Kitty Tabak: 'When I was 6, I began to struggle to speak', speech to school assembly - 2023

23 August 2023, St Margaret’s Berwick Grammar, Berwick, Victoria, Australia

Hey, I’m Kitty and I’ve been asked to speak to you all and bring some awareness to my neurological disability. 

So to give you some backstory, I was born a normal healthy child. I was speaking and forming sentences like any other young child - in my American accent thanks to Dora the Explorer - when everything changed. When I was six, I began to struggle to speak, I would hold onto my words, repeat syllables, stand there with my mouth wide open while nothing came out. My mother took me to get testing done and it was concluded that I have the brain abnormality that affects 5 to 10% all of children. Stuttering.

We all hoped that I was like the 80% of child stutterers who get a stutter when there are around 2 to 6 then grow out of it within a year or so. With a stutter there is no exact cut off year for when stuttering goes from temporary to permanent. Childhood stuttering has 8-10 as the prime years for it to go away. But really it is fair to assume that once you turn eighteen, it will almost definitely be a reoccurring issue for the rest of your life as a long-term stutter. Now, boys are 2-3 times more likely to stutter than girls and also 3-4 times more likely to continue stuttering than girls. So originally, I thought I would be normal again.

So every birthday that passed I just hoped that I would wake up and it would be gone because I knew every set of candles I blew out meant I was closer to it being permanent. Even though I had accepted it, deep down I still wished it would go away. By fourteen I was certain it wasn’t going to go and now at seventeen it’s here for the long run. I am now a part of the 1 percent that stutter. A part of the 80 million out of all 8 billion people.

I’m not going to lie and say that I have grown to be accepting of this and don’t let it hold me back, because that isn’t true. It is something I battle with every waking moment. Watching everyone I know talk and act like it is nothing and take it for granted when I can only wish to be like them and be ‘normal’. It also sucks knowing that my own emotions are betraying me every day as well. When stuttering certain emotions make it worse, and by certain, I mean almost all of them. Whether I am tired, angry, anxious, excited, or sad, those emotions make stuttering a lot worse and a lot harder to hide. The only emotion that doesn’t make it worse is when you’re totally calm, but how often, especially in the presence of other people, are you completely calm and almost numb? Taking those emotions in, and also having to deal with the ticks that stuttering causes is difficult. Trying to stop the leg tapping, hand movements, finger clicking, neck jerks, constant blinking and still be able to feel peaceful and calm is basically impossible. Now sometimes my stutter goes unnoticed by me, and that is pretty often when I’m alone or with people I’m comfortable with. But when in front of a customer at my retail job, speaking to an audience, speaking on the phone, its draining.

I use so much more energy that the normal person just to function like everyone else. During the semester exams, I would get in the car and almost be unable to talk or keep my eyes open. I used so much energy trying to talk fluently because of my stutter, and read and write fluently because of my severe dyslexia and illegible handwriting as well as just having to study and then focus for hours of exams that I would be physically and emotionally exhausted. Like physically unable to move or talk or express myself, if I try it just ends in me holding back frustrated tears from exhaustion.

Every single day is a challenge. Years of speech therapy never worked for me. Every technique failed on me and one day after a session I met my breaking point and told my mum that I would never go to one again and after some hesitation she agreed and accepted my choice. Something as simple as ordering a coffee is embarrassing and difficult for me and speech therapy never made it any easier. Doing this speech and the two other speeches I did in recent weeks for house and music captain was one of the most stressful and scary things I did this year. Speaking to large groups of people is fine usually for me, the girls in house extrav sport all know how loud and talkative I can be, but the second I have something like a speech or book in front of me that I have to read, or am being assessed, my fight or flight kicks in and my brain shuts down my ability to speak. That’s why me standing here right now talking about something so raw and personal is a really big deal for me.

Growing up knowing there is no cure for my disability kills me. There is no surgery for stuttering or medicine that can cure it. Speech therapy only teaches you ways to cope and ways to hide it or will help a child grow out of a childhood stutter. For a long-term stutterer, it is 50/50, either helps you or doesn’t at all. I’m one of the unlucky ones.

I’ll end by mentioning one celebrity I love, not solely because of his movies but because of how he goes about his stutter. Samuel L. Jackson. He has stuttered all his life and even went mute for over a year because of how bad it was and how severely he was bullied in school. He has gone on to have a successful acting career, yet his stutter was never cured. The first article to come up when you google his name and stuttering it is “how Samuel L. Jackson cured his stutter” because we never see him stutter so it must be cured. But a director never uses the scenes the star messed up their lines and the same goes for when an actor stutters. He still has his days but is able to move forward and be successful in life. I strive to be like that and be able to have a career where I’m more comfortable with my speech impediment.

Right this moment, I’m still not overly happy about my stutter. I know that deep down I will always have that hatred for it. My goal today was to just spread awareness of it and share a little bit of my struggles and my stories as well as prove my terrified younger self that I can do a speech in assembly like everyone else. Thank you for listening.  

Michael Kirby: 'To honour Daniel, we must resolve to talk about depression', Launch of Daniel Solomons Memorial Scholarship - 2015

30 April 2015, Sydney, Australia

Daniel Solomons committed suicide on 23 April 2013. A Memorial Scholarship was established in his name, and Justice Michael Kirby spoke at the launch event. The name of the talk is, “Lawyers Suicide: The Influence of Legal Studies and Practice, Stress and Clinical Depression and Sexuality’. Daniel’s mother Sandra Solomons also spoke at the event.

CONTRADICTIONS AND DISCORDANCIES

This is not an evening for joy and humour. Ashurst have offered their Sydney office for the launch of the Daniel Solomons Memorial Scholarship. Daniel was their employee. Before that, he was a gifted student at Moriah College. He received the Premier’s Medal for all round excellence in his High School Certificate results. He graduated in an Arts/Law course at the University of New South Wales, with first class honours. He was respected by his colleagues at Ashurst. He was admired for his analytical skills. He was studying for admission to practise at the New South Wales Bar. Two years and a week ago, on 23 April 2013, he took his own life. His death has been a devastation to his partner and his family, his work colleagues, the members of his intended Bar chambers. His is another story of might have beens.

I honour the lovely, discordant, evocative Jewish music, played by the quintet. I appreciate the fine food and the wines. But this is not an evening for enjoyment. Losing Daniel has left a hole in the heart of too many. The sharpest loss has been felt by those present at the event:

 His parents, Sandra and David Solomons.
 His sisters Michele and Rebecca, who grew up with him.

 His domestic partner and faithful friend, David Darley, who is here with his mother, Sandra Darley, still close to Daniel’s family.
 His two grandmothers who are both present.
 His uncles, cousins and other family members.
 His school friends from Moriah College.
 His University friends from UNSW.
 His work colleagues at Ashurst, who cherished his dazzling abilities.
 Jordana Wong from UNSW Law, substituting for Dean David Dixon, who planned the scholarship to continue Daniel’s passions.
 And the rest of us who are here, seeking to find meaning out of this tragic anniversary.

