TONTS. - Shining a Light in Dark Places with Laura Conti

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow up in a secretive Christian sect? And what happens if you leave? My guest today Laura Conti has done just that and not only left but thrived. Her story is one of fierce tenacity, feminist principles and the power of a good education. More than that though, what I admire most about Laura's story is her bravery in telling her truth and how speaking out can set you free. The sect she grew up in is called The Truth and is highly secretive with members across Australia, the USA and the EU. Former members of The Truth confirm the group hold fundamentalist Christian beliefs, where TV, movies, dancing, drinking, smoking, swearing, and gambling is described as the “devil’s work”. Women are expected to dress modestly and wear their long, uncut hair pinned in a bun; they are not allowed to follow current fashion trends, or wear makeup or jewellery. Men must have their hair cut short. Only “Workers” are allowed to marry outside of The Truth, and according to former member Elizabeth Coleman, “Children in the sect are told that if they stray, bad things will happen – a lightning strike, for example, being hit by a runaway bus, or an illness.”Laura was a joy to talk to you and I can't wait for you to hear this episode.For more from Laura and to purchase some #gokindly beautiful bedding you can head to https://www.gokindly.com.au/ If you or anyone you know is experiencing family violence or homelessness please reach out to the following organisations:24 HOUR FAMILY VIOLENCE SERVICE - SAFE STEPS  1800 015 18824 HOUR HOMELESSNESS SERVICE  1800 825 955Berry Street Juno Womens Housing LtdLaunch HousingAnd if this episode brought anything up for you at all please reach out to someone you trust or to Lifeline on 13 11 14You can find me at @clairetonti on instagram or at www.clairetonti.com and subscribe to my newsletter hereAs always thank you to RAW Collings for editing this week's episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast is brought to you by GoKindly, making waves in bedding and social impact. Hello, welcome to Tont's podcast about feeling all of it. My name is Claire Tonti and this week my guest is called Laura Conti. Our names rhyme, but we have very different stories. Laura grew up in a fundamentalist Christian community in New South Wales, which she left when she was 19. Now, the religious community is called The Truth, and I wanted to give you some more background on her upbringing before we start and you hear from Laura herself.

I had never heard of The Truth before I began researching for this episode, and that's not an accident. It's quite deliberate. The group, known by names including The Truth, Two by Twos, Workers and Friends, Cooneyites, Christian Convention Church, The Way, The No Name Church, The Friends and The Fold, are said to have thousands of members across America, Britain, Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. And they're shrouded in secrecy. The Truth Church is believed to have originated in Ireland in the late 1800s when founder William Irvine, an evangelist with an interdenominational group called Faith Mission,

began preaching independently on Mark 10 of the New Testament. Now, they're sometimes called the Cooneyites and they made their way to Australia through the Protestant evangelist Edward Cooney, who moved to Mildura around 1884. Now, Laura says in this episode that her family's connection to the truth go back maybe four or five generations. They lived on a rural property outside of New South Wales. And I think it's worth noting that other former members, including Elizabeth Coleman, have said that they often hide in plain sight. She writes in her book, they meet in private homes on Sunday mornings and in rented halls, school communities during the week. They are almost impossible to recognise, even if you stumble across them, as individually

they claim no name, denomination, affiliation, or even organization. In truth, Elizabeth writes, they are a highly organized worldwide ministry with an extensive following that carefully hides its origins, even from its own members. They refer to each other as the friends and to their clergy as the workers. Members of the public will only come across them by responding to small advertisements as the workers. Members of the public will only come across them by responding to small advertisements in public newspapers. Now, I've never spoken to someone before who has grown up in what ostensibly is a religious sect or a cult and who has left it, which Laura did when she was 19. It's clear that Laura, from the very beginning, was highly intelligent and vivacious and adventurous and also fierce. And I think that in some ways, as she talks about today,

that protected her from some of the darker things that were occurring in her community. Former members of the truth have confirmed that as well as holding fundamentalist Christian beliefs, where TV, movies, dancing, drinking, smoking, swearing and gambling were described as the devil's work, women were also expected to dress really modestly and wear their long, uncut hair pinned in a bun. They were not allowed to follow current fashion trends or wear makeup or jewellery, and men must have their hair cut short. Beyond all of those things though, children in the sect were told that if they strayed, bad things would happen to them. A lightning strike, for example, or being hit by a runaway bus or an illness, particularly

if they left the church. Now, despite all of this, Laura is really a funny and warm person. In recent years, it's become really clear that there was a huge amount of emotional, sexual and violent abuse taking place within the community. And Laura escaped all of this when she was 19. I want to just warn you that there are some darker points in this conversation. So if you feel triggered by anything that we talk about today, including family violence, please reach out to Lifeline on 13 11 14, and I'll put some links to some other organizations that can help in the show notes below. All right, let's get started.

Here she is, Laura Conti. Hello, Laura. Hello. Thank you so much for coming on Tons and we finally got ourselves here. It's been a bit of argy-bargy, hasn't it? Trying to find a time. Yeah, thank you for having me. The chaos of lockdowns and the emotional sort of roller coaster we're all on. Oh, I know. We were just discussing parenthood during this time. And so you've got a little boy who's three is that right I do yeah how have you found parenthood actually it's been very rewarding and for the most part I have a very wonderful

child in that he's very he has very high emotional intelligence and he loves other kids and he loves being around us he's very cuddly and very sweet and very like generous kid but the emotions that come with it oh my lord that's the hardest part for me is learning how to help them deal with their own little emotions totally and got any tips no absolutely no i just think like hats off to single parents like you need someone else to bounce this stuff off like you need to be able to say i'm out someone else needs to go and negotiate with this because i'm out totally oh exactly and I think I don't know about you but I'm parenting very differently to how I was raised and so that's the whole thing not having a

blueprint yes for how to cope with all this stuff and wanting to raise as someone who's in touch with their emotions but also not breaking things correct especially with little boys right I'm so I've always been so sure that socialization was a big part of it and you know and I'm a very kind of strong feminist woman like how do you raise a strong feminist boy who's not an absolute shit and like you just get so many like smacks in the face about testosterone like wow testosterone hey yeah it's a real thing isn't it I know but there's a great comedian that I love called Jessica Foster Q and she has this whole bit about how before she had a son she was like I'm going to raise a kind boy and a strong girl and then her son was born and he's just like this tornado and she's like oh wow there's things

we have to put in here for this kid because they come into the world they wait the way they come in don't they yeah I mean my son it's just so many confronting little moments but he loves babies loves baby dolls loves things like that but he's only interested in them if they move so I remember giving him a baby doll when he first started walking and he just used to chuck it down the stairs and watch it roll down the stairs. And I was like, oh, my God, he's a psychopath. I was like, what kind of child doesn't nurture a little baby and love a little baby?

All he wanted was for it to move, you know. And then I was like, I've just got to learn to accept that, yeah, you just don't make it toxic, you know, you don't make a big thing of it. You, like, learn how to work with masculinity and work um testosterone and not get too sort of panicked about it I know throwing the baby downstairs and look I've got a five-year-old and I have to say there were moments where I was very worried about him too just because he was really obsessed with the wildebeest in the Lion King for example because they trampled like Mufasa and it was awful. And I remember at the time thinking, oh, my God,

who is this kid and what's happening? And actually he's this lovely kid now and I think it's just three is just that time where all the emotion's coming and they're learning their boundaries and exploring all of that masculinity. And, like, he's really into war games and, you know, playing weapons and fighting and we never did any of that. He never watched anything like that. Yes.

