TONTS. - Celebrating Different Brains with Jasper Peach

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Jasper Peach is a trans, non-binary and disabled writer, speaker and parent. They are passionate about equitable access and inclusion, focused around the dismantling of misplaced shame via storytelling. Their written work has been published in The Age, HireUp, The Big Issue, Archer, The Guardian, Verandah, Australian Poetry Journal, Meanjin, ABC and SBS online.With a background in Auslan interpreting, broadcasting and civil celebrancy, writing has continued their personal trend of being all about communication and community. Their first book, You’ll be a Wonderful Parent, was published March 2023 by Hardie Grant and is a celebration of rainbow families of all kinds.For more from Jasper you can find them on instagram @jasperpeachsays or find Jasper's book here For more from me you can find me @clairetonti on instagram or at my website www.clairetonti.comEditing: RAW CollingsSocial Media: Maisie JP Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I create, speak and write today. They're a wondery people of the Kulin Nation and pay my respect to their elders past, present and merging, acknowledging that the sovereignty of this land has never been ceded. I want to acknowledge the people who have given birth on this land, raised children on this land for generations, connected to country and spirit. Hello, welcome to Tons, a podcast of in-depth interviews about emotions and the way they shape our lives. I'm your host, Claire Tonti, and I'm so glad you are here. Each week, I speak to writers,

activists, experts, thinkers, and deeply feeling humans about their lives. And this week I have a treat for you. I have author Jasper Peach. They are a trans, non-binary and disabled writer, speaker and parent. They are passionate about equitable access and inclusion, focused around the dismantling of misplaced shame via storytelling. Their written work has been published in The Age, Higher Up, The Big Issue, Archer, The Guardian, Veranda, Australian Poetry Journal, Mean Gin, ABC and SBS Online. With a background in Auslan interpreting, broadcasting and civil celebrancy as well, writing has continued Jasper's personal trend of being all about communication and community. Today, I talk with Jasper about their first book, You'll Be a

Wonderful Parent, that was published in March by Hardy Grant and is a celebration of rainbow families of all kinds. What a special human being Jasper is. Here they are, Jasper Peach. I wanted to start by asking you, this book, You'll Be a Wonderful Parent, advice and encouragement for rainbow families of all kinds. Why did you choose yellow? Well, I didn't choose it. One of the strange and wonderful things about publishing is there are so many moving parts and so many people who make the, you know, all the threads of your dreams real. So if you've ever seen, oh, what's their name, Omar Ashika, their beautiful book of poetry, it's bright pink with a snake on it. It's the same cover designer. But I really love that it's yellow because it stands out,

it's easy to find and it's sort of, it's gained this nickname of being the friendly banana book um which I really like yeah oh I love that idea that makes me think of your love of libraries can you tell us why you love libraries and where your kind of journey with them began? Oh, libraries are most of the time a very safe place for anyone, really. I mean, there's been some pretty yucky stuff going on recently where a writing workshop, a free writing workshop for teens has been pulled back from the State Library of Victoria's programming for, quote, safety concerns without any real clear guidance of what that means. So really hoping the State Library can show us that they are still a safe place to engage with.

But I've always found a lot of solace in libraries when you're not quite like other people or you don't know what to say or you need to find something out but you're a bit shy about looking into it you can go to the library and you can be as communicative as you like you don't have to talk to anyone it's kind of easy to find things but if you want to ask someone librarians are they are like freakily good at figuring things out. I could ask them how to escape from the Bermuda Triangle and I reckon they would dedicate some energy to figuring that out and giving it to me on a post-it note before I left the library. You know, they're those sorts of people. They're deeply caring. Everyone is so welcome at the library. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. It doesn't matter what colour you are.

It doesn't matter your racial background. It doesn't matter your size and shape. Everyone's welcome. There is a place for us at the library. There's a place for everyone. And I hope that still gets to be true over the coming months as we sort of wade through this situation with that workshop. But yeah, libraries are amazing. I know that you used to visit them when you were a kid as well could you describe for me who Jasper was as a little person as a kid oh gosh I've been wondering that myself lately um I feel like I was very self-conscious and I didn't really know who I was because there there wasn't language for that around me at the time. I was very curious. I had a lot of stims that I kind of learned to internalize because I guess

my mother, very kind, beautiful, wonderful person, didn't want me to be teased by other people or judged by others. So she kind of encouraged me to, oh, just, you know, I know you like making that sound and I know you like doing that with your hands, but people might look at you strangely. And so with the best of intentions for me to have a better time in life, I learned to kind of squash a lot of who I was, but I always knew that things would be better. I didn't know how, but I felt it in my bones. It was like a whisper that traveled around my body. One day you will not feel lonely. One day you will be a part of dismantling loneliness for others who are a bit like you.

I felt that and I knew that. And that has come to pass. It's been quite incredible to look back on that kid who just sort of had faith that, oh, yeah, I'm a bit of a, I stand out a bit now, but eventually I won't. I'll just be one of a community of people who all seem to understand each other and delight in one another and that's definitely where I'm at now.

That's such a beautiful thing to be able to reflect on. Can you tell us a little bit about the road to get to there? I know that's a big question. That's okay. I love the big questions. They're my favourite kind. I just feel weird talking about myself. Like, shouldn't we talk about someone more interesting? But I will. That's what this is. It's an interview. That's what we do.

