As a researcher, I was employed to study suicides in my home town. I became quite passionate about trying to help keep people alive using the data from the deceased people. My aim was to turn the deaths into something useful to prevent further suicides. That way the torment felt by those individuals would not be in vain. From all I read, I could not really understand what these people actually felt or experienced. I then came across something that offers a description of what people go through and I realized that this is something useful that people can use to empower themselves to stop the dangerous and tragic downwards trajectory.
This guide is a short explanation of the six stages of suicide with practical activities to help you prepare and assist your mind in the event it becomes irrational and unsafe.
Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist described these stages that people experience prior to carrying out suicidal acts.
Included is a mind-monitoring tool to assist you in identifying if your mind is displaying signs of reacting within the various six stages. This tool provides actions you can do to support your mind. A link to a printable PDF of the tool is included.
At the end of this guide, you can find a list of help crisis hotlines for various countries.
My original article is independently described as a:
‘Very good report, written in a humanistic way. The observed stages of suicide are of serious scientific interest, i.e. can help in preventive terms’.
The more you understand how your thoughts and emotions respond in irrational ways the more you can transform your actions beyond the influence of an unhelpful mind to that of a supportive mind and live freely and fully.
Reference: Baumeister R. F. (1990). Suicide as escape from self. Psychological Review, 97(1), 90-113
Review:
“Stages of Suicide is an excellent insight into the though patterns of those dealing with suicide. Each stage very well describes the kind of thoughts, behaviours and emotions one feels as their condition continues, which I found extremely accurate and relatable. As for someone who has experienced these stages second hand, this is an incredible tool that can help non-suicidal people understand what it is like to be suicidal which I believe is one of the most important things for dealing with suicide on the larger scale.
After each stage there is a ‘prepare your mind’ section which works as a helping hand/’what to do about this’ counterpart of the stage. I found this to be really useful in not only making the content a lot less daunting and overwhelming to take in, but the reader is reminded that regardless of what stage you find yourself or someone close to you in there is always a solution to help you get out of it, which is exactly how this book approaches the terror of suicidal ideation.
Moreover, the mind monitoring tool at the end seems incredibly useful to help the user understand their own thoughts and emotions as they go through stages as well as help to generate some rational thinking patterns.
Overall this is an extremely insightful and practical helping hand for those dealing with suicide. Definitely recommend this to anyone who are either going through it or know someone who is, this book can help!”
–Rhys Jones
If you or anyone you know needs help you can call:
My initial thought of going through radiotherapy to treat my breast cancer was “yeah I’m so not looking forward to grappling with the conflict of allowing my body to be bombarded with radiation”. The word radiation glowed luminous green in my head, and although I hoped that it would kill any remaining rogue cancer cells, I knew that radiation kills people. I’ve seen the extreme photos of Hiroshima where everything turned to ash. The imagery in my head was of my body slowly turning into tiny grey fragments and disintegrating like those Japanese people. Or would my body remain intact until I fell apart one random month into the future? These thoughts crowded my head but I suppressed them.
I didn’t know how I’d cope with a daily schedule of turning up every single day, five days a week for five weeks, whilst being pleasant to everyone… everyday. The effects of the chemotherapy hadn’t worn off and I still felt crappy. What I came to realize during those weeks is that besides the most obvious gain – an increase in the odds of living – there were unexpected bonuses that I could take home from the whole experience.
For my cancer type, radiotherapy increases my overall chance of survival by about 10%. I needed to know this before I commenced the treatment. My radiotherapy doctor spent plenty of time in our consultation showing me the results of studies with and without radiotherapy for my type of breast cancer. Perfect! I told him I needed that to help me feel good about the whole thing. For my cancer, this radiotherapy has better outcomes than the chemotherapy I’d just finished. Type of radiation for me? Photons. Photons are light particles so I tried to think of it as light therapy. Light as in life, and NOT that going up to the heavenly light thing.