This cannot be a usual dinner with laughter and celebration. We have serious work to do. And if we shed tears, that will be entirely appropriate. Yet tears are also not enough. We must respond to Daniel’s family’s determination to establish a scholarship that will recognise in others, and support, the same courage, idealism and determination to change things that Daniel exhibited in his short life.

COMMONALITIES

I feel an affinity for Daniel Solomons. Not to be too boastful (for Daniel and I would never be such) we were both pretty brilliant at school, and at university.

We were both enthusiastic and energised by our early work experience. We loved solving the problems of the law, Daniel and I.

We were both good writers. It is a genetic thing. A capacity to communicate simply. To write in the same language that we talk – a simple tongue derived from the Saxons, that now conquers the world.

We both tended to think outside the square. This irritated some people. But it helped us to see things to which others were blind.

We were both challengers of settled things. And, as we grew up, we knew, from our experiences with love and life, that many things needed changing, including in the law.

Undeservedly you might think, we both were lucky in love. We both won handsome and intelligent partners and (for a reason we could never fully understand) they loved us. Daniel’s, David Darley. My Johan van Vloten. Luck in love, we knew, could not be methodically planned. It was a gift from the Gods.

It is good that tonight we honour David Darley and his mother. Often, you know, this is done for wives or husbands but not for LGBT partners. Yet they are flesh and blood. They hurt. They weep too.

DIFFERENCES

Emanuel Poulos of Ashurst has shared with us a thoughtful and moving description of Daniel’s life in the Firm. So well-constructed and full of detail. Daniel’s sudden death, and its circumstances, would have been a terrible shock to his work colleagues. He had so much to offer and to look forward to. The support by Ashurst for Daniel’s scholarship. It will be one way to keep alive the flame of memory and to honour his unusual personality. It will support those selected who decide to make the study of law their dream. It will help those who need something more, to get started. And who demonstrate personal courage, as Daniel did, seeking knowledge and enlightenment despite challenges, whether personal, financial or both.

Still, there were differences between Daniel’s life and mine:

I am nearing the end. He was knocking on the entrance door. I applied for articles to Dawson Waldron Edwards and Nichols (a predecessor of Ashurst). I may have been brilliant. But they rejected my application. My father was not a lawyer. That was often a prerequisite in those days. Daniel was accepted here. I never made it to a top tier firm. Often in the High Court, I would look at the coversheet of appeal books. The old firms that rejected me may have changed their names. But it did not deceive me. I knew who they were. It did not make a difference to my judgment. But I still remembered. Daniel, on the other hand, entered the magic circle.

Daniel’s office was, let’s face it, a mess. Mine has always been antiseptically neat and tidy.

Towards the end of his life, Daniel, who had suffered anxiety, came to suffer from clinical depression. I never have. Depression is not an easy journey. In Samuel Coleridge’s poem “Dejection” he describes how it feels:

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy stifled unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear.

To honour Daniel, we must resolve to talk about depression. To analyse its causes. Above all, to understand why it is so common amongst law students, legal practitioners and judges. Although I did not feel its pain myself, I spent many years of enforced silence about another demon of others that Daniel knew: sexual difference. So it is not hard for me to understand the challenge of depression. The way out of the closet is to put it on the table, turn it around, examine it, acknowledge it and challenge its corrosive effects.


RESISTENCE

After I was appointed to the High Court of Australia, in February 1996, I was soon afterwards invited to address a judicial conference in Brisbane. I was asked to talk on any subject I might choose. Perhaps they were hoping for the Rule against Perpetuities or the Statute of Mortmain. Instead, fresh from a recent conference in Canada, I selected stress. Judicial stress. Stress done to judges. Stress done by judges. Little did I know that I could not have chosen a more stressful topic for my audience.

The commentator, Justice Jim Thomas of the Supreme Court of Queensland, was antagonistic to my theme. He blamed his wife, who, he said, had berated him for even coming to respond to such an inappropriate and irrelevant theme. Most of the judicial attendees at that conference appeared relieved and mischievously happy to tweak the tail of the new High Court Justice for daring to choose a “touchy-feely” subject. How rude of him. A few supported me; but not many. However, I stood my ground. That was another thing I shared with Daniel. The sometimes irrational belief in our own correctness. I have kept gnawing away at this subject since 1976: betraying a naively simple belief in rational persuasion. Now there are fewer lawyers who are dismissive of the topic. Too much evidence of its impact. Too many suicides and breakdowns to sustain the code of silence. Now, most law deans, chief judges and leading lawyers know that this subject is serious. We will honour Daniel’s life by treating is as such.

SUICIDAL DIMENSION

Suicide is now such a serious problem in our world that even the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) has provided a first report addressing the topic. According to the report, someone in our world commits suicide every 40 seconds. This is more than the aggregate of victims of wars and natural disasters. The largest toll is amongst the elderly. The highest rates occur in Central and Eastern Europe and in Asia with 25% of cases occurring in developed countries. Men are almost twice as likely as women to take their own lives. Inferentially, this is because women have better networks; they are more willing to talk about issues that trouble them; and to seek help. They are less likely to feel an obligation of denial. They will seek help beyond their own limited knowledge and experience. Lonely self-help will often not provide the solution.

The WHO report took a decade to produce. It found that the rates of suicide in developed countries (12.7 per 100,000) were slightly higher than in developing low and middle income countries (11.2). The very highest rates in the world occurred in North Korea, India, Indonesia and Nepal. Worldwide, the most suicide prone countries included Guyana (44.2 per 100,000); followed by North and South Korea (38.5 and 28.9 respectively), Sri Lanka (28.8), Lithuania (28.2), India (21.1) and Southern Sudan (19.8). Russia and Uganda each had 19.5. The purpose of the WHO report is to encourage a new global strategy. The Organisation hopes that this will reduce suicide rates by 10% before 2020.

Australia has a rate of about 11.5 per 100,000. Every year approximately 2,000 Australians commit suicide, with up to 40 times that number making an attempt to end their lives. Suicide is the leading cause of death in Australia for young men under 44 years and for women under 34 years. One person dies by suicide in Australia approximately every 4 hours.

One issue which the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention is currently studying is the particular impact of human sexuality on the suicide rate. This is why the Institute has recently appealed to persons who know someone who committed suicide to assist them with their research into the impact of minority sexual orientation or gender identity. These are topics that can occasionally lead to feelings of isolation, low self-worth, fear of violence and hostility.

Although we have known the basic facts of the science of sexual orientation for more than 50 years, recent research and experience shows that often there is good reason for people, including young people, to feel depressed and discouraged because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. They may keep up appearances. But, particularly if they are suffering from clinical depression, the appearances may simply mask the inner turmoil that is going on. Sometimes that turmoil will lead them to an exit strategy. For people who face what they see as unrelieved stress and pain, suicide can appear a rational way out of unyielding conflict and misery.