But it's just the way that it is, I think. They've just got little brains with neurons that just fire just at strange times over strange things. And do you know what? I always think I was obsessed with guns when I was a kid and so I think, you know what, I came out of that all right, like I'm not a serial killer. So I try not to get too hung up on that when they get obsessed

with little things like that. But it is very confronting to like i just thought you know it was all about the way we socialize them and it was all about the things we spoke to them about and no their little brains actually are wired a little bit differently and we have to work out the best way to get yeah good masculinity out of this instead of this crazy kind of frenetic energy yes yeah and i think you're absolutely right I think they come into the world the way they come in and we can shape around the edges but they are who they are straight up I wanted to ask you who you were when you were a kid well bizarrely I think the person I am now as a 40 something year old I don't even know how old I

am now 41 who knows I mean how many years have we been in lockdown? I could be 80 by now. Anyway, I went in to lockdown at around 40. I'm somewhere around there now. And honestly, I was, until I was about eight years old, the person I am now, like very quirky, very funny, very, yeah, I had a lot of energy as well. I was very amazing imagination, very curious, very, I was a lot like my boy cousins.

I kept up with the boys and I loved playing the boys' games. I was quite rough. I was quite – I wasn't – I liked, you know, I liked dresses and I liked bows and things, but they weren't ever going to hold me back, you know, like I was one of those kids that ran and jumped and swam and went as fast as I could at everything and thought I could do everything. And lots of ways exactly like my three-year-old. Now I say all those things like yeah okay we know where that comes from yeah I have always been a bit of a leader of things like you know I was always the kid that like rounded everybody up and decided what I wanted done and how I wanted it done and

yeah and then you know sort of aging to teenagehood was very difficult for me but um yeah I was a I was really who I am now at the end of the day a little bit quirky very funny a little bit unusual that sounds familiar actually I found I found this a lot of me when I was a kid for sure now I wanted to ask you I know you've been talking a lot about your story and that must be really exhausting and take a lot. It's so exhausting. Yeah, it must be exhausting. But are you comfortable talking about the context that you grew up in?

Is that quirky, energetic? Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I very deliberately talk about my background because I think it's really important in a broader context in these unusual times that we're in. Yeah, I feel that there's space for people to hear things from different perspectives for the first time in ever really um and it's very important to me look it is exhausting and I do it does especially with lockdown on top of it and a toddler on top of that does really kind of like emotionally exhaust me but um I'm never I never I never regret that I've done it and it's

really important to me that I do it. Absolutely. So how did you grow up? So do you want to describe the home that you grew up in as this sort of kid, adventurous, energetic girl? Yeah, I grew up a multi-generational fundamentals Christian. So I grew up in a very conservative, a lot of black and white thinking, a lot of rules, a lot of regulations, a lot of this is just the way it's done, don't question things, a lack of curiosity. And I grew up in a very loving home, but it was very loving within boundaries and everything was driven through the lens of our religion and through the lens of our community. I grew up in a rural, very rural

community, which is unusual even for my community, but my own family is very rural. We come from far western New South Wales and from northern northwest Victoria. So I grew up for a fair chunk of my life out near Bourke, Brewarrina, Ningen, out past Dubbo, long way out past Dubbo. Surrounded by a very loving, very big family, very multi-generational farms, very strict gender roles for men and for women, but, you know, very loving as well. I think I can't emphasise that enough is that, you know, I was a very loved child and there's a lot of privilege

of coming from a background where you are always fed and always clothed and know that you're loved and you've got a safe place to sleep at night. But it was also a very abusive religious community. There was a lot of sexual abuse, a lot of emotional, financial abuse. And I think sort of touching earlier, going back to sort of being eight and struggling from then on, you know, that's the age at which I realised exactly what was happening in our community. I'm no longer a child from that point on, really, because I realised just how unusual the community was I

lived in, how some of the behaviours inside my family and community were not very godly, Christian, and what roles were expected of me as a girl. So it was a very tumultuous time from then on, but I did nonetheless have a lot of good times. And I had a wonderful rural childhood full of running and dirt and never-ending sunsets and you know rural kids grow up with a sense of independence I think because there's never enough people for the work that needs to be done and you're expected just to dig in and work from the much from the moment you can walk which is maybe what I'm doing wrong with my son um you know there's I mean my husband always says to me gosh I can't believe you were driving so young and I can't believe the responsibilities you had so young but you know there was never enough adults

for the work that needed to be done there was always a car that had to go somewhere and not enough adults to you know to get it to where it needed to go and so you were just taught to stand on the seat and to get into first gear and steer and there's a sense of like just learning how to be a responsible person and how to get stuff done that comes from being coming from a rural background and um yeah I mean there were always other kids that needed to be cared for and more kids than there were adults so you know there's just this sort of you just naturally this work to be done and you're just expected to do it and certainly in a fundamentals community you know the idea that you would have extracurricular activities the idea that you you know we didn't have TV or radio or music

or any of those things. I mean, work was our life, which probably didn't help the situation either. But, yeah, we have a strong work ethic. Yeah, I take that away from our community as well. What was the set-up like in terms of the buildings and the way your families kind of lived together? Did you have separate houses?

Were you on one big farm? No, our communities all live in their own homes and have for all kind of intensive purposes their own homes and their own lives and their own families and their own work. But the nature of the community is that we're very close in terms of praying together and coming together to worship. And so there are several times a week meetings they're called, you know other people would call them church services so yeah we tend to congregate in areas where we live in similar areas so farms are not too far from each other houses not too far from each other and um and then of course layer on top of that the multi-generational nature of our

our businesses we tend to work in businesses that are you know owned by a grandparent or an uncle or an aunt and so many people work in the same business. So they spend all day together at work and then all day together again on the weekends at services and then in the evenings, you know, caring for the elderly and, you know, in and out of each other's homes and things. And so, yeah, we lived on our own farm but, you know,

nearby other family members' farms and I guess similar to a lot of other faith groups we share things like machinery and labor and you know that's not uncommon in farming communities for everyone to to share each other's things so you know we grew up in each other's pocket even though we had our own space we really were in our space alone yeah wow and what was the belief system like are there things that you've taken from it that you practice now in your own life or have you removed yourself completely from the belief systems existing within it?

Bizarrely I never believed in our belief system. I know that sounds really bizarre. I mean I'm kind of, I forget how many generations, four, five, three, four, five, three on one strand, four on another, five another I think so it's it's ingrained into my blood I mean everything about my existence came from this belief system but I don't think I ever believed it for me I it never made sense to me I wasn't the right personality for it to make sense to me I now realize in hindsight I wasn't the sort of person who is sort of compliant enough, I think, or that needed meaning and purpose enough. I think the people in my family and community for whom it matters are people who need it in order to feel at home in the world and to feel comfortable in the world and to feel that

there are reasons. And, you know, as a personality type, I think that I just don't fit in too easily. So I think I asked too many questions from the moment I could articulate them. And so I never felt that that religious context made sense to me, that I needed it in order to make decisions. I loved my community and I loved my family. And I think that comes from being a sort of a social personality type. I loved the social side of it, but I never needed it. So I would say I'm sort of an atheist I don't know I come and go from whether or not I believe in a bigger power I believe in a higher power but I don't know if I think that it's God necessarily or male yeah yeah or definitely male um it just doesn't I don't need it so and I don't think I ever have yeah so is that the belief system was that if you left the community,

your life would end? Is that a way of saying it? Well, it's sort of, the belief system is a very literal interpretation of the Bible and a very black and white interpretation of Christian beliefs. And so what is written in the Bible they believe to be true, like just black and white true, but they do pick and choose the things that they put attention to. And so, you know, the things about women's clothing,

women's appearance, women's roles are just sort of taken as literal. That's the way it is. And if you don't follow, then you've got the devil in you. And basically there's sort of a very much an us and them interpretation of the world. So there's us in terms of our interpretation and the way we live and then there's everybody else. And the only way you can get into heaven is through our interpretation.

