TONTS. - The Mother Wound with Amani Haydar

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

My guest this week Amani Haydar is a writer and artist. Her story is one of unimaginable pain and also triumph in the face of the murder of her mother Salwa Haydar at the hands of her father and the loss of her grandmother Teta who was murdered in the 2006 war in Lebanon. Her book The Mother Wound recounts in stunning prose the story of 3 women whose lives have been forever changed by violence. She is now a domestic violence advocate, award winning author and painter living in Sydney. As Amani will tell you today the attack and her mother’s devastating loss was completely shocking and unexpected. However in hindsight and with the language and education around emotional abuse and coercive control she has now she can see there were red flags throughout her mother’s life that led to this moment.So much of what we discuss today is difficult however there is also so much to be celebrated in the incredibly vibrant artwork that Amani creates. Her self portrait where she is holding a picture of her mother Salwa holding a photo of her own mother that was taken by the Fairfax Press has now become an iconic image symbolising the enormous grief and loss she and so many women have suffered at the hands of their abusers.For more from Amani you can head to her instagram page @amanihaydar or visit https://annaemina.com/collections/allFor more from Claire you can head to www.clairetonti.com or @clairetonti on instagramYou can email the show at [e-mail] this episode has brought anything up for you please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or for family violence support you can contact 1800 RESPECT ( 1800 737 732)Show credits:Editing - RAW Collings and Claire TontiTheme music - Avocado Junkie Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just a warning before we start this week's episode that we do discuss themes of domestic violence and abuse as well as the impact of war on women. If any of this brings anything up for you at all, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or for family violence support, you can go to the hotline 1 800 respect. That's 1 800 737 732. Okay, on with the show. Hello and welcome to Tons, a podcast of in-depth interviews about emotions and the way they shape our lives. I'm your host, Claire Taunty,

and I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I speak to writers, activists, experts, thinkers, and deeply feeling humans about their stories. My guest this week, Amani Haidar, is a writer and artist. Her story is one of unimaginable pain and also triumph in the face of the murder of her mother, Salwa Haidar, at the hands of her father, and also the loss of her grandmother, Teta, who was murdered in the 2006 war in Lebanon. Her book, The Mother Wound, recounts in stunning prose the story of three women whose lives have been forever changed by violence, Amani, her mother Salwa and Teta. She is now a domestic violence advocate, award-winning author and painter and a mum as well. Amani was five months pregnant with her first child in March 2015 when she found herself

sitting in a dingy interview room at the Kolgara police station, preparing to give a statement about why, just a few hours earlier, her father had killed his wife of 28 years and Haidar's mother. Her dad had not long been arrested after turning himself in that evening, and before that he'd fled Salwa's townhouse in Bexley, covered in blood, after stabbing her more than 30 times in a frenzied attack in which he also injured their youngest daughter, Ola, who had tried to stop him. Amani talks about her as one of the most courageous people she knows.

As Amani will tell you today in this episode, the attack and her mother's devastating loss was completely shocking and unexpected at the time. However, in hindsight, and I think this is important, with the language and education around emotional abuse and coercive control that she now has, she can see there were red flags throughout their home lives that led to this moment. So much of what we discuss today is difficult. However, there is also so much to be celebrated in the incredibly vibrant artwork and writing that Amani creates. Her self-portrait, where she's holding a picture of her mother Salwa, holding a photo of her

own mother that was taken by the Fairfax Press, has now become an iconic image, symbolising both the enormous grief and loss she and so many women have suffered at the hands of their abusers, as well as the power of art to share stories that may in the past never have seen the light of day. What I find so powerful about this work is that I think in our culture, we attempted to think that due to Amani being a Muslim woman, their faith community was in part to blame for this crime, where in actuality, this crime is all too common across all our communities and all our societies and in fact, across the world. Amani now advocates for change and speaks to young women from all different backgrounds, educating them about

domestic violence and the warning signs of emotional abuse. I'll leave you with this quote from her award-winning book, The Mother Wound. This is a passage Amani reads to young women when visiting high schools to talk about her story. If you take anything away from today, I want it to be this, I say slowly and deliberately. No one has the right to hurt you, not even your parents. You are never obliged to forgive someone who has hurt you, but you have the choice to do so if it feels safe and right for you. It is never ever your job to fix someone who is harmful and it is never your responsibility to carry another person's mistakes. The girls are still and silent. I am exhausted. I want to be in a world where this is not a conversation we need to have. I believe

Amani is building a world where this conversation will one day hopefully no longer be needed. So here she is, Amani Haider. I'm so thankful that you have come today thank you so much Amani for joining me I have just been such a huge fan of your work and I saw you first at the All About Women Festival and I just saw you walk out to read your victim impact statement in the most beautiful yellow dress oh thank you that was such a special evening and reading my victim impact statement out in front of an audience in such a different context to where it was originally read was very empowering, I felt. Why did you choose yellow? I initially just sort of liked the dress, but I felt yellow represents brightness and positivity. So it ended up being the perfect

fit for something that was quite uplifting and also spoke to some of the visuals that were in my performance, which included a stop motion film that I had made, a painting that I had painted. And there was just something about all those colors coming together that was kind of serendipitous, actually. I didn't put detailed thought into the yellow until right towards the end where I thought, okay, this is actually going to come together really well with some bright color. And I think it did. Yeah. It definitely did. It was beautiful. It was like a beacon or something. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, in contrast to what you were talking about and your story. For those who don't know, I'm so sorry about what's happened to your family and to your mother and your grandmother.

And your story documents, I think, the story of two women and your story, so really three women. Do you want to tell us a little bit first, and I thought we'd start with Teta, so your grandmother, and tell her story, and then we'll talk about your mother and her story and how that's impacted you. I really loved, there was a page in your book, The Mother Wound, which I read as soon as I saw you read your impact statement and you are a painter but just a beautiful writer. Just stunning. Thank you. And there's a little section I wanted to read about your grandmother Teta in, is it Atarun in Lebanon? Yeah, so it's pronounced Atarun which is the village that both my parents were born and raised in and where my family comes from.