Many young people in Australia come up against hostility and animosity because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. A recent report by Beyondblue revealed high levels of homophobia amongst Australian teenage boys between the ages of 14-17. A quarter of the cohort considered that it was acceptable to describe something they did not like as “gay”: assimilating the insult with the description. Most participants in the study agreed that homophobic discrimination was common in their circle and they realised that it could lead to depression and anxiety. However, despite this insight, a significant minority indicated attitudes that would escalate such responses:

 38% indicated that they would not be happy being friends with a same-sex attracted person;
 41% said that lesbian, gay and bisexual people make them uncomfortable;
 34% of boys were unsure whether ending a friendship if someone said they were same-sex attracted would be discrimination;
 Around 19% saw homosexuality as immoral; and
 17% regarded it as a “passing phase”.

DOING SOMETHING

The response to this problem in Australian society (which would appear to be larger than in most other western countries) demands institutional and individual responses. The places where such responses need to occur obviously include educational institutions. Some of these are under the control of religious (“Faith”) organisations that are resistant to changing the environment that gives rise to the discrimination, hostility and potentially terminal responses on the part of those targeted. Not all those who commit suicide amongst young Australians are from sexual minorities (LGBTI). But clearly some are. The higher rates of suicide amongst young males appears significant.

When the Australian Federal Government launched a “Safe Schools Coalition Australia” initiative, supported by federal funding of $8 million, to support an active campaign against bullying in schools, this was criticized by the Australian Christian Lobby. It called for a boycott. Nor is its approach confined to evangelical Christian churches. In March 2015, I wrote to a senior official in a Roman Catholic educational institution, drawing attention to reports that students had been refused accreditation of a LGBTI student group which would have financial and venue advantages for them. The institution had also reportedly refused permission to the students to meet on the university premises. The response by the senior executive of the institution was discouraging:

“As a [religious institution] recognised by Australian law, we believe that we have a right (and duty) to run [our body] in a way that is consistent with and gives witness to our Faith. We clearly identify our Objects in all of our recruitment materials and we ask all students to respect the Objects. We do not assert this as a justification for unjust discrimination, as we are absolutely opposed to unjust discrimination, but we do assert that this allows us to approach and deal with issues in ways that may be different to the practices of secular institutions but are none the less valuable and important. By way of illustration; while a secular [organisation] may well affiliate clubs with a “Pro-Gay Marriage” advocacy purpose, [we] would not, and indeed could not affiliate a … gay marriage advocacy club without completely undermining our existence… which operates within a ‘context of Catholic faith and values’. However, our commitment to pastoral care, human dignity and opposition to unjust discrimination means that we must - and do – ensure that all students continue to feel free to exercise their own judgment and discernment on such matters and are free to act in accordance with their conscience. Furthermore, we do not ban or prohibit such issues from being discussed publicly or privately at [our institution], and indeed to do so would be counter to the purpose and role. We would however, seek genuine debate, which means we would normally require the case for [our Faith’s] position to be debated together with any opposing positions. “

The fundamental message of this response remains that the institution concerned is happy to receive public funds to support its mission. But that mission is certainly hostile to the actuality of LGBTI students. Those students who are not themselves Catholic (and even some who are) might dismiss the institution’s unfriendly approach as predicable unequal treatment and just move on. But some students, particularly those raised in a Catholic tradition, could easily feel conflicted, stressed and unworthy by reason of such an environment.

Recently, the Holy See refused to accept the appointment of an ambassador accredited by the Government of France. He was openly gay. His offence, it seems, was that he did not keep his sexual orientation to himself. Demanding this of experienced ambassadors may perhaps be surmountable in countries like Saudi Arabia, The Russian Federation and Uganda and possibly the Vatican. But for young students in an Australian educational institution, it only serves to sharpen the anxieties, stress and depression. This can clearly have deleterious consequences for those exposed to suicidal thoughts. But especially for young people who may love their religion and hate themselves for being unchangeably gay, as science teaches that they are.

Earlier, there were similar religious attitudes in the United States and in South Africa to support racial discrimination against minorities and miscegenation. Apartheid in South Africa was often supported by the Dutch Reformed Church (which has since recanted) on the basis of scriptural texts. These problems are bad enough as an intellectual dilemma for people growing up. But are particularly harmful as they apply to vulnerable young people who may be suicidal in what should be a nurturing environment. I may be wrong, but I cannot see that such attitudes in publicly funded institutions in Australia are compatible either with legal and constitutional principle or with the pastoral and legal duty of care owed by every educational institution to those in their charge, given increasing knowledge of the risks.

In Daniel’s case, he had no religious conflicts we know of as he grew up in Moriah College. He was surrounded by love and protection by his family, teachers and fellow pupils. Yet, even then, he was caught in the chains of suicide. Daniel’s basic problems were that he suffered from clinical depression, a recognised pathology. And he worked in the law. For such a person, this is an especially hazardous occupation.

CLINICAL DEPRESSION

I have just returned from a conference in England, most of whose participants were statisticians and biological scientists. Statisticians are drawn from the most brilliant of students. I know this from my time as Chancellor of Macquarie University, with its degrees in mathematics, statistics and actuarial studies. I was, I think, the only lawyer at the conference. One participant, Professor Lewis Wolpert, an expert in cell and developmental biology at University College London, talked of the challenge of severe depression. He has given papers and written books on the subject. He talked openly about his own experience with depression. He explained that:

“If you can describe your severe depression, you probably have not had one. It is indescribable and one enters a world with little relation to the real one. It was the worst experience in my life, even worse than the death of my wife from cancer. With her dying, I could do things to help her and I mourned afterwards. But with my depression, there was nothing I felt I could do and I believed that I would never get better. My state bore no resemblance to anything I had ever experienced before. I had had periods of feeling low but they were nothing like my depressed state. I was totally self-involved and negative and thought about suicide all the time. I just wanted to be left alone.”

Cognitive therapy eventually gave assistance to Professor Wolpert. He gradually got better. But his family were embarrassed about his depression. They would tell no one. He knew from his reading that only 10% of patients with severe depression do not have a relapse. He regarded William Styron’s Darkness Visible as an outstanding exposition of the problem. Styron points out that:

“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances as it cannot be borne.”

Cultural and social inhibitions in many countries prevent identification, treatment and support during such an illness. Pharmaceutical drugs can sometimes help. Professor Wolpert found that physical exercise was useful. He saw an analogy between depression and cancer, in the sense that it is a normal process of living (sadness) that has become disordered and magnified. He tried to analyse the condition from an evolutionary point of view. Feelings that are so common in society could have some advantages for the individual. A “social competition hypothesis” suggests that depression is an adaptation whose function is to inhibit aggression by rivals and superiors when one’s status is low. It is a means of yielding, when there is acute social competition. It thus reduces the efforts of the aggressor. But Professor Wolpert is not convinced. Especially when depression leads to suicide, it is hard to see an evolutionary value in it. It may have a perceived individual value, as terminating unendurable pain. It may, like sexual orientation, simply be a variant in nature whose purpose is not always clear and may not matter much given its reality as part of human experience. If it exists, that is enough. Society must respond. It must seek to palliate and help the subject and to avoid needless termination of the subject’s life.

