Untethered...with Clementine Ford
Untethered...with Clementine Ford
NADINE CHEMALI – The Beauty In Finding Common Ground
This week, I’m joined by one of my favourite people - a woman with one of the biggest hearts you’ll ever find. Nadine Chemali is a feminist organiser, thrill seeker and all-round excellent human. We had a beautiful conversation about community building, the importance of support networks and how to mobilise collective action, as well as what it means to navigate the grief and loss of a much-loved parent.
Through Nadine's personal stories of growing up in a Lebanese family, we highlight the unifying power of food, culture, and love. This segment underscores the transformative potential of cross-cultural solidarity in amplifying marginalised voices and dismantling systemic racism. From navigating friendships and personal growth to the lessons of motherhood and self-discovery, Nadine's narrative weaves a powerful tapestry of love, community, and resilience. Tune in to discover how these themes shape our lives and offer pathways for resistance and survival in challenging times.
Follow Nadine on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nadine_chemali
Follow Nadine on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/femmocollective
If you're enjoying Untethered, please consider rating and reviewing the show and becoming a subscriber! New episodes every Wednesday.
Support Clementine’s work and the podcast by following her on these platforms:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/clementine_ford
Substack: www.substack.com/@clementinef
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/clementineford
Free Palestine.
Untethered is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this country and their elders, past and present. Remember wherever you are, know whose land you're on. Hello, my loves, and welcome once again to Untethered with me, your host, clementine Ford. Untethered is a weekly podcast exploring courage, choices and the catalyzing moments in a person's life that lead them to define themselves on their own terms. Whether you're desperate for some sage advice or looking to be inspired, untethered will nurture the hopes, dreams and goals you have for yourself and give you the toolbox to do so with confidence, while listening to some fucking amazing people. One of the great things about recording podcasts is that you have the freedom to invite anyone you want. They may not always say yes, but as part of this, you can ask some of your dearest friends to join you in discussion.
Speaker 1:And this week I am so happy and excited to introduce to people who may not know her yet, the incredible Nadine Shmailey. Nadine is a feminist organizer, a thrill seeker and an all-round excellent human, and we had a beautiful conversation about community building, the importance of support networks and how to mobilize collective action. We also, as children of dead parents discussed what it means to navigate the grief and loss of that. Nadine and I didn't start out as friends, so one of the things we discuss here as well is evolution and change and growth and the beauty in finding common ground with people who you didn't necessarily expect to become close to. But fuck, are you glad you did. Welcome to Untethered Nadine Shmailey. Mercury Retrograde is kicking my butt today. Nadine Shmailey, welcome to Untethered third time lucky.
Speaker 2:Hello, what a pleasure to be here. How are you? Yeah, I'm okay. I'm actually pretty good.
Speaker 1:What's new in your world, Nadine?
Speaker 2:Oh wow, what a big question. Um, I think I'm about to apply for like a real job, about to apply for like a real job. Yeah, what? Yeah, right, okay, see, look at that. Yeah, so I think I I miss doing, um, doing like not-for-profit kind of industry work so I've been kind of looking at at maybe going back to to. I also miss having a steady income.
Speaker 1:It's nice to have money.
Speaker 2:Money paying bills is really good, um, you know, and not cost constantly hustling, you know, not constantly worrying.
Speaker 1:So yeah, well just just for the benefit of people who you know, unfortunately up to this point have not been familiar with your work but from this point will be obsessed with you. Why don't we just step back and you said go back to a real nine to five job? I mean, I hate how we call those things real jobs, anyway, formal work, I suppose what have you been doing in the pre years up to now that has, in the pre years up to now, that has, you know, nestled so nicely in the creative realm, the community realm? I mean, you're so active in community work and feminist work and one of the things that I love about you is that you are just so committed to bringing people together. So tell the listeners about Nadine in the kind of non-formal workplace.
Speaker 2:Right, I guess I hope that I'm a community builder. You know, I created this little online community 10 years ago when I was going through a separation and I saw that there was something missing in the online world where women or femmes or you know, not cishet men could actually show each other support. So I, with some friends, started a little community and we were called FEMO, which was something that I scribbled in my diary in like 1995, because I was a little feminist. I started listening to Riot Grrrl music and then a little community grew from that and to Riot Grrrl music and then a little community grew from that and it's now a really big community and it's really lovely. It's mostly online and it's just a bunch of people who are there for each other. It's a support network, it's a referral system, it's a social work program, it's friendship, and that's kind of how I started down this path of community work in the non-formal sense.