So, oh, look, I did, I guess I did okay academically. and that was what I sort of clung on to as the thing that I defined myself being worthy of love or whatever. And finished school, had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I assumed everyone else did, which is definitely not the case. But we don't talk about these things, you know, we don't overt them. There's so much we don't overt that leads people down these paths where they feel less than. So I try and overt the things that feel obvious now. And I feel a bit silly about it sometimes, but I'm like, oh, I feel like I didn't have words for this. And if I had had words for that, things would have been easier. So I went to university and did or enrolled in, I should say, a course that would have led me to something that I wanted to do because I didn't get high enough marks. I wanted to be a speech pathologist. I don't know why. I like talking,

maybe. And so I enrolled in this Bachelor of Health Information Management and the idea was that I I'd get high enough marks and then be able to transfer over but I completely flipped out because I I desperately wanted to move out of home and start my adult life but I just couldn't cope with it I couldn't work out how to care for myself really so dropped out had a lot of what I now understand to be autistic meltdown and what's the word where you just kind of run out of any kind of energy to deal with anything burnouts the phrase and ended up working at a telco worked in the disputes team so man that was a trip um I just sort of went with the flow. I was like, okay, sure, I'll work here.

And then they say you can be made permanent. Okay, sure, I'll sign this thing. And next thing you know, it's four years later and I'm looking out the window on Exhibition Street thinking, oh, my God, it's seven hours and 21 minutes till the end of the day. Okay. I was bored out of my brain but didn't know what to do really so I just sort of went along with it but my friends knew me to be someone who would always have a go and accompany them to anything at all so I did dancing classes cooking classes life drawing all sorts of things and a friend asked me wants to go to an Intro to Auslan short course. And I was

like, yeah, sure. I don't know why, but I'd forgotten that my mother was an early childhood educator for deaf children, like way before I was born. And so she remembered a few signs and taught them to me when I was little. And I always thought they were really magical and would trace the, you know how they had the finger spelling shapes in the back of the yellow pages? I'd look at those and think, wow, that's amazing. And so I went along to this short course. It was a box heel TAFE. And I arrived and then the class started.

And I was like, oh, that's what I want to be. Okay. And it was easy. It just made sense to me. It made perfect sense. Well, of course, you communicate with your hands and your face and your body. And of course, it makes sense in this way. And of course, people need to be a bridge between those two communication styles.

And so I did part-time for a little while, then left my job and went into a full immersion course over two years to get a diploma in Auslan and then another year following that at university to get the skills in interpreting and I was good at it I like when you nail it there's no feeling better than that I loved being part of the deaf community I was so fortunate to be gifted a sign name which is you cannot ask for a sign name sign name. You can't get one from a hearing person. It has to be from a deaf person who trusts you enough and knows you well enough to give you a sign name. And began my interpreting career, did a bit of interpreting for a women's football team. That was so much fun. And I don't know anything about football but I can sign kick and run and ball and

get the tone get the tone across of what's being said or signed and was loving that and then what I understand now my I had a real hyper focus around Auslan and so when I wasn't studying I was volunteering and when I wasn't volunteering I was working and it all was linked into Auslan. And then I got an injury in my shoulder and I couldn't stop. I just couldn't stop and rest and allow that injury to heal. So then my other arm got injured because I was so pig-headed about it. I didn't understand how to pause something that made me feel so good and gave me such a sense of belonging. Anyway, so long story short, I ended up becoming horrifyingly injured at work and needed to just bow out of all of it. And at the time I was like, but I don't understand. I found

the thing. I did what everyone said you're meant to do. You're meant to work hard and when you work hard, you can be anything. Because I'm very literal. It's my autism. And I was just heartbroken. I was like, but it's not fair. But then I sat in that for a while and I realized life isn't fair for anyone. Everyone is in danger all the time. We all lose things. We all find ourselves in circumstances that are unbearable and it doesn't mean that there's any kind of moral application that you should place on that. And thinking in current context, I think about those people in Palestine and what they are suffering and going through as we are all watching in real time. Nobody deserves that. And so it really gave me

a broader worldview of that deserving doesn't necessarily come along with how hard you work or who you are as a person or whether you're talented at something. If you've been dealt a hand that means you can't do it, then you just can't do it. But it kind of felt like being dumped by the love of my life. I was so deeply in love with that world and I thought, oh, well, it took me 25 years to find that. How will I find, and I couldn't imagine going back to working in a job that was boring to me. I didn't want to be in an office and staring out the window and waiting for time to end. So I remember I sat at my kitchen table at my flat in Thornbury and I thought, what can I do?

What are things that I can do? I'm sick of thinking about what I can't do. And I can talk and talk. Who talks? Oh, broadcasters talk. Okay. What else do I like? I like talk. I can talk. Who talks? Oh, broadcasters talk. Okay, what else do I like? I like love.

Love's nice. So I studied two things. I studied to become a civil celebrant and I studied broadcasting. And both of those things ended up being just as fascinating and full of community and like-minded people and interesting and creative and unexpected interests that would pop up as a result of embroiling myself in those communities. But that sort of got me to the pandemic. So when that kicked off, oh my gosh, there was so much going going on in weddings like when all the lockdown started in Melbourne and then all of a sudden people's weddings couldn't go ahead and then they could

with five people or they could with this many people but on a Thursday if the wind's blowing that way you've got to do it this way so my job became admin and holding people through the disappointment of having to change plans that they'd made with their hearts. And then after a while of that, I was just like, oh man, this is not fun for me. I was going through my own stuff. I was working out my neurodiversity. I was working out who I am and because I'd made sure that I didn't have a scare of free time in my mind to think about myself because it was too scary. I thought about everyone else's love story. Everyone. I can't walk down the street without bumping into someone I've married, which is really lovely. But it's that whole focus and complete devotion to who are these people and what is meaningful to them and what can

I create that will honour them in this step in life. So I was going to the wedding, but having a panic attack on the way there. And because I'm immunocompromised and social distancing didn't seem to apply at weddings to people because it's their big special day but it was just going to work for me and then a friend who worked at the health department in another state contacted me and they just said what are you doing why are you doing this to yourself and I was like what do you mean oh it hadn't occurred to me to bow out. I'm so loyal to that profession. I thought I'd do it forever.