LAWYERS’ RESPONSES

Those who suffer the indescribable pain, recounted by Professor Wolpert, are rendered extremely vulnerable if their career choice has taken them into the law. The law is usually a very public vocation. Its top practitioners are on display most of the time. They face fierce competition. They are often perfectionists. Overachievers. Trapped in “pin striped prisons”. We now know that law places special and excessive pressures on students and practitioners. Working in symbiosis with depression, this can trigger suicidal thoughts and actions. As wise commentators have observed, because lawyers generally sell their talent in modules of time, there is always pressure on them to sell more and more time, until there is no time left for the other priorities of life.

There is some evidence that pressures of this kind are heaviest in large firms where it is harder to maintain a life/work balance. Although many firms today (and some law schools, even judicial institutions) have attempted remedial measures to show that they care about the challenge of depression and the risks (including suicide) that it brings, commentators repeatedly observe that the lawyers most at risk commonly do not believe that these efforts are real or intended to be taken seriously:

“… [P]rivate practice lawyers are often subject to tight, client-driven deadlines and exacting internal performance targets – the competitive and confrontational nature of legal practice leaves many believing that such wellbeing policies are not worth the paper they are written on. ‘A few months ago, my firm distributed helpful tips, printed on colourful postcards, suggesting we ought to “go for a swim in the ocean” or “go home and cook a meal with your family”, wrote one lawyer anonymously… in 2013. “Apparently the irony of recommending such fun and whimsy to a group of employees who are effectively required to remain at the office upwards of 14 hours/day for months on end was lost on the hopeful folks in human resources. Under such conditions, and with the profession’s poor track record in looking after its own, such cynicism is well placed.”

Certainly, there does now seem to be a growing realisation of the existence of a true crisis in legal employment as a career choice. In a recent poll asking “is life as a lawyer what you thought it would be when you were a student?”, more than 37% of respondents said “No, I wish I was working in a different career”. Only 11% of the 444 respondents to the survey said their law career had fulfilled all their expectations.

Plainly, we have a problem here. Estimates suggest that one in three lawyers from law school to final retirement, suffer at some stage from depression and low self-esteem. A number will face serious suicidal imaginings. If one of Google’s lawyers’ suicides and inserts the name of the city or town, names will come up that one knew but sometimes had forgotten. Tristan Jepson was such a name. His parents established the Foundation in his name in his name to tackle the issue. Daniel Solomons was another young lawyer who fell victim to suicidal depression. Most of his colleagues did not know, could not understand and could not believe that such a talented and handsome, much admired person would suffer the condition at the end of his life. Or respond as he did. But that is the fact. Lawyers have to face the facts.

Shortly before the launch of the Daniel Solomons Scholarship, yet another Sydney lawyer, a specialist in tax, who had taken a part in advocacy for a genuine response to suicide risks, took his own life. This challenge is always with us. It goes on. It does not disappear.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

The beginning of wisdom is the accumulation of knowledge. The Tristan Jepson Foundation has sponsored research by Professor Ian Hickie of the Sydney University Brain and Mind Institute. There must be more such research. The burgeoning legal industry and the multiplying Australian law schools – now numbering more than thirty five – should contribute to it. They have a stake in addressing the challenge successfully. So have we all. So has our society.

As with sexual orientation and gender identity, those who have faced the challenge of depression and suicidal thoughts need to come forward, stand up and identify themselves if they can. They should bravely become role models for those who do not yet dare. Tristan and Daniel did not live long enough to follow the lead of Lewis Wolpert in acknowledging the condition, facing it squarely in the eyes and seeking to communicate its burdens and dangers to their fellows. So this is the great opportunity loss we have suffered through the deaths of these young men. We must act before more join them.

My own decision, (with my partner Johan van Vloten) to be open about my sexual orientation was, in part, motivated by a feeling of obligation to young LGBTI people (including lawyers) coming along behind us. I cannot respect the attitudes of the Faith organisations quoted in these remarks who enter the educational space and alienate and humiliate a vulnerable cohort who came under their direct influence. They seem to be far from the loving message of the religion they purport to promote. In particular, they seem distant from the response of Pope Francis, soon after his election to the See of Rome, declaring of the sexual minorities: “Who am I to judge?”

Eventually, Faith organisations, Christian and non-Christian, will have to reconcile themselves to the science of the origins, causes and features of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity. It is not binary. Meantime, they should be brought to understand that their practices promote homophobia in society, as is recorded in the recent Australian survey on the attitude of teenage males. They cause or aggravate low self-esteem, lack of honesty and consignment to silence or duplicity that feeds depression and suicidal conduct. Especially in the stressful world of legal studies and of contemporary legal practice.

Lawyers and law students should support the Tristan Jepson Foundation and the Daniel Solomons Scholarship. These parental-driven initiatives help us to fill the void left by the loss of such gifted, young people. Not all of them are LGBTI. Not all of them suffer clinical depression. Not all of them are remembered as they should be. But all of them deserve to be respected. This way, we can learn from their pain. We can respond to their cry of despair.

The Daniel Solomons Memorial Scholarship is a practical initiative in a great ocean of neglect and indifference. Daniel’s life and death should not have been in vain.

Matthew McConaughey: 'Let’s see if we can make some lemonade out of this lemon', COVID-19 piece to camera -2020

because every red light eventually turns green pic.twitter.com/x05GuITW4J

— Matthew McConaughey (@McConaughey) March 17, 2020

19 March 2020, California, USA

I just want to say, in these crazy times that we’re in with coronavirus, let’s take care of ourselves, and each other. Let’s not go to the lowest common denominator and get paranoid. Let’s do our due diligence and take the precautions we need to take care of ourselves and the people around us.

Right now more than ever we are more dependent on each other than we ever have been.

We have an enemy in coronavirus that is faceless, that is raceless, that is sexless, nondenominational, and bipartisan. And it’s an enemy that we all agree we gonna beat. We wanna beat and we’re gonna beat.

So in this time, when people are gonna be #, the economy is going to be in shambles for goodness knows how long.

There is a green light on the other side of this red light that we’re in right now, And I believe that green light is gonna be built on the values that we can enact right now.

Values of fairness, kindness, accountability, resilience, respect, courage. We practice those things right now, we practice this.

This virus, this time might be the one time that brings us all together and unifies us like we have not been in a long time. So, yes—let’s see if we can make some lemonade out of this lemon that we’re in the middle of. Turn a red light into a green light.

Just keep livin,

Maricla Pannocchia: ‘Don’t turn a blind eye, it won’t help anyone’, Teens and Cancer - 2020

January 2020, Rosignano Solvay, Italy

Hello everyone, my name is Maricla Pannocchia, I’m the founder of a charity called “Adolescenti e cancro” (Teens and Cancer) which brings young people with cancer together. We support anyone aged 13 to 24 y.o. from anywhere in Italy who is going, or has gone, through a childhood cancer diagnosis.