Do you mind if I read a little section? Go for it. With Teta, I felt loved for no reason other than that she seemed to delight in my existence. I watched her closely fascinated. She had tan skin and tied a white square hijab in a knot at the nape of her neck while she potted around the house. She was big and warm and had a hearty laugh. Her belly jiggled when she laughed at her own jokes about her size. She dipped Lebanese bread in home-pressed olive oil and ate it just like that, even though the doctor had told her to watch her weight. She gave me the cuddles I had been too embarrassed and angry to want from

my parents and she laughed at the things that I said in broken Arabic. Can you tell me more about her? Yeah, so I really got to know my grandmother in sort of fragmented ways throughout my childhood and the incident or the events that I describe in that part of the book are when I visited her, I was about 17 years old. We went for a trip to Lebanon and I got to spend a lot of time in my mum's childhood home, getting to know my maternal grandmother. And I loved her creativity. I loved her intelligence. And I really loved just her genuine warmth. That was really, I think as teenagers, we often struggle to connect with people and to vocalize the fact that we love and care about someone or that we want to feel loved

in return. And I felt that with her, I experienced a lot of warmth and safety and connection and a sense of belonging that came really naturally and really easily. So I really felt a strong bond with her and I especially appreciated the way that she was really crafty. So she was a seamstress, she was quite well read, she had really interesting bits of wisdom about the world, but she wasn't too serious at the same time. So she was quite funny and lighthearted and knew how to have a laugh at herself, which I think comes through in the way that I write about her. And I just, I found it to be such a peaceful and genuinely loving environment to be in her presence. Yeah, that comes through so strongly.

And I loved the phrasing that you used in your stop motion film as well. Start with one stitch and build on it do you want to tell us about that phrase and why it's important to you yeah so in the time that I was spending with my grandmother she taught me to crochet and actually gave me her crochet needle and that has featured since in some of my artworks and I reference it in my writing as well and she basically had this really simple way of explaining things in a very practical sense. And she just said to me, once you learn one of the stitches, you can just build on it. And the creativity kind of flows from that really basic

starting point. And I think that can apply to so many different things. Often if something is new or overwhelming or difficult, all we can really do is start in that really simple space and build on that and take it one step at a time. So I feel that that lesson sort of speaks to so many different situations and contexts. And I love that she was able to leave me with that kind of wisdom and fruitful thought that I could later apply in different ways in different parts of my life. Absolutely. The other phrase that is just so beautiful is that everything starts out small and grows bigger over time, which I guess is that same kind of concept, isn't it?

Which is so wise and simple all at once. And I wanted to now talk about the fact that after that, you say in the book she teaches you that it's important to accept death and I guess coming from Lebanon and the history of Lebanon and then the fact that you lost your grandmother too in the war in 2006. And I'm so sorry again to bring this up because I know I just am so grateful that you share your story in this way

because I can't imagine how heartbreaking it must be. But she does, you write in the book, she says, or you say that death starts out huge and it gets smaller and that grief shrinks over time. Can you tell us about finding out about what happened to your grandmother? Yeah. So unfortunately, as you said, my grandmother was one of the many, many victims of the 2006 war in South Lebanon, where there were a huge number of attacks on civilians by Israeli drones and in airstrikes. And unfortunately, a lot of civilians were impacted by that violence. And the incident that my grandmother was killed in was a drone strike on some vehicles that were fleeing the village that my grandmother is from,

Aitoron, which we mentioned earlier. And they were told to evacuate and were now evacuating. And unfortunately, they were followed by drones and set upon and a number of people were killed, including a baby aged one. And that incident was then broadcast internationally, like news about that reached Canada, our relatives in Germany and here in Australia. And my mum actually found out while watching the evening news because they named my grandmother and what town she was from. And so she was able to know with certainty that that was her mum that was being referred to in the news report. And I remember that very clearly. And that was about six months after I had visited Lebanon and

spent all this time with my grandmother. And there was an investigation by Human Rights Watch, but unfortunately what we know about a lot of war crime situations is often it's really, really difficult to get any kind of accountability. And families then have to pick up the pieces and move on with their lives and create some kind of closure without having anyone ever held responsible, without having any kind of real systemic recognition of their loss. And that can be really difficult to accept and move on from. And at the same time, in a lot of places where there's been a long history of war, there aren't sufficient social supports and mechanisms in place to support the survivors. So you end up with many layers of trauma that run deep within a community. And for my mum

here in Australia, not being able to say goodbye properly to her mum, worrying about her other family members, I found that she was, despite all that, quite strong in the sense that when the media approached her for comment, she spoke about her mum. She went along to a memorial that was held at Sydney Town Hall and held a picture of her. And I think that really modelled for me as a young person at the time, that we shouldn't be expected to remain silent in the face of injustice, that, you know, our loved ones deserve dignity, and that it's not okay, you know, for this kind of violence to be inflicted upon generations and

generations of people over and over again. And so I think I learned from my mum's resilience, a form of resilience that would later serve me. But I also felt that it would have been really difficult for my mum to face and deal with that grief whilst also parenting and managing all her different responsibilities and being so far away from her own family and not having a supportive partner and just all these things at once and this huge grief that goes with losing your mum, even in the most simple or expected of circumstances, is hugely upsetting and devastating for people. So in a situation where there's been such extreme violence, it can be really hard to comprehend a loss like that.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Grief is so huge, regardless of how it happens. And while you're trying to parent, the kids don't stop. They don't give you a break to process emotions. So in that instant, it must have been such a huge thing for your mum to do and then so brave of her to then be able to speak in that way and super powerful. What was she like as a mum for you? My mum was really smart. I associate her with being quite clever, strong and really energetic. So she was quite a go-getter in her daily life. You know, she always was up to something. She would get up early in the morning, get all these things done. And I think a lot of mums just have to be that way out of necessity. But I think for her, she just had

all this energy and she liked doing things and being involved in things. And after she raised the four of us and we were all in high school, she pursued her own career. She was a social worker. She was a counsellor with the New South Wales Quitline. And she was one of two Arabic speaking counsellors, which meant that people could contact her when they were trying to quit smoking or if they had drug and alcohol issues and speak to her about their addiction. And that's such a valuable service, I think, to the community and for that to be provided to the Arabic speaking community and making that accessible was something that she was quite passionate about. And she also, you know, I think a lot of the time we have an impression