And they said, you know, that COVID's not going anywhere and it'll be here for years and years and years. Do you want to keep being this unwell mentally while you're going through this? And I thought about it and I talked to my wife and we didn't know what I would do instead but she was like yeah if you need to bow out bow out it's okay so I broke up with like 16 couples they were all beautiful they were really understanding um some of them

said I don't need my deposit back you've worked worked so hard for us, which was very good because I had spent all those deposits. And so I got a loan from my mom and paid everyone back and just thought, oh, okay, shit. Oh, it's just me rattling around in my head. What do I do? And that's when I just mentioned in an online group that I'm in with a lot of other parents, I'm stopping this work, and I quite like writing. Does anyone know how to do that for a job? Which is, you know, it's such a silly way to phrase a question, but that's how my brain works, is just like, oh, so normal people do all sorts of things, but I don't really know how to be that. I'm just my own little you

know however many poly pockets in a trench coat walking around and I'm trying to make sense of the world and there's an author in the group and she said hey send me your writing and then let's chat and that led to lots of things and the other thing she said to me was you just need to keep writing and so I did and I pretended I knew what I was doing and I would like email a newspaper and say I've I've got a pitch for you this is the pitch I have done this and they'd be like sure can you file by and I'd look up what does file mean yeah sure um it's this many words and we'll pay you this much and I was like really really? Okay, sure.

And so I got a few bylines, which again, I had to look up and that means your name's at the top of the article. And then I got a job working in a magazine just for one issue. They were doing a disabilities issue of a sexuality and gender magazine. And so I joined as guest co-editor for that. Again, I didn't know what I was doing but they I'm really bad at reading emails so I look at the email it just looks like soup and it said come to this zoom and I was like okay sure so I came to the zoom and then that I thought they wanted me to write something and then they said all this stuff that I didn't really understand and by the end of the zoom I had a contract to co-edit this magazine, which ended up just being opinionated and encouraging other people to share their stories, which is what I'm good at. So that was the thing I did.

But all of it's just very funny to me. I'm like, do you really think that I'm a real grown-up? I know I'm 43, but I don't know what I'm doing any more than anyone else. So that original author who was so kind to me and gave me all this feedback and encouragement then asked me to do a sensitivity read on her manuscript. And if you don't know what a sensitivity read is, I didn't. I just said yes and then Googled it. Is your read work by someone through your particular lens of your particular minority group or community. So,

I'm a bit of a two-for-one. I'm queer and disabled. So, I read through that lens and it was You'll Be a Wonderful Dad by Elsa Wilde, which was the first book in a series and then my book is the second in the series because at the end of the conversation I said, there really should be a queer version of this book. And so she spoke to her publisher and then they contacted me and I tripped over and got a book deal. Does that answer your question? Yes, it absolutely does.

And I think that phrase, I tripped over and got a book deal, is so interesting to me because I love the way your brain works in that it's so logical and straight to the point. And rather than coping with all the barriers that sometimes I think people make life much more complicated than it is when actually if you want to be a writer, you've got to write. You know? You've just got to write and then write some more and write bad

things write things that are not great it's okay it doesn't matter just have a crack and I did it I did a workshop with a local author here Jenny Valentich and and she talked about with memoir in particular your first draft is like your vomit draft where you just go and put it all on the page and and I was like oh but mine won't be like that because I'm I'm very thoughtful in the way that I write and I won't need to be edited really um so that manuscript is still I'm still reworking it you know two years later just reworking it reworking it reworking because it is, you need to get the top layer off before you get to the good stuff. Yeah, a friend of mine who's a comedian, Alistair Tremblay-Birchall,

who I love his name, by the way. I married him. Oh, what? Alistair, did you? Yeah. Oh, you really did marry everyone. Yeah. If you've been to a wedding, you've probably met, yeah.

Oh, I love that. love that well yeah he's wonderful and he said to me you just yeah get it all out and then you mine for the gold you take the gold bit out of all of the sludge and then you then you do it again and you find the next little bit of gold and then you piece the gold together but i also do think you have a real gift for writing as well because there's there's the ability to see what maybe some people can't see or think differently and and not hold yourself back from that creative pursuit but there's also having a gift for it I wanted to read you a little section of this beautiful book and then I wanted to ask you a question about it it's my

favorite sort of passage and as a parent I'm not queer but it spoke to me so deeply. So I'll just read it for our listeners. The love you feel as a parent, the fear and hope and vulnerability and wonder is exquisite and humbling. Use it to make the best choices you can. The best advice I can offer, other than the naps before birthing, is to always greet your children with joy.

When they know you're happy to see them, no matter what, it will help shape such an unshakable sense of self that they'll know their worth in any setting. And the single greatest gift you can give yourself next time you look in the mirror is to regard that person staring back with that same joy and pride and acknowledge that despite the scars of this world, you are loved, you are worthy, you are here and perfect as a parent and as a person, just as you are. I wanted to ask you about what it felt like to acknowledge that you were queer. Hmm, a relief, a huge relief. It felt like, oh, there's a word for the ways that I

am inside and I can let those ways be visible now. Yeah, it takes energy to hold in parts of who you genuinely are I felt like oh okay I understand that now I think I just think life is endlessly confusing for most people and when something makes sense at last it's it's wonderful it's wonderful There ought to be a parade for everyone. It's beautiful to know these things about yourself and it doesn't matter what it is. It might be something as silly as, I really like Japanese food. It might be something really that feels little, but once you know that and then you can, every action reflect that, it builds you up. It fills your cup.