We organize free activity stays, days out and other initiatives so these young people and their families can meet others in similar situations and we aim to make the cancer journey a little less lonely. I also work a lot on bringing much needed childhood cancer awareness. I set up my charity in 2014 and that’s when my life changed. Before that, I didn’t know anything about childhood cancer. I was – and still am – lucky enough to have never experienced cancer myself, nor to have known a close person who has gone through a cancer battle, so I didn’t have any reason to think about cancer in general or, specifically, about childhood and teenage cancer. I happened to read a story or two in the newspapers, once in a while, but those were mostly stories where pain, suffering and death were the predominant themes. On the contrary, I sometimes saw pictures of bald, beautiful and happy children or teens having fun in a summer camp.

Those are just two extreme sides of the cause. Childhood cancer has many shades, and most of them are not seen by the general public. When is the last time you heard about how childhood cancer is severly underfunded? I didn’t know that. I worked in my charity for a good year and a half before I’ve found those information in some foreigner Facebook groups set up by childhood cancer families. Until then, I thought any child or young person diagnosed with cancer in Europe or in the States would be treated with the best treatments. I didn’t know that, because childhood cancer is considered “rare”, in the US only 4% of federal government cancer research funding goes to study pediatric cancer. In Europe, 6.000 children and young people die of cancer every year yet in the last 9 years only two new cancer drugs for the pediatric patients have been developed. In 2016 there were over 1.000 new drugs being devoloped for adults with cancer.

When I learned about this I was shocked, and outraged. We’re focusing on so many unimportant things. We keep saying: “Children and young people are our future” and then we fail them. Why? Do governments really think money are worth more than a young person’s life? Most of these children and young people go through old, harsh treatment plans that often leave them with long term side effects such as infertility and secondary cancers. Then, when we say “childhood cancer” people often think that’s just one illness when in fact we’re talking about many different types of cancer and dozens of subtypes. Prognosis can vary from one cancer type to the other. There are certain types of cancer for which the prognosis is still pretty poor and some types of cancers like DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma; a type of brain cancer) that still has no cure. It’s terminal upon diagnosis and the average survival rate is 9 months from diagnosis. This didn’t change in the last 50 years.

And the question is still the same, old one: Why? Because we’ve got the wrong priorities. Because we don’t like to think about childhood cancer, it may scare us, but we need to shed light on this topic and to make our voices heard with these families and young people as well as on their behalf. We must be united to make our voices stronger and to inform governments and all the other people who play an important part that we can’t keep ignoring this. This is such a complicated world which is impossible to completely describe now. That’s why I share a lot of real life stories that young people and their families send to me, because they want you all to know what they are or have been going through and how one of the most basic human rights – the right to health – is often ignored in our rich and developed Countries where many children and young people die or go through months or even years of hell because we all, as a developed society, are failing them.

Childhood cancer is not just bald, smiling kids. It’s not just pain and heartbreak. I’ve got the honor of knowing many young people with cancer, many brave parents, and they taught me the most important life lessons that shaped me as a person. They really are our present and our future. They should have the right to go to school, play a sport, have fun, travel, being contributors to the world. They are not just poor little kids lying in a hospital bed that we can easily forget about, or that we can feel sorry for, they are individuals each with his/her own personality, dreams and worries. They deserve a future, and a present in which they are well cared for and where they can feel they are worth to us.

I encourage everyone here today to learn more about this cause. I’m using my charity’s Facebook page to share real life stories as well as articles from reliable sources to help people get a better understanding of the childhood cancer world. Educate yourself, that’s the first step, I think. Don’t turn a blind eye. It won’t help anyone. And once you’ve started learning about all this, and maybe you’ve met a childhood cancer family or two, you’ll be able to advocate and to join all our voices. Together, we really can make a difference.

To follow my charity’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/adolescentiecancro

Robert Rabbin: 'I don’t care if cancer is still with me or not, because I’m living with something truer', response to terminal cancer diagnosis - 2015

To listen to this speech, select track three in this list.

13 April 2015, Los Angeles, California, USA

I don’t know what you were doing in November 2011, but I was in Bali, teaching a weeklong retreat based on my eighth book, The 5 Principles of Authentic Living. For six months prior to Bali, I had suffered from muscle spasms in my back that would buckle my knees, drop me to the floor, and blind me with pain. I could scarcely walk, but I had committed to teaching in Bali, so I loaded up on painkillers and flew from L. A. to the retreat site.

When it was over, I was finished: exhausted, weak, sick, and in pain. I knew I couldn’t make it back to L. A. Instead, I went to the much closer Australia, where I had recently lived for six years. I went downhill fast. Lying down, I couldn’t lift my legs; I could barely wiggle my toes. On December 24th, yes, Christmas eve, I was admitted to the ER of a local hospital.

I didn’t know that I was entering a school that would soon transform everything I had ever known or been. A few days later, I was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer — you know, the terminal kind. My spine, pelvis, and hips were riddled with tumors. I was rushed into a series of radiation treatments, which relieved the pressure on my spinal nerves and prevented me from losing my legs to paralysis.

That was the good news. The other news was that, statistically, I had six months to live. But seeing as how I’m standing before you this evening, it’s clear I’ve exceeded the doctors’ predicted expiration date by nearly three years. I’m quite happy about this; not so much because I’m still alive, but because I always take delight in doing what I’m not supposed to do.

And just for the record, I am not a statistic. When word got around that I had become a spring-break hotel for millions of cells-gone-wild, teachers and teachings came from everywhere. Oncologists, metaphysicians, friends, colleagues, students — all had suggestions as to how to fight cancer. I received tips about nutrition, emotional clearing, European and Mexican clinics, cannabis oil, breath work, psychic intervention, herbal supplements, and, of course, juicing.

I started thinking that if cancer didn’t kill me, this well-meaning but overwhelming tsunami of information would! But then I received a message from my meditation teacher, Swami Muktananda — with whom I had lived and studied for 10 years. Even though he had died in 1982, he managed to get this message to me: “Robert, don’t say you have cancer; if you must say something, just say that you are holding the space for cancer to visit you temporarily.”

That message triggered a game-changing epiphany. I decided that cancer was a condition, not my defining reality. I decided that my response to cancer would create my reality. So, I shifted the focus of my listening from outside to inside, where an irresistible voice started speaking to me from the depths of my being, but in silence.

This inner silence taught me many things — about cancer, the nature of self, and living authentically, which has been the focus of my life since I was 11. When I began “holding the space for cancer to visit me,” a lot of people started telling me what I should do.

It was tempting to simply obey the “experts,” thinking that they knew. Yes, they knew what they knew, but not what I was beginning to know, courtesy of silence. For example, not long after my last chemo treatment, my doctor asked how I was getting on with my life. I told him. I didn’t go out, socialize, exercise, or take walks on the beach. I didn’t have a pet; not even a houseplant. I hadn’t joined a cancer support group. I didn’t have any burning ambition or clear goals. I wasn’t having sex, with myself or anyone else.