about victims of crime that they're somehow meek or passive or incapable of doing things, but she was so capable. She was, she owned her own house at the time of her death. She was enrolled in university. She was doing her bachelor's in social work. And she had all these things going on. And I think sometimes we don't think of women holistically and we forget that they have all these interesting aspects and dimensions to their personalities and their lives. And they're especially reduced into a two-dimensional character when something awful happens to them and people forget that victims and survivors of abuse exercise resistance in so many different ways. And they do it every day and they navigate these circumstances in really clever ways. So it's

always important for me to remember how she lived as well as how she died. Absolutely. And I'm curious about her story. So she grew up in Lebanon first and foremost. Do you want to talk a little bit about her life in Lebanon? And then even once you understand that, I guess it's even more impressive where she came from and then how she grew as a person over here. Yeah. So my mum, like most women in her generation, grew up in a kind of confined to her village environment. The south of Lebanon was occupied at the time by Israel. So there wasn't really freedom of movement and freedom of opportunity in the same way that there might be today. So her options in terms of the future were quite restricted, both by the fact that it wasn't seen as appropriate for girls to travel abroad alone to study, and also by the

fact that it was an unsafe time to travel as far as Beirut, for example, to get a university education. And she finished high school and very quickly after that, got engaged to my dad after he was introduced to her by her family members. And he seemed to her to represent, I think, an opportunity to live a really happy life, to travel overseas, to have a family. And I think what a lot of people see when they think of an arranged marriage is that it's this really boring procedural and transactional thing when in fact there is a lot of, all the stories that I've heard involve some kind of excitement, some kind of attraction, some kind of sense of optimism about the relationship. And I think it's an incredibly

optimistic thing to do, to travel all the way to another country without your family, believing that you're going to start a really beautiful life with someone. And unfortunately, within that, it can be really difficult to identify red flags. It can be really difficult to get to know the real quirks of someone else's personality, get to know the kinds of risks and barriers that you're going to face once you're in a new country, because it's not easy, you know. So I think for my mum to take that step at a young age was both an act of optimism, but also something that's really common to a lot of women's, migrant women's stories in the sense that they often found life really difficult from that point on.

What was your relationship like with her and with your dad in the house, like as a family? You know, you always think that your particular household is really normal and that everything else is other and different to that. And it's not until you kind of grow up and have a home of your own and kids of your own and a partner of your own that you have any kind of real frame of reference, you know. So for me, I always thought of my childhood and my relationship with my parents as being normal. And I do now see that there were controlling elements in the way that my father parented us. There was a huge emphasis on academic success and having a traditionally successful career and establishing yourself, which I think is also quite common to many migrant households where, you know, your parents have given up so much and they've done so much for you and now it's your turn to make the family proud.

And a lot of the women that I speak to from my generation really feel the pressure of that. But overall, it's not until you have some space and the opportunity for hindsight that you can sort of evaluate what you would do differently as a parent, what kind of relationship your parents really had. And I came to really understand that the household dynamic was quite an unhealthy one. It was a source of a lot of anxiety for myself and I think for my siblings too. There was always this uncertainty about whether my parents would get divorced or whether this would be the final fight that led to the end of their marriage,

what that would mean for us. And also at the same time, some cultural expectations in the sense that you shouldn't really talk and say bad things about your family to people outside the family. You carry yourself in a particular way. You behave respectfully to your parents no matter what and all these different things that kind of inform that relationship. Yeah, it's a weird thing about growing up, isn't it? That when you're inside it, you can often not see a lot of the really strange or even just different things that your parents do or the way your family is until you look back in hindsight and see those differences or see your parents as people rather than as your mum and dad and that's just who they are.

So I think something that you do so beautifully is talk to women and to young women about what emotional abuse is and coercive control. So now looking back, can you tell us a bit about what you see maybe within your own home, but maybe some red flags for women to look out for and men too, but particularly women, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So when I speak to a lot of victim survivors, one of the key things that seems to define an experience of emotional abuse and coercive control is the loss of your own self-worth. So emotional abuse tends to chip away at your personality. It chips away at your confidence. It chips away at your sense of autonomy and your belief that you can sort of get things done for yourself and that you'll be okay outside of this relationship should you choose to leave

and because it's it can be quite insidious and subtle it can be difficult for people to identify when it's happening to them until they're kind of feeling really consumed by the relationship or trapped within it and sometimes it's not until physical abuse becomes involved as well that a victim-survivor might notice or pay attention to the dynamics of the relationship. So sometimes people struggle to put their finger on it. And I think some of the things that are really important to know about coercive control is that it can look

like different things in different relationships and it can include things like financial abuse. I think almost always involves an element of financial abuse when your partner has complete control over the finances, over the bank accounts, where you're kind of given an allowance and you're in trouble if you don't spend correctly. I know in our household, it was often a tax on my mum's character or her personality or even her successes. So my dad would put her down in relation to the things that she was doing really well or in relation to how she was dressed or in relation to how she conducted herself at a particular event. So it was all these little criticisms that really chipped away at her. And I think she began to, I think at the time that the murder took place, she was actually coming out of that. And that's

another thing that's important to note. Emotional abuse can lead to a fatal incident of DV without really a history of physical violence beforehand. And it can also happen quite suddenly and tends to happen in the period in which the victim is actually taking steps to leave the relationship. And usually that two-week period after a separation is the riskiest. So for my mum, she'd already taken those steps. She'd identified the gaslighting. She'd identified the abuse, she was establishing herself, she had her own home, she was really in the process of untangling her life from my dad's and establishing herself when the murder took place and I think that's one of the really, one of the things I really like to highlight about coercive control and emotional abuse is that it's that separation period carries

so much risk even if there isn't this long history of physical violence in the relationship. Was it something that you had thought could happen in your family before the night that it happened? It's one of those things where again you don't really think of your parents as being capable of that kind of violence so So for me, it felt quite shocking and initially a huge sense of betrayal, confusion. And it wasn't until I began to understand a little bit more about emotional abuse and coercive control that I began to see the patterns in my father's behaviour and the ways in which his attitudes and the way that he thought about relationships would have informed his behaviour and his use of violence. So it's one of those things where on one hand, it didn't make sense at the time, but having now come to a place where I have a

lot more literacy around abuse, where I've spoken to lots of people with similar experiences, where I've read some of the research, it absolutely makes sense. And sometimes we need to challenge those stereotypes of what an abuser is in order to get a better understanding that they're not always the person that you imagine and they're often otherwise seemingly charming, articulate, well-educated, perhaps middle-class men who are capable of, you know, really awful violence against their partners. Well, you mentioned he had an idea of what a relationship