It gives you joy. And the more joy you have, the more joy there is in the world, and that can only be a good thing. Yeah, I love that idea, the joy of just being the unique version of you, the human that is, you know. And as someone who loves words, and I know that you're a person that loves words, do you like labels or do you find them limiting? I used to really dislike the word queer because people would use it

about me when I had not self-identified yet. So I think for me it's a little bit about it's really important for me to understand and make choices as kind of an antidote to that perpetual confusion. And when someone else has decided something about me, I don't like that. And it feels like scratchy and rusty and I'm a very synesthetic kind of person. So

often like an emotion will have a physical sensation attached to it or a colour or a font or whatever's going on in my brain. And yeah, it just feels kind of scratchy. But if I can sit in my own, just my own thoughts and let everyone else's noise melt away and really connect with what I feel and do some research into the origins of that word, learn about how it's been used over time. And then I can make a decision about how I feel placing that word against my skin. And once I'd done that, I felt really good about the word queer. Non-binary is, I don't like that it starts with a non. I don't like that disability starts with dis. I don't, you know, they just feel a bit, they're not quite the whole picture. So I think, I think label's just another word for word, right? Or definition. And we can be so fluid in how we define ourselves. There's

nothing to stop anyone from saying, hey, today I feel a bit genderqueer or today I feel a bit tired or today I feel a bit excited. They're words and they have the power to change how we relate to ourselves. I love the word queer now. I love the political element of it and the power that's behind it. I love joining forces with it. I love the visibility of it. I think visibility is so important because a lot of my confusion stemmed from not perceiving anyone like me. And so I felt misunderstood, but I just didn't understand myself. I didn't have the words or the labels yet. Yeah. Once I eventually found them and also accepted that they can change and there's nothing wrong with that. Is that a big driving force for the work you do in the world

to create visibility for other young people? Yeah. Oh, always, always. I'm in the middle of writing a sub stack at the moment and what have I said? And so there's a little paragraph in it. As always, I share these things not to have a complain over it because I think these might be common experiences.

It's taken me almost two decades of crip life to have the words to apply to them. Having the words takes the mystery out. It takes the self-blame away and transforms it into something more constructive. I feel like shame is not constructive. Shame stops us in our tracks and silences us and generates feelings of not worthy or love shouldn't be available to this person or there's no place for this person because they should be ashamed. I feel like that's so destructive. If we can turn toward what's real rather than turning toward what we think other people should think it might be new or there might be things that are difficult

to define but we're all better off for it in the end to understand and have compassionate gaze for people for ourselves yeah I think it's really important as parents to acknowledge that sometimes it's so boring. It's so boring. It's so boring. And that that very true statement can exist alongside with another true statement, which is I have never loved anyone with the ferocity that I love these children.

They're both true. One doesn't cancel the other out. Yeah, being definitive about things, it has to be done with movement. It needs to have space and air and you need to be able to let other feelings in alongside a core feeling and hold it against your skin and go does that feel good or does that feel oppressive and sometimes even working out why something feels oppressive oh why do I make this rule for myself that every time I do this I have to do that where does that belief come from oh maybe I don't need to hold on to that anymore yeah so I guess a lot of my work is

is having conversations or writing I just call them like little word salads I just make a little salad with the alphabet and hope that it has a similar effect on others that it does for me and that it's expansive and compassionate and puts words to a feeling that didn't quite land in a way that made sense yet. You mentioned before about how you experience emotion and you used a word which I've heard someone else say recently. Is it kinesthesia? Synesthesia.

Synesthesia. What does that mean? So everyone experiences it differently if they do at all, but I don't know what the definition is. It's something like one sense can be experienced through another sense at the same time. I'll give you an example. Say you're standing out in the sun and your skin is warm from that. For me, like going in direct sunlight is a big no-no because I'm so sensitive to anything. I sort of burst into flames looking out the window.

So when I can feel the sun on my skin, it brings a fear for me and that fear feels like a choppy feeling in my belly. It's almost like waves that would that would pull someone under yeah so it can be oh Tuesday feels like a blue day and the number four is is soft or there's all different ways that people experience it but it's a very sensory thing I think it comes with a lot of neurodivergent types. So I'm autistic and have ADHD. And through understanding that, it's given me these words. They were just things I felt all the time.

I didn't know that other people didn't, but I didn't really know the words to put to them either. Yeah, so it's kind of interesting. What are some other things, in particularly autism and ADHD, that you went, oh, it's not just a very unique part of Jass's personality, which is also just precious and unique as it is. What are some other things that really blew your mind? It's the way I approach anything I'm interested in. Like I will grab onto it with everything that I am and just completely devote myself to wholly understanding, collecting information or things. Like a lot of people with ADHD in particular will describe, you know, their whatever the new hobby is this week.

And, you know, they go, oh, I quite like crocheting. And within three days, they'll oh I quite like crocheting and within three days they'll have floor-to-ceiling crochet supplies and then next week they'll lose interest and oh no what do I do with that I can't get rid of it I yeah I don't really know how to answer that question because it's just it's just how I am yeah you mentioned burnout before too or that idea so and is that also the meltdowns that you would have is that now because of like a sensory overload of the way you can be yeah I like I always thought that they were panic attacks that started when I was a teenager. But it's only very recently that I think I was reading Clem Bastow's book that differentiates what is the difference between a panic attack

and an autistic meltdown. It's completely different. I never had the words for it before, but now I do, and I'm able to look back and go, oh, that's what that was about. Okay, okay. And so I can engineer my life a little bit differently to avoid that from happening. At the moment, I'm in a really big kind of fatigue pit.