He said I was clinically depressed and prescribed anti-depressants, which I assured him I would take, but I never did. He didn’t understand that in my solitude and silence, I was being taught important, maybe life-saving things. I did listen to the experts, but I didn’t automatically do what they said. I didn’t let them choose what I should do. I realized that it was up to me to choose.

So, I developed a discerning disposition. I questioned everyone and everything until I was satisfied. I wasn’t bullied or intimated by what anyone told me to do. I challenged the status quo of convention and popular opinion. For example, in all the messages I received, it was clear that no one wanted me to die. That was nice to find out. Everyone wanted me to fight hard and defeat cancer.

But I never felt that I should go to war and fight to survive. I thought it was better to become friends with cancer. I wasn’t afraid of dying, nor angry about this sudden turn of events. I was at peace with the prospect of moving on, even though there were still things I wanted to do, like teach what I had learned about authentic living and speaking truthfully.

Still, I felt that death was not my enemy; after all, it has been with me from the first moment of my existence. I know I disappointed many people when I told them I had made death my friend and that I wasn’t going to start a war against cancer. During the months of my chemotherapy treatments, I could only eat refried beans and fried eggs and drink watermelon juice. I dropped forty-five pounds. My body glowed with toxicity. I spent twenty-three hours a day in bed. I was barely a vegetable.

But my attention had turned from “terminal” cancer to inner silence. I started going on numerous trips to . . . I don’t know where. I called them pony rides to oblivion. My consciousness left me and went where I couldn’t track. Each time my consciousness returned, it came back with less of me than when it had begun that journey.

One day, I ceased to exist in the way I had existed up until that time. Those pony rides to oblivion devoured everything I had ever known as “me”: page by page, the history of my life was shredded — all the mental photos, memories and mementos — gone. Desires, goals, aspirations, fears, hopes, wishes — gone. Time disappeared. Conceptual language collapsed. Everything I had been, everything I had known, everything recognizable was gone — except silence, and what comes to life in silence.

It’s hard for me to say what came alive in silence, what is alive within me now. Since my pony rides to oblivion, words themselves don’t have the same power to convey meaning, though I love words and speaking: my professional motto for 30 years has been “Have Mouth, Will Travel.” What really matters now is where my words come from. I know the difference between speaking about, and speaking from, the difference between philosophy and embodiment. I can recognize the difference between surface and depth, between petty and profound, between trendy and timeless beauty.

I don’t care if cancer is still with me or not, because I’m living with something truer, something that silence installed in me as a kind of existential app that has erased all other programs, leaving me with this: I live from my soul. If I want to say something from my true heart, I say it now. If I want to do something from my molten center, I do it now. I live from deep silence, and that makes me happy because maybe now I can do what I’ve tried to do my whole life: be a blessing to myself and to everyone I meet, and bring some much needed grace into this world.

Bruce Bonyhady: 'If the NDIS were Apollo 11 we would be counting down for lift off', NDIS New World Conference - 2015

27 October 2015, NDIS New World Conference, Brisbane, Australia

Bruce Bonyhady is the Chairman of the National Disability Insurance Agency

Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Welcome to the NDIS New World Conference.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting, the Jagera and Turubul peoples and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

The Prime Minister recently said that this is an exciting time to be an Australian.

It"s an even more exciting time to be an Australian with a disability.

It"s exciting because – after years of campaigning, designing, planning and piloting – we are about to move into the full rollout stage of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

It"s exciting because technological advancements, digital disruption and innovation are already transforming the lives of people with disability and creating a world with unlimited possibilities and opportunities.

And it"s exciting because the NDIS is a platform for innovation.

Looking at where that innovation might take us, it helps to think of the NDIS like Moore"s Law.

Moore"s Law states that the processing speeds of computers double every two years.

This exponential growth in processing power is why our phones are far more powerful than the computers that guided the Apollo Moon landing.

The NDIS will also have an exponential impact – as it has the potential to create a future as unimaginable to us today as an iPhone would have been to the astronauts on Apollo 11.

The point I am making is this:

If the NDIS were Apollo 11 we would be counting down for lift off.

This is just the beginning.

With that in mind the thinking behind this NDIS New World Conference is simple:

Bring together people with disability, families, carers, service providers and the technology industry, and focus on the ways in which technology can create that new world for people with a disability.

Technology has a leading role to play in the implementation of the NDIS – not just in the run up to the full scheme in 2019, but in the decades that follow.

How much of a leading role?

That depends on our ambition and imagination.

Now, I"m not a technologist and – as my children regularly remind me – not even a savvy user of technology.

So, I"m not about to stand here and tell you what to create – innovation does not work like that.

Innovation works best when we adopt a start-up mentality.

Innovation works best when we are prepared to try something new – and learn from the experience … and try again. And again.

Innovation works best when we are flexible in our thinking – when we see with fresh eyes – when we are prepared to start at square one … to reframe an issue, as the NDIS itself has done.

Innovation works best when we make it simple – when, rather than building institutions – we put ourselves in the shoes of the people we are serving … and work with them to understand their needs and aspirations.

Innovation also works best when governments get out of the way. When we create enabling environments where innovation, including innovation in technology, flourishes.

Our expectation is that the better we use technology the better the NDIS will be.

With that in mind I want to provide some context by:

Briefing you on where we are at with the NDIS;
Explaining the principles of the NDIS; and,
Outlining the opportunities and challenges of the NDIS.

Let me start with a quick briefing.

Where We Are At

The NDIS is currently being piloted in seven trial sites around the country and has 19,817 participants.

It is on time, on budget and participant satisfaction is above 90 per cent.

Between now and 2019, the number of participants is set to increase by a factor of more than 20.

By 2019 – just four years from now – the Scheme will be rolled out nationally and will have around 460,000 participants.

Government expenditure on disability services will double – from 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent of GDP – and the Scheme will be funded from general taxation revenues and an increase in the Medicare levy.

What taxpayers will receive in return is the security of knowing that every man, woman and child in the Commonwealth who is born with or acquires a significant disability before the age of 65 is covered by the NDIS.

The Scheme will include people with intellectual, physical, sensory and psychosocial disabilities.

It will also include early intervention services for children and adults with progressive disabling conditions.

All participants in the NDIS – all 460,000 of them – will then receive the funds to purchase 'reasonable and necessary" supports.

Let me now quickly explain the principles of the NDIS.

A Revolutionary Idea

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is revolutionary.

It is revolutionary …

not because it is replacing the old system,

not because it is doubling funding,

not because it has created a new Federal body – the National Disability Insurance Agency – making its benefits portable right across Australia.

The NDIS is revolutionary because it is taking an entirely new approach to disability services …

an approach that is built around the needs and the potential of the individual,

an approach that sees the individual as a life-long investment, rather than a year-to-year unit of cost,

an approach that replaces the welfare model of disability services with an insurance model.

In short, the NDIS is based on insurance principles. 

Traditionally, the costs of disability services have been approached with a short- to medium-term outlook.