was or what do you mean by that? How do you think he saw your relationship or their relationship in that way? I think my dad's perspectives on relationships, it's very hard to speculate on what kind of goes on in someone else's head, especially if it's someone whose actions are really foreign and shocking to you. But some of the things that I see as perhaps informing the way that he thought of relationships was firstly, that he had a huge disdain for divorce and a huge stigma towards it. And it was a disproportionate stigma. He really had a sense of catastrophe around the idea of divorce. He did not like people who were divorced and in particular women who were divorced. He saw that as a failure on the woman's part, as something that showed that you weren't such a good mother, that you didn't work hard enough to preserve your marriage. And I think that was really a central

part of the way he thought of relationships and why it made it so hard for my mum to leave was that he would then use those attitudes to shame her or guilt her into staying a little bit longer or trying again. And I think for a lot of women, regardless of their cultural context, that sort of plays a role, that sense of shame that's associated with, okay, I'm a failure. I couldn't manage this relationship. I couldn't keep my family together. I didn't do enough to make the kids happy. So all of that compounded with a cultural context where that stigma was quite prevalent in some of the families that we knew, where in a close-knit community, there are

lots of eyes on you. You can't sort of just break away and live as an individual. Sometimes you're connected to a lot of people and your partner might be connected to the same community. So you feel a sense of, I guess, this feeling that there are lots of people watching you and there's lots of people that know about you and know of you. And it's very hard to get out of that at times. So I think for my mum, those things impacted on her planning and her decision making because she didn't want to have to live with that stigma. She didn't want her children to have to live with that stigma. I think as well for to have to live with that stigma I think as well for my dad you know they say that for a lot of abusers there's sense of humiliation and rejection and all these things that feed into the way that they respond to women

making decisions about their own lives but it's very hard for me to sit here and contemplate that and really you know it's I don't find that there's much to be gained by trying to get into his head and understand his behaviour. I think generally I've come to sort of accept that there are parts of his conduct that I'll never really be able to wrap my head around. Do you mind talking us through what happened on that night? Sure. So basically on the night that my mum was murdered, she had just come home from work. My dad had just come back from a trip to Lebanon and he attacked her in the kitchen. And my sister, my youngest sister was home at the time. She was

18 years old at the time and she fought him off. So she's really probably the bravest person I know. And she fought as hard as she could. And she was the one that ended up calling the ambulance. And he left and eventually handed himself into police. When I found out I was at home, I was five months pregnant with my first baby. And I got a call from my cousin who sort of told me a really incoherent story and wasn't sure what had happened. And it wasn't until we got to the hospital where my sister was being treated for the injuries that she sustained, that we were informed by police

that my mum had passed away at the scene. And that really triggered, I think, a whole chain of events because a lot of, I think sometimes we don't have a real appreciation of what it's like to experience an awful crime. And often it's so sensationalized in the media and on TV that we don't really get an understanding of the mental health consequences, the feeling of a complete loss of control over your life, the feeling of having lost your sense of safety, your sense of security. You're not sure what's going to happen next. You've got to wait for a trial to take place. There are all these different factors that are suddenly marred with a sense of uncertainty and that compounds the sense of grief that you're already experiencing if it's a homicide. So I think that day was

really just not just the start of our grief, but also the start of a really long journey in terms of all of those different things. You speak about being a survivor in the system and how it's just not set up to care for you in the way that's supportive. Can you talk us through a little bit about that process of what happens because it is that you're a victim of a crime? Yeah. So there are different perspectives or different ways of looking at the situation that highlight different systemic what happens because it is that you're a victim of a crime? Yeah. So there are different perspectives or different ways of looking at the situation that highlight different systemic failures. So on one hand, you've got the mental health response, which initially you're given a bunch of flyers and brochures in a hospital, you're referred to particular services, but you might not be in

the headspace yet to accept that help. And I know my siblings and I have had a very different healing journey because of the way that things played out, where we were in our lives, or how willing we were to accept counselling. So I initially received counselling from the Homicide Victims Support Group, and they basically service all of the state of New South Wales and all cases in which there's been a homicide. They provide support to the non-offending family members of the victim. That was really important because there's paperwork to fill out.

There are, you know, there's information coming from the prosecutor's office and you might be in the process of giving statements to the police, all these different procedural things that feel really out of place when you're experiencing grief. And then in addition to that, you're anticipating a trial and we had to wait two years before the trial could take place. And that's a really long time to have that kind of uncertainty hanging over you. So even though I was practicing as a lawyer at the time that I lost my mom, I was familiar with courtrooms, I still found the trial process itself incredibly overwhelming and retraumatising.

And I think that the courtroom, you know, really needs to be looked at as a space where changes can be made to make that experience a little bit better for victims. And then in terms of the long term, there are children who have witnessed violence or abuse who will need lifelong counselling, but our government doesn't always prioritise providing the health services that people need in order to be resilient, in order to rebuild their lives. Nor is it always easy to access the financial support you need, or if you've been injured and you're living with a disability as a result of violence, you might struggle to access the services and the supports that you need. There are so many barriers and I think it's really important that whenever we

think about the stories of victim survivors, we don't just focus on what happened to them and feel bad about it, but also call for change and a policy response that's informed by that lived experience. What was it like to be pregnant with your first child at the same time as finding that out about your mum? Well, it was really, I think, firstly, it was incredibly devastating. And in addition to the grief of losing my mum, I was sort of grieving this idea of her as a grandmother and this idea of my children being able to get to know her and all the things that you sort of take for granted and assume that you're going to have in your life. And it wasn't until I gave birth to my daughter that I really began to appreciate the significance of that loss,

and I write a little bit in my book about how I didn't know, I wasn't sure whether I'd been breastfed and for how long, whether, you know, when I got my first tooth, when I started walking, all these little things that only your mum really knows about you suddenly are not available for you to know anymore. You know, you lose that connection with that knowledge. And I began to really reflect on the value of that connection and how important it would have been to have my mum's support and her advice in that period immediately after my daughter's birth. And at the same time, it reminded me of the fact that she too had given birth to me, quite isolated and away from her

mother and in a new environment where she didn't know the language yet, where she didn't know which services to get in touch with or who could help her. And she had none of her immediate family around her. So I found that a lot of my experience was mirroring things that she would have gone through too. Which is so interesting, isn't it? And also birth is just so horrendous. No one tells you how hard it is. And I know you start your book talking about your birth and there was this beautiful phrase, I know that you belong to the Muslim faith. And there was a phrase that you say, the one who contracts, the one who expands in talking about God. And that just brought to me so viscerally the feeling of being in that room and thinking, how am I ever going to do this? How did my mother ever do this? How did any woman in history ever actually survive this? What was it like? And it's so funny.

