share the dignity in my brain that I was going to do it
all the time, right? I then did a post on our social
media, which was a Facebook pagethat my daughter had set up.
She had done the graphics. So literally I've mentioned this
because there's so many people who have played a little or big
role along the way. That post that I put up then got
(10:40):
shared. M Raciano, a Melbourne comedian,
picked it up and was like, Oh myGod, I have never thought of
this. And then she shared that to her
20,000 plus people. It went viral.
I had no idea what we were doing.
We then had another collection in August.
We had Libra reach out to us anddonate 150,000 packets of pads.
(11:05):
Where did you normally gone to landfill.
Oh my God, they went to a volunteers shed in Warrnambool.
Oh it was, it was absolutely crazy.
Little did I know in order to have a charity that I needed to
have a constitution, a board of directors, I needed to pay fees
and permits in every state and it was crazy.
(11:26):
My husband had gone to school with a friend who worked at DLA
Piper, so he did. They donated $30,000 to do our
constitution and start the the business which was a proprietary
limited light and then start their not-for-profit DGR status.
So that was crazy. But it was always just, it was
never what you knew. It was who you knew.
(11:48):
And it was connecting all the way along.
At the beginning. I remember Coles coming on
board, but they only wanted to come on board in Victoria.
And because we had like a national page and we were
collecting everywhere, it made it really complicated.
Yeah. So we had Terry White Chemist
(12:09):
and we had Fernwood and I had this vision board and I still
have that vision board and I cutout everybody that I wanted on
it and every person that I wanted to share the dignity.
And I look at that board and I think for most part I was
successful in everything that was on there except for Oprah.
Now Oprah is coming here very soon, so she I'm going to tick
(12:31):
her off my vision board. I have been writing to Oprah
every three days for the last 90days.
Persistent, persistent, persistent.
It's worked for you in the past.It has.
Absolutely. I remember when Woolworths
contacted me after the abolishment of the tampon tax
(12:51):
and just using LinkedIn to sharethe stories all of the time.
And I still do that. I still do it successfully.
I think that and showing that vulnerability, but also people
want to help. They just want to know how they
can help. And I think that's probably one
of the things that I've also, I've done really well.
I will tell you that I'm never the smartest person in that
(13:12):
room, but I don't want to be. I went to a lunch on Friday with
the most incredibly smart people.
I was the dumbest person at thattime and I'm OK with that.
But Oh my God, those conversations that I learnt from
were incredible. Now, if I was to sit around a
table where I was the smartest person, am I going to learn
anything? Probably not, right?
So I'm always happy, happiest being they're not the smartest
(13:32):
person at the table. And I'm not saying that I'm
dumb. I'm just saying that I surround
myself with people who have got skills in areas that I just
don't have. That's how I will always be able
to be better. Yeah, Strategic, yeah.
Strategic. I'm the dumbest strategic person
I know. And that addiction to the growth
(13:54):
and the purpose and the impact, I'm sure a lot of people
listening can relate to that in their careers.
They lean right in and they pushreally hard, but maybe the
stakes don't feel as heavy as what you're dealing with.
So yeah. And remember, for the first five
years, everybody was a volunteer, including me.
So I had this amazing business of Bellevue personal training,
(14:17):
which provided for me and my family and my daughters.
And then the more I got into Share the Dignity, the less I
trained people. So I was donating like I
literally had two full time jobs.
Yeah, it was hard sleep was was rare.
Five hours. I would, I would live on, but I
would I do things different again, Probably not.
(14:38):
You just got to do what you got to do.
Share the Dignity is a charity. It's a not-for-profit, but it's
a business and we're in the business of making a difference
and you really had to put a business lens on it from
everything that we did. Like, how do you get people to
donate? Well, for me, I was a busy mum,
right? You have to make it super
simple. You can't have too many steps.
(14:59):
You've got to make it. You've got to communicate really
well. People don't want to send
another message to find out how you do something.
So I think that it was a perfecttime for me and I'm good with
that stuff, right? I'm I know what it's like to be
a time poor person and time is the most precious resource
anybody can give us. Yeah, Including businesses who
invest their time in putting a collection box.
(15:21):
What are all the things that we can do to make sure that their
time, that they give the charityand the cause is utilised to the
most? Yeah.
You share on your own podcast which will link in the show
notes and on social media a number of real stories from the
women that are being helped. Are there a few that stand out
to you that you can share with us right now?
Because I think as you mentioned, a lot of us come from
(15:44):
a privileged place where maybe we've been out and about and not
had a tampon when we needed it, but it wasn't necessarily
because we couldn't afford it. What sort of things are these
women dealing with? Yeah, in 2017, I met this
incredible young woman who in a domestic violence refuge here on
the Gold Coast actually. And I, she, she changed me
(16:06):
forever. So we were sitting on the edge
of the bed. She was about 24, she had a
little baby boy who was about 9 weeks old.
And she talked about the fact that living on the streets in
Adelaide was safer for her than living in the home that she had
come from because her mother hadsold her for sex from the age of
8. Now, I I couldn't stomach that
(16:29):
in itself, but her to tell me that she knew to go in and steal
people's socks from the laundromat to deal with her
period at the age of 14 and thatshe ended up going from one
relationship to another with at 14.
It were she ended up choosing tolive with a man who was 30
because it was a roof over her head.
(16:50):
Like her choices were never there.
And how, and for me at that stage, it was how does a child
just disappear from schooling, from friendships, from the world
and get vortex into that, into that life.
And so 10 years on from stealinga sock, here she is having
stolen a packet of maternity pads because she needed to buy
(17:15):
formula and nappies. And she didn't, you know, she
was sleeping in her car before she ended up at the at the
sanctuary. And that that whole life of
turmoil saw her sitting on the edge of a bed with a bag that
somebody had donated and given her, which was a mum and bum
bag. Now she talked about that bag as
the only Christmas present that she remembers.
(17:36):
And since the time that she was 8 years old and when she was 8,
her mum gave her a bike. But her mum took it back to the
shop after Christmas. So she talked about she
remembers getting Christmas present, but then it got taken
back. So she actually didn't remember
getting a Christmas present. This bag was the first gift
she'd got. And in there were these little
round yellow earrings. And she said, well, like, I've
(17:59):
never had a Christmas present, but I've never felt pretty.
And I feel really pretty in these earrings.
Now. A bag can give you all the
things, but that made her feel pretty.
It made her feel valued and thatyou can never buy.
And I will die trying to make sure that people feel like that
(18:19):
for Christmas, right. Yes, we give them pads and
tampons and all of the things that they need.
But that feeling like you're important and you're special.
And to have never had that as anas an adult or a teenager blows
my mind. And you know, I'm proud of what
we've done, but that is the the reason why we do it.
(18:41):
So we want to times that by 150,000 this year, right?
And I, I believe that every one of us has the ability to just
put that one bag together and impact that one person.
Yeah, that's a huge thing to be able to do.
Yeah, the ripple effects of thata giant.
So let's let's talked about it. And I know a number of people
have probably heard of what's inthe bag before, but for anyone
(19:02):
hearing of it for the first time, what is it and how can we
help? Yeah, I'm gonna step that back
to what does Share the Dignity do?
Sure. Yeah, of course.
In March and August, we put collection boxes out in every
Woolworths supermarket, but alsoanother thousand other
businesses around Australia. We collect period products, so
everything from pads, tampons, menstrual cups, period undies,
(19:24):
incontinence products, and then we distribute those to the 3 1/2
thousand charities. And then we do, it's in the bag.
So it's like my favorite child of Share the Dignity.
Probably because I hear more stories from people who will
tell you about the impact of thebag as opposed to, oh, I got my
period and thank God I got a packet of pads or tampons,
(19:45):
right. We ask you to clean up your
cupboard. Really.
That's how it started. It started from me cleaning out
my bathroom cupboard and realising I'd been a netball
coach, a personal trainer and people have just given me all of
these things that I just am a really simple person.
I don't ever change my perfume. I don't ever change my
jewellery. And so I had all of these
(20:07):
abundance of things. And so I put them into some
handbags and dropped them into adomestic violence refuge and
then shared it on our social media.
I had no infrastructure in place.
I'd not even told our volunteersthat that's what we were going
to do. And we had like 200 and
something volunteers back then. Some of them are still in
therapy from, from the way that I've like, oh, let's just do
(20:28):
this. But Oh my God, I'm so grateful I
did. And I literally am always cut
before that. We'll just work it out.
