Creating Space Project

Denise talks about volunteering in Sri Lanka in the mid 90s. She went with her husband and two young children, and was pregnant at the time. She delivered her baby at home, in a small village in the middle of Sri Lanka, assisted by her husband and best friend. Amidst the beauty of mountains, waterfalls, and elephants walking through the village, Denise raised her young children, dancing around the couch and opening, joyfully, the parcels sent from Australia.

Connecting with people - your family and friends, the person next to you on an aeroplane - and enjoying where you are – being in the moment – are some of the themes that emerge in this interview.

Sr Susan has been asked to obtain a visa for another religious sister, whose father, in Ireland, is dying. On Saturday afternoons in Canberra, in 1976, nothing is open. Least of all the Irish embassy.

Anyone who knows Sr Susan Connelly is well aware that she is a powerful force for good in this world, advocating tirelessly for social justice, especially for the people of East Timor.

In this interview, she reflects on some of what she values and how that emerged in her life.

We catch sight of the importance of living off your wits, being willing to get involved, and holding a belief that there is always a way. We hear about the importance of communion – a kind of unity – with people with whom you have a shared past, a common history.

She believes in the importance of public education and the importance of Gonski funding in Australia, to ensure all children receive an adequately resourced education.

Sr Susan attributes much of her strong-mindedness to her parents. Recognising the place of nature, she sees much of what has shaped her as being about nurture. It's a reminder for parents – be proud of your children, regardless of their accomplishments. Give them the message that they will always be loved and accepted by you, regardless of their mistakes. As Sr Susan says, "that gives a person enormous strength."

In her childhood home, she describes having "what counted." Strong relationships between people who wanted to do the right thing, despite not being perfect. Reflecting on it evoked enormous gratitude towards her parents. Gratitude is a warm and sustaining feeling, one that everyone deserves. "I'd love that whatever I do in the world could be an occasion of someone being grateful, in the sense that they've been given something by me that they otherwise wouldn't have had. That would be a lovely thing."

Sr Susan has been asked to obtain a visa for another religious sister, whose father, in Ireland, is dying. On Saturday afternoons in Canberra, in 1976, nothing is open. Least of all the Irish embassy.

Anyone who knows Sr Susan Connelly is well aware that she is a powerful force for good in this world, advocating tirelessly for social justice, especially for the people of East Timor.

In this interview, she reflects on some of what she values and how that emerged in her life.

We catch sight of the importance of living off your wits, being willing to get involved, and holding a belief that there is always a way. We hear about the importance of communion – a kind of unity – with people with whom you have a shared past, a common history.

She believes in the importance of public education and the importance of Gonski funding in Australia, to ensure all children receive an adequately resourced education.

Sr Susan attributes much of her strong-mindedness to her parents. Recognising the place of nature, she sees much of what has shaped her as being about nurture. It’s a reminder for parents – be proud of your children, regardless of their accomplishments. Give them the message that they will always be loved and accepted by you, regardless of their mistakes. As Sr Susan says, “that gives a person enormous strength.”

In her childhood home, she describes having “what counted.” Strong relationships between people who wanted to do the right thing, despite not being perfect. Reflecting on it evoked enormous gratitude towards her parents. Gratitude is a warm and sustaining feeling, one that everyone deserves. “I’d love that whatever I do in the world could be an occasion of someone being grateful, in the sense that they’ve been given something by me that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. That would be a lovely thing.”

Lee is the daughter of the Australian realist artist, Nutter Buzacott (1905-1976). This year, Lee curated an exhibition of her father's work in the Lismore Regional Gallery. In this interview, Lee talks about her father's art and her relationship with that art. A former communist and a humanist, the impression that is left is of a man who closely observed people and landscapes.

His art allows the viewer to see something of people's real life. And I think that's worth looking at.

Those people, in my father's art, are not going to change the world. They're ordinary people, in ordinary clothes, making a contribution.

I think what I'd like people to do is wonder about these people. To wonder. Why are those little kids playing cricket in that back yard? What are those Salvation Army people standing under that tree playing for? What are they hoping to get out of life? I'd just like us to wonder about them.