I had strep throat a few weeks ago and it's just very slow going to come to any level of recovery like I I get really puffed out folding laundry and and the physical part is one thing but it's I think it's the the cognitive and emotional aspect that comes along with that because when you've when you've grown up in a mind and a body that it's not really on par with the neurotypical pace or way of understanding or way of being, there's a lot of internalised ableism and shaming that goes on in my own self-talk. Like, oh, you can't even fold laundry, you idiot. You know, that sort of thing will come up. And now I'm able to notice it and say, say oh laundry really results in fatigue for me right now I wonder if that will be different in

a few days if I've rested effectively and learning that rest is a really important part of caring for myself because I need time to process all the sensory input that's gone in it's exhausting and if you don't give yourself time where you're zoning out like I like to play a game on my phone that has hexagons that you match up it's very repetitive and soothing but while I'm playing that or listening to an audiobook or whatever it is that I'm doing I know that there's all this processing going on underneath. And then once I've processed it, thoughts will sort of waft up and go, oh, I get that now. But if I just kept going, going, going, going, there's no way I would come to that space of understanding.

So avoiding burnout and meltdown means every single day I have, I call it a smaller day, a small holiday for minimum an hour I just go lie down have low stimulus zone out and just let the processing happen and then I'm a lot more energetic at dinner bath bedtime I can be more present with my children I can I can tap into what they need I can and this is the thing that people don't talk about i think neurodivergent parents are so attuned with our children like we can see when they need lower stimulus we can see when they're tired we can see oh you need protein oh you need a cuddle or and just sort of gently offer those things

because we know what it is to have needs like children do you know it'll be a lifelong thing to prioritize rest to make sure nutrition is good to um to give ourselves the compassion and grace that you would give your child. You learn to reparent yourself at the same time. That's the key, isn't it? It's that understanding that in parenting you're reparenting yourself and that in itself is a huge exhausting thing and the self-compassion. As I heard you speaking then, I can hear someone who's done a huge amount of work in self-talk and how to separate yourself from your thoughts. Do you meditate?

Is that a practice that you do? No. I thought you were going to tell me you're a sage that sits on a mountain top. No, I can't. I can't sit with my thoughts. That's the worst idea ever. But, you know, it's the answer to everything.

It's like when people say, have you tried yoga? No, I haven't tried yoga. Well, I have tried it 57,000 times and it doesn't work with my body and my mind, so no. Meditation is hell for me because you meant to, I don't know, you meant to let your thoughts slow down and let, and just notice them a bit, but you're trying not to have any, that's never going to happen. I've got a gajillion thoughts. The trick for me is allowing any of them to separate out and become

clear and transparent. So maybe meditation for me is watching a movie that I've seen 70,000 times. It's very soothing. Like that, that makes my brain feel smooth and happy and at rest. But sitting with my thoughts, no, I'd rather stick a fork in my eyeball. Oh, my God. It's just this unfolding, isn't it, of understanding yourself more and more the older that you get and and knowing what you need specifically like a recipe I know that cooking um you said on your Instagram is the secret to life can you tell me about your relationship with cooking oh my gosh I love

cooking I so growing up we had one cookbook which was I can't remember the name of it but it's I've got it in my house it's this woman women's weekly it's like brick red and it had all kinds of things it had entrees and mains and desserts in it real it was published 1981 so things like crepe suzette and bomb alaska and lemon meringue pie and I remember just going through that book and trying to make every single thing in the book when I was a kid. You know, it didn't go well. But I really enjoyed the process of watching something change from one thing into another thing. And if I mastered that, maybe I could try it in this different way. Anyway, I wasn't great at cooking, but I love a fancy wanky dinner.

Like I love a degustation where I don't have to make a decision and they just bring out all these little bits and bobs I'm like oh my god wow that's so fancy pants um so when I first moved to Castlemaine when my wife and I moved up here about 10 years ago I what happened I got I was really unwell and, you know, I'd been unwell for a while with fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis. And then I got a really bad flu and just couldn't do anything for months. And I watched, I illegally downloaded the first season of MasterChef because I like to start from the start and be very systematic and just watch every single little thing. It drives my wife up the wall. She's like, oh my God, can we just watch it from where it's on there? I'm like, no,

because then I will not know all the information. So I just, I lay on the couch and sweated a lot and watched from season one, episode one of MasterChef and it became my new hyper fixation and I learned about how to prepare food like I hadn't really learned it before and and it's it's how I like to show people my love it's it's when I've been in a fatigue pit or if I've been really unwell when I'm starting to come out of it I start to make plans oh what am I going to make plans. Oh, what am I going to make? What will I make for this person that I've missed being around? Yeah, I really, I love the alchemy of it. I love growing things in my garden. I love putting that love into something everyone needs to eat. It's quite meditative.

You can cook while you're listening to a book. It's a thing you can do while you're doing other things so it's not boring for me yeah my kids just they crack it at most things i cook they enjoy flavor or texture um so okay sure you can have nuggets that's fine that i spent all day cooking this for you um we'll just have cereal after we've sat down yeah this nutritious lovely dinner yeah but my partner likes it so that's okay you know at least there's two of us who will enjoy the process um as far as i know it's about exposure so you show them it and you show them it and one day they'll eat more than just chicken eggs and chips and plain pasta with cheese oh plain pasta with cheese it kills me i'm just like oh i know one of the things i struggled with in parenting is i love cooking too and you lose

the joy of it because they just won't they don't want to eat anything with any of that flame and they get angry yeah i know my friend was like i just only got one meal and that's it and my kids just eat it or don't and i'm like oh god yeah but my kids get angry and also then they have to eat while they melt down like you mentioned protein and for our kids it's absolutely vital because i suspect my partner and i are both neurodiverse and so it's um a very non-negotiable thing in our house and navigating all of those things. I wanted to ask you also now about specific parenting advice

for queer parents and rainbow families. What do you think are the things you could distill down? If you only had kind of five minutes with someone i know that's like headline dot points because you know what would you say yeah advice for queer parents i think so important to link in with people who have a similar lived experience to you because no one will understand what you're going through unless they've lived a similar thing it's so essential to have those non-judgmental unconditional positive regard spaces because the world can be so harsh and medical spaces can be really othering and difficult to be courageous enough to place yourself within. They're not all