Speaker 2:And then, like I was blogging or writing you know little missives about my life, and someone at SBS Voices saw something that I wrote and they were like, hey, would you like to put this in writing? And I was like, um, okay, so I did. And um, then I became a writer, um, which was funny cause I didn't think of myself as a writer and I still, I guess, in a sense I I still don't, but I do write, I guess. Um, and then it was, uh, a cishet man said to me um, hey, just put writer in your Twitter bio and see what happens. And I was like what, no, I can't do that. And he's like just watch, do it. And I did. And then all of a sudden, people start hitting me up for writing and it's like your typical, of course, they freaking did, um, you know, feminist story, didn't all this, you know unsureness and whatever. And then you do what the white man does and suddenly you're like oh yeah, I'm a writer now, Um, and it was just typically that.
Speaker 2:So, from there, um, my bestie, Nisa, wanted to open a tattoo studio and and Loki, um, my other bestie, we were kind of sitting together during COVID and I was like what do you guys want to do? And they're like we've always wanted to open a tattoo studio. And I was like, okay, let's do that. And they were like what? And I was like I can't do the art part, but I can do the other part.
Speaker 2:And we opened a shop called Thrill House which has become like a little community space, a hub, tattoo studio, art space. We hold gigs there, punk gigs, we fundraise and that's just kind of grown into this beautiful space as well, which I love and I'm really dedicated to. But that also now, you know, we're four years in and it's almost like it's really beautiful watching these spaces that you can work on and then kind of slowly maybe step back from and just watch them do their own thing. And FEMO kind of did that and Thrill House is now kind of doing that. And I'm still a member, I'm still involved, but I don't need to be, you know, micromanaging anything. I'm just able to stop and do something else and that's really cool.
Speaker 1:So I think that's one of your great skills. Actually it's community building, but it's also it's knowing what the community needs built, and you seem to have this great knack for kind of coming in, and not just with Thrill House and not just with FEMO, but you know, you do a lot of fundraising. Currently, obviously, we're watching a genocide in real time, and you're Lebanese as well, so you have, you know, a personal connection to what is being done by Israel and what you know just the mass gaslighting. I suppose that has been occurring for decades. But even in that, the community building that you're doing and the space that you're kind of fuck I hate using this word but curating to act as like an educational system, I think for a lot of people has been really profoundly important. You are kind of like a Duracell bunny that is devoted to social activism and community and change and you never stop.
Speaker 2:But we all are. I mean, so are you? You know, and I think there's something to be said about this is going to sound weird, so I've never said it out loud, so hear me out but, like I have a personal connection to Palestine. My family is from the south of Lebanon. My mother's family lived in Palestine and was displaced during the Navka, so we then became Lebanese naturalized citizens, which was a privilege that people don't have, most Palestinians don't have. So I have a personal connection to this particular thing, just like you know female women's stuff. I have a connection to that, and you know.
Speaker 2:But what I find really fascinating and really important, and maybe even more important parallel, you know, is people like you stepping up for Palestine and stepping up against the genocide. Like you guys, you do have to do it, obviously, but you don't have to because a lot of people don't, and I think that there's something really profoundly powerful in that and I'm eternally grateful to those of you that don't have any connection. I kind of feel like it's in my blood. You know I have to speak up. I would be a traitor to myself, to my people, to my culture, to my world. But what is it that makes you go hey, I've got to speak. I'm going to use my platform to educate.
Speaker 1:Well, I suppose, if that's not a rhetorical question for me, I don't think it's not a matter of doing it for my people, obviously because I don't have that familial or blood or cultural connection that you have. But I feel like I would be a traitor to my values to stay silent and in particular, not just because you know and I don't want to sit here and act as if somehow I'm the most fucking selfless person in the world. Oh, I'd be betraying my values if I didn't speak up about this horrendous human rights violation. I mean, obviously you'd want everyone to think that. But there is, there's something specific about Palestine, obviously, and the control of you know, we're at a current point in history where, for the last 76 years, no one has spoken out this freely, I think, in support of Palestinian liberation, to even see what is being done by Israel to Palestine and to Palestinians and what has been done and has been supported to be done by the United States and by the UK and even Australia. Even though we really don't have that much global power when you think about it, we still want to be part of it and so obviously we know that the economic backlash and the social and cultural backlash against people who've spoken up for Palestinian liberation has been swift and profound for decades. Again, you know, look at what happened to Vanessa Redgrave when she made a documentary about Palestine. So I feel like, in that sense, the kind of traitor to your values. Traitor to your values.