Everything else is a false god. And they're not alone in that. I mean, there are Mormons that leave a very similar thing, Seventh-day Adventists. Scientology actually is similar as well, although their interpretation, they don't have Bible per se, they have a different text. But, yeah, it's very much an us and them mentality. and so while i don't actually say to you you'll die everything in the belief system is set up to be about well you believe the way we do or bad things happen basically and those

bad things are amplified so people who left we heard a lot about when they died and people who left and bad things happened to them we heard a lot about that we didn't hear anything about those people who left who went on to have good lives and went on to live functional lives they just disappeared from us you know and that's very deliberate because if there's no reason for you to stay you know if you're not scared of something then why would you why would you stay so yeah I think it's about um the roadblocks are put there in your way to scare you a little, especially as a child, you know. That's how I came to believe, I think, that if you left, you died, is because, you know, I did know some people who left who did die,

but, of course, I didn't realise that actually that wasn't everybody. That was, you know, somebody died in an accident, someone else was murdered, you know. It wasn't, they didn't die because they left. They died because of other tragic things that happened in their lives, but that's unfortunately not the story that we were told. Wow.

Is there a moment you remember, like a particular moment when you were eight, like something you saw that made you really think, well, this is not the way that I want to live or I don't believe in this structure or is it a gradual process, do you think? It was very gradual but it was really as an eight-year-old I had older cousins I had older female cousins and I mean I've spoken a lot to various psychiatrists and psychologists over the years about what happens to you at eight and and why it was that eight is such a big turning point in the way I

felt about my home and the way I felt about our community you know you reach a level of emotional maturity where you're more aware of the things around you. And so, you know, eight is a kind of an emotional maturity, but it was also at eight I had older cousins and I suddenly noticed what was happening to them and what was expected of them. And I felt very, very uncomfortable with it. You know, I inherited all my cousins' hand-me-down clothes

and I saw their clothes change. I saw what was expected of them. You know, no longer were we just carefree kids for whom it didn't matter what length our dress was all of a sudden it mattered what length the sleeves were and what length they came down to below our knee you know and I inherited all their shoes and I you know all of a sudden they were no fun shoes anymore they were all the closed toe kind of suitable shoes and so you know there's a very marked shift that happened around eight about the things I inherited from them in terms of clothes. And then it also became very obvious that I was expected to participate in this religion. So at eight, you know, there's sort of, not formally,

but informally, I guess you become mature enough to suddenly read the Bible and to be expected to participate in prayers and to be expected to what they call make your choice, which is your choice to stay in the religion forever and to dedicate your life to it. And the responsibility that comes with that is that you are expected to speak in the meetings. And I just, as an eight-year-old, I was very developed in my reading ability. I loved reading.

I could read everything. And I understood the things I read. You know, I read Edith Blighton. I could get my house, you know, at school I was sent to the Year 6 kids to read with them when I was in kindergarten when I could get my house, at school I was sent to the year six kids to read with them when I was in kindergarten because I could read so well. And I just, as an eight-year-old realizing that I was meant to read the Bible and I was meant to understand it, I probably had what I would think of as a panic attack.

I was just like, I don't understand the Bible. I've read all these other Enid Blyton books and I've read all these other things and I understand them and I don't understand this Bible. And so there's this change in me that happened where all of a sudden I realized the level of responsibility that was required of me as a girl and as a woman inside this group. And how does that change as you got older? Are there more responsibilities? Well, you know, as the years went went by then my cousins got married and married young and I didn't feel comfortable with that my cousins left school and I didn't feel comfortable with that yeah I guess more and more of those instances came along that made me think no this

is not working for me um and then you know I saw my male cousins get given leadership kind of roles and given responsibilities inside our religion and I was even more angry and more upset because I thought I'm actually more clever than them. Like it's a very kind of stuck up kind of childish thing to think but I was like I'm cleverer than them. I can do this. You know, they're a bit useless and I'm not. Like why are there no jobs like that for me?

And then, you know, probably from around 10, 11 onwards, the abuse just became more and more evident to me that what comes through those power structures of very traditional male and female roles is a whole lot of abuse behind closed doors that as I did start to understand a bit more about the bible I could not I just couldn't get that to line up with my you know my interpretation of the bible just couldn't line up with the amount of abuse I could see but happening behind closed doors and so none of it ever made any sense to me just didn't stack up I'm so sorry I just think I can't even comprehend what that would do to your sense of self as a child at that age trying to navigate those really adult kind of concepts and themes

I guess in terms of the abuse and I don't want to stay very long there, do you mean it was, was it like physical or sexual abuse? No, you know, I never experienced, well, not never, I rarely experienced any kind of overt physical abuse. Everything is so, so emotional, you know, this idea that if you don't do what you're told, you're going to hell. This idea that you're damned, you know, for not listening you don't do what you're told you're going to hell this idea that you're damned you know for not listening to your elders for not responding to your elders on something that's very clearly abusive um sexual abuse was rife in my family you know I got out pretty lucky all things considered um in fact I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people

because I was such a tough kid you know that I was put in situations where other kids had been abused and I just, honestly, I just loved this kid. I loved this kid that she was. I was just like, don't you touch me. You get away from me. And, you know, I would walk out of the room and I would stomp off and I caused whole issues and whole problems in my family because I was so defiant

and so angry and so mean. But, of course, that's how I got out, right? I got out of situations where other kids got sexually abused because I was defiant and I was mean and I was tough as nails, you know, and I love that kid. But she should never have had to do that, obviously. But, yeah, it's not, it was just endemic in everything, you know and I love that kid but she should never have had to do that obviously but um yeah it's it's not it was just endemic in everything you know the the emotional abuse the spiritual abuse the financial abuse I mean you've got multi-generational businesses um

you know money being donated to organizations that don't exist as organizations the expectation that you will donate even when you don't have enough for your own family, it was everywhere. You know, it was every day there was abuses of some kind. At the heart of that, someone's benefiting, right? Who is benefiting from all of that? It's just the senior men in the organisation, right? So we have what are called workers who organisations would call priests

or would call clergy. They don't have a formal job and they move from house to house and town to town supported by our community. And we are expected to donate to them. We're expected to have them in our homes. We are expected to revere them. There's no formal policies in place in terms of their employment, in terms of who they work for.

It's all very casual. And, yeah, I mean that's how they are sustained. That's how they afford cars. That's how they afford clothes. That's how they afford to run our large conventions every year, is on the donations of other people. Does that make you angry still do you have a lot of rage or have you kind of moved forward I did it makes me angry I'm really angry

no I did I did I was a very very angry you know teenager I was I was angry sort of from teens all the way through teens in my 20s I mellowed in my 30s and onwards. And that came as a result of hearing more other people's stories and realising that there's so much, you know, so much worse out there than what I experienced. And I also mellowed by being able to talk about it, by being able to articulate it, has somehow made me feel more at peace with it, that it's no longer hidden and there's no power in that hiddenness anymore I yeah there's something about being able to talk about it and also being able to hear other people's stories that has taking it out of the shadows has taken away a lot of the rage but yeah god I used to be so angry you know my my response to people who used to try

and talk to me about getting out was just get out just get out and run and then sue them and then this and then that and then over the years you, you know, I realised actually that's not, that's actually not the best way to get revenge. That's not the way to get out. You know, there's other ways we can do this. And taking it out of the shadows and taking it out of, taking the secrecy out of it has really changed this. The truth sets you free, right?