We all end up saying that afterwards. We're like, how did anyone ever live through this and how has all of humanity continued? And I think for me it ended up being, and I think what comes through my writing is that both life and death are quite spiritual experiences for a lot of people, but in my faith and in my community they're given a lot of people, but in my faith and in my community, they're given a lot of spiritual significance. And that can be great because you have a sense of

a way of learning how to cope with those experiences and those changes, a way of thinking about them that allows you to sort of tap into a broader spirituality. And that can be quite helpful. And I wanted that to really come across in my writing because I think being able to have that really allowed me to focus on rebuilding, having a sense of hope, having a sense of, okay, maybe, maybe I don't have to carry all this. Maybe there's a broader, a bigger picture and we're all part of it. So for me that was really important. And, yeah, I just couldn't get past that feeling of how did people do this, how did people do this.

And you feel that in the birthing suite you're kind of like there and you're alone and no matter how many people are around you, you're really alone with that pain or with that doubt in your own, you know, body. And sometimes you just sort of then surrender to that process and you're like, you know what, this baby's going to come regardless. So yeah, I think I've written about it and I still don't have the words for it, you know. Yeah, completely. Well, you had some beautiful words, let me tell you. Thank you. It's sort of almost, you know, you can't explain it.

It's so hard. But I feel like that's just motherhood in general as well. It constantly unfolds, right? My goodness. Yeah. Yeah. And you're confronted with this little version of yourself where you're constantly challenged to reparent yourself while you're

parenting this child and what I found is that there's a sense of validation that comes with recognizing your own pain and disappointment as a child and then treating your child accordingly and having that compassion where maybe compassion wasn't actually afforded to you as a kid so yeah it's it's a it's a real journey. I don't have enough words for what motherhood is like. No, I know. I know. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. How does your faith inform your life now? It's interesting because again, when something is such an integrated part of your world, it's hard to sort of compartmentalise it and say, oh, this is the role it plays. But for me, faith has always been a part of my life. And it's something that

I always re-evaluate, think about, reflect on. I don't think you ever get to a point, no matter what belief system you adhere to, where you've answered every question about life and that's it, you know, you're done. So I think it gives me a framework basically to think about things and reflect on things. And most crucially, I think that sense of spirituality, a sense of divine justice. I really like that idea that I don't have to be in control of everything. There is a greater purpose for me. And, you know, sometimes it can also be really valuable in the sense of community that it creates because you've got to connect with people and you heal when you connect with people

and working with and speaking with other Muslim women who share my experiences has been incredibly empowering over the past few years and creating a space for us to have a conversation around abuse is something that I'm really passionate about. I think that can be quite beautiful, the sense of community that comes with having a common faith. But at the same time, I think it's important, you know, to be questioning, to be curious, and to also recognise the harm that takes place in religious institutions across society, to recognise that often religion is weaponised against its adherents, or people experience spiritual abuse, where concepts that are religious or spiritual in

origin are used to try to influence your behaviour, put you down, judge you or control you. So whilst I have found a lot of meaning and connection within my faith and within my community, I also think that there needs to be more work done to make that experience accessible to other people and to make sure that people have an awareness about the misuse of spirituality and faith. How do you sort of intersect your feminism because I assume your work is so feminist how do you intersect that with your Muslim faith? That's such an interesting question because sometimes people ask with an embedded assumption that it's a difficult thing to integrate. Whereas for me, it's been a really natural experience. I think my faith has grown in tandem with my feminism. And, you know, as a holistic person, we all have ways of integrating the different layers of our

identity and our work and the things that we're committed to and our values and that's not always a conscious process but you're there and you just do it you know so for me it's a very difficult thing to pinpoint but I think there's so much beauty in the work that Muslim feminists have done in the past there's diversity within that as well lots of debates and conversations going on. And I think there's just, I think just more work needs to be done to celebrate that and to really highlight it and, you know, make sure that the influence of Muslim women throughout history is not forgotten or erased and that their contributions are remembered.

Yeah, absolutely. What are the values particularly you think that align so well with feminism? Because that's a beautiful way of talking about it, that as you've grown in your faith, you've also grown in your understanding of empowering women. So for me, my primary way of understanding both faith and feminism is in relation to social justice. I think that's really the nexus. You need to be able to pursue justice. You need to be able to create an environment that doesn't inflict harm on people, where people are able to have their spirituality, have their autonomy and have their dignity respected. So that for me is the real common thread and that's why I think that conversation just feels like a real no-brainer for me.

I think the common values, if you want to get into details, are often things in relation to how you treat other people, the importance of standing up against oppression, the importance of being fair in terms of the distribution of your income, making sure no one's left behind. They're values that are really deeply steeped in the Islamic tradition and spoken about often and are really core to having a feminist framework in the way that you navigate the world, where you make sure that women who are more vulnerable than you or have less privilege than you or have any kind of disadvantage are not forgotten or left behind and that society is held accountable for any injustice that's inflicted on them. Absolutely. You write in the book about the impact of war on women particularly, and I'd never thought

about it before in that context, that there are so many different ways that women are impacted by war irreversibly. Do you want to talk a little about that? Yeah, so I think we tend to see interpersonal violence as somehow distinct and separate from other forms of violence, when in fact all violence for me and the way I see it exists on a continuum. So state-sanctioned violence also has devastating effects on people's lives and just because it might be a little bit harder to speak about geopolitics or people don't feel that that information is really clear or accessible to them doesn't mean that the violence isn't as bad. So in connecting my mum's story and my grandmother's story, it's really about