So the next thing I had to grapple with was whether my heart would be damaged by the radiation because my tumour sat right above my heart, and the therapy involves focusing the radiation on the tumour. Well two things saved my heart from damage. Firstly, the physicist, who designed my ‘more complex’ treatment plan algorithm with the configuration of directions and angles of all the beams across my upper body, did an excellent job by bypassing my heart. I saw the images of my CT scan and the intricate beam patterns over layering the top. He said that I’m not the usual patient (yes I keep hearing that) as no one has ever asked to talk to the physicist before. It’s not that I don’t trust people’s words, it is just that I understand better when things are more tangible and then I feel like I get it then. I wished to see what they are talking about not just hear it from their mouths. He went through the plan report in detail explaining the acronyms and jargon terms for me. And I had questions that only he could answer. Serious questions about radiation that had been bugging me the whole time but I was too scared to know the truth till I was near the end of treatment in case I backed out and didn’t complete it. I’ll get to that soon.
The beam configuration over my left chest wall and shoulder.
The second heart saving measure relied on remaining perfectly still. I had to hold my breath to push my chest cavity out and drop my heart away from the deadly beams. Perfecting this technique became my goal. Thanks to the staff who reassured me all the way through the process, I began to look forward to holding my breath twelve times each day for the 80 second period it took to radiate me. These long breaths could have been broken into 40 seconds instead but that meant more time taken up. At first I tried to imagine that I was surfing. I envisioned taking a breath before enduring a massive underwater hold down but this backfired because the reality of a surfing hold down is that if you panic you can drown. That scenario was too confronting. Instead, I imagined I was diving down to a deep coral reef on snorkel, which stretched time into 80 seconds. In my mind I could see the anemone fish close by, and high above, the Barracudas circling backlit against the sun. There was also a cheeky green moray eel but not wanting to involve sharks, I soon ran out of new things with this adventure. I then developed a whole string of different walks that I knew well, adding in as much detail as I could. (One of these is a childhood walk or rather run you can read about in my memoir story Freedom Creek). Using this visual imagery relaxed me, and kept my heart rate down, and allowed me to hold my breath for the duration of the walk, sometimes with air to spare. Later, practiced this in the spa at home, and made sure I used my method of taking up the air slowly and ‘locking the chest’ compartment while I held onto the bottom of the pool. I then practiced this while body surfing and then when my skin became strong again, I could do it whilst surfing. I even taught me daughter my technique so she has more confidence surfing. I wasn’t expecting that!
On the radiation bed
Another bonus I didn’t expect was becoming comfy in my own skin…without boobs…fast. I thought I had come to terms with losing the ‘girls’ but actually I hadn’t. My mind was still catching up with the reality of the surgery that removed a part of my femininity. At the time all I could think was that the boobs were bombs implanted inside me which needed defusing by removal before they exploded and sent me to oblivion. Due to my skin feeling too sensitive during the radiotherapy treatment I couldn’t wear any restrictive clothing like bras or synthetic materials. At first I felt resentful that I couldn’t wear my padded bras and feel normal after all I had been through. My boobs had come off nine months earlier and I no longer had any cleavage, I had a flat pre-prepubescent chest. I ended up wearing skimpy tops like halter necks with no padded bra for boobs. It was summer and it was hot. Before long I felt normal and attractive again in my attire thanks to being forced to go without the fake boobs day in and day out during the treatment. I worked out that if I chose the right top such as a gathered style at the front, then I looked sexier than some of my old outfits with the padded bra. Now six months on I remain equally comfortable wearing or not wearing cleavage. Without undergoing the radiotherapy I doubt I could have reached this mindset so fast.
As it turned out, in the end I didn’t have to worry about coping with the daily radiotherapy treatment session. I looked forward to seeing the staff who looked after me, and I enjoyed great conversations with everyone from the manager to the radiologists to the nurses, the other patients, and even their partners. One time my daughter came with me and the ladies were happy to show her everything and let her check out what they did with the machine behind the window. I asked if she could take a photo of the screen on the machine, which was great because only then could I actually seemy heart dropped back in the cavity with my breath holding technique in action. These people are a special type to care for us when we are at our most vulnerable and I am so grateful to them for their warmth and the humanness that they gave me.
A photo my daughter took
Towards the end of the five week treatment, I was walking past the wooden book swap cupboard in our neighborhood, and as I peered in I found the book ‘Shockwave Countdown to Hiroshima’ by Stephen Walker. I took it but I couldn’t start reading it for a while. Then I couldn’t put it down. Some of the assumptions I had about Hiroshima were wrong. Hundreds of thousands of people perished, but miraculously, some survived. The author interviewed a handful of Hiroshima survivors who were healthy, even though they were relatively close to the T-shaped target Aioi bridge where the bomb known as ‘Little Boy’ landed two hundred meters away. The bridge itself survived. Not everyone who survived suffered a long term decline from radiation sickness. Today, radiation is being used to save lives. My body and my life may have been saved thanks to a technological breakthrough that wreaked horror in 1945.