We'll just work it out. So we now ask you to fill a
handbag with life's essentials, things like shampoo,
conditioner, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, soap,
period products. Then anything else you put into
your bag size is up to your bag size, your imagination, and your
(20:50):
budget. So you can put things in like
I've owned 7,422,000 hair ties in my lifetime and I can never
find one. I always put a hair brush and
hair ties into my bag. I also always put a chapstick.
So I've got a chapstick in my car, in my bedside drawer, in my
office drawer, in my handbag. I just couldn't do life without
chapstick, right? So I just think about the things
(21:13):
that people want and need in their bag.
And just to hear those stories of women smells is one of the
things that I constantly hear about ladies when they've
received a bag like Kim, who youcan see on YouTube, actually,
you can hear Kim's story. Have you heard it?
No, we'll link that in the show notes.
So Kim. 'S story about receiving a bag.
(21:34):
She's the, I think the second orthird episode and she talks
about how unsafe it was for her in her home in domestic violence
and that washing her hair was anabsolute luxury at home because
it wasn't safe in her shower. And when she ended up in a
domestic violence refuge, she felt safe in the shower.
And in her bag was Flex shampoo.And she said she still uses Flex
(21:57):
just for the smell. And for the first time in her
life, feeling safe and cared forand that somebody she'd never
met had given her something. It was something different and
really important in her life. And you know, to look at Kim,
you would never choose that. That would have been the life
that she was. And I think that that was real.
The real beauty of the Another Bloody Podcast was that people
(22:20):
perceive people who've experiencing homelessness or
domestic violence to look a certain way.
They just don't. They just look like you and I
Yeah, they just got a really trauma filled life and story.
Yeah. And how do we get these bags to
women in need? I know you've got a really cool
partnership with Bunnings. Can you tell us about that?
(22:41):
Yeah, So what we do is ask you to fill those bags and then drop
them into Bunnings. The last two weeks of November
we do do three different types of bags, so a women's bag, then
a mum and bub bag, which you just tie up a purple ribbon on,
and a teen bag. So a teen bag, we just ask you
to put a yellow ribbon on it andput things like, you know,
mindfulness, colouring in or just some things that you think
(23:04):
that your teenage self or your teenage daughters would want and
need. There is a story that we've
shared recently on our page about Rachel, this incredible
young woman who was going to a high School for Girls, not in
mainstream. Now Rachel didn't have a home,
she was experiencing homelessness and going to
(23:25):
school, right? Just couch surfing from one
house to another. The school was organising so she
got a bag. A few years ago the school was
organising for her to have permanent accommodation.
So she on her 18th birthday, received this bag that somebody
had given her and in that bag was a towel set.
Now she was moving into her a unit that they had given her.
(23:47):
It was the first time that she'dhad her first lot of things.
That was her 18th birthday, and it was a Christmas gift, and it
was the only 18th birthday present that she got and the
only Christmas present that she got.
Somebody put that together for her.
So there's, yeah, a beautiful picture that they sent us of
Rachel holding this bag. You actually don't see her face.
(24:08):
You just see her holding this bag.
It's stories like that that makeus who can't afford to put
together a bag. And I always say, if you can't
afford to put together a bag, get together with some friends
and buy some pieces each yourself and maybe look in your
cupboard of things that you haven't opened right and look at
what you could give somebody else.
Yeah. So everyone that listens to
(24:28):
reset, they're high achievers, they're going to be wondering
what makes a great bag, not justa good bag, but a great bag.
What's kind of the best bag you've seen or what do you want
to challenge them to put in there?
You've listed a number of things.
Is there anything else? You know what a great bag is?
One that comes from somebody's heart?
It just does. And it also comes with a note.
(24:49):
So a lot of our stories that youhear the ladies talk about is
the note. So Gabby received also received
a bag. And in her bag was a quote that
said you are braver. And the Winnie the Pooh quote
that said you are braver and stronger than you ever imagined.
That changed Gabby's life aroundand what somebody had written in
that note. That note sits beside her bed in
(25:10):
a frame still to this day. Gabby now works in lived
experience in the hospitals in Perth because it wasn't abnormal
for her to sleep during the day whilst while living on the
streets of Perth because it was unsafe to her to be out asleep
at night. So you know, a bag has so much,
(25:30):
but as long as it comes from your heart and what you put into
it is not about the money. It's not about how much money of
stuff you can put in there. It's really about what does that
look like for you? Should you be fleeing domestic
violence and need something bestand less, do these incredible
undies that are one-size-fits-all, which are
incredible to put into the bag. OK, noted.
(25:54):
Noted. Yeah, they just, they just
stretch and. For lots of our bags go in the
back of police cars, right? So when a woman's being picked
up from DV, she sometimes can beput on a bus to get to a
different state and not have anything.
Now imagine just having even a pair of thongs.
(26:14):
Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah.
The. It's the little things when you
don't have anything. Yeah.
Anything we shouldn't put in thebags?
Yeah, look, we can't have food. And that was a we can't because
of the ants and the heat. So I always thought at the
beginning, so the first year we did lots of mistakes, right?
But I, we, I just thought you would want chocolates in there
(26:35):
and candy like in a in Queensland.
Yeah. You put those bags in the back
of your car and, or you tend to,they melt or the ants get them.
So we ask that people don't put food in.
We also ask that you don't put sharps or razors in.
OK. Basically, you don't know
whether that bag is going to endup in a mental health unit or
people who can't have it. Yeah.
(26:56):
So. And then we ask you also to opt
for roll on deodorants or pump sprays as opposed to aerosols
for the same reason. Yeah, that makes sense.
On your website, there's also a way that you can donate
equivalent money to a bag. Can you talk to me about that?
Wow. Is that a thing?
(27:17):
Yeah, it is a thing. It is a thing.
And I take a big deep breath because before COVID, we used to
collect 145,000 bags, 142,000 bags, and the charities would
request around 150,000 bags. So we were never very far off.
And for most part that was mom and Bob bags because we would
never get enough of them. They're quite expensive to put
together, right? But in COVID in 2020, everything
(27:41):
changed. Everything changed for the
world, right? But it also changed for Share
the Dignity. What happened was we collected
72,000 bags and the charities had requested 162,000 bags.
I was gutted and I remember and this was the one point where I
realised that people relied on us, that we weren't even a nice
(28:03):
to have any more and that peopleneeded us.
And so a woman from Tweed Heads had contact, rang my mobile and
said Oh my God, your chiros havejust dropped off 25 bags and
I've got 52 women coming. That's how many bags we'd
requested for a homelessness event.
Every year we give them a bag. What am I going to do?
(28:24):
And I remember just, I didn't like conflict in the first in
the first place. I was really startled by it and
her aggression. But I kind of understood what
she like, how do you give one every second, a bag to every
second person? It was just a problem that we'd
never had before. And I just said to her, I look,
I'm, I'm so sorry. We can only give what's donated.
(28:47):
And so around Australia, we have, you know, 4000 volunteers
who felt that in their gut, their hearts, we were broken.
And so we realised that people weren't going out shopping,
people weren't going to offices.So all of these big collections
that we used to get from officesthat they would take to Bunnings
was just not happening. So we thought, you know what,
(29:09):
we'll turn it online, we'll do the shopping for you.
We'll, we'll buy the, we'll get bags, the money donated and then
we'll put them together. So we now have what we call
sponsor a bag and that has started from there.
A couple of weeks ago we put together 11,000 bags in a two
week period. We had corporates come in,
they'd come in for two hours, we'd pack them.
(29:31):
But I you have no understanding of it cost me half $1,000,000
which was all the money that youhad donated.
But the rubbish that comes from unpacking 11,000 shampoos and
conditioners and deodorants. Even every deodorant pack comes
in a blister pack that you've got a cut open and then a box
and then these amazing little connectors on either side which
(29:53):
we actually keep and give to kindies to put paints in and we
try to re really recycle. But it took us 32 skip bins to
get rid of, which comes at a. Cost as well rubbish as well.
Right. So, well, I love that people
give money. It's like a production line of
putting those bags together. And yeah, we do it with heart,
(30:13):
but it's not the heart that happens when you choose your
bag. You go out shopping, you put it
together, you put a note in it. Do you know what I mean?
Like, I love it. And it's so needed.
Those 11,000 bags went out to 82different charities, a lot of
them remote indigenous communities.