As a result, technology has often been seen more as a short-term cost than a long-term investment.

The insurance model of disability – and its approach to technology – are radically different.

Under an insurance model, expenditure is factored in over the life of an individual and scheme sustainability is measured by calculating and controlling the total future costs of all those who are insured.

This approach creates an incentive to make short-term investments that reduce long-term costs.

For instance, the best way to reduce long-term costs is to increase an individual"s independence and enable their participation in the community and work.

That means taking an individual approach to services – giving people what they need right now, including cutting edge technology for which there is an investment case, to help them live a more productive life for the rest of their lives.

That might mean …

funding a person the type of wheelchair – or even two specialised wheelchairs – that maximise their independence at home and in the community,

or providing an iPad that includes specialist applications to help a person with an intellectual disability learn the skills they need to live and work in the community,

or using the Agency"s lifetime cost estimator to approve the purchase of a hoist or other equipment that makes it possible to get a person with a physical impairment out the door to university or work with one support worker rather than two,

or using technology and the internet to help participants in the NDIS make informed choices – and allowing those participant-led choices to spark new services, opportunities and innovation.

Technology has a central role to play in the success of the NDIS – participant by participant.

But the success of the NDIS is also in the national interest.

In 2011, the Productivity Commission undertook a major independent analysis of disability care and support. It found that the NDIS would result in an additional 320,000 people with a disability and 80,000 carers being employed and boost Gross Domestic Product by 1 per cent by 2050.

This means that while national expenditure on disability services is projected to increase by 0.5 per cent, in return, the economy is projected to increase by 1 per cent.

In short, the NDIS is a sound investment in our economy, as well as our society.

Opportunities

I"d now like to turn to some of the opportunities for new technologies and new applications of technology that the NDIS may create.

The NDIS itself is in part a product of technology, because the organisers of the Every Australian Counts campaign used technology brilliantly to build, motivate and mobilise a supporter base of more than 150,000 people.

The campaign was an old-fashioned grassroots campaign that became a national phenomenon through the agency of the Internet and the connectivity of social media.

Now the NDIS will repay the favour by turbocharging investment in technology.

When fully rolled out, the NDIS will invest $1 billion-a-year in technological supports and devices.

Not only that, how and where that $1 billion-a-year is spent will be decided by the 460,000 participants in the NDIS.

One of the defining characteristics of the NDIS is control and choice.

Every participant in the NDIS will have control over the services and supports they receive.

Those services will be individualised to suit the reasonable and necessary needs of each participant.

Those services will be highly decentralised, with local area coordination of locally-based care.

And support through the NDIS will be portable.

If a person with a disability wants to move to another state with their family their entitlement to the NDIS – and therefore their level and standard of care – will move with them.

Only time will tell how people exercise their choices – and control their lives.

In other words, we are creating a $1 billion market for technological innovation in disability services.

If companies want to win a share of this market, they will need to be competitive.

They will need to think national and act local.

Some of the competitors and some of the enablers will be global, because the NDIS is a major global opportunity.

For example, IBM, Apple, Microsoft and Google – are considering incubating accessibility ideas in Australia as a direct result of the NDIS. They are all at this conference.

The National Disability Insurance Agency wants to create an enabling environment which encourages innovation and new entrants, as well as established players.

We are also looking to create an e-market.

When the NBN is complete, access to the internet will be close to Australia-wide and this will help to underpin the Agency"s rural and remote strategy. The NBN"s target for full roll-out is 2020 and so aligns closely to the NDIS.

Organisations that use technology smartly will have an advantage.

Technology will also play a very important role in facilitating diverse and competitive markets.

The more competitive the market, the more power will shift to individuals and the greater will be the efficiency, effectiveness and innovation, which will contribute to the long-term sustainability of the NDIS.

Technology will also help participants become informed consumers.

New apps are already being developed and many more will follow.

As a result the technology market generated by the NDIS will be much larger than $1billion.

Some of the new technology will be specialised.

Some new technologies will be developed as part of mainstream responses as companies seek to broaden their customer bases to include those with impairments.

In other cases, technology developed primarily for people who do not have disabilities will have particular benefits for those living with disability. An example is text to voice and voice to text software.

Voice recognition software has developed enormously over the past decade – making life easier for everyone.

However, if you are vision impaired or have limited literacy skills due to an intellectual disability, voice recognition software can literally open a new world.

On the other hand, technologies to translate information into other languages or, for example, easy English are in their infancy. But I am confident that in time we will see major improvements.

For a country as culturally and linguistically diverse as Australia, this will create major benefits, including amongst people with disability, because disability does not discriminate.

The digital divide is normally characterised in terms of income or access but there is also a digital divide that applies to people with disability.

Technology can add to this divide or reduce it.

Technology can also help to build inclusion and create new forms of social capital.

For instance, in Sweden the internet is bringing isolated parents of children with profound disabilities together with experts to teach them about augmentative and alternative communication and to form networks of support.

Another group in Sweden is working with local governments to create 'Social Rescue' – an app that allows people with disability who are travelling alone and not feeling safe to connect with safety houses, friends and relatives.

In many ways the internet is the ultimate social good.

Traditional business models, and especially new businesses, have had an immediate revenue imperative.

In contrast, with the internet and internet start-ups the currency is usually new subscribers – which is why so many online services or apps are either free or relatively inexpensive.  

That"s why the internet is an 'open-source" opportunity for people with disability, which we are seeking to highlight through this conference.

Challenges

As I've said, these are exciting times. But challenging times, too.

Challenging because scaling up and then industrialising the operations of the NDIS is complex.

Challenging because there is no turning back – because the old ways of doling out disability services was broken.

Challenging because we need to find new ways to build a new, more inclusive nation – a nation that no longer shuts out people with a disability, together with their families and carers.

Challenging because we need to create a new world – and that"s why this conference is so important.

Conclusion

Technology therefore provides a major opportunity for people with a disability, of still unknown dimensions.

Our ambition needs to match the size and scale of the opportunity.

We need to seize the opportunity of the NDIS right now.

We need to be agile.

We need to treat people with disabilities as partners.

We need to recognise that co-design is essential.

We need to create an environment that fosters the development and use of smart technology side-by-side with the NDIS.

We need to enter a New World.

Then people with disability will be equal citizens and have equal power.

Thank you.

Clare Wright: 'The Year My Brain Broke', Epic Fail event - 2014

30 July, 2014, Wheeler Centre, Melbourne, Australia

You have been promised a night of tales guaranteed to amuse.

I so wish that I had a funny story to tell you tonight.

I wish I was one of the performers in the annual Melbourne Comedy Festival event, Best Comedians, Worst Gigs, so that I could have you all in stitches as I regaled you with anecdotes of falling flat on my face in front of an audience: side-splittingly self-deprecating tales of humiliation, mockery and disgrace that only go to prove what a good comedian I really am.

I wish I could tell you about the time that I toppled into a swimming pool at the wake of a prominent sporty identity and had to wear the deceased’s clothes all night until my sodden ones had been put through the dryer.  Unfortunately, that was my husband in the pool, a banana peel moment of truly epic proportions.

