Into the woods

This story was told as part of tenx9 Kyneton. Tenx9 is an event where nine people tell a ten minute true story about a particular theme. The November theme was “Into the woods”

Put your hands up if you were here last time?

I don’t think this time will be as funny, sorry.

For those of you who weren’t, I told the tale about how I accidentally gave birth to twins. It was pretty traumatic at the time. But as it turns out, after ten years, it’s actually quite a witty tale.

So this story actually starts there. Because this is a story of how I went into the woods and couldn’t find my way out again.

—

When you have a traumatic birth in Australia there are amazing support services available to you. Day one, we were surrounded by a care team, that included a social worker, who was ready to do whatever we needed to keep our normal lives functioning.

Our family were there being amazing. My husband’s work gave him time off. We had the space that we needed to figure out what on earth was happening to our lives.

But then our son recovered miraculously; a true blessing.

But the support systems quickly scurried off to help some other poor family. Our family went back to their lives, Karl went back to work. I was left at home with a 3 year old and infant twins.

Of course I didn’t cope.

My three year old was desperately missing my undivided attention. I was deeply blaming myself for the whole situation and reliving every single moment of the birth every single day. I was drowning in breastmilk and poo and sleep deprivation. I couldn’t ask for help because I couldn’t even fathom what was going on, let alone know what help I needed to survive. And I was alone.

It wasn’t the 1950’s when my great, something or other cousin had 8 kids under the age of 12 including three sets of twins. I’m sure she didn’t have an easy time of it, but her mother lived with her and she lived on a street full of mothers because women didn’t work back then. There was family, there was community. There were people all around, all the time.

I was a university educated radical feminist stranded in the suburbs. Deeply depressed and deeply traumatised. And horribly alone.

Somehow I got through. I told my maternal child health nurse I wasn’t coping and she laughed and said ‘of course you’re bloody not!’ She referred me to more help. I found an amazing therapist and slowly started to work through it all. It was deep and hard and confronting. It took me a whole year to finally tell her that from that first day I blamed myself for the whole situation. By then of course I didn’t, and it felt kind of silly even saying it out loud by that point. This horrific feeling that had held me captive for a whole year. This feeling that had choked me to the point I couldn’t breathe, or all I could do was scream. But I finally said the words and poof! The power that feeling had held over me was gone.

—

A couple of years later it became apparent to my partner and I that it was probably time to get married. We’re not traditional people so getting married was never going to be traditional. We didn’t get hitched because it was time to settle down, buy a house, and have kids. We had already done that. We got married because we had got through the hardest of challenges and our relationship had not only survived, but we had grown stronger together. We knew if we could get through that we could get through anything. It was time to share that with our friends and family.

So we got married, the kids were in school, we both had great jobs, we were both super active in our community and doing wonderful things. Everything was wonderful. On the outside.

The inside however was a very different landscape. Every day I ached for freedom. I told myself the commute was worth it, but it wasn’t. I plotted and planned to leave the city but I couldn’t. I was a small town kid living in a city the same population as my entire home country and I was suffocating.

Something had to give. Inside I was day dreaming escapes but at the same time beating myself up for not being grateful enough for what I had.

I was mourning a life I once had and was terrified I would never have again.

Now, I don’t believe in destiny. I do not believe that things happen for a reason. I believe that things happen and they trigger more events and if you believe in the impossible, if your imagination knows no bounds than you can seize those opportunities and make them work for you. But not destiny

But honestly the universe could not have picked a better time to give me cancer.

Don’t get me wrong, having cancer is shit house. I didn’t even have a crappy cancer. I had a really easy to treat, painless, don’t even have to have chemo cancer. I was in and out in less than 3 months and then a few months of physical rehab. No worries.

I got to quit my job that I was about to resign from anyway. I got to spend a whole Melbourne winter in bed watching Netflix. I got a beautiful new weaving loom. There were definitely perks.

But then I was well and it was time to do the life thing again. And I just couldn’t.

I had nothing left. That black dog had led me so deep into the darkest of forests that I just couldn’t see the way out.

So one day my husband and I sat on a park bench in Carlton Gardens and decided the time had come to just stop trying. We bought a caravan, pulled the kids from school, took his long service leave and we drove around Australia.

We drove through the forests of east Victoria, awed at the light in Eurobodella National Park, ate fruits in the lush rainforests of Nimbin, played peekaboo with Cassowary in the Daintree, were humbled by the ancient boabs across the North, gazed with wonder at the enormous karri trees in south WA and took great delight in skipping across their canopy.

We came home to Victoria alive, bursting with stories and with an incredible bond between our family that will keep us tight and close forever. We were also certain that we were coming home to find a new home.

And that new home we found in Drummond. On Dja Dja Wurrung country. Nestled in a secret little valley amongst the peppermint gums and the little volcanoes that remind us that while this country may be old, it is very much alive.

And most importantly I found the forests. Coming from Aotearoa, I grew up knowing the forests well. Knowing their smells and sounds, knowing the trees and what you can eat to stay alive if you get lost.

But here I have never felt truly at home because the forest is so alien to me.

So over the last couple of years I have got to know our local forests. The majestic Wombat that despite the best efforts of colonisation has managed to maintain pockets of ancient wisdom. Those fern covered valleys that play home to the greater gliders and koalas.

Then there’s the young forests around us in Lauriston and Drummond that despite being cleared to the ground in the relentless pursuit of shiny yellow rocks still remember what it was like to be magnificent and old and are on their way to being so again.

There’s the wildflowers that spread their beautiful colour across the forest floor for such a brief time before retreating away back below the soil. There’s the plethora of fungi doing the hard work of bringing the dead back to the earth. There’s the birds singing songs of love, warning and death.

The forest is a living being. It is harmonious. It is interdependent. Most importantly, it doesn’t need a single species to exist, it doesn’t need people. In a forest we are not important. And if we listen we are humbled, if we breathe, drink and eat, we can be healed.

I went into the forest and it brought me out of the woods. I don’t believe in destiny but I do believe in listening carefully to the messages that are all around us. And I hear the messages that our earth is sending us loud and clear. So if anyone needs me, I’ll be in Drummond with my wonderful husband Karl who has stood by me through all of this beautiful madness and together we’ll be planting a forest.