bad, but there is enough going on where they are bad. Simple things like when you're filling out a form online, it doesn't have your pronoun in the drop-down box. It doesn't have the option for two mums. It doesn't have the option for yeah like really like we're not we're not imaginary we're here could you please include us in the freaking form um so having someone to bitch about that kind of thing with is really great um my kids are now four and six and one of the best things I've done is now that I have a little bit of energy and and brain space is to join a committee so I'm I'm part of the rainbow families committee under um what's uh switchboard okay and there's been switchboard um and we meet online and just talk about how can we make

make life easier for rainbow families how can we make life easier for rainbow families? How can we make life more inclusive? So being able to use my experience to contribute in that way is really wonderful. And if you're at the beginning of your parenting journey, if you're considering becoming a parent, reach out to someone who's a few years down the road from you and say, hey, can I ask you all the questions that I have floating around in my head? And nine times out of 10, that person will say, absolutely, come over, meet the kids, see what it's like in our house, and we'll just hang out and we'll chat. But if you're in it already, if you've got little kids or older kids, or if there's anything where you feel like you're a bit lost or confused or if going to a thing that you need to go to as a parent feels bad to you for whatever

reason even if you can't articulate it there will be something that can happen that will make the experience better for you for your kids And if it's good for you and your kids, it's good for your wider community. And if you don't know what that thing is, reach out to someone within the rainbow community and talk it through. And if they don't know the answer, they will know someone who is just the right person for you to talk to. I really believe that it's those chats around the kitchen table or over Zoom or via text where the most meaningful change happens and it happens because there's a sense of solidarity and community and understanding. So that's my distilled down version. I know that's really hard, particularly when you're a weird person.

I think that's so beautiful in the end. It's the conversation, the connection, the listening, the talking. Thank you so much for being that person for so many. And I know if you're neurodiverse, actually sometimes having a conversation that you can just listen to is also so valuable too rather when you're in that space where you need more rest, which is why podcasts are so beautiful I think in that way too because you can cook while you listen.

You mentioned gardening. Yes, game changer. Yeah. What? I love a garden. I love that alchemy of the growing of things and I'm also a musician. What does music mean for you? Oh, music is one of my greatest joys.

I've always loved music. I've played many instruments that I can't play anymore because of my disability but I still, it feels like a secret, safe world for me to dive into. Last weekend I went to a rehearsal for, there's this thing in Castlemaine called Castlemaine Idol and it's like a karaoke competition with a live band. It's in this big natural amphitheatre called Lot 19 and anyone can enter

and I've done it maybe three or four times and it's so much fun you don't have to be good at it you can just have a crack and after I went to rehearsal I sort of realized oh this is this is a thing that I didn't let myself do when I was a kid because I didn't feel like I was good enough and now I'm really embracing being a total middle-aged dork and all that entails. So music is this beautiful world where good things happen and it's all about vibration and feeling and emotion. It's sort of like Auslan for me. It's a language that makes complete sense,

way more than conversation or written English. It just, yeah, it's a way to connect and feel who you are and feel good in that. Do you see? What is it for you? Oh, that's a beautiful question. Yeah, it's exactly the same for me. I started, my sort of story very briefly that I didn't do music

for 15 years because it was too painful for me because I loved it so much. If I wasn't doing it, I thought I wasn't good enough. And so I couldn't even go and watch live music because I'd cry through the whole thing and feel really jealous. And I remember saying it to a friend and they were like, you can't like music that much if you don't go and watch it and I'm like oh no also having kids I have two one's three and eight and having kids as well I was so overwhelmed by that transition and

the sort of trauma of that I'm very emotionally kind of sensitive person too and I just couldn't connect in with that part of me because I knew I loved it so deeply and I did singing at university with my teaching degree I was a primary school teacher and the part of me that did this sort of classical training just had just even further that idea of not being good enough just it just crushed me because you'd stand up there and perform and everyone would dissect you and then they'd only kind of zoom in on the notes that were wrong.

And so it was this real idea that music to me was this kind of place of competitiveness and perfection, which I could never think of. Oh, my God, yeah. But for the life of me, I can't be perfect. I can't, and I can't. I just can't. I can't turn things on time.

I start to put my foot in my mouth all the time it's just the way I'm built and so a couple of years ago I got long COVID and I the light was too bright I couldn't I could parent and I could rest and that was kind of all I think COVID parenting and having another baby during that time and working, I just didn't stop. And so I was overwhelmed. And I started kind of listening to music again, because it was all I could really do. And it's that vibration and that sound. And then I started songwriting because songs have always followed me around everywhere I go. I thought everyone got really drunk and started writing songs into their phone in the toilet cubicles turns out not turns out not and so I um this is a long way of saying yeah music to me is life it's energy it's vibration I love nature I spent a lot of time outside I need to I know that now because I

started to rest for the first time in my life I feel like I was running and running and running and running and running um and I just had interpreted this idea that if you are as perfect as you can be and work as hard as you can be, then you'll be a good human. And that's what life's about. And in the stopping, these songs started to come. And then I started working with a producer. I got a singing teacher and she said, you're a song songwriter and I was like, I'm not. Turns out I am. And hyper-focus I would suggest potentially because I didn't just do it as a hobby. I ended up with an 11-song album and then I was touring it

and singing it. But it was all about that transition to motherhood. Yeah, it's healing to me. The further down this road I go, the more I feel music as vibration and healing. I went to a devotional singing group on Friday night with my friend Erin and I grew up very Catholic, so there's a lot of groups singing around me,

but that context didn't feel good, you know, for so many reasons, as we know. Some of the concept of it, the community care and the singing I loved and, you know, the stand-up comedy from The Priest was great, but all of the judgment and all that other bullshit. Yeah. Excuse my French. And so, but that devotional singing session of all just being together