There's something really in that. I think. Yeah. It can't hurt you anymore once it's out you're shining a light in all of those dark spaces and then suddenly there's no more there's no dark in there anymore I guess in a simplistic way how did you get out because you were 19 right when you finally left uh yeah I mean you know I didn't ever just leave I didn't ever get out I didn't it wasn't really like that it was you know these I didn't ever just leave. I didn't ever get out. I didn't, it wasn't really like that.

It was, you know, these series of things that happened to me from eight onwards just gradually built up and built up and I made series of choices at every junction along the way and those series of decisions led me to a point where I was no longer wanted really is what happened. I mean, if you've got a kid that just keeps making decisions like that she's not going to get married, she's going to have to stay at school and then when she finishes school she's going to want to go to university

and then when she gets to university she's going to want to have a job. And, you know, there's a series of decisions, all those decisions added up to me. Just one day standing at a tram stop and realising I didn't fit in and that I wasn't wanted. And, yeah, and I sort of made this snap decision and went, no, I'm not doing this anymore because I didn't fit in and that I wasn't wanted and yeah and I sort of made this snap decision and went no I'm not doing this anymore because I don't feel like I'm wanted and these people are not don't feel like they're good people and and then it unraveled from there really

that I just said I'm not doing this anymore and was very quickly found myself on the outer and then from there found myself very alone and without any support structure oh my god were you told not to go to university or was there pressure on you to get married or was it just that you're quite strong in who you were and just kept making those decisions so no one stepped in? Well, I think there's a lot of subtle pressure. There's a lot of when everyone else around you is doing

those things, it takes a lot of courage and a lot of strength to say, yeah, I'm not doing that. And, you know, I did have a reputation for being a pretty strong kid and a pretty kind of rebellious kid and a pretty determined kid. And I think they just sort of watched me and thought, oh, she'll fall over eventually, oh, she'll fall over eventually. You know, and gradually and gradually took support away from me, thinking that she's not going to do it, she hasn't got any money,

how's she going to go to university, how's she going to do any of this stuff she thinks she's going to do you know and once you have taken away financial support from a child I mean well how are they going to do it and I was just like well this is what I'm doing this I'm knowing it's what I'm doing yeah to the yeah to the point where they didn't withdrew or kind of contact with me and really didn't speak to me um and so yeah I mean that's that's their way of solving things too inside my family and community is if we don't like what you do we'll just shut you off and we'll just not talk to you until you come around and realize you can't do it without us which just made me more and more defiant good on you good on you I know you said you like that kid I like

that kid too oh my god what is what a legend can you imagine parenting that kid though which is what you're doing now life comes full circle it's interesting isn't it so how did you do that if they were with your financial support how did you how did you go about supporting yourself I just worked honestly Claire I look back now and just think god it's lucky I was young and I had energy but you know I just worked I worked and worked and worked and I lived on nothing. And, I mean, that's a lot of the motivation behind why I run the business I do too is that, you know, I survived on food banks.

I mean, I never spent money on food. Every cent I had I put in to pay the rent. I lived in houses with nothing in them. Like I had a mattress from Hard Rubbish and, you know, a little table to work on and I'd go to the university library every night and never bought a book. I'd get them out the library and the they had the day the day things where you could only you know a textbook would only be available for the day you couldn't take it out for a week or a month or anything I'd go in the evenings after work and do my readings and go home

and sleep on my mattress and you know I never I never spent money on food I went to food banks every week and I had a roof over my head and I had this just ridiculous idea that if I finished university I could get a career and if I had a career I was free you know I had money and I could help my sisters and I could buy a house and I could have some kind of life and as naive and as simple as that sounds it's just what I did. Wow how did you get a job where did you work? When I was at university, I worked as a swimming teacher at Fast Food Outlets. And then I got a job at a consulting firm after I finished university. Right. And you did accounting. I did do accounting and finance. It was bloody awful. Let me tell you, it was bloody awful.

Why did you choose accounting why because they had jobs like I literally was like I remember going into the career person's office and going like how do I get a job like I just need to get a job and where do I get a job and they were like well here's where's hiring and I was like great what do I need to do to get that job I didn't know what it was I don't even know who these firms were I just wanted a job and I guess it's also money, right? It's like learning about money and then getting a job to do that too gives you that freedom, does it? Yeah, it was just freedom for me.

It was like I don't know what this job does. I don't even know who these people are but they're going to hire me and they're going to pay me and that's all that matters to me. Yeah, wow. So I wanted to ask you just a step back. For those who don't know and are very privileged not to know, what is a food bank? It is, I don't know, do they still exist anymore?

I don't know. Well, they exist in a different way. In the 90s, 2000s, they were run by church groups and they were basically a big pantry where you could go and you could get given like tin food. And I think I would give you a week's supply of food because I went every week, so I don't think I ever got more than a week's worth but I mean they would have things like toilet paper and candles and because you know often people don't

have electricity blankets sometimes but yeah you'd get tin food and two minute noodles and whatever I think now they've done a bit differently where they give you a hamper or something um at the likes of I can't remember what they're called here in Melbourne I've had a brain freeze but anyway yeah it's emergency food basically. And that kind of kept you going and kept you from having to go back home with your family. Yeah, correct. Yeah.

I'd be like, hello, I'm home. That was not going to happen. I was like, whatever I had to do for that not to be my solution, I was willing to do. Yeah. Is there a moment where like what did it feel like to graduate? Like in that moment were you like I am free then or was there a moment further down the track where you really felt

you could look back and go yep that was the moment I felt really free or is it more gradual no much more gradual I mean still at my graduation I was still desperately trying to get my family to come around you know like I was desperately trying to get my family to come to my graduation and desperately trying to get them to have a photo with me and desperately trying to, you know, trying to make this somehow work. So no, it definitely wasn't that kind of like, oh, yeah, I'm done. It was never felt like it was done. Probably not until the last five, ten years or so have I felt like,

yeah, I've made it, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. And again, it's being able to speak out and say, and not be scared of the consequences and not be worried about what they're going to think of me and not being embarrassed by my story. That makes me feel I'm done. Do you like your pillows with a side of helping other people as well? Me too. It's Claire, just in case you didn't know. And I'm interrupting today's show to talk a little bit more about today's sponsor, Laura's wonderful company, GoKindly. Now, GoKindly is a social enterprise making waves in bedding and also social impact. GoKindly retails hotel quality pillows, and let me tell you, I've slept on these, and they are like sleeping on air. They also have quilts and mattresses, and 50% of proceeds go towards women experiencing

housing stress and homelessness. All GoKindly products are proudly Australian made and use no single-use plastic packaging, leaving a kinder world for the generations to come. Proudly born in Coburg, supporting Juno, Women's Housing Limited and Launch Housing, you can check out GoKindly at gokindly.com.au. That's G-O-K-I-N-D-L-Y.com.au. And you won't regret it. I have some of the pillows and some of the doonas and wow, they're awesome. They're the kind of things that are great basics that you will always need. So you can go over there to check them out and also know that you're supporting a really good cause at the same time. All right, on with the show. When you're going for a job interview like that to get a job and you're living on food banks

and you're in this like small flat with nothing in it, how do you get a sort of work attire that looks appropriate for people to hire you well yeah I know it's funny right because here's the thing I grew up I grew up having to look a certain way and having to behave a certain way and I'm white and I'm it's pretty easy to put yourself together and look presentable when people already assume because you're a nice blonde white woman that you've got a leg up, right? I always had good verbal skills. I always had good communication skills. I had so many things in my corner.

