There’s A Crack In Everything

The work I created for this exhibition was vastly different to my normal style; there were no poetic fairy-tales, no grand or sweeping sounds, no great imaginings of other realms. This work was pure, heart breaking reality. So often the word trauma gets thrown around, it seems to be an overused buzz word at the moment. But…what is trauma. What does it look like? What does it feel like? How does it translate in someone’s life? What affect does it have on someone’s mind and body?

At the hospital the night my niece Kaia died, my whole world shattered. It was an implosion that happened all at once, and yet, it felt like the shards fell in the slowest of motions. Cruel, painful, ripping apart every inch of me as I cracked apart. It was as though my insides had turned to glass, and fell to the ground, the sound as if a bomb had exploded; the ringing in the ears, a deafening, shell shocked mess. A fog that wouldn’t settle. When I stepped forward it was as if whatever was left of me had been turned to wood. Movement felt unnatural. My eyes saw movement around me - nurses and doctors moving about the corridors as if in some parallel universe. When I looked around, the roads before and after me were all ripped up. There was rubble everywhere.

The shoes in the installation were those that walked me into that hospital, to where death awaited. I have not worn them since that night. A powerful and heartbreaking symbol of the woman I was being forever changed. When standing in the hospital, I tried to come up with a way to fix it. Time travel, I thought. Surely I can go back an hour - it’s not that far back, and if I just reach out, maybe I can pull time back and make sure this never happened. Surely I can time travel an hour back. It would be silly to think I could travel back days or weeks, but an hour, that’s reasonable. There must be a way. Think brain, THINK! How can someone be alive one moment and gone the next. Can’t we just rewind.

There was no reversing of time.

When faced with such soul wrenching grief, you learn things about life and death. You learn what is important. You learn how to stand up on your own two feet and fight for truth and justice, unapologetically. Take the family photo, even if it seems embarrassing at the time, even if you hate being in photos - one day, all you will have are the memories.

For me, it was important to talk about the impact of suicide on family. In the media we hear about “mental health awareness” and there are countless charities raising awareness for suicide and mental health. I believe it needs to be taken a step further as I think the goal of “raising awareness” of those things has been achieved. It is the conversations and actions that must follow which are the things we must now advocate for. Mental “illness” has all manner of reasons for being. If we want true awareness, we must face the dark reality of trauma too: accidents, child sexual abuse, violence - all the really hard topics we naturally want to shy away from. We need to acknowledge that these things happen so much more frequently than what we think. The conversations might be uncomfortable for us, but no more uncomfortable than the person who has lived through such things themselves. We don’t want to believe bad things can happen, we don’t want to believe that ‘good’ people can cause harm to others. Sitting and listening without judgement is one of the greatest things we can do for someone who is struggling.

Providing a child with a safe and protective place will help that child to rebuild and ensure they feel loved and supported. All of us can do this - and the more of us that do this, will ensure that predators have less chance to get away with their crimes.

Here in Australia we had a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse back in 2016. It is a harrowing document, yet the bravery of all those victim survivors in sharing their story means we have a much better picture of how to support those who disclose abuse at the hands of an adult. While the RC was focused on institutional settings, the lessons we can take away in how to support children in any setting remains the same. And listen we must.

5368. The number of days Kaia was alive, and the number of clay bricks I made. Some were bare clay, others were a beautiful golden yellow.

It’s not easy being open about the impact Kaia’s death has had on me. I am a deeply personal and private person. But I also know, a part of the awareness and information around suicide needs to come from those who have experienced it in some way. Without hearing and listening, the conversation will never go past superficial awareness. The why, the gaps in the system, the ways we can do better as a community - it starts with all of us. We can blame the government, we can blame the hospitals and mental health system (all of which DO need fixing). But true action and awareness starts with each and every one of us.

The exhibition catalogue with essay by Carrie Lumby can be read here.

The entire show was dedicated to Kaia; a beautiful, complex, deeply compassionate girl gone far too soon. I hear you, I see you and I believe you. 10/8/2006 - 21/4/2021