Now to that serious question for the Physicist. Yes the physicist not the physican. How does the photon ray bombardment compare with the rays that victims experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What I really wanted to know is if the long term side effects would be the same. Photons used in radiotherapy treatment are non-ionizing radiation and have less energy than ionizing nuclear reaction radiation. The rays passed right through my body rather than linger. On the back of my shoulder there is a dark patch of skin where the rays exited my body away from my organs and bones. This is amazing technology. My bones should be quite intact and my heart has been protected. I wondered about my circulating blood being irradiated but I suppose as it keeps moving, and cells keep turning over then it should be fine too.
Exit point of radiation can be seen as the red circular area on my upper back
So I have no regrets about going through this treatment. My concerns and fear were replaced with good things. I’m glad I asked the questions about the treatment, but I should not have been such a chicken and asked them way earlier.
Until now, I have managed to escape injury and death during my encounters with wild animals, but depending on how you see it, either my luck ran out recently or it kept running because I’m alive and writing this after one animal closed in on me.
For some reason, it seems to be those moments when I am relaxed and having fun that my world is flipped on its back. Minutes before El Toro the scrub bull confronted me I had been walking along a tranquil sandy creek bed anticipating a cool soothing wash downstream. Minutes before Jaw’s fin sliced through the water I had just begun to really relax out in those crowd free waves. This time was no different. Earlier in the day I had driven for forty minutes out to a floodplain paddock I’d leased for two of my horses. The grassy green field is in one of the narrow valleys that are flanked by the steep ridges of the Ourimbah State Forest, west of Gosford, an hour north of Sydney. I had my heavy breaking-in saddle and my light weight all-purpose saddle with me, and I planned to ride my new young gelding Jindy first and then my mare Twiggy. Jindy is pretty green and I had no idea how he’d react to the dirt bikes and four wheel drives we’d encounter so I rode him in the breaking-in stock saddle. When the first car approached us along the main road he freaked out, running backwards and he did the same when a string of very noisy guttural dirt bikes motored down past us as we climbed up the steep 300 meter accent onto the forest ridge line. I urged him past them with my calves gently pushing round his barrel and then he gained some confidence and started to relax and enjoy himself. His paces were smooth and super comfy and he behaved perfectly when we encountered more bikes, cars and wildlife during the ride.
Next it was my Arabian palomino mare, Twiggy’s turn. We had been training over the last few months for an endurance race so on that Saturday afternoon I planned to ride for thirty kilometers. Starting out slow my plan was to maintain a steady pace for the middle third, and then finish with a fast pace ride home. Usually I ride her in the light saddle but thankfully, this time I used the more secure breaking-in saddle. On the ride out she shied along the track a lot more than Jindy but mostly at rocks and stumps which is usual for her. We passed quite a few packs of dirt bike riders; a father with his boys on teeny cute dirt bikes and a few 4WDs coasting along. People were friendly and calm as I rode past.
Twiggy and I on a trail
After about seven kilometers, we chose the left fork at the main intersection and headed further west. I knew this track was pretty remote reaching deeper into the forest far from the hobby farms and well-used roads. I didn’t expect to see anyone this far out this late in the day. One red 4WD did drive past us but that was it. We kept on and the late autumn sun dipped below a large round high hill ahead of us. I felt my body start to cool down although I was wearing a fleece jumper.
I don’t know if it was the hill’s sweeping, dark black shadow or intuition but as we trotted along, the track ahead constricted into the bush and the air become super still. My instincts told me that we should turn around and not go any further. My eternal problem is I always want to know what’s around the corner so I ignored my gut and decided to explore further. We’d push on and just see what it looks like up the top there and then head home. Near the top, the track turned sharply to the left skirting around the steep hill while an embankment flanked the track on the left. The sun shone again, we slowed to a walk and I relaxed. I was just about to turn back when I heard a car engine slowly climbing the hill behind us.