Because again, shouldn't matter where you live, you should have
(30:33):
the very basic of essentials. And for them, they don't even
have their own toothbrush. Like they share a toothbrush
between everybody who lives in their home, same with shampoo
and conditioner. That those very basic essentials
that we just have in our bathroom are such a luxury for
them. So it's really important to get
them to them before Christmas aswell.
So oh, we could pack 11,000 bagsevery month and we'd still
(30:57):
wouldn't have enough bags. It sounds like a really nice way
to get a group of girlfriends together or your corporate team
together and pack bags yourselves and then one person
or the group can go to Bunnings and deliver them.
But that seems like a nice sort of team bonding activity or
thing for a group of girlfriendsto do even.
In workplaces, they will give a matching pair from different
(31:21):
divisions $50 Visa card, and they go out and go shopping
together. It's a great bonding experience,
right? But it's also a really nice way
in a corporate world to have conversations around domestic
violence and even privilege, right?
Like, could you imagine being without those sorts of things?
Yeah. Talk to me more about the ways
(31:42):
corporate teams get involved throughout the year.
Is there if someone's listening and they have a team or a
business and they think, oh, this is a great thing for us to
work into our calendar next year, what's in the bag?
Is there anything else that you've seen corporate teams do?
So at Mars Bar at the moment they are.
Every month they bring in something different and donate
(32:03):
shampoos and conditioners in January, then something else.
So it's never a big thing at theend of the year.
Then they bring in one bag each,and then they all pack a bag.
They pack it together. So instead of having a expensive
Christmas party, this is their Christmas party.
It's a way to give back. It's a way to show.
And everybody loves it. Yeah.
And that happens not just at Mars, but at combat.
(32:25):
Like it's, it's really importantto be able to show your stuff,
not just tick a box, yeah, that you're making a difference.
Yeah. And it's great that these huge
organisations do it, but small businesses can do it too.
If you have a team of two or three or ten, like it's still
something, you can all bring things in together and make the
bags together. And what a nice way to spend an
afternoon. Yeah.
Absolutely. Even the going shopping piece.
(32:46):
Yeah, yeah, it feels so good. Like you, I mean, you know, I
know when I go to Kmart and I'm going to put together my teen
bag, I just love it. I love the shopping piece of it.
I love that you're thinking of somebody that you're never, ever
gonna meet. Yeah, yeah.
Helping a stranger. Yeah, at Christmas time.
And on our website we have everything.
(33:06):
So if you want to host an event at your workplace, we have
everything from the e-mail that you need to write to the e-mail
signature to the header, to everything that you need, the
shopping list. Everything is there.
Again, I look at how I would want things.
Yeah. Yeah.
Given to me. I want everything on on a
platter. Yeah.
So I don't want to have to thinkabout it.
(33:27):
Downloadable posters. Everything's there.
Make it as easy as possible. Absolutely.
Perfect for time pool managers or assistants out there.
They're thinking what can we do for our end of year way to give
back? Absolutely, yeah.
Same with International Women's Day, all of those sorts of
things. I think that that's one of the
things that we've done really well from the perspective of how
(33:47):
can a business business get involved here.
We'll make it as easy as possible.
Yeah, I love that. That's how to make things easy
as possible. What is the hardest thing about
running a nationwide charity as big as Share the Dignity?
Time time's just something you can't buy, right?
And there's and even last week, we have 32 staff now and every
(34:12):
single one of those staff could come in today and work for 14
hours and they'd still have 14 hours of work to do.
There is just a list a mile longand that doesn't even allow my
word for next year is space. What I'm really looking for is
we've worked really hard this year.
We've implemented Salesforce, we've got a new website coming.
(34:36):
And this is all because Priceline and Sisterhood
Foundation have given us $250,000 a year for three years
to be able to do some of that really heavy lifting.
Yeah, that has happened. So we've done a lot of that this
year and even for any business that's implemented Salesforce,
they're like Salesforce will make things easier, but there is
a lot of work that goes into before you do that.
(34:58):
And you know, as a charity that's 10 years old, if you
donated to us, we've, we've known, we've said thank you, but
we've never had a, a process fordoing it right.
So we're really excited about that.
But my word for next year would be like to be able to have a
team of staff that have 35 hoursworth of work to do and have
space to go, Oh, I've always done it that way.
(35:20):
But actually, if I did this, this or this, we could have a
better outcome. And that's the world that I want
moving forward into our 11th, 12th, 13th and forever's years.
Forever. Years, yeah.
And sometimes, like we were talking about earlier, like a
retreat experience, sometimes you need the opportunity to
like, just step back. But when you're so busy, you
(35:41):
don't have that. So space is really cool.
Coming soon for your team. Absolutely.
And for me, I think every time Ideuced and your health and
well-being is the highest priority because you can't
actually lead a team. And I understand why I attracted
the people that I attracted whenI did because I was working
(36:01):
60-70 hours a week. I wasn't going, I wasn't setting
a a great example on a nice walkin the morning.
Gym is really important. Eating healthy food, resting.
Resting was not in my vocabulary.
And even though I didn't expect it of everybody, that was what
was attracted. About yeah, it wasn't magnetised
(36:23):
and I've yeah. Absolutely made so many mistakes
from that perspective, but that is not who I am now.
And I think that's the really beautiful part about being a
leader, is that you get to change and evolve every single
day, right? Yeah.
Where do you see share the dignity in 10 years time, which
is you've been in this for 10 years, like I'm sure another 10
years you're just going to continue to magnify and amplify
(36:43):
your impact. But what's your vision?
My vision is in 2035 that we will have menstrual equity in
Australia. So menstrual equity to me means
that no matter where you are, there is the provision of period
products. So whether you're at school,
university, in a hospital, you're at the library, whether
you're in a workplace, there is period products there like there
(37:06):
is toilet paper. So there won't be what we have
now, which is, you know, girls missing out on sport because
they can't afford period products or they have
endometriosis and playing sport is something you don't talk
about, that sort of thing, right?
So there's the provision of period products, but there's
also the education component of it.
(37:27):
So in our bloody big survey, ourstats showed that 63% of women
felt like they didn't feel like they were adequately educated on
menstruation. What?
Imagine 63% of girls coming out of school saying, oh, I don't
feel like I was adequately educated on maths or English or
any of the other subjects. That would be an absolute
failure on the education department and we would be doing
(37:49):
everything we can to rectify that.
Right. And so then my conversations
with the education department isthis is not good enough and what
are you going to do to make thisbetter?
So if that's the number for women, could you imagine what
that number is for boys and men?And everybody's little boy ends
up being somebody's father, boss, colleague, friend, and
(38:10):
they have no understanding of menstruation.
That has to change. Education needs to be better and
removing that shame and stigma. So in doing that we are really
working hard with, we provide, we produced a 2 minute non
verbal animation. We did that with 25 new
Australians, so refugees who'd come to Australia based on some
(38:32):
information that we had had in the collaboration world.
And I'm so proud of that two-minute animation that is now
being rolled out in schools, in prisons, in hospitals, in health
departments that will ensure that when we go to do the bloody
big survey again in 2027, we don't wanna see those numbers
the same. And we we are committed to doing
(38:53):
that survey every three years. So by 2035, there will be none
of this one in five, there will be none of this can't
participate in sport because there isn't period products.
Nobody missing work because they're too embarrassed to go to
a meeting and feel like they're going to bleed through their
their clothes, all of those things.
(39:13):
I feel like we have the ability to make the difference.
We can't do it alone, which is why we are working with the
federal government. We are working state, we are
working council, we are working with schools, we are working
with NRL. So for example, I've worked with
NRL to provide, produce a what does a coach need to know when
Ruby's dad, who's put his hand up to coach the under twelves,
(39:34):
is saying I'll coach them, but Ihave no understanding about
menstruation. So all of those sorts of
education pieces are so very vitally important to that 2035
goal. I feel like it won't not happen.
It's just it's not a non negotiable for me.
It's just how do we bring everybody in on that journey?
(39:55):
Yeah, we will then obviously need to move towards to it's in
the bag donations a year insteadof the one because obviously
people flee domestic violence every day of the week, right.
And for me it's in the bag as turn the corner from just being
a present at Christmas time to. Women coming out of prison 365
(40:16):
days a year or women in mental health units or it's just way
more than what it ever was when we very first started.
So that's where we will negate to and drive towards, which is
what we're setting ourselves up for now.
Yeah, you mentioned before that being a leader is an opportunity
to learn and grow and pivot and change yourself everyday.
(40:38):
What do you feel like you need to change about yourself?