I even wish I could tell you about the multiple rejections I received for my recent award-winning book and how, after a decade of work, I thought it would be exiled to the Orphanage for Abandoned Manuscripts before being miraculously rescued from obscurity and skyrocketing to stellar success.  But this is not what happened, and the truth — a bidding war between multiple publishers — is not the stuff of short poppy glory.

In fact there is little in my CV that would suggest I should be standing here on this pedestal of failure tonight.  I was a straight-A student at a select entry high school for academically gifted girls.  I achieved a perfect 100% for my HSC English exam.  I received First Class Honours for my Bachelor and Masters degrees and my PhD thesis won the prize for the best doctoral work in my discipline.  I have been awarded merit-based scholarships for all my tertiary courses, and a federal grant for my postdoctoral research.  My books have been on the best-sellers lists. My television documentary was a critical triumph, and my new documentary series will hit the screens on 19 August.  So no belly flops or banana peels there.

My domestic life is pretty cozy too.  I met the love of my life in first-year university and my husband and I have now been together for twenty-six years.  (All of them bliss, he would say with only the hint of an impudent smile.)  Together we are raising three delightful, healthy children, whose company we prefer to most other human or technological interaction.  Our warm and hospitable suburban home is filled with food, love and laughter.  We have an open door policy with friends and wildlife alike.  At the moment we are breaking bread with a dog, two cats, four rabbits, twelve guinea pigs and the ever-present chooks.    We have a beach house.

So it’s perhaps odd that when I was asked by the Wheeler Centre to participate in tonight’s panel, I knew immediately and instinctively what I would talk about.  For me, the two little words ‘epic fail’ cast me straight back to a moment so vivid and visceral it could be yesterday.

But it is seven years ago and I am in a car.  I am in my little navy blue Golf and I am driving back home to my beloved husband and beautiful family from a doctor’s appointment.  I have spent two hours talking to this doctor — a woman I have never met before but who has kindly spared me eight of her precious 15 minutes appointment slots and bulk-billed me to boot.  It is raining.  Or maybe it is not raining but I am crying so hard that my memory requires windshield wipers to hone its field of vision.

I am in a state but I am also in a car so I’m stopping at traffic lights and watching out for pedestrians.  And I’m talking out loud to myself, repeating two short sentences in a spin cycle of fear and self-loathing.

I’m sorry.  I have failed.  I’m sorry.  I have failed.  I’m sorry.

I drive and I cry and I chant this mantra to the rhythm of the rain.  Or perhaps into the blinding sunshine. Does it matter? I have no idea who I’m apologizing to.  But I know without a shadow of a doubt what I’m apologizing for: I have failed.

Later, I would come to think of 2007 as The Year My Brain Broke.  But there in the car that day all I knew was that I’d left the doctor’s office with a prescription for antidepressants, a referral to a psychiatrist, and the assurance that ‘no strength of character or force of will’ would get me through this.

But what was this?  This feeling of utter incompetence.  This knowledge of my complete inability to pull myself up by my bootstraps.  This incapacity to count my blessings.  This malfunction of every system I had ever put in place to stave of disaster, avert catastrophe and neutralize chaos.

According to the doctor — who I had to admit was a highly skilled professional who had not merely raised her eyes above her glasses at me and reached for her prescription pad but rather listened while I oozed gloom for two whole hours — according to this doctor I had severe clinical postnatal depression.

My third child, my only daughter, had been born two and a half years earlier. We were instantly bonded in a deep and abiding connection.  Every photo shows me beaming with pride and joy.  With her birth I experienced a deep sense of fulfillment and a circle that I wasn’t aware was broken had finally closed.

And yet…

For at least two years, I had struggled with the daily challenge to scale the summit of my own wretchedness.  Most days were like snorkeling through tar.  Dark, heavy, suffocating days punctuated by panic and a generalized sense of impending doom.  I experienced waking hallucinations of my baby toppling down the stairs.  A bomb in her pusher.  Snakes crawling next to the bunny rug where she kicked happily in the back yard.  At night when I slept, if I slept, which was rarely, I dreamed I was falling into a black abyss.  “So this is what it’s like” I’d think wistfully as I plummeted into the void, right before I woke bolt upright, mouth dry, heart racing.

But this couldn’t be postnatal depression, could it?  Depressed mums didn’t get out of bed, and cried all day, and shouted at people, and didn’t want to touch their babies, and were afraid they might hurt them.  I wasn’t any of these things.  I went to work, wrote and published, appeared on tv shows and made intelligent, amusing speeches.  I had a hot meal on the table every night, and clean school uniforms in the cupboards.  I had clean hair and happy kids.

Yes, I often felt red raw when watching the news or reading the paper, like my skin had been peeled away, gleaning on some deep gut level that it was my fault that a man had thrown his child off a bridge, or a group of teenagers had been mown down by a drunk driver, or a baby’s pusher had blown on the train tracks in a big wind.

And yes, I often started walking to the supermarket, or the swimming pool, or a café to meet friends, only to find myself frozen to the spot, certain that going to that place or doing that activity was wrong, and that I should have made a different decision, a better decision, and if I’d made THAT decision I wouldn’t be here, now, walking around in circles, unable to make up my mind whether to stay or go, pumped full of adrenalin, without a single good reason why I should either fight or take flight, but nonetheless primed for battle, certain I was going mad.

On the outside, I was a solid citizen.  On the inside, I had fractured into a million little pieces.

But it was not until 45 year-old Audrey Fagan, Chief Police Office of the ACT, was found hanging in her hotel room on a Queensland tropical island in April 2007 that I started to grasp that something was seriously wrong with me beyond my own failure to stop myself from feeling so rotten and acting so crazy. 

Stories on Fagan’s death all took the same line: why would such a competent, meticulous, successful mentor and mother take her own life? ‘Awesome mum solved all problems but her own’ read one headline. Amanda Vanstone was quoted saying “She was always happy, there was never any nastiness about her, she got along well with everybody." AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty said: "She was a very professional, very strong woman, and I think that's what has surprised all of us, that because she was such a strong woman, such a determined woman, it's a great lesson to all of us that everybody is vulnerable."

None of the articles said that Audrey Fagan had depression, though one story published in the Good Weekend magazine a few months after her death implied it.

Reading that piece at my kitchen table, I felt such a profound affinity with Fagan that my blood ran cold.  It was not long after that I found myself a doctor. 

Now that I am well again, I know, of course, that confronting the full force of my own vulnerability was not an epic fail.  In fact, it was the complete opposite.  Only I could make the decision to step back from the brink of the abyss.  Only I could start to love myself the way my friends and family loved me.  I had to find out for myself that life is not a performance sport; that achievement is a state of grace, not the sum total of relentless activity; that ego might not be a dirty work, but it can be a ruthless taskmaster; and that hard work often brings just rewards, but it’s not what sets you free.

Clare is a guest on episode 49 of the Speakola podcast