Briannon is an autistic parent of three autistic children. Several years ago and before knowing she is autistic, Briannon was shamed by a work colleague for “that weird thing” she does with her hands. Recently, her six-year old child has started hand flapping. This story is about the joy and pride of being autistic.

Mamata, a gentle and wise soul, is an assistant librarian. She is also an engineer, and studied in India. She was the only girl in a class of 42 boys and most of them didn't talk to her. Excluded from study groups, she describes a moment when one of them took the time to offer her some very useful information. The experience taught her the importance of compassion, and of choosing not to perceive other people as a threat. It also taught her the importance of cherishing friendship.

Aligran tells a story from her childhood to three of her grandchildren.

It's daybreak in the early 1940s deep in the Australian bush, at the family property in Porter's Retreat. Aligran is a 3 year old girl. Her father takes her fishing to catch rainbow trout for breakfast. He leaves her next to the stream while he goes ahead around the bend. She gets frightened by a fox, tries to find her way to their horse and gets lost in the bush.

After listening to the story, Aligran's grandchildren, Jess, Thea and Vincent, reflect on what the story says about their grandmother's values. Their discussion leads them to discover for themselves the concept of resilience. 

At university, Julie had 23 people in her course, three of whom were male. One of them made the comment that he would be escalated into management because he was male and all of the women would be taking maternity leave. 

Julie was shocked that he had the audacity to say this.

In years to come, she was shocked to discover he was right.

Julie is an occupational therapist. As a working mother, she was unhappy with how she was being treated in her workplace. Flexible work arrangements and part time work were not encouraged or supported.

With many friends in a similar situation, Julie found there were all these amazingly skilled women unable to return to the work force because of lack of flexibility. 

So Julie and her wife decided, “You know what, let’s do this better ourselves.”

They set up their own company and have been able to support other women in returning to work, including Julie after she had twins.

Julie believes you should be able to have a fulfilling work life and a fulfilling home life. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice one for the other. The value, here, for Julie, is the balance between the two. 

When I was a child, probably aged 9, I moved with my parents and little sister into a two-family house in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. It was an extended household, extended family kind of situation.

There was a family downstairs. The family, as almost everybody in the neighbourhood was and we were, were Jewish. And they were Holocaust survivors, as were half to two-thirds of the neighbourhood where I grew up. As is true in chilldhood, what’s a given is simply natural to you. It’s only when you look back “Oh, that was quite an extreme or different kind of experience than most other people have.”

I grew up right at the end of WW2, knowing so many people in the neighbourhood who had survived the Nazis and the concentration camps, hiding and running for their lives for years. The woman who lived downstairs, in particular, she had two sons. So I was kind of the daughter she never had. And I became her confidante. I was a shy introverted girl, so I was happy to come home from school and to have somebody to cocoon with. 

She would be downstairs baking. My mother was working at that time, which was kind of unusual for that generation. But you know, the woman downstairs was kind of the mother figure when I came home. She would bake and we would sit at her kitchen table and she would tell me story after story after story about what she had endured in Poland and her family, some of whom survived, some of them didn’t. 

And later in my life, I came to understand that, on the one hand, hearing at such a young age, all that she, and so many others in the neighbourhood where I grew up, went through was traumatic and probably inappropriate, on a certain level, for a young child, to be holding that experience and narrative. 

On the other hand, because I was facing somebody who had survived and was such resilient and thriving person, it helped me understand at the same time, in a kind of unconscious way that imprinted on me the notion that you could go through the most harrowing kinds of ordeals and come through intact. Somehow, with your dignity intact, with your love of life intact. It wasn’t that she didn’t continue to suffer and didn’t continue to need ongoing treatment all her life. Nobody comes through unscathed. But something in her, I could feel immediately, was kind of beyond harm. And that was kind of an important thing for me to bear witness to as a small child. 

Later in life, as I began to write, because I’ve been a novelist for most of my working life, and a teacher of fiction writers, primarily, and now memoirists, that notion of bearing witness was something I realise I learnt from her. The power of it, the necessity of it. Also the way in which it gave me faith in something in myself that would be sustained no matter what life might ask me to meet or the suffering I would go through. 

So she came to mind immediately when you said do you have a story. And she was the storyteller too. That’s the other thing she modelled for me too. She told story after story after story. 