highlighting that and highlighting the fact that these two women had their lives taken away from them in an act of violence, in an illegal act of violence in both cases, and that that's unfair and unacceptable. And how do we as a society respond to that? How do we say that this is not okay? In relation to the details of how war can be a gendered experience, I think it's important firstly to say that war is bad regardless of who the victims are. Men also deserve to live with dignity and safety. But the experience for women is that living in a context of war or displacement exacerbates all of their existing inequalities and risks. And that means there's an increased risk of DV, there's an increased risk of experiencing

sexual violence in the conflict. And that can include both opportunistic acts of violence, as well as tactical sexual violence. And they're both documented to have happened. Then there are broader structural things, like if you're spending money on war as a government, you're not spending as much money on social services or on people's health or on women's safety or providing shelters. If people are displaced and they lose their sense of connection with their community, then they lose their safety net as well. Economic disadvantage really comes out during times of war

as well. And that disadvantages women in particular. They might lose the main breadwinner in war. They might lose the son that they were dependent on. In addition to the trauma that that causes, they might be pregnant and having a child. They might face increased mortality rates as a result. So all these different things that we really need to remember are part of what it means for women to live through war and conflict and armed conflict. And I think that means that we hold governments accountable when they go to war and when they use violence against populations. Absolutely. There's a wonderful quote that you said that your cousin said to you, that there is no way to get justice for what war does. War just happens to you and you can do

absolutely nothing about it. And I think that so much of your work speaks into grief and loss of, you know, the tiny things of women's lives and which are actually the big things of women's lives, you know, that those small stitches that create beautiful doilies or crochet. And I think that that came across to me in reading the book. And I really started to understand more and more that war isn't this kind of like a thing that happens somewhere else, that there's big losses in terms of, I don't know, nationhood and big structures that blow up, but it's those tiny, you know, that pine tree in someone's garden, the way of people living and women living,

particularly the heart of their communities that get fragmented, which is unbelievably heartbreaking and then such important work to share. So I really appreciate your work on so many levels. Thank you. Thanks, Claire. Oh, I wanted to talk to you about storytelling now. And I know that the book is one way of telling stories, but you also tell story through your art so beautifully. And there's this beautiful quote, storytelling cracks the crust of shame imposed on victims and shifts the burden to where it rightfully belongs, spitting and smouldering

in the palms of the abuser. And that imagery is so cool. I have to say, just the idea, like there's so much anger in that, but it's just, I love just sending it back to them and imagining them holding it in their hands. Can you talk to us about art and painting and what that means to you? Yeah, so the visual arts and painting really became a way for me to begin expressing my grief and my pain and my story before I had really formulated all the words for it. So I think it was a very natural and instinctive thing to do, to sit down while my kids were napping and begin drawing and just giving myself a chance to play

at a time where things were so full of dread and again, uncertainty. So I started drawing in a disciplined way. I've always loved art and I've always had some kind of creative practice on the side, but it's very hard to do that when you're working full time. But once I was on mat leave, I began to really use these little pockets of time that I could save for myself to draw, to play, to experiment. And that just grew. Initially, I started sharing some of my artworks on Instagram, but without identifying myself because I just wanted to create a safe space and my art was giving me a safe space. And I thought, why not share it? Why not see what other artists are doing? Why not, you know, really allow this to develop and to grow? And it just connected with people I found. And with people I found and the more

I drew and the more I painted the more I wanted to do it and ideas were always surfacing and I thought I think I'm going to pursue this a little bit further and I kept telling myself you know maybe you should enter the art world prize maybe you should do this but because I didn't go to art school I really held back and I doubted my own abilities. But eventually I just thought, you know, I think you need to let that go and just go for it because you don't really need permission from anyone to make art and to exercise your creative side. And, you know, I speak to some women who say, oh, I used to be creative, but I'm not creative anymore. And I'm like, I think everybody's creative. It's just a matter of, do we want to

choose to give that space and time in our lives? How can we do that? It can be really hard to do that. Let's think about how we can carve out some time for it. And being able to do that was a life saving for me and also life changing for me. And I've just had my most recent exhibition in Melbourne close. And that was such a beautiful experience because we had so many people come along on the opening night. We had beautiful conversations and stories happening at our launch. We had young people come in and really see themselves represented and even participate in workshops and things like that. So I really also see art as a wonderful space for connection and a wonderful space for healing and

for community building. Why did you call that exhibition The Window? Originally the first painting that I painted for that exhibition had this window on the side and then I realised there was a bit of a pattern happening in a lot of my works where there was a window, an interior and a window that was looking outward so that that was interesting. And then I also earlier this year saw the Matisse exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. And I realised when I was doing some reading afterwards that he had this theme of windows and interiors also happening and even a painting that was titled The Window. So those things kind of came together perfectly. But I think the symbolic value of a window is also, you know,

this link between the outside and the inside. And art for me really is about that. It's what's going on for me internally kind of coming out to the surface and finding an audience and connecting with other people, and that's my window. So there were so many things about it that just made it the right title. And when I spoke to the curator, Anna, about it, it was just the perfect fit.

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing about motherhood and creativity because I find I struggle with a guilt with carving out time for my art versus I'm not a visual artist but I love playing music and I found it's so hard to carve out that time. Do you struggle with that guilt about making it your time and not feeling like you should be, I don't know, doing something else for your kids? Of course I do. Yeah. And I particularly struggled with it in the beginning and I struggled with the additional guilt of maybe I should go back to legal practice. That's more productive, that's going to earn me more money, that's a more structured career. And letting go of that guilt around productivity,

letting go of that guilt around I should be doing something else for my family was really crucial to being able to allow myself to develop a consistent practice. So I began to challenge that and I began to give non-negotiable time each day to my creative pursuits, whether that be half an hour or an hour. And in that time, even the dishes weren't allowed to take priority. It could be just blowing up all behind me. And I decided that if I didn't do that, I was never going to be able to develop a consistent creative practice. So challenging that guilt, I think is really important. Everybody else doesn't do their chores and doesn't, I don't see men feeling guilty about not doing their chores. I think mums particularly feel a lot of guilt about it, but I think it's important that we question the source

of that guilt and, you know, question whether it's actually being imposed upon us or is it something that we've internalised from our childhood or from our own mums. And, you know, if you can challenge that for yourself and create windows for creativity, I think that's really, really the key to then building up a lot of discipline around it. And now I don't feel as much guilt. I sort of just prioritize it naturally. You know, having really unlearned a lot of that messaging and said to myself, you know what, my creative pursuits are really important to me. They're a priority and I'm going to allocate non-negotiable time to them.