and singing, you know, you are the stars or whatever you wanted to be in that room and they created this space where you could be however you wanted. Move your body however you wanted to be in that room and they created this space where you could be however you wanted, move your body however you wanted, sit, stand, lie, sleep, harmonise, yell, whatever you needed. And to me that's what music allows us because it moves our vibration, moves our body and it enables, you know, experience emotion in an audio form, which is what my singing teacher really changed my life about my voice because she said,

who are the artists you really love? And I said, like, you know, Lennon Collin or Clay Bowditch or Sarah Blasco. And she's like, well, Bob Dylan. They sing completely imperfectly. They sing as the most them. And then that changed the way I approached my voice and my art because I realized that that is what life is just being the most you and then people respond to that because they hear

that in the in the sound and think of how how the definition of the word perfect has changed for you in that because those those artists that you listed to to you they're perfect they're the most they're the pinnacle right and it's because we see we see all that they are it's not about always hitting the note right it's about letting your heart out through the vibration and sharing that yeah exactly oh no i'm gonna know you made me cry yeah it's so true because it is it's like you said you've said quite a lot and it's into how it feels on your skin and to me like my album artwork has a heart externally on my skin because that that to me is how i want to live going forward and i think i'm trying to live that in my parenting sort of heart-led

and understanding you know that's then other people can see you and it allows them to feel free yeah and think about what that means for your children going forward yeah allowing I think it's sort of it does it makes me deeply emotional it's it's really interesting though because also my kids find it hard for me to sing all the time around them because I do it so much and also they know it takes me away from them as well do you have that in your life with your parenting that they sense uh um that you're writing or in a creative project and that you're away from them? Do you have that type of book in your house? Yeah, I think it wasn't last year, it was the year before.

In November I really committed to writing every day. So there's this thing, NaNoWriMo, where you're meant to write a certain number of words per day and by the end you'll have a book. I didn't really follow the rules. I just sort of joined the bandwagon and every night after the kids were in bed, I would sit and write a couple of thousand words. And by the end of the year, I kept going. And by the end of the year, I had my vomit draft of my memoir and um and when it was finished I took myself for a haircut and then I went to my physio and I was like okay I'm back from you know being like a big foot in the woods kind of guy and um I can stand up straight again I'm not hunched over the desk all the time and I think a few days later I was folding laundry and my wife said to me oh you're back

you're where have Where have you been? You've been off in outer space. Like you've been here and going through the motions, but I can see that you're actually here. And I think as creative people, it really, that devotion can be split between family and whatever it is that you're wholly invested in creating or finessing or whatever it is. So yeah, it makes it a little bit daunting to dive into a project of any kind. So I try and make my projects little these days and just give that manuscript time to breathe and I'll come back into it. Like when I was really sick a few weeks ago, I woke up with a start one morning and went, oh,

I need to get cracking on that book. I can't just let it sit there and go mouldy. So it's interesting actually the conversation we've had today because I picked out a single chapter that I've reworked and that on Thursday I'm going into Melbourne to my writers group and we're going to workshop it but it is about my upbringing finding music and finding language so in in school I really loved learning languages other than English I learned a couple but how both of those worlds were, they gave me the belonging that I didn't have, that I never felt anywhere.

And then how the classical training of that music just destroyed it for me and killed it for me and how lost I felt until I found the deaf community in Auslan in my mid-20s. So, yeah, it's a bit cuckoo that all these things are happening at once. But, yeah, it's such a – it can be such a tender path when you know who you are as a person is that you're just going to completely hyperfixate and dive deep into process and your kids need to get to school and you need to make lunches and it would be nice to see the laundry floor sometime this year and

you know it's all these realities coexist and and you love your children and but there's a part of you missing when you when you're diving into that. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It means giving yourself a bit of compassion about the realities of having a divided heart. It's just who we are. And our children, I think, are often the same and seeing parents who honour that, who turn toward what's real and not just try and suppress what our souls are calling us to do.

It's really important, yeah. Yeah, it's that beautiful book by Rachel Power, The Motherhood in Divinity, right, The Divided Heart. A friend of mine gave it to me before I left on my tour last year. So thoughtful, very introverted,verted beautiful artist Bianca and um in typical me fashion because my brain worked so fast I didn't read it before I left would have been good if I had because it is so complex when you um you are divided utterly and to really especially because I hid away my art the artist that I am for most of my life and so finding that person I just want to spend my whole time with her but I then it

separates me from my kids and and now this year it's only now it's sort of been two years since I've been practicing art and this third year I'm now finding ways of integrating both the mother and the artist together and that going slowly that you said. There's definitely a real interconnectedness of all things. I often think things aren't necessarily an accident, who we're drawn to speak to, at what time, what practice come in. You know, even you said the word to breathe, the phrase to breathe just before, and I'm releasing a song in April

called To Breathe, which is an ambient song based on just the idea that to still down, we just are, you know, to love, to breathe, to seek, to love, to breathe on the repeat. Do you know that Claire Bowditch song, People Like You, People Like Me? I really, that's one of my, I think that's my whole core value system is that song and it's the repetition of a phrase that becomes quite devotional and meditative but not in a bad, stuck-with-your-thoughts way, in a good, expansive way. And at the time that album came out, what was left?