The sound became louder and then it was drowned out by the noise of people yelling and screaming. I thought they were some drunk young hooligans driving along that were about to seriously hassle me. I coolly asked Twiggy to trot and looked ahead for side tracks but there were none. The screaming became more crazy sounding and I glanced back but only made out the blur of a white ute.
Then we saw it….Cujo (like from the horror movie). This grey bull-arab hunting dog, a meter high with a monstrous head had bolted hundreds of meters in front of the ute to intercept us. Cujo crossed the distance between us in seconds. So fast in fact that we didn’t know she was there until she was a few meters from of us. (I refer to her as female because the image of her is etched sharply into my brain and there is no willy in that memory). She didn’t stay within the three meter perimeter zone like wary dogs tend to do. Instead, she quickly circled us and moved in close very quickly, looking for an opportunity to strike. I spun Twiggy to face the dog, and when it refused to back off, I yelled at it “Go away” with my deepest voice. The dog didn’t back off. I looked up to see what the owners were doing, and I could see they were still 20 meters away. I looked back to the dog and it raised its head, staring up at me, rolling the whites of its orange colored eyes, mouth agape. It darted in under Twiggy’s neck and locked its massive jaws into Twiggy’s front hoof and pastern. Twiggy’s worst nightmare. Instantly she jumped away from it and leaped up the steep cliff rocky embankment next to us. Luckily she dislodged the dog’s grip, but she kept going and turning side on she started to fall back down towards the track. In that instant I weighed up the risk of bailing off her backwards verses becoming crushed if she rolled over me if she did continue her fall. Plus I didn’t know if I’d stay on anyway because I could not predict where she was headed or how. In the past I have saved my butt with a deliberate ejection and as a kid I fell off so many horses I kind of learned how to fall and not go thump and instead dissipate the momentum of energy by slowly rolling.
A dog with the same appearance as one that attacked my mare
As Twiggy fell sideways, the last thing I remember was pulling my feet backwards out of my oxbow stirrups, letting go of the reins and trying to leap off her back as Twiggy’s body rose up in front of me. Usually in these situations, this is when time slows right down and I’ll remember the every detail in slow motion, from leaving the saddle to hitting the ground but not this time. No opportunity for that prayer of contrition, Betwixt the stirrup and the ground or having my life flash before me.
I blacked out. I came to, my entire body a bundle of pain. I lay on the rocky dirt track and I think I was face down on my front. I couldn’t move at all nor could I speak. Eventually I started getting annoyed at the bloke who owned the dog whose voice I could hear telling me to get up just over and over. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak and he expected me to get up! At one point there was some commotion I couldn’t see and I irrationally thought maybe I could be run over by a car and would not be able to do anything about it. The all body pain rush started to subside and I realized the worst pain patch was my wrist. My leg and elbow were sore too. Moving my fingers I told myself and the man that it’s probably just a sprain. That type of pain however felt quite severe. I had no bones sticking way out of my arm, only a small bump protruded. I sat up and the bloke proceeded to talk at me. I still could hardly speak. He kept on a few times about how my horse jumped up the cliff like it was her fault. All I could do was listen and store his words for later thinking. He said that the dog was his friend’s and that it didn’t bite the horse. I was in no state to even look at Twiggy’s body or really take in what his words even meant. Something took over in me in that vulnerable state that even if I could manage words, no way would I argue as I needed the help of the man and the woman that was with him. I couldn’t see the dog and they must have caught Twiggy. I did ask two things. Was it a pig dog? ‘No never hunted’ was his answer. I remember the feeling that there was this urgency that they wanted me back on my horse so they could just leave the scene. The second question I asked was ‘can you hold my horse while I get on’? They were happy to help. Both of them looked into my face and apologized to me which brings tears to my eyes as I write this. I think because those words gave me a sense of relief that they wouldn’t hurt me and vulnerability is not my thing. The man clutched hard at the reins and I remember the whites of his knuckles gleaming round lumps. The first attempt to mount failed because Twiggy moved. I knew I had strength for only one more go so I’d better make it as good as I could I told myself. Somehow my body let me swing over her back and settle into the comfort of the saddle and security of being able to get away. I turned towards home and the lady handed me the visor from my helmet which I didn’t know had broken. I vaguely recall another dog and maybe a kid but don’t remember the car number plate but over the few weeks since this happened, I’m starting to get an image of it suggesting I did try and take it in.