And now your kids are growing up surrounded by art. I mean, what's better than that? Yeah, it's amazing. It's a lovely part of the home environment. They won't have the same, I guess, judgment or stigma towards creativity as I kind of grew up with where it was like, oh, you should be doing something more important. You should be doing something more productive. You're too smart to waste your time doing art, you know? So they can see it as something valuable. And we go to the art gallery together. They see paintings evolve from nothing to a complete project. They see the end product. I think there's so much that can be learned from it. And I really love sharing it with my kids. You're entering to the Archival Prize. I heard a story that, I mean, it's an incredibly moving self-portrait of you and then a photo of your mother holding a photo of Teta. And I heard a

story that you ran out of time and you ended up printing that image just from your printer at home is that right and that's I feel like hashtag mum life can I say that just running out of time I think yes yeah that classical element yeah you just got to do it and it doesn't have to be perfect does it and and that painting has gone on to be so hugely impactful. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about it? Yeah, so that story is pretty much what happened, but there were other factors. It wasn't just about time. It was also accepting that imperfection, accepting the fact that this was all I had right now

and also deciding that it's kind of cool to print it out and integrate it into the image as it's almost like a collage, you know, and it's got the Fairfax watermark on it because the original photo was taken by the press and you actually have to buy them if you want a clear copy. So who owns your story? All these different messages come through with that decision to use the Google version of that picture. So I was running out of time. I think I painted that portrait in about 10 days. And yeah, it was nonstop. I nonstop painted and my kids were behind me and everything was going on. And I was like, you know what, this year I'm going to do it and I'm going to submit it no matter what. And I was so nervous about it. I was nervous about, I was more nervous about it actually getting in than not getting in because not getting in means

you submitted something, you tried, you took yourself seriously, but there's nothing that's going to happen after that. But getting in means you have to talk about it. And that was a turning point for me because that was the first time that I was really inviting the public engage in a dialogue with me. And it was my first real public expression of my grief and my story. So I was really nervous about what if it does get in and it actually ended up being such a beautiful experience because communicating through art can be so immediate so visceral there were so many people who connected with it I didn't have to be there so it was quite a safe way to communicate with people there was no pressure to put things into words or in black and white there was room

for ambiguity and interpretation. And that's what I really love about art. So I think that for me gave me a safe way to start telling my story and a safe way to begin sharing with the public at a time where I was still feeling really vulnerable. And yeah, I'm sure about whether that was what I really wanted to do. It's a gift because I know how much courage it takes to do that in a creative way and put yourself out there. Why has it been important to you that you continue to do that? Because you've grown from that, you know, first image and painting to now a book to now more exhibitions. Why is it so important? Well, firstly, on a personal level, I just love, I love creative projects. I love

being able to work across different creative disciplines. I love the way that it generates new conversations and connects with people so powerfully. I think there's something really special about building on your previous work and seeing how you've grown and how you've evolved in terms of your technique, as well as the themes that you're thinking about and the things that you're really reflecting on any given stage of your life so for me it's about documenting things that are happening in my world my art and my writing kind of acts as a as a kind of journal for self-expression and for what I'm what you know, what's kind of keeping me busy or what's consuming my thoughts at a particular point in time.

But I think from a broader perspective, it's really important, firstly, that we keep having conversations around the effects of abuse and violence and state violence as well. So I think my art and my writing gives me a way to keep having that conversation. I think it's also important to create communities where people can come along and participate in those conversations in a safe way. I think art can be such a welcoming thing, and it doesn't always have to be in a gallery or in a really formal institution. It can be in a community space and people feel a real sense of connection through imagery and symbolism that you can't always get just through having difficult conversations. So it gives me a really beautiful way to have

sometimes serious or heavy conversations with people. And I think that's quite important as well. And I mean, just generally, like, I wouldn't want to be doing anything else, you know. I just love it. Yeah, there's so much to be, there are so many stories to be told. There's so much room for more stories to be told. I want to hear from other people.

I want, you know, to keep having this dialogue. And I, yeah, I'm very passionate about it. So I think it's something that I'll keep doing, you know, to keep having this dialogue. And I, yeah, I'm very passionate about it. So I think it's something that I'll keep doing, you know, forever. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely keep doing it because the minutiae that you share of women's lives, particularly when you see those images and the colour, it's so stunning to be a part of and to understand how important it is that we exactly, as you said, hear from different women's stories in particular. For so long, I think the narrative has been more heavily men's lives and men's stories. And I think the more that we have of women talking and sharing

and creating art and giving ourselves room, the richer our experiences are and the more empathy we build. In that, it strikes me there's a lot of healing that comes through art right um but art isn't the only way that we heal and what are other ways that you have sought healing oh I've done everything I'm constantly I'm constantly I take I take my recovery journey very seriously and you know what it's because I felt the benefits of it so my first experience with counselling thankfully was very good for a lot of people it isn't and that's why we have to keep investing in supports and making sure that the right help is available to everyone who needs it but I had such a beautiful experience count in in my initial

round of counselling with the homicide victims Victims Support Group. That helped me get through those really early days. Later on, I did counselling through victim services and I, again, had a really positive experience. I've been on a trauma retreat organised by Hope and Heal and they're an amazing organisation that does these beautiful retreats for women where they get to do meditation and storytelling and share their stories. And I actually did that last year immediately after finishing the writing process. So it was the perfect time for me to go back into myself and think about how the writing process had perhaps impacted on me and do some yoga and some, you know, getting back into my body, reconnecting with myself. So that was important to me. And, you know, we mentioned

earlier spirituality. It's important for me to have some spirituality in my life. It gives me a sense of, you know, things will go on, things will be okay. And then there's the really practical things, you know, having a circle of friends who you can create a safe space with is really important. We've got the WhatsApp chat, me and my friends, where we've agreed that it's a safe space. And if you have something going on, we can talk about it and it won't be communicated outside the group. We share information in there, share worries, building those connections is so crucial and I've got my sisters and my husband and that really practical support as well so really healing isn't just one thing and there are so many ways to engage in a healing process and I think we we

just need to do better in in allowing people to access that and, you know, go on that journey for themselves. Totally. And you write about that connection between trauma and stress and our physical body and physical health, which I think we don't often talk about, right, that it's not just a mental thing here. You know, head's up here, our body's down here, and if you're sick in your body for whatever reason, you have physical pain, it can absolutely be directly related to the stress and trauma that you've been through, which for some reason

still seems like a foreign concept sometimes. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's as if we imagine our brain living outside our body. It's in your body. It's part of your body. It's interpreting everything.