I was working in broadcasting at the time and I interviewed Claire and she was quite apologetic about how long the song went for. She said, oh, you don't have to play the whole thing. And I was like, no, it's really important that we do play the whole thing because it gives us time and space to let that expansive thought mean whatever it means to us. I love that because, yeah, the word expansive has come up a lot in this conversation too and i there's something i think about a lot the difference

and sometimes it's been that creative mind expansive mind that you exist in and then the laundry floor and lunches and the rest of and the turning up and there's someone's got to have a purple shirt and someone needs to have a purple shirt and someone needs to have vegemite sandwich but they won't they don't like it anymore they have that every day but now they want a ham sandwich you know it's just that whole idea and you and you're going from here to here so yeah it's it's it's the imperfect perfect nature I guess of ourselves right in the end we just have to allow all of it to be I wanted to ask you what is your feeling about the nature of things why we're here

do you have a perspective on that I feel that the older I become the more I understand the less I understand and how wonderful that is how wonderful it is to be surprised so often about who I am who the people I love are what it is that I need the ways that I can be of service to not just people but to country and to big concepts like love and understanding and not just acceptance but celebration. My friend is a scientist and she says to me, I am no more significant than an ant and I love that and it frustrates me and I agree with it and I hate it and it kind of it weaves in a little bit to what I was saying earlier about losing that deep love in the profession that I finally found good things will happen to us bad things will happen to us what is important is allowing ourselves to feel what's real and turning toward

what's real as much as we can with the resources that we have. And if there's a resource we don't have that we think we might need or that other people might need, there's nothing to stop us from dreaming about creating that resource. If we don't have the skills, we can pass that information onto someone else who might say, hey, it would be good if this thing existed. And that's how books are born and that's how podcasts are born and how children are born and butterflies and Vegemite and all the things, you know.

Yeah. That is some of my waffly, rambly thought in response to that lovely question. I love that. Well, that's what you'll be a wonderful parent is, right, for sure. As you were talking, and I'll finish now, I could talk to you forever. As you were talking, this word came to me that I've been thinking about a lot and songwriting about.

Have you heard of the word heliotropic? Heliotropic. It sounds familiar but I don't know what it means and I don't know why. So you mentioned gardening as well and while you were talking, you were saying, you know, turning to things, turning to light is the phrase that it means actually. So it's a practice, a process that plants turn directly to sunlight all the time.

And we see that, you know, in the forest, trees grow towards the sunlight. They're constantly turning towards light. And if you think about it in a philosophical or human way, it's the propensity for human beings to lean towards positive energy to the sun, you know, to lean towards positive energy to the sun you know to that idea that despite everything we still need positive energy we want that sunshiny light that yellow in our lives and even though we might have a lot of shade and a lot of darkness in our in our world

you know you talked about talked about Palestine and we talked about the darker sides of mental health and parenting and all of those things, but we have a need for the positive and that turning towards it. And I think that's what you are creating, some light for people to turn towards. So thank you so much, Jasperper for your work in the world and what you are doing and the gift of this conversation really appreciated it heliotropic i want to tattoo

it on my forehead that's so beautiful thank you oh what a juicy yummy words i thank you yes so good so fiz's all fizzy. Yeah, thank you. It's been a lovely chat, really. I just want to piggyback on to what you were saying about light in the face of darkness. So all these bad, bad things are happening in the world that are not only painful to perceive but painful on all levels for all people. It's way, and I don't like the, what's the word,

when there's like levels of how much suffering you have. I don't agree with the, like the suffering Olympics, but, you know, obviously the people who are bearing the brunt of that violence are having an unbearable, terrible time. When the worst dark things are happening in plain view, that means that there's light on them. And what I deeply hope is that things will shift as a result of these horrors, that we cannot, no one can turn away anymore from the things that might have been hidden before um things need to change and there needs to be a lot more love and a lot less violence in the world so yeah it can feel so insensitive to create light when dark times

are happening but it is the most important time to do it yeah yeah i'll get that tattooed i really i really need to be careful to not buy a tattoo gun from ebay or something because it that would be that would lead to a lot of big problems for me on my flights of fancy oh gosh i don't have any tats yet and i'm um i'm planning one but i'm just my brain has so many loves that's why i get an obsession and then i get another obsession and i'm worried that i'll get these tattoos and then in a year i'll be like what i don't like these anymore so but um a friend of mine said that well you you live your life as you go through and you collect kind of scars in different ways.

And, you know, I've got scars from having my kids and scars from different injuries or, you know, different things that have happened in my life. And I guess the tattoo is a bit like that. Yeah. All right. This has just been such a beautiful conversation. My friend Shana, who's a librarian, recommend I go and find you. Oh, yeah, cool.

She's absolutely right. Yeah, cool. Okay, well, I'll let you know. Oh, just right. It was such a joy to meet you. Yeah, it really was. Thank you. And I look forward to seeing more of your work out in the world too.

Yeah. Get that world too. Yeah. Get that memoir written. Yeah. I've got a kid's book sitting at the publisher at the moment, so I'm hoping they get back to me soon and someone will want to print it. I'm sure they will. Absolutely. Okay.

Thank you. Cool. Thank you. Have a lovely rest of your day. Bye. You've been listening to a podcast with me, Claire Tonti, and this week with broadcaster and writer Jasper Peach. Now, for more from Jasper, head to at Jasper Peach Says on Instagram

where you can find links to their wonderful book, You'll Be a Wonderful Parent. It's bright yellow. You can't miss it. I totally recommend it. For more from me, you can head to claaretonte.com where I have links to all my upcoming events, as well as my tour of the UK and Ireland. I'm heading to Colac in May and also doing a book launch for my friend, Aaron Beeston's new book as well in Carlton in May and all the details you can

find over there on my website and follow me on Instagram at Claire Tonti, which is where I like to tell stories. I also have a new song in the world. It's an ambient track. So if you like meditation, you'll like this work. It's a collaboration with an artist called Willa Brandt. It's available on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music. And I wrote it as a longer song that will be coming out later in the year with the full lyrics, but this is a collaboration. So I use it in my own life while I'm walking through the woods and the forest and when I'm trying to rest and particularly trying to take moments

to breathe during my parenting. So I hope you really enjoy it. Okay, thank you as always to Roar Collings for editing this week's episode and to Maisie for running our social media. All right. Tons out. Bye.