Aggressive dog
The first ten kilometers after that were a mix of relief and trepidation. My left hand stopped working; it was broken, so I had to keep a firm right handed grip on the reins. My left leg ached with every movement and my right elbow hurt. I knew if Twiggy shied, I’d have trouble staying aboard and if I fell, I would really injure myself due to lack of muscle control and balance. I would hit hard. My body was a cauldron of pain especially my back which jarred at very step. My phone was strapped around my waist so if I came off, and there was reception and I could move, I’d be able to use it. After those first kilometers my fear was the people and Cujo would drive back behind me so on the slight inclines, I began to force myself to endure a slow trot to cover ground faster. I realized that if I lent forward and we trotted slow enough, I became distracted, and the pain became bearable and I loosened up. Twiggy shied slightly once which hurt but she really looked after me and carried me back the 15 kilometers safe and sound.
Puncture wounds to my mare’s pastern after dog attack
I slid from her back, tied her up but it was hard going undoing all the buckles and I knew the saddle was too heavy to hoist into the Landcruiser with one arm. I called out to my friend Jane who was feeding her horses across the road and she helped me out by doing it all and washing Twiggy down and later disinfected the puncture wounds in Twiggy’s pastern. In contrast to what the man had told me, his dog had inflicted deep wounds to the horse’s leg. Jane helped me take my bangle off my swelling wrist and gave me some panadol from the glove box. She offered to drive me to the hospital and take me to her house to sit with a cuppa but I said that if I could manage to turn my car around using her driveway then I’d be right. The hospital was on the way home. I managed to drive one handed although roundabouts were a bit tricky and I couldn’t park properly. Three hours later I left the hospital and drove home with a plaster cast after an x-ray showed a piece of bone protruding from my wrist and fracture across the main bone. No breaks in my elbow but a later bone scan revealed a compression injury to my tibia. The injuries I have don’t match with how I found myself face down on the ground and it is frustrating having a memory gap like this. My injuries included a grapefruit sized swelling and green thunder bruise from the back of my left knee to the top of my thigh, a serious knee injury, a broken left wrist with bone protruding, a bruise to my right bum cheek and elbow. And I had busted my helmet visor. But it could have been much worse. Twiggy could have lept down the cliff, the horse could have fallen on me, and the dog could have mauled me as I lay unconscious on the ground. So my luck is still running with me I reckon. And faster than Cujo can run!
Twiggy’s wounds healed and a month later, although I wore a cast on my broken arm, we successfully competed in an endurance race.
Twiggy and I during the endurance race.
Twiggy and I during the endurance race after the dog attack
A trip in January to the high country again and I felt like I kind of hit Ctrl + F5 and refreshed the page in amongst the granite mountains.
“Soon I’ll be back in the strong powerful granite lands with my body intact and pretty much back to normal with another smile like the one in my photo”.
Those were my words I wrote in story 2 of Sourcing Strength entitled The Summit Run, and yes I am happy to say those thoughts turned into reality.
The January before this in 2018, I had been diagnosed with a rare type of breast cancer but for some reason I felt I’d be alright with this. I decided to kick back for the year like I had a broken leg and extreme morning sickness and then after twelve months I’d be back to normal, or at least mostly normal. So now after that heavy duty year and constant running to keep my stamina levels up, I managed to make it to the top of Australia again to close that loop.
Sure, I didn’t run the 22 km this time but that’s partly because I learnt some difficult lessons during the year. One of them is about the hated words of “listen to your body”. Gees did I hate that line. People spewed it on me all the time, mostly wise health care people. And did I suffer when I ignored them!
Cycling to the Summit
Nor did I reach the summit solo. The main photo shows me and my husband on top of Mt Kosciuszko which is symbolic really as he helped me so so much during the year. Our kids reached the summit too. They gave me strength throughout the year in a myriad of ways so it felt right that we all ascended the mountain this year together as one.
Summit family photo
So many people within my life strengthened me up and if you are one of them, you too are in that photo standing with me up top of Mt Kosciuszko. Quite often, the tiniest action or few words from someone (that probably they were not even conscious of) translated into giving me a kind of power that fueled me along just at the right time. My ancestors gave me strength too and you can read how in my Story 1How my ancestors gave me strength– Sourcing Strength.