I have so many privileges. It's not funny, right? Yeah, like there's so many things I'm thankful for. And one of them is that, you know, I had a very basic public school education, but it was a good school. It was a good education. I was taught to good education I was taught to read and I was taught to behave because I come from a community who's obsessed with

appearances I was taught how to dress properly in you know nice long dresses and whatever and that helps when you go into a consulting firm when there's a very specific look that you have to adhere to right you know the nice suit that you wear every day to church is exactly the same suit that you have to wear in a consulting firm just with a slightly higher hem yeah I knew how to sew I knew how to you know like I knew how to get by on not a lot and and literally I went to Box Hill shopping center to Suzanne's and I rummaged through and found a suit that looked like it it fitted with with church and I wore a suit like from Suzanne's from the Suzanne's sales rack and I had a pair of black shoes that came from the op shop that I colored in the heels

with black texture because they were scuffed and revolting but I knew how to do those things because I'd grown up in a in a household that knew how to manage that they knew who knew how to go to church on Sunday and color in your shoes so that you looked respectable so in lots and lots of ways I'm very privileged that actually I was able to do that and I was able to pull that off. Absolutely. What was it like then going into that kind of job interview and then into the workforce and even at university did people know about your background at all? No and in fact university was wonderful compared to the workforce. I mean I ended up working for a lot of, for and with a lot of very privileged, very private school educated people who had no concept

that my life was any different to theirs. And it was a very confronting time for me to realise just how different I was. At university, I managed to blend in and hang out with alternative kids. Because what people often also don't know is that I also studied an arts degree in parallel to my accounting degree. So I did accounting and finance and also an arts degree where I did languages and feminism and lots of other amazing things. And so the people I met and hung out with at university, less mainstream people, and I don't regret that for a second

because actually it's given me a much better base for life than accounting and finance has. Accounting and finance has given me a lot of money, mind you, but that's not where I've gotten satisfaction from. I think you've done it really well. You've done both. Yeah, no, I think that's so interesting, isn't it? So university is much more free thinking, I guess,

and you could fit in. Everyone comes from everywhere, whereas accounting is a much more narrow pool. Is it also a very male dominated industry you know it wasn't and it wasn't it really wasn't there was over 60 percent of my year graduates were women and and you know they were they would they were often diverse women too we had Egyptian women we had a lot of women from East Asia like it actually wasn't it's the higher you go the worse it gets and it's you know it's those

first couple of rungs from graduate up to senior manager and then sorry a senior um senior accountant or senior associate and then from there it's just a male private school boys club why do you reckon the behavior honestly it's a hard drinking long hours it's It's very racist. It's not a place that's nice for people who are not rich boys. Wow. Did you, was there a point where you decided to leave that industry because of it? Like how far up the road did you go? No, I got pushed out in the end.

It still makes me very sad because actually I loved that work. I actually really loved it. The more senior I got, the less it was about the black and white numbers and the more about, you know, people and dealing with solving business problems and partnering with really clever people. I got pushed out after I had my son actually. I was a senior, a CFO basically at a start-up here in Melbourne

and after I had my son they really just decided they didn't didn't want me anymore and did everything they could to push me out what did that what does that mean like not physically push you out the door but do you mean well they may as well have yeah god what yeah no I had my son and I went back to work after six weeks because my son was a bit of a bit of an accident and I had just I had started this job and found out I was pregnant pretty much straight away and I had no maternity leave and so my husband who had worked at a for eight or nine years at another company said okay well I've got leave so I and long service leave so he decided to take um he must have been there over 10 years if he had logs oh no it was seven anyway sorry

the accountant in me is trying to calculate how his long service leave just ignore that um anyway he'd been there a long time and he took long service leave to look after our son after six weeks and he was so good at it he was amazing and I went back to work and they basically decided that because they couldn't hold meetings at six seven o'clock at night anymore because I wanted to go home and feed my baby then um they didn't want me there anymore so they did everything they could to work out ways to push me up the organization by scheduling meetings when you couldn't be there and correct all right okay and so and making decisions when they're at the pub or at places where you couldn't be that I can no longer participate in anymore they were like well you're not doing a job are you you weren't at that meeting

me yeah I wasn't at that meeting because you had that meeting at seven o'clock on a Friday night and that's not what I want to do no exactly oh my god a rage again rage again yeah sure how did oh it's horrendous gosh so something happy how did it feel to kind of have enough money to have all the things that you needed and be able to just have money to just buy something online when you wanted to, you know, not have to get shoes from an op shop and color them in. I don't know. I still like doing that. That's a great tip though. I'm taking that away. Honestly, I, until about five years ago, I poured back every cent that I could afford back into other people in my family, um, in this ridiculous idea that I could afford back into other people in my family

in this ridiculous idea that I could somehow save them and set them free from it and that was a huge eye-opener to me five or so five maybe eight years ago now to realize I don't need to do that anymore this is not about other people this is about me and I'm much happier for it so it's actually only been the last few years that I've reinvested in myself and I've invested in my own well-being things like my own mental health support my own private health insurance my own well we have our own home but you know renovating our home and doing things for us I actually hadn't I had tried very hard to port I think I felt I know I know I felt very very guilty that I was the one that got out and then I got out and got an education um and that I just felt so lucky that

I poured everything back into other people because I felt like I didn't deserve it and who is there left behind is that your sisters and other members yeah I have sisters um many cousins and parents and I had grandparents my grandparents have now passed away yeah yeah I'm so sorry are you still in contact do you know not really it's not a that's what I realized at the time was it's actually not a very functional relationship anymore and I think there's a there was a lot of parentification that happened of me as well in that I sort of became the parent to my siblings and because my parents, you know, were experiencing such, you know, they didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with the things

that were happening, the abuses that were happening inside the organisations, inside the group. And so I became carer very young and I took on a lot of responsibility for kids that I shouldn't have and that has really kind of played havoc with our relationships. What have you had to do to kind of put boundaries in? Are there things that you do for yourself now to do that? Yeah, and COVID has been another big curveball in all of that, right?

Like for the last five to eight years, you know, I spent a lot of time on things like psychologists, even just a massage regularly because, you know, my body just holds so much trauma and so much kind of tension that I've had to do things like learning how to have a massage and let go, how to see, you know, mental health professionals and learn how to process things when they happen because, you know, it is an ongoing trauma too.

It never ends, you know. When my grandparents died, that was another trauma. Like how do you deal with that, going to a funeral full of running it running the style of your community in your inside your community with people who don't want to speak to you and don't want to see you so it's an ongoing trauma you never get to just say it's over and it's done it's like you're constantly coming back into it it's you know for funerals for realizing you've missed out on a birth or realizing you've missed out on a wedding or you know it's it's an ongoing trauma So it's learning how to have conversations with mental health

professionals and process that and work out how you deal with that. But now I do that, you know, I did for the first kind of 15 to 20 years. At least now I do it. Yeah, because you... Well, I did before COVID came along. Yeah, God, I know, exactly. And it takes away like a rug all the things that you do, right,

to keep that mental headspace okay. And it has a way of shining a light, doesn't it, on the things that aren't. It's just this whole hard thing for lots of different reasons. It is. It's very difficult, isn't it? Yeah. Even just things like, I mean, it's very, very privileged,

but I've always paid for a cleaner because I get compulsive when I'm not feeling well and I clean and clean and clean and clean and nothing's ever clean enough. And, of course, there is no cleaner allowed in our houses. So it's like, you know, all these things that you've done for self-care and you've done to cope with things have suddenly just been ripped away from you and it's very confronting. Yeah, yeah, completely. Let alone if you're in situations that are unsafe in life.