Well, how do you need to grow tobe able to deliver those goals
in the next 10 years? That changes daily for me.
Like if you well, for me, being really rested is the best
version of me. Exercising is the best version
of me seeing things from other people's perspective, but always
(41:02):
learning and reading. Like I don't do conflict well, I
don't do hard conversations well.
And that comes from that comes from a child, childhood trauma,
right. So working on me being the best
version of me is to the benefit of everybody in Australia, I
say, right. When you're, when you look at
when you're leading a charity like that.
(41:23):
And I'm trying to make sure thata woman doesn't miss out on A
and a bag, whether she's coming into a mental health unit or
she's spending Christmas in a domestic violence shelter.
The best version of me is not just for me, it's for everybody.
Yeah. I like that quote and I might I
might get it wrong right now, but it's something around like
rather than have I worked hard enough to deserve rest, it's
have I am I well rested enough to be able to do my best work.
(41:46):
Absolutely, yeah. And I think growing up, I I
didn't, I didn't. Resting was for the weak, right.
So you it that to me, that was how I was brought up.
But and I wore busy like a badgeof honour.
Oh, I'm so busy. I'm I'm this, I'm that.
And it was. It's just so stupid really.
(42:06):
And when I look back and think, Oh my God, now there's no
negotiating when it comes to 8 hours sleep.
Even this week I've got a board meeting till 7:30 on Wednesday
night and I have to be in Sydneyby 8:30 on Thursday morning.
And I'm just said I originally last week I was like, no, I'll
just get the first flight out, which is now 5:00 because of
(42:27):
daylight savings. And then I'm like, no, 'cause
I'll come home from the board meeting and I'll be worried
about I have to get up at 3:30 to get there.
I'm like, I'd rather just go after the board meeting, get
there, get a good night's sleep and then be ready for the next
day. Yeah, and that takes time and
experience and self-awareness. I think we all go through that
(42:48):
messy period where you just leaninto the busyness and it's fun
and it's addictive and it's cool.
But it takes time to then have that hindsight of actually this
isn't sustainable. And if I do want to do my best
work and have this global impact, which I'm sure you're
working on, then you do need to put those boundaries in place.
Yeah. And I think it comes at a time
20/20/21, I had three, three operations.
(43:12):
And it was a really tough healthyear for me.
And you can't buy health and youcan't be of any benefit to
anybody if you're not healthy. Yeah.
So for me, it was, that was my year where I was like, OK, all
right, I really need to look after, really need to look after
me. And audio books came in into my
(43:32):
world. Now, I'd never read as I just
never read because I never stayed still long enough.
And my, you know, I'm probably one of those people who would
now be diagnosed with ADHD. I'm going to pretend it's a
superpower, but it's also been something that I haven't known
or how to work with. So I never read because I it
(43:54):
was, I could do two or three pages and then I'd be bored and
I'd be looking at, oh, what's next shiny thing, right?
So audiobooks changed my life. And even now when I say, oh, I
just read, oh, actually I audiobooked it and my mum will
still say, oh, well, that means you didn't read it.
I'm like, I took it in and I'm now smarter than I was before
the book. So I don't care.
You take it whatever way you want to.
I think that's another thing that I've learnt.
(44:14):
I mean, I'm 55 years old, right?I don't care what anyone thinks
anymore. God I wish I was that person
when I was 25. What haven't we spoken about
today that you wish more people knew?
If there's a problem in the world or in your world that you
have the ability to fix it, I think that's the thing that we
(44:35):
sometimes think problems are so much bigger than the one person,
but it's not you really. The most powerful thing any of
us have is our voice to make a difference.
And that's a voice even if you're standing up for yourself,
right? It's it's almost how do you find
your voice? If you can't do it, you have to
work out a way to do it. Michelle, thank you.
(44:58):
Thank you. I've loved this chat, I've
learnt a lot. I think everyone listening is
going to be excited to go out and build a bag, write a
beautiful note, drop it off and donate it to someone that
they're never going to meet, butthey might just make their year
a little bit easier. So thank you for everything
you're doing. Thank you.
My guest today has built a charity that has donated over 5
million period products to womenand girls in need across the
country. She also saves Aussie women like
you and I over $30 million collectively because she lobbied
the government to make sure thatthey absolutely remove taxes on
period products. She is an Australian of the Year
nominee. She is also the proud mother of
(00:24):
two daughters and she has a bunch of gorgeous grandkids.
I am so excited to welcome Rochelle AKA Pad Lady and I saw
her car coming in. It is also the number place Pad
Lady, the founder of Share the Dignity charity here into the
studio with me today. Rochelle, welcome to Reset.
Thank you, I'm super excited to have a chat to you.
(00:44):
Oh, this is so good. Look, I told you before we
started recording that I am really inspired by your story
and in the past 10 years you have had more positive impact on
the world than some people couldwish to have 10 lifetimes.
Thank you. Can you kick us off with some
more big numbers? I've shared a couple in the
intro, but can you tell me what are the latest impact stats that
(01:06):
share the Dignity has had? Yeah, I'll share the Dignity
sexy stats as I call them. Yes, that we've had Australian
public donate 5.6 million packetsuperior products that we've
distributed to our 3 1/2 thousand charities that we work
with. We also have around 4000
volunteers that we call Shiros. They're the backbone of Share
(01:27):
the Dignity. We've collected more than
1,000,000, It's in the bag donations and we have 1200
dignity vending machines out there in Australia doing what
they should be doing, which is giving people access.
So the very basic of essentials without needing to ask anybody
for them. I love that and I wanna jump
(01:47):
into a little bit later what what's in the bag is, but can
you tell it take us back to the start now.
What inspired you to start Sharethe Dignity.
Yeah, so Share the Dignity started when I read an article
that talked about the fact that women were using socks and
newspaper to deal with their period.
Now this was back in 2015, I hadsuffered severely from
(02:10):
endometriosis. So for me a period wasn't just a
period. I'm sure the dignity probably
wouldn't exist if that wasn't the case for me because whilst I
was never rich, I'd never not had access to period products.
So really, in actual fact, I wasprivileged, right?
It really spun a different worldfor me, to be honest.
(02:34):
But then when I Google searched,it wasn't the first article to
ever be written. This had been a topic that had
been discussed before and I justcouldn't jog on at that stage.
My daughters were like 15 and 16and I just didn't want them to
ever read an article about that and wonder why no one had done
anything about it? I had my own personal training
(02:54):
business back then and I'd askedall my clients to bring me a
packet of pads or tampons for every wine they had in the month
of March 2015. Oh, that's creative.
I like. Wow, it worked because some of
them would just bring me a a bagand say, oh, let's not count
them babe, let's just cut start training.
It was really that I didn't believe, and I still don't
believe that there isn't one of us who wouldn't give somebody we
(03:16):
don't know, don't even see a pador a tampon under a toilet door.
So how could we ensure that we all knew to share the dignity
because we would all want to play a role in in doing that.
Yeah, beautiful. And since that initial reach out
to your clients, things have just grown Sky rocketed sky.
Rocketed. So in saying that, no one ever
(03:39):
talked about it, right? So it wasn't, it wasn't, it
wasn't easy, but it was also oneof those things that people had
never heard about before. Yeah.
And they were like, oh, yeah, ofcourse I could help.
So there's not been very many people that I've asked to help
me where they haven't said, oh, no, yeah.
Do you know what I mean? Like if you look at the
charities that are out there, there are lots of charities who
(04:01):
work in, in cancer or homelessness or DV.
Yeah. This is a problem that we
actually can solve. Yeah, too, though, Right.
So I feel like people came on board with that.
They came on board with the factthat this shouldn't be a
problem, that that exists and that if I could get people to
donate them, that we could actually eradicate period
poverty. Yeah.
(04:21):
That wasn't even a word when I started either, Right.
So it was really about periods and poverty and putting them
together and making people realise, like me.
Oh my God, I never knew that that was a problem.
Yeah, and you're right. There's so many charities out
there that do wonderful things and donate food and shelter and
whatnot, but your period is something you don't get a choice
(04:42):
in having as a woman. And so how many women and girls
are living in period poverty around the country?
Well, interestingly enough, in 2021 we did our very first
bloody big survey. So and that came about in this
long winded way. I always say I'm like the
Stephen Bradbury of charity, right?
(05:02):
It just stumble and fall and it just seems to happen.
In saying that, I surround myself with incredible people.
Yeah, and it's those incredible people that allows and open
stores and you're always learning, right?