New piece of granite rock
The granite lands imbued their energetic vibe into me once again and I selected another small piece of rock to take home with me in case I feel the need for a booster during this next year. When looking at my new second rock, it feels great because it reminds me that I really have completed that past year, it is over and I managed to do it just how I had planned to. These happy reminders happen at unexpected moments. For instance, the other day while waiting for our kids to arrive home on the school bus, I was chatting to a neighbor.
He asked, “So how is all the cancer stuff going?”
I said, “What cancer stuff? That was last year”.
On the summit of Mount Kosciuszko, on top of Australia. 2018Summit Again 2019
Running fast along the creek gave me freedom from everyone and everything; school, boredom, teachers, schoolkids, brothers, parents, the lot. I could smell the sweet privet flowers and hear the quiet stream flowing along beside me. In anticipation, I’d run for the next turn, and leap the rocky creek bed into the old man’s orchard. Checking for shiny ripe fruit, I’d dance past before following the next bend in the creek. As the body moved along, the mind would slough everything behind and I’d slip smoothly into my own inner world. Entering this realm is a comfort like the first warming droplets of a hot shower soaking into a cooled neck and back.
I felt freedom because this is where I am free. I say ‘am free’ as I still often feel this kind of frizzy feeling when I’m moving through the bush with no one but me.
As I ran, the sun back-lit through green leaves of overgrown bush and the pretty weeds soothed me. I felt in control and powerful. No one was there to tell me what to do or what clothes to wear. I hated the rigidity of the tartan school uniform and choking tie, so I’d wear half of it down the creek in rebellion. It felt good. Outside of school, were not permitted to wear jumpers unless they were covered with heavy blazers. Eating in public was also banned.
Eventually I’d amble slowly back home feeling relaxed and soothed, ready for the rhythms of household living and the next days ahead of mundane school lessons and the usual chaos of people pressures.
I’m searching for a hint of falseness. The more I can’t find any, the more energy I’m imbued with. Even though I’m standing atop Mount Kosciuszko, feeling happy might seem odd given the life changer spanner sent my way the day before. Looking at my face in the photo of me standing on top of Australia reassures me. I look at this photo on my phone and zoom in with my fingers to scrutinise my expression some more. Yes, I really do look happy.
Happy!more happy…
Picking up my speckled granite rock, an ancient stone chip created in explosive volcanic times, I slot it into my cupped hand as if slipping it into an envelope. I feel power and strength transmitted to me as I do this. It strengthens my psyche and empowers my flesh. In my mind I think about the overall deep seated knowledge that I WILL be the same as I was that day on top of the highest mountain in Australia nearly a year ago.
My granite power rock
Two years ago, I picked up that rock chip from the side of the road close to the summit, and kept it near the front door in among’st a stack of other colourful pieces I’ve collected from here and there. I didn’t know then how important it would be to me in the future but I remember carefully selecting a rock that had a shape that felt easy in the hand. After that summit run last January, it has been my micro generator throughout the year when I’ve often needed a mental kick start. A reminder that my body will be okay and I’ll still be able to run and do everything I did before, even though my body has been ravished by surgery and chemotherapy. I WILL be the same. Maybe even better…somehow.
The granite is part of the main range where Mount Kosciuszko sits high up over the blue land far around. Several years ago, in a shallow valley to the north-east of the summit, I walked alone between the snow drifts. There were shallow peat pools and a ground cover of soft pale grey green snow grass. As I walked close to a jagged black rock tor that towered over me, I heard a roaring sound like that of a jet flying overhead. It reminded me of the earthquake I experienced in the Kimberleys in remote Western Australia which sounded like about eight jumbo jets. The loud rumbling sound penetrated the air and a sort of shimmer wave moved past me and wooshed away across the alpine valley. Looking around, there was no wind moving the white paper daisies or the snow grass. No jets in the electric blue sky, nothing. All I know was what I felt and heard, and I can only describe it as perhaps a spirit or some type of energy I had flushed from the tor. No malevolence, just kind of it.
Summit Track
In January this year, as I ran over that solid and dark, speckled ground to the summit I felt a great sense of power in the land. I thought about the energy spirit thing that ‘resides’ a few hundred metres from where I ran. The day before, I had phoned my doctor for the results of a biopsy test and he told me that I had breast cancer. Four days of preparation in my head helped me prior to hearing this news. I had rationalized stuff. The twenty two kilometre run solidified my rationalizations. I did feel good.