I just think about women and families and, you know, people in all different situations where they don't like the people in their home, you know, and they have to be there. I really am so admiring of the work you're doing now at GoKindly. Do you want to tell us why you're doing that? And I know it's a social enterprise where you give 50% of the profits to homelessness for women. Do you want to talk to us about where that came from and why you do it? Yeah well as I mentioned before after my son was born I sort of was at a low stand and I felt like you know I'd worked in these really senior positions where I'd really helped a lot of other people make a lot of money

and I looked around and thought what do I do next like I just really don't feel like I want to go back into that world again I feel a bit jaded by it. I like it I do next? Like I just really don't feel like I want to go back into that world again. I feel a bit jaded by it. I like it. I do. I love it. I love the wheeling and dealing. I love the, you know, I love leading teams and I love people

and I loved so much about what I did but I didn't like the end result. It was really that we were making a lot of profit and then it was buying a new Range Rover or a new Maserati or whatever for the CEO or for the founders and the owners and I just thought there's got to be a way to do this and do this better. And I'm good at it. I'm good at this stuff. So how do I get the best of both worlds? How do I keep doing it, but do it in a way that's more aligned to my values and less about buying a new Maserati?

So yeah, I didn't know at that time anything about B Corps and I didn't know anything really about social enterprise. I just decided I know how to make a profit and I'm going to make a profit and I'm going to use that profit to support things I care about and I'm going to use my experience to do that. And so, yeah, the idea that we would build a betting brand and that we'd use the proceeds to support women

who were going through a tough time kind of came about and we haven't looked back. So it's about, yeah, everyday items. So it's really, if you think about who gives a crap in the toilet paper, the idea was we would do that for everyday bedding and home items. So the boring stuff like pillows and doonas and mattresses and, you know, the boring stuff that you either use

and you're always going to buy and you're always going to need, done really good quality, made in Australia, and in every sort of step in the chain we'll try and help as many women as we can and make it do good. I think it's awesome. I've got some and they're awesome. Their pillows are great. It's just great.

Doona's amazing. You can doona as well. Fabulous. I did. I got two. I got one for my bed and then one for my son's bed as well because we needed a new one so i thought you know what let's do it because oh i'm so pleased because i think i think what you're doing is so wonderful and i often think this is generalization but the women i've spoken to in business who are doing their own thing often have that dual purpose right it's not just how

much money can I get how fast can I get it how how much better can I be it's what's my impact going to be with this for myself and my family but for other people as well you know when we lift you know the all the boats rise whatever that saying is you know and also that idea of helping the environment too and and thinking about our you know impact on everything I think sometimes women have this really interesting way of connecting all of that together and um yeah so congratulations because it's such a great concept you know thank you yeah I think we are it's important to see things in multi-touchpoint you know for me it's not just one thing it's like at every touchpoint every touchpoint we try to do the best that we can

at each touchpoint, not just like rush through and get it, you know, packaged in plastic and shipped out. It's like how do we do it in a way that's gentle all the way through? Yeah, exactly right. And you could tell that in the packaging and I'd so encourage people to go kindly and grab yourself some new pillows and things um yeah I think as well there is like a real connection right with family violence and women in homelessness in Australia do you have a perspective on that do you have some current

research that you could share with us about statistics for women we're actually waiting right now on the census um to get the most up-to-date view. We're sort of holding our breath in a bad way because, yeah, the last census was four or five years ago now and we know that the issue has changed significantly since then. Homelessness in Australia, every night there is 100, well, at the last census, 113,500 people experiencing like actual homelessness.

That's people who said, you know, I currently don't have a home. We know that's the tip of the iceberg, that people don't identify as experiencing homelessness. They're living in a car. They're living with a friend. They are living in a caravan. They're living in temporary accommodation. They don't think that they are homeless.

That is actually a form of homelessness. They don't have a permanent place to live every at least half of those so 49 000 of those are women um and at the last census that was women over the age of i think it's 55 it's 50 50 to 55 plus um are the largest growing cohort of women in Australia experiencing homelessness and that is confronting and that is usually due to relationship breakdown to them being out for caring responsibilities and not having built up things like superannuation balances now that's not their fault that is the fault of the structural thing in the Australian kind of economy and system but then there's also a large number of women with children escaping family violence and that we believe to be now

the largest growing cohort of people experiencing homelessness and that's what we expect will come out of the new census data is that actually there's two cohorts of women experiencing homelessness and that is the older cohort and then a younger cohort who have children in tow who are escaping family violence. And the reason we think that is because every one of the charity partners we're working with that is the largest number of situations that they're dealing with at the moment is children and their families that do not feel

safe in their home is there things that people can do to help if they they feel like there's someone in their you know circle they see that there's something going on are there that what what what sort of things would you suggest people could do it's actually about giving people affordable options for places to go because the reason this becomes what it does is that they have nowhere to go because there's no affordable housing options so it's a very complex issue to solve. It's not something that possibly can be solved by individuals. We need more social housing and I encourage people to make noise,

as much noise as they can about social housing, write to their MPs, sign petitions online, do what you can because that social housing is one of the first steps that women and non-binary people too, like let's not forget there's actually violence and LBG QI relationships as well, is that there's nowhere to go. And so they end up in this horrible cycle of staying in hotels, staying in motels, living in caravans, living in tents and couch surfing because there is no affordable housing. So it's about all of us making noise and forcing the governments to invest in good quality and large affordable housing. So single units, for instance are great for

older women single you know person units are great but you can't put a family of four in a single unit long term like we really have to be really tough with our government about building you know two three bedroom homes for social housing and doing it in places where people want to live because that's what empowers people to be able to leave situations that are not healthy or that are violent or that are abusive. Do you know why it's on the rise or do you have a perspective on why family violence is increasing in that way? My personal perspective is that it's always been there.

It's just that we're better at talking about it and articulating it and that actually we're starting to teach women and non-binary people not to put up with it coercive the conversation about coercive control has been a really interesting one there is a lot of coercive control inside relationships in my opinion um people haven't been able to put a finger on and haven't been able to have a conversation about and that i think is driving a lot more people to think about it and to talk about it but i also suspect there are some men who are not getting ahead as much as they used to in life a lot of white middle-class men who are not getting ahead as much as they used to in life and that's

making them pretty angry and I have no statistics and this is my own personal opinion what do these people do with that anger I think is something we have to ask when you're not getting ahead like you used to when the jobs are not there like they used to I think it's a bit of a toxic environment and when you're not taught to express that anger in a way that's healthy yeah I was speaking to one of my friends Sandeep Varma who has an organization called Sari Collective and he amplifies South Asian Australian voices in his community really but he also is a lawyer and worked in children's advocacy and rights. And he read a book called Man Enough by Justin Baldoni

and he talked about it as like a man box, right, where men keep stuffing all this emotional shit basically in it with the lid on and not ever expressing it until it all just kind of explodes and so the stuff that we're doing now even right like you were saying before about talking about your emotions and shining a light and being truthful it's hard and you have to be vulnerable and it's you know gut-wrenching but also it allows you to start to process it right in a healthy way in a healthy way correct yeah and not ending up in a situation where you're then impacting the people around you in a violent way or or emotionally abusive way oh look I know it's such a complicated topic right but I do think

yeah from you know having more conversations around this stuff and, as you were saying, raising a new generation of men, I'm hopeful the more that we can teach them about their own emotions and how to deal with all of that stuff when it happens in the moment, you know, maybe that can move towards helping. Yeah. I think too. Just in all of this, I think sometimes people aren't sure what coercive

control actually means could you explain that I know it's that's a hard one I don't know if I'm good at it um for me it's about controlling behavior behavior that tries to encourage or push people to behave or to do things in a certain way and really leaves no option it's emotional abuse at the end of the day so it's things like you need to do x in a certain way and really leaves no option. It's emotional abuse at the end of the day. So it's things like you need to do X in order for Y to happen, pressuring people, putting people under. In situations where the choice that they make is one that they may not make if you weren't there pressuring them. It's all about pressure for me.