Yeah. So in 2021 we did bloody big
survey so we had a 125,000 responses.
So that made that the biggest body of data the world had ever
(05:22):
seen on menstruation ever. Let's.
Celebrate that for a second. Yeah, that is huge.
And when I was on your website and seeing the bloody big
survey, I was looking at your numbers and I thought it is so
hard to get five people to do a survey, let alone over 100,000.
Yeah, well, the last. Survey we had 153,000 people so.
Huge. Huge numbers.
Huge. Numbers.
(05:42):
I actually had to wear a dress completely made of pads for 30
days to convince people I wouldn't take it off unless you
did it. So maybe people just got sick of
seeing it. But yeah, it is really hard to
get people to do that. But people, I think women knew
that if they gave us that 5 minutes, that that actually
could change the world for theirdaughters and their daughters.
(06:03):
Daughters, right? And that's what it's about.
And that data actually has changed the world, right.
So when we look at the first survey, our intent was really
clear. We wanted to find out how many
girls were missing school, how many people had not felt like
they were adequately educated onmenstruation and who had been
through period poverty. That data surprised us.
(06:24):
It told us that one in five of us have been through period
poverty. Yeah, nobody talks about it.
No, it's such a taboo topic. Periods in general.
Yeah, and to find out that womenwho identify as indigenous with
73% that haven't been able to afford period products, that is
(06:44):
so wrong. It shouldn't matter where you
live, you should have access to period products, right?
So that data that we utilised inthe 1st place was to speak the
language of politicians, was to say, you know what, here's the
data you've been asking me for years.
You didn't want anecdotal, you wanted data.
So here's the data. So now proudly in every state
(07:04):
and territory there is provisionof period products at every
primary and secondary school, excluding NT and Tasmania, which
we're still working on. Okay, okay.
But how great is that? That is huge and if that was all
you did that would be impressive.
But like, you and your team justkeep kicking goals in all areas.
(07:25):
It's easy to look at things now 10 years on and think like, it's
amazing and you've built this huge platform, and you can keep
moving and growing from there. But in the early days, was there
ever a point where you started to unravel just how big this
challenge was and think, like, you know what?
Too hard, too big. What can I do as one person?
Yeah. Even now, sometimes, like a
(07:45):
couple of weeks ago, I just sat in front of my computer and
cried. Because sometimes it is
overwhelming, right? Sometimes there was an e-mail
that came through which was it was a mental health unit in
South Australia who'd found out that we were helping with bags
for a mental health unit in Queensland and said can we
please get some? Can we get about 50 bags for
(08:08):
those women who turn up with nothing, not even underwear on.
Now there's somebody's baby, there's somebody, somebody,
right? And they mean something.
And I'm like, how do you say no?But you know what, We're not
going to collect enough bags to be able to do that.
But I still can't say no. And so I just sat there and
cried. And one of my team came in and
was talking about, it's in the bag.
(08:29):
We were talking about the planning of that.
And I was crying and I was just sitting there crying because
what's wrong? And then I started telling the
story and she snapped this photo.
It is the ugliest photo in the history of the world and put it
on LinkedIn. And we just wrote that this is
gut wrenching. And how do you not?
And sometimes I just sit there and think, what else can I do
when people rely on me? At the beginning, people didn't
(08:51):
rely on me, so I didn't have anything to lose.
Now I feel like if I don't, not that one person won't know that
I haven't done that, but I will know.
So yeah, things are hard. At the very beginning, I don't
think it was hard. I was so filled with adrenaline
and I was to the point I wouldn't even say I burnt out.
(09:13):
I actually just got recharged byit over and over and over again,
right? My health didn't come first
though, in retrospect, right? I loved that people needed me.
I loved that it challenged my brain and every.
I loved the relationships that we built.
I loved the challenges that werethere.
But Oh my God, I had no idea of you'd pull a string and then
(09:36):
more would just come and more would just come and it just, you
know, here we are 10 years laterand there are still 100 problems
that I need to solve. But we'll get there.
I don't feel like I'm, I, I willsay this, it's in the bag.
I will die trying to get 150,000donations so that no woman
(09:56):
misses out. Yeah.
Can you take me back to the beginning?
Where did Share the Dignity begin?
What's its origin story? How did you get started?
We've already discussed how it started with me asking my
clients to bring me pads and tampons.
Now, that was in the March. Now in the May, another friend
who worked in a hospital asked me if she could get some more
(10:17):
period products. So it's not like I started off
with share the dignity in my brain that I was going to do it
all the time, right? I then did a post on our social
media, which was a Facebook pagethat my daughter had set up.
She had done the graphics. So literally I've mentioned this
because there's so many people who have played a little or big
role along the way. That post that I put up then got
(10:40):
shared. M Raciano, a Melbourne comedian,
picked it up and was like, Oh myGod, I have never thought of
this. And then she shared that to her
20,000 plus people. It went viral.
I had no idea what we were doing.
We then had another collection in August.
We had Libra reach out to us anddonate 150,000 packets of pads.
(11:05):
Where did you normally gone to landfill.
Oh my God, they went to a volunteers shed in Warrnambool.
Oh it was, it was absolutely crazy.
Little did I know in order to have a charity that I needed to
have a constitution, a board of directors, I needed to pay fees
and permits in every state and it was crazy.
(11:26):
My husband had gone to school with a friend who worked at DLA
Piper, so he did. They donated $30,000 to do our
constitution and start the the business which was a proprietary
limited light and then start their not-for-profit DGR status.
So that was crazy. But it was always just, it was
never what you knew. It was who you knew.
(11:48):
And it was connecting all the way along.
At the beginning. I remember Coles coming on
board, but they only wanted to come on board in Victoria.
And because we had like a national page and we were
collecting everywhere, it made it really complicated.
Yeah. So we had Terry White Chemist
(12:09):
and we had Fernwood and I had this vision board and I still
have that vision board and I cutout everybody that I wanted on
it and every person that I wanted to share the dignity.
And I look at that board and I think for most part I was
successful in everything that was on there except for Oprah.
Now Oprah is coming here very soon, so she I'm going to tick
(12:31):
her off my vision board. I have been writing to Oprah
every three days for the last 90days.
Persistent, persistent, persistent.
It's worked for you in the past.It has.
Absolutely. I remember when Woolworths
contacted me after the abolishment of the tampon tax
(12:51):
and just using LinkedIn to sharethe stories all of the time.
And I still do that. I still do it successfully.
I think that and showing that vulnerability, but also people
want to help. They just want to know how they
can help. And I think that's probably one
of the things that I've also, I've done really well.
I will tell you that I'm never the smartest person in that
(13:12):
room, but I don't want to be. I went to a lunch on Friday with
the most incredibly smart people.
I was the dumbest person at thattime and I'm OK with that.
But Oh my God, those conversations that I learnt from
were incredible. Now, if I was to sit around a
table where I was the smartest person, am I going to learn
anything? Probably not, right?
So I'm always happy, happiest being they're not the smartest
(13:32):
person at the table. And I'm not saying that I'm
dumb. I'm just saying that I surround
myself with people who have got skills in areas that I just
don't have. That's how I will always be able
to be better. Yeah, Strategic, yeah.
Strategic. I'm the dumbest strategic person
I know. And that addiction to the growth
(13:54):
and the purpose and the impact, I'm sure a lot of people
listening can relate to that in their careers.
They lean right in and they pushreally hard, but maybe the
stakes don't feel as heavy as what you're dealing with.
So yeah. And remember, for the first five
years, everybody was a volunteer, including me.
So I had this amazing business of Bellevue personal training,
(14:17):
which provided for me and my family and my daughters.
And then the more I got into Share the Dignity, the less I
trained people. So I was donating like I
literally had two full time jobs.
Yeah, it was hard sleep was was rare.
Five hours. I would, I would live on, but I
would I do things different again, Probably not.
(14:38):
You just got to do what you got to do.
Share the Dignity is a charity. It's a not-for-profit, but it's
a business and we're in the business of making a difference
and you really had to put a business lens on it from
everything that we did. Like, how do you get people to
donate? Well, for me, I was a busy mum,
right? You have to make it super
simple. You can't have too many steps.
(14:59):
You've got to make it. You've got to communicate really
well. People don't want to send
another message to find out how you do something.
So I think that it was a perfecttime for me and I'm good with
that stuff, right? I'm I know what it's like to be
a time poor person and time is the most precious resource
anybody can give us. Yeah, Including businesses who
invest their time in putting a collection box.