Grounding to earth
I was grounding myself to the earth with every step. I was confident then in returning to my normal self after the year of treatment. I have been confident during the year of surgery and treatment with a little help from my speckled rock and from strong human support that I have been so lucky to have gained. I am still confident. I trust my knowing myself. Soon I’ll be back in the strong powerful granite lands with my body intact and pretty much back to normal with another smile like the one in my photo.
I am a young girl, around 15 years old, standing high up on the top of a huge sheer cliff with a scalloped bay in the background named Maitland Bay (after a shipwreck).
This cliff is within a national park and instead of me standing there as a typical visitor in hiking clothes, hat and boots with a bunch of other like walkers, I’m dressed in a sexy high cut swimming costume, two bare feet and my blue heeler, Bluebell.
This is typical of me as a teenager. The minimalist. Tearing off what’s not necessary to leave the bare bones and nothing extra. Bare feet, so I can extract maximum immersion from my exploration of the bush or rocks or sand or whatever the substrate I’m travelling over.
The muddy clay squelching between toes, after walking across a long spread of jagged and sharp rocky ground, I particularly savor and relish. That’s like the ecstasy of finally gorging on two tall glasses of water after riding your pushbike for miles without a drop of water down the throat.
I love that. To really feel the texture of the ground, gives me a more in-depth knowledge and a kind of intimate understanding of the terrain. Then it’s mine, that land.
You know I even get jealous of places. I am quite possessive of that track I’m standing on. Little beach to Putty Beach. That’s my track. Too many strangers I see on it now. It’s not theirs this place.
They don’t know it like I do.
They don’t know the legless lizard that leisurely suns herself on the southern sandy section of steps that rise up after the rocky gulch of caves bay. Nor do they know the dark diminutive swamp wallaby that forages behind the big set of wooden stairs at the northern end of Killcare beach. They also wouldn’t have met the echidna that loves to break up the ants nests for a feed just before Caves Bay.
Those cream flannel flowers that sweep round the bend in the track near the Maitland Bay turnoff seem to be in bloom longer than anywhere else. That’s the bend where the white tsunami sand rests high over the bay below. This particular soft bend connected me and held me tight to the land when I grew older and became a woman in my twenties. I lived away, three thousand kilometres away in fact in Darwin, and I’d see flashbacks anytime anywhere of that particular bend of heathy, low bush.
After flying home and re-visiting my bush, these flashbacks would disappear until I’d been away again too long and they’d reappear to remind me of my land.
Today, I continue to ground myself along this piece of coastline. I ground myself by the physical and psychee connection to this, my favourite stretch of the world, by feeling my feet touching the terrain, the roots, the rocks, the clay and the sands during my one and a half hour circular run I regularly do.
I often see my animal ‘friends’ on the track and I note whose flowering or fruiting. Sometimes, Ill slow enough to touch a slender flannel flower with the tip of a finger. No Bluebell now, but like as a young girl, there is no extraneous clutter on me. No water bottles, camel packs, not even a hat.
The best piece of advice I was given I would have to say was to not follow the crowd, don’t be a sheep, be your own person, that concept. The other dimension is not to waste energy competing with others.
I learnt this in first grade. I was 5. Linda unknowingly gave it to me. Our task for the lesson was colouring in. My patience never stretched as far as colouring in perfectly up against those thick black lines. Never. No matter how hard I tried. Hopeless I was. But, I couldn’t see the point really. Linda however was perfectly skilled at this. Linda had blonde hair, was my friend, I liked her and was super popular. The teacher asked consecutively around the room what our favourite colours were, starting with Linda. She said pink. Alison my other friend said pink. Glen probably said pink. They all said pink. I loved pink but I said brown. That felt good.
Since that moment I have never worried about going against the grain. It has me in trouble but it’s usually worth it.
My Submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Australia’s Faunal Extinction Crisis can be viewed here : Dr Myfanwy Webb Submission 247.
Resurrecting ecosystems manually should encourage all of the intricate connections within ecosystems and bolster their resilience to threats. I see regrowing bush is like providing necessary new ‘housing developments’ for our populations of animals and plants.