I think that's probably a good way to put it. And coercive behaviour is, it's complex because for me, there's a lot of conversations about male coercive behaviour towards women, but actually I come from a community where coercive and controlling behaviour is actually rife amongst women as well and into children, coercive control over children is also rife. So I think there's a bit of a, in the current dialogue, which I'm very, very supportive of and I think it's a great thing to be talking about, but there is probably a little bit

too much emphasis on male coercive behaviour and not enough on how there is actually other cohorts of people who use this behaviour as well in order to, for instance, threaten suicide if their children don't behave in a certain way or threaten to leave if their children don't behave in a certain way or withdraw financial support if their children don't behave in a certain way. So it's a pretty big debate of which we're only seeing a narrow sliver of it at the moment.

So it's like the tip of the iceberg. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Do you agree it kind of feels like there's all of this stuff coming to the surface, like if you had a facial and draw out all of that gunk out of your face and we're kind of in this situation where everything's coming out and it's awful and gross, but hopefully down the track maybe when our kids are growing up,

some of that's been cleansed away you know hopefully i just i just hope to god we get some of the social structures in place that help people with that you know i mean we talk about social housing but it's also things like our centrelink payments are not nearly social support structures are not nearly high enough to support people who go i don't want to do it i don't want to be in this relationship anymore or children who want to leave and go i don't want to deal with this anymore like i want a different life i this relationship anymore. Or children who want to leave and go, I don't want to deal with this anymore. Like I want a different life. I mean, we can have all this gunk come to the surface, but we've also got to have ways to support people

through that gunk and that worries me no end. And does that start with government, right? Like government funding? Well, I think business has a role to play too. I think we're asking our government to do a lot, which is why I do what I do with GoKindly, right, which is why we donate the proceeds because I think I can't wait for government to get the shit together to do this. Like I need women to be safe now, which is why I do what I do with Go Kindly, right, which is why we donate the proceeds because I think I can't wait for government to get this shit together to do this.

Like I need women to be safe now, not when we get the right government in power, not when we get the right people in the chamber. It's got to happen now. So it's about inspiring people to do it and take it on themselves and contribute where they can. Correct, yeah, volunteer where you can, go and buy from people who are doing things differently, write letters, yeah volunteer where you can go and buy from the from people who are doing things differently write letters like do what you can to try and put structures in place but as well as raise awareness I mean obviously supporting our own friends and raising awareness

amongst your friends is important too but yeah this gunk is just going to keep coming forward and we're not we need to make sure people are supported yeah we've got the structures in place to do it yeah this is all very heavy I want to ask you something fun how did you meet your husband how did you guys meet you're gonna get fun there um we worked together we were accountants together yeah and um remember I talked about that heavy drinking kind of long nights culture well we were always the last two standing. We were always the biggest drinkers and the biggest partiers. And, yeah, it was inevitable really. Oh, that seemed romance blossoms.

You know, you've got to have stuff in common to start with. Yeah. Was there a point where you sort of knew that he was the best for you oh gosh um I don't know it's been so long now too I mean we've been together for I don't know 15 16 years yeah oh my god it does it twice doesn't it I how did I know I don't know we have a lot of similar values we have we have come from very different communities and but nonetheless similar communities in that he comes from a very traditional Italian family, very tight-knit, very, yeah, a lot of very similar values

even though they're from a different cultural context. I think it was pretty obvious pretty early on that we're very similar. Even though we're completely different personalities and completely different in many, many ways, we value the same things. Yeah, which is important, I think. How have you built structure around you with support networks and relationships and friends when you don't have your own family around you in that way? I look through, as I say, COVID's just thrown this completely on its head because it's not the way it used to be. But I used to just pay for help.

You know, I used to pay for the cleaner. I used to pay for the gardener. I used to pay for everything. So I haven't got any help. So I have to pay for it. And I've been very lucky in that I've worked in some wonderful workplaces where I've made amazing friends and I have good support networks and good friends as a result of the wonderful jobs I've had

at the end of the day. I've met amazing people who are interesting and have been wonderfully helpful towards me. But I think we're going through right now quite a confronting time when it comes to realising how much people need support and help around them, that it's quite isolating to keep people in their homes on their own. And your local community just becomes so important we're very lucky we come from a street of families that are got children and we you know our son can go and play in the street with them and we've just become hyper

local my support structure has literally become my street in the last couple of years because that's all we can do yeah so i think i feel like in answer to your question i'm going through a massive change in that regard because the things that I used to do and that used to work are just not there anymore. Yeah, and it's a big sort of time. I think COVID really has done that, right? We've had a lot of time to sit with ourselves and, you know, for better or worse.

Yeah. And a lot of time to like, I know because we have a cleaner too and it does sound super privileged privileged but when you work for yourself and you've got limited capacity and time, that's something you can outsource in a very easy way. So when that's taken away and, yeah, when you're someone who likes your space to be a certain way as well, I hear you. It sounds really privileged but I also think it's a, I see our cleaner as part of our company, like part of our structure.

They work for our customers. Yeah, correct. She works for us. Like it's part of our business at the end of the day. Yeah. That's how we get work done is that that work also gets done. Correct. Because it's women's, like traditionally it's been fallen to women.

Women's work, right? That's the other reason I use one, right? And the other reason I'm really pissed about it is because my husband is pretty useless at it and that's the way we've gotten through that's the way we've navigated our relationship is that it doesn't get done by either of us and so neither of us carries the load of it and so it changes the whole dynamic when all of a sudden we have to sit down and work out how it happens yeah totally I know and reframe it all because exactly right it takes so much of the heat and arguments about it out because it nothing automatically happens you know you know it just

doesn't there's no magical dish fairies or laundry fairies and so there are there's a lot of interesting discussions I think for us anyway happening in our house about it and I think you know statistically women still do the bulk of the domestic work right even though we could we are often working the same hours and that's something that also needs to change I think and I'm you know hopeful that it is changing we need our little boys to lean into that we need our little boys to grow up and realize the bulk that you know where labor from, like who does stuff, to notice what's happening around them because for some reason boys just don't seem to notice or men just don't seem to notice the labour

that's happening around them. Yeah, you know what? James and I, James is awesome and we've been together for like 16 years or something. So this has been an ongoing process, very ongoing. But recently we sat down and I listed all of the mental things you know in that checklist that we've all got ticking over I listed all of it I put it into categories and initially he was like we don't have time to put this into categories I don't have time for

this conversation I'm like I don't have time but we gotta do it and then when I articulated it then he could see all the things like he genuinely thought that it was equal until we sat down and he's wonderful and really helpful but I talked about it like I was the boss and he was the employee of the house and he would come to me and be like what else needs to be done what do I need to be done yes and you don't want to be the boss you want to be co-bosses I mean sometimes I want to be the boss. You want to be co-bosses. I mean, sometimes I want to be the boss. Yeah. But, you know, but really you want to be co-bosses.