(15:21):
What are all the things that we can do to make sure that their
time, that they give the charityand the cause is utilised to the
most? Yeah.
You share on your own podcast which will link in the show
notes and on social media a number of real stories from the
women that are being helped. Are there a few that stand out
to you that you can share with us right now?
Because I think as you mentioned, a lot of us come from
(15:44):
a privileged place where maybe we've been out and about and not
had a tampon when we needed it, but it wasn't necessarily
because we couldn't afford it. What sort of things are these
women dealing with? Yeah, in 2017, I met this
incredible young woman who in a domestic violence refuge here on
the Gold Coast actually. And I, she, she changed me
(16:06):
forever. So we were sitting on the edge
of the bed. She was about 24, she had a
little baby boy who was about 9 weeks old.
And she talked about the fact that living on the streets in
Adelaide was safer for her than living in the home that she had
come from because her mother hadsold her for sex from the age of
8. Now, I I couldn't stomach that
(16:29):
in itself, but her to tell me that she knew to go in and steal
people's socks from the laundromat to deal with her
period at the age of 14 and thatshe ended up going from one
relationship to another with at 14.
It were she ended up choosing tolive with a man who was 30
because it was a roof over her head.
(16:50):
Like her choices were never there.
And how, and for me at that stage, it was how does a child
just disappear from schooling, from friendships, from the world
and get vortex into that, into that life.
And so 10 years on from stealinga sock, here she is having
stolen a packet of maternity pads because she needed to buy
(17:15):
formula and nappies. And she didn't, you know, she
was sleeping in her car before she ended up at the at the
sanctuary. And that that whole life of
turmoil saw her sitting on the edge of a bed with a bag that
somebody had donated and given her, which was a mum and bum
bag. Now she talked about that bag as
the only Christmas present that she remembers.
(17:36):
And since the time that she was 8 years old and when she was 8,
her mum gave her a bike. But her mum took it back to the
shop after Christmas. So she talked about she
remembers getting Christmas present, but then it got taken
back. So she actually didn't remember
getting a Christmas present. This bag was the first gift
she'd got. And in there were these little
round yellow earrings. And she said, well, like, I've
(17:59):
never had a Christmas present, but I've never felt pretty.
And I feel really pretty in these earrings.
Now. A bag can give you all the
things, but that made her feel pretty.
It made her feel valued and thatyou can never buy.
And I will die trying to make sure that people feel like that
(18:19):
for Christmas, right. Yes, we give them pads and
tampons and all of the things that they need.
But that feeling like you're important and you're special.
And to have never had that as anas an adult or a teenager blows
my mind. And you know, I'm proud of what
we've done, but that is the the reason why we do it.
(18:41):
So we want to times that by 150,000 this year, right?
And I, I believe that every one of us has the ability to just
put that one bag together and impact that one person.
Yeah, that's a huge thing to be able to do.
Yeah, the ripple effects of thata giant.
So let's let's talked about it. And I know a number of people
have probably heard of what's inthe bag before, but for anyone
(19:02):
hearing of it for the first time, what is it and how can we
help? Yeah, I'm gonna step that back
to what does Share the Dignity do?
Sure. Yeah, of course.
In March and August, we put collection boxes out in every
Woolworths supermarket, but alsoanother thousand other
businesses around Australia. We collect period products, so
everything from pads, tampons, menstrual cups, period undies,
(19:24):
incontinence products, and then we distribute those to the 3 1/2
thousand charities. And then we do, it's in the bag.
So it's like my favorite child of Share the Dignity.
Probably because I hear more stories from people who will
tell you about the impact of thebag as opposed to, oh, I got my
period and thank God I got a packet of pads or tampons,
(19:45):
right. We ask you to clean up your
cupboard. Really.
That's how it started. It started from me cleaning out
my bathroom cupboard and realising I'd been a netball
coach, a personal trainer and people have just given me all of
these things that I just am a really simple person.
I don't ever change my perfume. I don't ever change my
jewellery. And so I had all of these
(20:07):
abundance of things. And so I put them into some
handbags and dropped them into adomestic violence refuge and
then shared it on our social media.
I had no infrastructure in place.
I'd not even told our volunteersthat that's what we were going
to do. And we had like 200 and
something volunteers back then. Some of them are still in
therapy from, from the way that I've like, oh, let's just do
(20:28):
this. But Oh my God, I'm so grateful I
did. And I literally am always cut
before that. We'll just work it out.
We'll just work it out. So we now ask you to fill a
handbag with life's essentials, things like shampoo,
conditioner, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, soap,
period products. Then anything else you put into
your bag size is up to your bag size, your imagination, and your
(20:50):
budget. So you can put things in like
I've owned 7,422,000 hair ties in my lifetime and I can never
find one. I always put a hair brush and
hair ties into my bag. I also always put a chapstick.
So I've got a chapstick in my car, in my bedside drawer, in my
office drawer, in my handbag. I just couldn't do life without
chapstick, right? So I just think about the things
(21:13):
that people want and need in their bag.
And just to hear those stories of women smells is one of the
things that I constantly hear about ladies when they've
received a bag like Kim, who youcan see on YouTube, actually,
you can hear Kim's story. Have you heard it?
No, we'll link that in the show notes.
So Kim. 'S story about receiving a bag.
(21:34):
She's the, I think the second orthird episode and she talks
about how unsafe it was for her in her home in domestic violence
and that washing her hair was anabsolute luxury at home because
it wasn't safe in her shower. And when she ended up in a
domestic violence refuge, she felt safe in the shower.
And in her bag was Flex shampoo.And she said she still uses Flex
(21:57):
just for the smell. And for the first time in her
life, feeling safe and cared forand that somebody she'd never
met had given her something. It was something different and
really important in her life. And you know, to look at Kim,
you would never choose that. That would have been the life
that she was. And I think that that was real.
The real beauty of the Another Bloody Podcast was that people
(22:20):
perceive people who've experiencing homelessness or
domestic violence to look a certain way.
They just don't. They just look like you and I
Yeah, they just got a really trauma filled life and story.
Yeah. And how do we get these bags to
women in need? I know you've got a really cool
partnership with Bunnings. Can you tell us about that?
(22:41):
Yeah, So what we do is ask you to fill those bags and then drop
them into Bunnings. The last two weeks of November
we do do three different types of bags, so a women's bag, then
a mum and bub bag, which you just tie up a purple ribbon on,
and a teen bag. So a teen bag, we just ask you
to put a yellow ribbon on it andput things like, you know,
mindfulness, colouring in or just some things that you think
(23:04):
that your teenage self or your teenage daughters would want and
need. There is a story that we've
shared recently on our page about Rachel, this incredible
young woman who was going to a high School for Girls, not in
mainstream. Now Rachel didn't have a home,
she was experiencing homelessness and going to
(23:25):
school, right? Just couch surfing from one
house to another. The school was organising so she
got a bag. A few years ago the school was
organising for her to have permanent accommodation.
So she on her 18th birthday, received this bag that somebody
had given her and in that bag was a towel set.
Now she was moving into her a unit that they had given her.
(23:47):
It was the first time that she'dhad her first lot of things.
That was her 18th birthday, and it was a Christmas gift, and it
was the only 18th birthday present that she got and the
only Christmas present that she got.
Somebody put that together for her.
So there's, yeah, a beautiful picture that they sent us of
Rachel holding this bag. You actually don't see her face.
(24:08):
You just see her holding this bag.
It's stories like that that makeus who can't afford to put
together a bag. And I always say, if you can't
afford to put together a bag, get together with some friends
and buy some pieces each yourself and maybe look in your
cupboard of things that you haven't opened right and look at
what you could give somebody else.
Yeah. So everyone that listens to
(24:28):
reset, they're high achievers, they're going to be wondering
what makes a great bag, not justa good bag, but a great bag.
What's kind of the best bag you've seen or what do you want
to challenge them to put in there?
You've listed a number of things.
Is there anything else? You know what a great bag is?
One that comes from somebody's heart?
It just does. And it also comes with a note.
(24:49):
So a lot of our stories that youhear the ladies talk about is
the note. So Gabby received also received
a bag. And in her bag was a quote that
said you are braver. And the Winnie the Pooh quote
that said you are braver and stronger than you ever imagined.