It might sound airy fairy to you but this ‘merging of the senses’ is as solid in me as the pain felt from stubbing my pinky toe on the unforgiving steel plant stand in my kitchen. I thought everyone experienced what I do and it shocked me when I realized the truth. I always assumed we are all the same especially when my brother described the pain he felt one day in his side as green. It turns out he’s not synaesthesic. None of my family is. It’s supposed to be hereditary though. I’ve never met anyone who is either. Not that I bring it up much, mainly because no one EVER knows what I’m talking about so there’s no chance I’ll get anything out of the interaction, so I don’t bother. There was one time I did mention it and I was slammed as a liar. That was at a friends’ big birthday bash down at the surf club a few years back. A bunch of us were talking near the bar and I was explaining it to them and this one know it all woman, yes you know the type, goes “I don’t believe in it” like I was trying to convert her to some zealous religious sect or something. I couldn’t care less about her rebuttal but her response made me realize that I probably sounded like a lunatic. So here I am telling you about it. You can take it or leave it too of course. I won’t hold it against you if you conclude I’m a looney tune if that suits you. I’m okay with that.
Synaesthesian. sensation produced in part of the body by stimulus elsewhere; production of mental sense-impression by stimulation of another sense.
That’s the definition of synaesthesia from my 1988 Concise Oxford Dictionary. When I hear sounds, I see in my mind’s eye shapes and colours. These shapes and forms and images change as the components of the sound changes. I love listening to techno music with synth sounds because they give me these fluid smooth and soothing patterns and lines that flow into each other. I haven’t taken LSD but I’d imagine what I ‘see’ is a slightly more restrained form of that sort of drug-induced, colourful and expansive trip. Lucky aren’t I, getting free trips all the time. Ying and yang though, loud piercing sounds give me harsh shapes and snapping sharp colours. One thing I’d really hate is to live next to a noisy traffic intersection with all the hideous patterns and forms that go with that type of constant audio stimuli.
Some people remember faces and or names, I remember voices. Each person’s way of speaking is unique and has its own indelible and unchangeable signature. Some voices I love, some just annoy the absolute hell out of me thanks to their particular set of squiggles and lines. I hear some people talk and I think, how can anyone be married to that? Luckily, I have a reliable audio memory that balances out the fact that I cannot remember people’s faces or names. In fact names can become a problem because of my synaesthesia due to what colour hair and complexion they have. How this works, or rather, doesn’t work is, when I think of or see letters in the alphabet, I see a colour with each letter. Each letter has its own unchanging fixed shade. Together, a bunch of letters form a word and that word I see as a whole colour, usually with the colour I see matching closely the first capital letter. Where it becomes confusing for me is if I meet someone or know someone who is say blonde haired and pale with a name spelt Katherine not Catherine with a C. To me, Katherine should be someone darker and brunette because K is dark blue in the word Katherine and Catherine should have an overall paler face because C to me is cream. Mix them up and I’m stuffed.
Right now, I am listening to the neighbour’s lawn being mown and it looks roughly like this; …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. . As you can see, no rocks or sticks on their grass and no backfires, a dark subdued brown in colour running along a similar toned background, small dashes and not too bright because it is in the distance, low in pitch and not right outside my door. If it were closer and louder and running over rubble, the line would be jagged, thicker, sharper edged and brighter and depending on pitch, lighter or darker plus a different colour. The background would also most likely be more contrasty like a pale one that makes the darker pattern more sharp and defined. Yukky in other words.
What I do like about what I see is it is way more accurate than other facets of my memory and I can trust it. The other night I heard one of the distinctive calls of a Yellow-bellied glider. I saw an image of something akin to a question mark with the vertical base line forming a twisting, almost spiraling pattern at the end of the call. Listening to the call from an app, gave me an almost identical image. Other possum calls from other species, (of which I have studied as part of my PhD, Scent marking and vocal communication in the rock-haunting possumPetropseudes dahli 2004), are completely different and give me their own specific signature imagery.
Although what I experience can be a kind of painful intrusion sometimes, at least it’s not as painful as my repeated stubbing of my little toe in the kitchen. I also have to be happy that my synaesthesia sight is as accurate as any photograph and it is more detailed than flat photos as I usually see 3D imagery like a hologram. Oh and it’s free for me.
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