And so then we kind of sort of said, right, well, you're in charge of this stuff and you just do it. Whenever you do it, it's yours. That's your area and this is my area. And that really, I think, helped us a lot because it alleviated some of that frustration that I had and also you know we've done the same thing with our son but can I say some of the structures that sit around this from a social perspective are so fucking excuse my language broken my son's responsible my husband's responsible for all the medical appointments

but guess what happens with every single medical appointment that gets booked all the reminder notices get sent to me all the reminder text messages get sent to me it's like society has decided what a woman's role is and there's some things that just haven't caught up to the fact that actually someone else can do it yeah so it's like i have i have actually given my husband i've said you are responsible for all medical appointments in this house and he's very good at it but they still try and drag me back into it you know and you're like I don't want to be part of it stop putting me as the main contact yeah yeah we need to get better at saying to men okay so who is going to be the contact here and and our social structure is backing that up when my husband goes to the doctor's surgery and says you need to change my number to be the primary number they say to him

well aren't you living in the same house or does it matter? My husband says, yes, it matters. I'm in charge of the appointments. It's like we don't trust men with some things. Yes, correct. Exactly. You're so right.

It is that social and cultural pressure, I guess. And also there is something in having to understand that maybe the first time a bloke does it, he's not going to do it right. Because the first time I did it, I didn't do it right either, you know? And a lot of it is down to, oh, but women can just do it better, you know, or women are just better at that. And I think that's-

We're better at it because we've been doing it since we're five. Exactly. So we can just stop that. Exactly. You know, like I remember, James is going to hate me telling this story, but I've told it before, so it's okay. He had to order some, I said, you're in charge of ordering the school uniforms.

Now they arrived and they were man size, like man size. I mean, like he could wear them. It was a man size small. And I was like, mate, he's not going to be able to wear this polo. You could wear it to cricket on the weekend. But anyway, he like was mortified and so like oh god but then he went back in and now for next year if he has to order another jumper he knows that actually he needs to buy a size seven not a size small

but and but that's the thing like I've made mistakes like that as well. It's just that I've been ordering shit online for 20 years. For so long that you know. That you know that you have to double check the sizing and all of those things. And maybe buy one of each. Correct. And send one back. Yes, exactly. And, you know, so sometimes it is about also accepting that it may not look the way that you wanted it to look.

You want it to, yes. It wouldn't be as perfect. Anyway. No, it's true, isn't it? Yeah, all of this stuff is so interesting. What is your main sort of philosophy on life now? Because I know you've grown up in a very different, we'll say, interesting context and had a lot of different, you know,

roles in your life. What's the kind of overarching philosophy you live with now? I am the thing that I philosophy you live with now I am the thing that I say to myself and that I wish that I'd known earlier is just to go and do the things that make you happy and it sounds really simple and really nasty but I mean I knew that this work would make me happy I guess I've known since I was what 14 15 that working for myself and being a leader in things and getting stuff done was what I loved and what I enjoyed. And in lots of ways, I regret that I spent so many years

working inside those, you know, those big organizations and small organizations in finance and accounting, because sure, it got me a lot of money and I met a lot of good people, but actually that's not what made me happy. What makes me happy is doing things that I already knew made me happy happy I was trying to fit into boxes and trying to do things that I thought I had to do I was trying to trying to make myself into something I wasn't and I think it's really important and you never know exactly what it is that that you're going to be or that you're going to do but I think if you just follow the things that you enjoy and somehow find ways to make money around the edges of that um I just think it's a really good recipe for living a good life is not to try and follow the what other people are doing or what other people say to you but like know what makes brings you joy and and what you

love doing and find ways to monetize that completely I wholeheartedly agree and it doesn't have to look the way that other people want it to look either no you know no I mean we're banging on especially in in my career my previous career about mentors and sponsors and you know I did that for for 15 18 years you know I had mentors I had sponsors I did training I did whatever but that's just putting pushing you down the path of other people and and well it's great to get other people's ideas and other people's thoughts, you've really got to know what makes you happy.

You can't mentor your way into happiness. You can't get sponsorship to make yourself happy. You've got to do that. This is a one-person job and your best place to do that. Absolutely. Know yourself, right? And that's the gift of getting older, I think, you know. Yeah, sadly. absolutely know yourself right and that's the gift of getting older I think you know sadly I know we've aged about 50 years in COVID we've really got to know ourselves you know Laura

I've got to know about gray hairs let me tell you that oh mate I think it looks great I actually do yeah I think it suits great. I actually do. Yeah. I think it suits you. I feel about 80, but anyway. No, it looks good. But yeah, that's the thing, right? That's the other thing. All the stuff that we do to our hair and ourselves to make ourselves feel better, give ourselves some self-love, that's not there either. Gone. Gone. Zero. I started meditating. That's been my thing. I know. Wow. I know, right? Right? Wow. Crazy. I only do it twice a week, not like every day,

but that has actually been really helpful. And I know people say it's really helpful, but it's one of those things that I've never wanted to do. But it has actually been like a little warm bath for my head. I do it for like. I am in awe. Yes, I feel. Thank you. Thanks for that that sometimes I say that I'm

meditating to my husband where I'm really just hiding in the front room let's not tell him that that is a form of meditation it's self-care that too yeah exactly that's all it is actually to be fair that's all it is I just sit on a rock in our backyard alone. But I'm meditating so no one can talk to me. Okay, let's not share this secret with anyone. Actually, meditation is hiding. For women. It's just hiding from people asking you another question. I've lost my shoe.

Sorry. Meditating. I'm meditating. It's really important. It's for my mental stability. It's like, you know i'm basically a yogi yeah i'm sickly exactly all right well thank you so much for coming on taunts i've really appreciated your time and it's just been lovely to chat oh it's been awesome

where can people find you now and go kindly you can look at go kindly which is you know go and kindly one word. And if you look on social media, there's a hashtag in front of it because we're cool, which, you know, you're not if you have to say that. Yeah, online is probably the best place to find us. We have a studio in Coburg, but with COVID and everything, we're not really operating from there at the moment. Excellent.

Cool. You've been listening to a podcast with me, Claire Tonti, and this week with Laura Conti. For more from Laura, you can head to GoKindly, that's hashtag GoKindly, G-O-K-I-N-D-L-Y. There's more information about their organization at the beginning and the middle of this episode, but head on over there. And she's also on LinkedIn too if you want to reach out to her as well, which I really recommend following her blog too, which is on the GoKindly website. She writes a lot and has a lot of stories to tell.

There's also an episode of SBS's Insight, which tells more of Laura's story. I wanted to thank her so much because I know she's been telling her story a lot and I think in telling it, she has been incredibly brave and generous. I think her advocacy work is so vital and important. All right. For more from me, you can head to claretonty.com or I'm on Instagram at claretonty. This episode comes out every Tuesday and is edited by the wonderful Raw Collings. You can also find me on another podcast called Suggestible Pod that I do

with my husband, man, and that comes out every Thursday. Recommendations for things to watch, read, and listen to in that one and just a bloody good time is had by all over there. If you loved this episode, I would so love you to share it with a friend and you can rate and review and subscribe in app just straight away. That would just do me the biggest favor of all time. And if you want to email me, I would love to hear from you at tonspod at gmail.com. Okay. That's it for me this week. Big brave story in this week's episode. And as I said, up top, if it brought

up anything for you, there are links in the show notes below to organizations you can reach out to or talk to someone you trust. Let's look after each other and our mental health, hey, as much as we can. Maybe go meditate on a rock. That's what I'm trying to do at the moment. Okay. Big love to you. Talk to you soon. Bye.