That changed Gabby's life aroundand what somebody had written in
that note. That note sits beside her bed in
(25:10):
a frame still to this day. Gabby now works in lived
experience in the hospitals in Perth because it wasn't abnormal
for her to sleep during the day whilst while living on the
streets of Perth because it was unsafe to her to be out asleep
at night. So you know, a bag has so much,
(25:30):
but as long as it comes from your heart and what you put into
it is not about the money. It's not about how much money of
stuff you can put in there. It's really about what does that
look like for you? Should you be fleeing domestic
violence and need something bestand less, do these incredible
undies that are one-size-fits-all, which are
incredible to put into the bag. OK, noted.
(25:54):
Noted. Yeah, they just, they just
stretch and. For lots of our bags go in the
back of police cars, right? So when a woman's being picked
up from DV, she sometimes can beput on a bus to get to a
different state and not have anything.
Now imagine just having even a pair of thongs.
(26:14):
Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah.
The. It's the little things when you
don't have anything. Yeah.
Anything we shouldn't put in thebags?
Yeah, look, we can't have food. And that was a we can't because
of the ants and the heat. So I always thought at the
beginning, so the first year we did lots of mistakes, right?
But I, we, I just thought you would want chocolates in there
(26:35):
and candy like in a in Queensland.
Yeah. You put those bags in the back
of your car and, or you tend to,they melt or the ants get them.
So we ask that people don't put food in.
We also ask that you don't put sharps or razors in.
OK. Basically, you don't know
whether that bag is going to endup in a mental health unit or
people who can't have it. Yeah.
(26:56):
So. And then we ask you also to opt
for roll on deodorants or pump sprays as opposed to aerosols
for the same reason. Yeah, that makes sense.
On your website, there's also a way that you can donate
equivalent money to a bag. Can you talk to me about that?
Wow. Is that a thing?
(27:17):
Yeah, it is a thing. It is a thing.
And I take a big deep breath because before COVID, we used to
collect 145,000 bags, 142,000 bags, and the charities would
request around 150,000 bags. So we were never very far off.
And for most part that was mom and Bob bags because we would
never get enough of them. They're quite expensive to put
together, right? But in COVID in 2020, everything
(27:41):
changed. Everything changed for the
world, right? But it also changed for Share
the Dignity. What happened was we collected
72,000 bags and the charities had requested 162,000 bags.
I was gutted and I remember and this was the one point where I
realised that people relied on us, that we weren't even a nice
(28:03):
to have any more and that peopleneeded us.
And so a woman from Tweed Heads had contact, rang my mobile and
said Oh my God, your chiros havejust dropped off 25 bags and
I've got 52 women coming. That's how many bags we'd
requested for a homelessness event.
Every year we give them a bag. What am I going to do?
(28:24):
And I remember just, I didn't like conflict in the first in
the first place. I was really startled by it and
her aggression. But I kind of understood what
she like, how do you give one every second, a bag to every
second person? It was just a problem that we'd
never had before. And I just said to her, I look,
I'm, I'm so sorry. We can only give what's donated.
(28:47):
And so around Australia, we have, you know, 4000 volunteers
who felt that in their gut, their hearts, we were broken.
And so we realised that people weren't going out shopping,
people weren't going to offices.So all of these big collections
that we used to get from officesthat they would take to Bunnings
was just not happening. So we thought, you know what,
(29:09):
we'll turn it online, we'll do the shopping for you.
We'll, we'll buy the, we'll get bags, the money donated and then
we'll put them together. So we now have what we call
sponsor a bag and that has started from there.
A couple of weeks ago we put together 11,000 bags in a two
week period. We had corporates come in,
they'd come in for two hours, we'd pack them.
(29:31):
But I you have no understanding of it cost me half $1,000,000
which was all the money that youhad donated.
But the rubbish that comes from unpacking 11,000 shampoos and
conditioners and deodorants. Even every deodorant pack comes
in a blister pack that you've got a cut open and then a box
and then these amazing little connectors on either side which
(29:53):
we actually keep and give to kindies to put paints in and we
try to re really recycle. But it took us 32 skip bins to
get rid of, which comes at a. Cost as well rubbish as well.
Right. So, well, I love that people
give money. It's like a production line of
putting those bags together. And yeah, we do it with heart,
(30:13):
but it's not the heart that happens when you choose your
bag. You go out shopping, you put it
together, you put a note in it. Do you know what I mean?
Like, I love it. And it's so needed.
Those 11,000 bags went out to 82different charities, a lot of
them remote indigenous communities.
Because again, shouldn't matter where you live, you should have
(30:33):
the very basic of essentials. And for them, they don't even
have their own toothbrush. Like they share a toothbrush
between everybody who lives in their home, same with shampoo
and conditioner. That those very basic essentials
that we just have in our bathroom are such a luxury for
them. So it's really important to get
them to them before Christmas aswell.
So oh, we could pack 11,000 bagsevery month and we'd still
(30:57):
wouldn't have enough bags. It sounds like a really nice way
to get a group of girlfriends together or your corporate team
together and pack bags yourselves and then one person
or the group can go to Bunnings and deliver them.
But that seems like a nice sort of team bonding activity or
thing for a group of girlfriendsto do even.
In workplaces, they will give a matching pair from different
(31:21):
divisions $50 Visa card, and they go out and go shopping
together. It's a great bonding experience,
right? But it's also a really nice way
in a corporate world to have conversations around domestic
violence and even privilege, right?
Like, could you imagine being without those sorts of things?
Yeah. Talk to me more about the ways
(31:42):
corporate teams get involved throughout the year.
Is there if someone's listening and they have a team or a
business and they think, oh, this is a great thing for us to
work into our calendar next year, what's in the bag?
Is there anything else that you've seen corporate teams do?
So at Mars Bar at the moment they are.
Every month they bring in something different and donate
(32:03):
shampoos and conditioners in January, then something else.
So it's never a big thing at theend of the year.
Then they bring in one bag each,and then they all pack a bag.
They pack it together. So instead of having a expensive
Christmas party, this is their Christmas party.
It's a way to give back. It's a way to show.
And everybody loves it. Yeah.
And that happens not just at Mars, but at combat.
(32:25):
Like it's, it's really importantto be able to show your stuff,
not just tick a box, yeah, that you're making a difference.
Yeah. And it's great that these huge
organisations do it, but small businesses can do it too.
If you have a team of two or three or ten, like it's still
something, you can all bring things in together and make the
bags together. And what a nice way to spend an
afternoon. Yeah.
Absolutely. Even the going shopping piece.
(32:46):
Yeah, yeah, it feels so good. Like you, I mean, you know, I
know when I go to Kmart and I'm going to put together my teen
bag, I just love it. I love the shopping piece of it.
I love that you're thinking of somebody that you're never, ever
gonna meet. Yeah, yeah.
Helping a stranger. Yeah, at Christmas time.
And on our website we have everything.
(33:06):
So if you want to host an event at your workplace, we have
everything from the e-mail that you need to write to the e-mail
signature to the header, to everything that you need, the
shopping list. Everything is there.
Again, I look at how I would want things.
Yeah. Yeah.
Given to me. I want everything on on a
platter. Yeah.
So I don't want to have to thinkabout it.
(33:27):
Downloadable posters. Everything's there.
Make it as easy as possible. Absolutely.
Perfect for time pool managers or assistants out there.
They're thinking what can we do for our end of year way to give
back? Absolutely, yeah.
Same with International Women's Day, all of those sorts of
things. I think that that's one of the
things that we've done really well from the perspective of how
(33:47):
can a business business get involved here.
We'll make it as easy as possible.
Yeah, I love that. That's how to make things easy
as possible. What is the hardest thing about
running a nationwide charity as big as Share the Dignity?
Time time's just something you can't buy, right?
And there's and even last week, we have 32 staff now and every
(34:12):
single one of those staff could come in today and work for 14
hours and they'd still have 14 hours of work to do.
There is just a list a mile longand that doesn't even allow my
word for next year is space. What I'm really looking for is
we've worked really hard this year.
We've implemented Salesforce, we've got a new website coming.
(34:36):
And this is all because Priceline and Sisterhood
Foundation have given us $250,000 a year for three years
to be able to do some of that really heavy lifting.
Yeah, that has happened. So we've done a lot of that this
year and even for any business that's implemented Salesforce,
they're like Salesforce will make things easier, but there is
a lot of work that goes into before you do that.
(34:58):
And you know, as a charity that's 10 years old, if you
donated to us, we've, we've known, we've said thank you, but
we've never had a, a process fordoing it right.
So we're really excited about that.