And that is where you feel pain you know so I think that mind-body connection is really key to understanding how trauma impacts us yeah absolutely and I know that that was something that you experienced a lot of physical like pain in your body also from childbirth and all the things that happen there's that beautiful quote in women's health we don't ask what's wrong with you we ask what happened to you. And that just struck out so strongly with me for so many different reasons. I think of so many of my friends who are having problems physically, but really when we get to the heart of it, there's big things that have happened in their lives. They haven't had that space to heal, that space and time to process all of those really difficult things. Because women's lives are often marked by pain in different

ways, aren't they? And trauma. Yeah, absolutely. And there's lots of research around this. And I think it's becoming a little bit more well-known. I sit on the board of my local women's health centre and that's the context where I learnt that approach. And our physical and emotional wellbeing is interconnected. And for a lot of women, if they haven't had the opportunity to engage in healing or they haven't had an opportunity to tell their story, it manifests later in life through ailments and pain and all sorts of physical conditions. And I think it's really important that we recognize that and we, you know, not, we shouldn't dismiss trauma as being this purely psychological thing because it's something that really does have a huge impact on someone's life. It has an impact on your ability to work. It has

an impact on your ability to feel safe within your body. it has an impact on your movement through the world. So I think I've become quite passionate about and interested in connecting that emotional wellbeing with your physical health and safety. Yeah, well, thank you because so much of the work you do is helping so many people in so many ways, both in your self-advocacy, which I think is so inspiring as a model for how other women and men and people's stories can be shared, but also moving through the world, caring about yourself and knowing that you also need to look after yourself and speak up for yourself first before you can advocate for someone else. Like they tell us, you know, you put the life jacket on yourself before you put it on your kids. And I think we're all learning that lesson over and over again.

Yep. In different ways. Yeah. The one that I love is you can't pour from an empty cup, you know, you've got to fill your cup and then you can sort of share that with others. Yeah, absolutely. All right. I'll just finish by asking you what gives you hope now? I try to think of hope, and I touch on this in my writing, try to think of hope as something that you do rather than something that comes from an outside source. So I get a sense of hope from the work that's being done

in the DV space by advocates and feminists and the fact that, you know, often that's done unpaid and with a lot of pain and emotional labour involved. I think there's immense hope in the fact that people are prepared to tell their stories and push for change and really keep holding our government accountable and asking for solutions and policy responses. I think that's a huge source of hope for me. I think the fact that the next generation will have all these resources and all these different stories to tap into is also a source of hope because it can be really frustrating trying to change people who are really set in their ways or older than you, but we can sort of change the messaging that we give to our children. We can change the approach that we take in raising them and the values that we convey to them. And I think there's definitely a sense of hope in that. And, you know, the fact that my kids will be able

to pick up and read my mum's story, I think that gives me a lot of hope because I lost my connection to her and I lost my connection to my grandmother but in writing I've been able to reconnect those dots somewhat and preserve them for the next generation. Well thank you, thank you for your work, thank you for your time, thank you for coming on Tons, this has just been such a gift and I know that I cannot wait to see what you paint next. Oh thank you. Yeah I'm sure it's just going to be really exciting to see you keep growing as an artist. Thank you. And I hope you find more time for your music.

Oh, thank you. Look, I do too. It's a constant work in progress. Like as we know with motherhood, you just keep on doing it, don't you? And try to fit it in where you can. I think the advice that you gave about just squeezing it in, it doesn't have to be 20, you know, an hour even. It can be 15 minutes and do it daily, right? Absolutely. And in amongst the mess, I think we sometimes think art has to be made in some fancy studio. And if we don't have that, then we can't do it, right? Yeah. No, I've been practicing art in my house for about six years now, and it's always been part of our home environment. And I have only just managed to get myself a studio, but I think it'll always been part of our home environment and I have only just managed to

get myself a studio but I think it'll always be part of my home as well yeah and your heart and your life yeah thank you so much Imani thank you thank you so much for having me you're welcome you've been listening to a podcast with me Claire Twente and this week with the incredible Imani Haider now to find out more about Amani's artwork and her writing, I would recommend going to Instagram. That's Amani Haidar, A-M-A-N-I-H-A-Y-D-A-R. You can see all of her artwork over there and many of her images anyway and get a real sense of the way she uses colour to tell story.

It's just stunningly beautiful and moving. Now, I, as I mentioned in the episode, first saw her when she read her victim impact statement on stage at the All About Women Festival. And there's an image of her doing so in that yellow gown with a floral hijab that we talked about during the episode. So you can go over there and see exactly what she means. You can see the painting that we talked about with her holding a photo of her mother and grandmother. And you can also get a sense as well of the beautiful stop motion film that she created for that event too.

So just overall, cannot recommend accessing her work enough. Rosie Batty also interviews her recently on the ABC for One Plus One, and that's a lovely interview too. Okay. For more from me, you can go to at Claire Tonti on Instagram. That's where I like to tell stories or clairetonti.com, which is my website. And you can also hear me on another podcast, Suggestible, that comes out every Thursday where I talk to my husband,

man, James Clement, about what to watch, read and listen to. That's a pretty funny, silly show most of the time. We also talk about the highs and lows of parenting and all the things in between. So you can head on over there to Suggestible.

And thank you as always to Roar Collings for editing this week's episode and also to the wonderful Maisie for running our social media. All right, that's it from me. If you wouldn't mind sharing this episode with a friend if you thought that it was something they would like, I would love that and obviously subscribe, rate and review if you can. It really helps to get this show out there and women's stories to be heard, which is what we need, right? More women telling more stories and sharing. Okay. Big love for you today. It was

a really big episode. Hopefully you can get outside and get some sunshine and go for a walk. Big, deep breaths onwards. Okay. Till next week. I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I create, speak and write today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respect to their elders past, present and emerging, acknowledging that the sovereignty of this land has never been ceded.