*

After telling this story, Joyce reflects on what it means to her. She talks about the notion of bearing witness and about resilience. 

Bearing witness

To bear witness means to just make the time to listen to someone else’s story and to see that as a task and a goal and an activity in and of itself. Because there’s some way in which we nourish each other when we make room in our lives to hear what the other has experienced. That’s a kind of relaxed time. In order to really bear witness to another, you have to be there not just with your ears, but open heartedly. You have to be willing to be vulnerable, to be impacted. 

Resilience 

I think she was particularly important to me as kind of an example of somebody who had a certain kind of emotional stamina. My parents were somewhat fearful people and I myself was kind of an introverted, easily anxious child. So it was a gift for me to spend daily time in the presence of somebody who had been through more horror than I could possibly have imagined surviving. Something in her had survived, had thrived in spite of what she had been through. It’s probably a human thing. 

[Suffering] is necessarily going to destroy you or break you. It may actually show you resources in yourself that you didn’t know you had. And there are ways to support yourself and other people, formally and informally, to be able to turn a light for people onto their own strengths that are sometimes out of sight, taken for granted, not really celebrated. 

I was a listener from an early age and found quite a bit of solace from the quality of her voice. It almost didn’t matter what she would have been telling me. There was something about the way she spoke. There was a kindness and presence in her voice. It was quite nourishing. 

Having come so early to the knowledge of what human beings can do to each other in this world has made me very attuned to the notion of human rights and civil rights. That’s an area of life I’ve been very active in as an adult. I’ve always seen [her storytelling] only as a gift. 

Joyce also talks about the values that this story reveals

I value the intimate realm of life. A kind of one on one building of trust between people. That would be primary. The relationship was primary, for me. And then of course, what it taught me about the need to be active on behalf of the human rights of others. Because rights are being attacked in all sorts of ways all over the planet, at any given time, and to be awake to that and to see where and how I can be responsive. Another thing that’s important to me from that relationship is that she made time to be with me. Something about adults making time to be with children. Granted, she was getting something. But she was giving me something quite valuable. There was no sense these encounters were rushed. It was really a kind of precious time, I think, for both of us. 

I experienced her as being kind of indomitable. This was not going to break her. The kinds of things that she went through, one could hear them and imagine “I would not come out of that hole,” or “I would not come out of that sane.” But she did. With a kind of love of life and a wish to make a family, and work that she loved. So I learnt something. Not just about strength, but a woman’s strength. A capacity to not shut down, no matter what. 

She’s been quite an inspiration for a lot of my writing, both in terms of content and also kind of a spirit of story making that’s been absorbed from her. 

I’ve been thinking for a long time that at this stage of my life I’d really like to write a memoir and I’d like to write it as the history of that house. There was a lot that got lived out in that house, for her family and my family, and a third floor where people came and went. I’m interested in the cosmology of that house, and the house itself. 

[It’s important to] not to underestimate the power of offering your own story and giving the time to hear the story of another at any stage of life. It’s life-giving and life-saving. In some ways, it’s one of the ways in which we are uniquely human. [It’s important] not to lose that in the world of soundbites and headlines and visuals, just the sheer pace of life, particularly urban life.

"If it wasn't for that decision I made, maybe I wouldn't even be living. Maybe my family wouldn't be living. It's between life and death." 

“It’s all the decisions we make in life that make the difference.”

Focus - 

Concentrate.

Focus - 

When you find opportunity, give it your time and your mind. 

These are the themes that emerge as Edith reflects on the story she shared in Part 1. 

She reflects on the women that people her life - 

Her mother, whose choice to have her own life empowered Edith to make her own decisions. Who modelled, as a woman, what it is to be educated, what opportunities are presented for a better future. 

Her sister, “a fighter”, was the first in the family to get a university degree - and imagine going, in one generation, from the first girl to go to school to the first girl to get a degree!

Her daughter, who also makes her own decisions. She’s innovative, focused, she has goals. She has a powerful and beautiful role model in her mother, telling Edith “I want to be like you.” Edith tells her “Just try.”

That, really, is Edith’s message for all of us. Just try. Keep making decisions. Stay focused. Grasp all opportunities that you can. Just try.