But my word for next year would be like to be able to have a
team of staff that have 35 hoursworth of work to do and have
space to go, Oh, I've always done it that way.
(35:20):
But actually, if I did this, this or this, we could have a
better outcome. And that's the world that I want
moving forward into our 11th, 12th, 13th and forever's years.
Forever. Years, yeah.
And sometimes, like we were talking about earlier, like a
retreat experience, sometimes you need the opportunity to
like, just step back. But when you're so busy, you
(35:41):
don't have that. So space is really cool.
Coming soon for your team. Absolutely.
And for me, I think every time Ideuced and your health and
well-being is the highest priority because you can't
actually lead a team. And I understand why I attracted
the people that I attracted whenI did because I was working
(36:01):
60-70 hours a week. I wasn't going, I wasn't setting
a a great example on a nice walkin the morning.
Gym is really important. Eating healthy food, resting.
Resting was not in my vocabulary.
And even though I didn't expect it of everybody, that was what
was attracted. About yeah, it wasn't magnetised
(36:23):
and I've yeah. Absolutely made so many mistakes
from that perspective, but that is not who I am now.
And I think that's the really beautiful part about being a
leader, is that you get to change and evolve every single
day, right? Yeah.
Where do you see share the dignity in 10 years time, which
is you've been in this for 10 years, like I'm sure another 10
years you're just going to continue to magnify and amplify
(36:43):
your impact. But what's your vision?
My vision is in 2035 that we will have menstrual equity in
Australia. So menstrual equity to me means
that no matter where you are, there is the provision of period
products. So whether you're at school,
university, in a hospital, you're at the library, whether
you're in a workplace, there is period products there like there
(37:06):
is toilet paper. So there won't be what we have
now, which is, you know, girls missing out on sport because
they can't afford period products or they have
endometriosis and playing sport is something you don't talk
about, that sort of thing, right?
So there's the provision of period products, but there's
also the education component of it.
(37:27):
So in our bloody big survey, ourstats showed that 63% of women
felt like they didn't feel like they were adequately educated on
menstruation. What?
Imagine 63% of girls coming out of school saying, oh, I don't
feel like I was adequately educated on maths or English or
any of the other subjects. That would be an absolute
failure on the education department and we would be doing
(37:49):
everything we can to rectify that.
Right. And so then my conversations
with the education department isthis is not good enough and what
are you going to do to make thisbetter?
So if that's the number for women, could you imagine what
that number is for boys and men?And everybody's little boy ends
up being somebody's father, boss, colleague, friend, and
(38:10):
they have no understanding of menstruation.
That has to change. Education needs to be better and
removing that shame and stigma. So in doing that we are really
working hard with, we provide, we produced a 2 minute non
verbal animation. We did that with 25 new
Australians, so refugees who'd come to Australia based on some
(38:32):
information that we had had in the collaboration world.
And I'm so proud of that two-minute animation that is now
being rolled out in schools, in prisons, in hospitals, in health
departments that will ensure that when we go to do the bloody
big survey again in 2027, we don't wanna see those numbers
the same. And we we are committed to doing
(38:53):
that survey every three years. So by 2035, there will be none
of this one in five, there will be none of this can't
participate in sport because there isn't period products.
Nobody missing work because they're too embarrassed to go to
a meeting and feel like they're going to bleed through their
their clothes, all of those things.
(39:13):
I feel like we have the ability to make the difference.
We can't do it alone, which is why we are working with the
federal government. We are working state, we are
working council, we are working with schools, we are working
with NRL. So for example, I've worked with
NRL to provide, produce a what does a coach need to know when
Ruby's dad, who's put his hand up to coach the under twelves,
(39:34):
is saying I'll coach them, but Ihave no understanding about
menstruation. So all of those sorts of
education pieces are so very vitally important to that 2035
goal. I feel like it won't not happen.
It's just it's not a non negotiable for me.
It's just how do we bring everybody in on that journey?
(39:55):
Yeah, we will then obviously need to move towards to it's in
the bag donations a year insteadof the one because obviously
people flee domestic violence every day of the week, right.
And for me it's in the bag as turn the corner from just being
a present at Christmas time to. Women coming out of prison 365
(40:16):
days a year or women in mental health units or it's just way
more than what it ever was when we very first started.
So that's where we will negate to and drive towards, which is
what we're setting ourselves up for now.
Yeah, you mentioned before that being a leader is an opportunity
to learn and grow and pivot and change yourself everyday.
(40:38):
What do you feel like you need to change about yourself?
Well, how do you need to grow tobe able to deliver those goals
in the next 10 years? That changes daily for me.
Like if you well, for me, being really rested is the best
version of me. Exercising is the best version
of me seeing things from other people's perspective, but always
(41:02):
learning and reading. Like I don't do conflict well, I
don't do hard conversations well.
And that comes from that comes from a child, childhood trauma,
right. So working on me being the best
version of me is to the benefit of everybody in Australia, I
say, right. When you're, when you look at
when you're leading a charity like that.
(41:23):
And I'm trying to make sure thata woman doesn't miss out on A
and a bag, whether she's coming into a mental health unit or
she's spending Christmas in a domestic violence shelter.
The best version of me is not just for me, it's for everybody.
Yeah. I like that quote and I might I
might get it wrong right now, but it's something around like
rather than have I worked hard enough to deserve rest, it's
have I am I well rested enough to be able to do my best work.
(41:46):
Absolutely, yeah. And I think growing up, I I
didn't, I didn't. Resting was for the weak, right.
So you it that to me, that was how I was brought up.
But and I wore busy like a badgeof honour.
Oh, I'm so busy. I'm I'm this, I'm that.
And it was. It's just so stupid really.
(42:06):
And when I look back and think, Oh my God, now there's no
negotiating when it comes to 8 hours sleep.
Even this week I've got a board meeting till 7:30 on Wednesday
night and I have to be in Sydneyby 8:30 on Thursday morning.
And I'm just said I originally last week I was like, no, I'll
just get the first flight out, which is now 5:00 because of
(42:27):
daylight savings. And then I'm like, no, 'cause
I'll come home from the board meeting and I'll be worried
about I have to get up at 3:30 to get there.
I'm like, I'd rather just go after the board meeting, get
there, get a good night's sleep and then be ready for the next
day. Yeah, and that takes time and
experience and self-awareness. I think we all go through that
(42:48):
messy period where you just leaninto the busyness and it's fun
and it's addictive and it's cool.
But it takes time to then have that hindsight of actually this
isn't sustainable. And if I do want to do my best
work and have this global impact, which I'm sure you're
working on, then you do need to put those boundaries in place.
Yeah. And I think it comes at a time
20/20/21, I had three, three operations.
(43:12):
And it was a really tough healthyear for me.
And you can't buy health and youcan't be of any benefit to
anybody if you're not healthy. Yeah.
So for me, it was, that was my year where I was like, OK, all
right, I really need to look after, really need to look after
me. And audio books came in into my
(43:32):
world. Now, I'd never read as I just
never read because I never stayed still long enough.
And my, you know, I'm probably one of those people who would
now be diagnosed with ADHD. I'm going to pretend it's a
superpower, but it's also been something that I haven't known
or how to work with. So I never read because I it
(43:54):
was, I could do two or three pages and then I'd be bored and
I'd be looking at, oh, what's next shiny thing, right?
So audiobooks changed my life. And even now when I say, oh, I
just read, oh, actually I audiobooked it and my mum will
still say, oh, well, that means you didn't read it.
I'm like, I took it in and I'm now smarter than I was before
the book. So I don't care.
You take it whatever way you want to.
I think that's another thing that I've learnt.
(44:14):
I mean, I'm 55 years old, right?I don't care what anyone thinks
anymore. God I wish I was that person
when I was 25. What haven't we spoken about
today that you wish more people knew?
If there's a problem in the world or in your world that you
have the ability to fix it, I think that's the thing that we
(44:35):
sometimes think problems are so much bigger than the one person,
but it's not you really. The most powerful thing any of
us have is our voice to make a difference.
And that's a voice even if you're standing up for yourself,
right? It's it's almost how do you find
your voice? If you can't do it, you have to
work out a way to do it. Michelle, thank you.
(44:58):
Thank you. I've loved this chat, I've
learnt a lot. I think everyone listening is
going to be excited to go out and build a bag, write a
beautiful note, drop it off and donate it to someone that
they're never going to meet, butthey might just make their year
a little bit easier. So thank you for everything
you're doing. Thank you.
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