Speaker 1:If I chose to stay silent because even if I felt, oh, this is not right, what's happening, but I don't want to risk my work, I don't want to risk my job, I don't want to risk my money, I just feel like I couldn't um, the hypocrisy would be too bitter and you would be, I don't know. I feel like I'd be really confronted with the reality that I was not the person that I wanted to be, or that I thought that I was. And the other thing as well is that what keeps me in this movement and keeps me in this activism is not just the conviction that it's the right thing to do and also, obviously, that it's just horrifying seeing it happen. But, you know, ironically, considering what we started talking about, it's the community that's been found in it, and I think that there's something really profound and powerful about joining together with others who are fighting for something real.
Speaker 1:You know, and I feel like you and I have been fortunate to be friends for a number of years now, but we didn't start off that way, which I want to talk about in a second. But even with you, I feel like this being in the kind of experience of this where I get to learn from my friend Nadine and I get to be encouraged and inspired by my friend Nadine and also to have you know, however big or small, some kind of cultural link and insight into what it really means for so many more people than just those being bombarded. I think has been very, I don't know feels. I feel like, weirdly, I'm closer to you because of it and I definitely feel that, without a doubt.
Speaker 2:I definitely feel that I think there's something about this moment in time in history where, um, you know, we have to all put aside our shit. You know, like this is. This is not I. I think if anyone in this last six months is still focusing on, on small shit beef shit stuff between people, there's something deeply wrong with us. Um, it's not how, how, how could we?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how, it's very easy for me to sit back and go. Well, comes this white woman who's jumped on board of the Palestine movement. But can we just analyze you joining us in this movement? And I wasn't always vocal about Palestine. I used to be afraid, very afraid. I grew up shh, don't talk about Palestine, Don't even say the word Palestine. In Lebanon, in the war, you didn't say the word Palestine, depending on where you lived, what suburb you were in, whose suburb you were in. So there's this whole thing.
Speaker 2:So, to come to this place where white women are openly wearing kefiyah, and you know, it can be really confronting for a lot of people, I think. But what a fucking magical moment. Sorry, Amal, I'll have to swear. What do you think? Yeah, well, fuck it. What a powerful moment where we can share this and I can share your strength, like I'm strengthened by the fact that I've got this really powerful, strong woman who has the choice to not do this and is doing it.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that makes sense at all, but it it solidifies the support that we feel. It solidifies, um, the community that we have. It you're able to reach people that we could never reach I. You are able to talk to an audience that we could never speak to and you're sacrificing potentially your own whatever the fuck. It is all the stuff we've experienced the silencing, the whatever. You're taking that risk to stand with us and there's something really magical and powerful in that, um, and, and I'm really grateful, I'm really really grateful I don't know how to say it Um, yeah, I, I, yeah, you don't, you don't, definitely don't need to say it and um, yeah, it's a weird conversation to have because it's it is.
Speaker 1:I feel really uncomfortable about the sentiments that you've shared.
Speaker 2:Tough no.
Speaker 1:No, because it just is how it should be, you know.
Speaker 1:But it's also I wouldn't even say it's confronting to me, because I have been trying to become much more aware of it since long before October 7th.
Speaker 1:But it's a good reminder, I think, for white women and white people like me, that we, like we, just choose to be ignorant to so many things. And in choosing to be ignorant, we keep things in place and keep them silent. And you know the one thing I could say, for better or worse, it's kind of fucked that this is how it is. But I think, with more non-Arab people standing up and coming out for Palestine, marching and and openly, proudly wearing keffiyehs and and being invited into that cultural experience of being able to do that, it's sort of I know from well, look, I can tell you from being an insider in the white system that it makes it that much harder to pretend that it's not happening. You know, it's so easy when it's just Arabs doing it for the white system to maintain this deceit that it's somehow not only niche but also nefarious. You know, my friend, emily, is from her dad's side of the family, is Armenian, but her grandmother was living in Jerusalem and was expelled during the Nakba as well.
Speaker 2:So she's got double genocide yeah yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:So she and I talk a lot about this and we talk a lot as well about the you know the realisation that and I say this as someone who I was not ignorant to Arab culture you know, I grew up in Oman and I know that there is a huge, you know a total separate side issue of the ease with which white people move to Arab countries and benefit and profit from them whilst at the same time, you know, maintaining this fucking racist bullshit. So I'm not saying that gave me like some kind of superior insight as a person in the world, but it definitely gave me a different insight as an as a white australian living in 2024, and the just the way that hollywood pop culture, every scrap of kind of cultural literacy that we've been fed in white society for decades, has successfully demonised all. I mean, obviously, like Arab culture is not a monolith, you know, but it's demonised all Arab people.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's made us a monolith hasn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's made us a media, you know, yeah, it's just like, even like hearing people speak in Arabic.
Speaker 1:People are coded to white.
Speaker 2:People are coded to go they're talking about the bombs, you know, yeah, have you seen that? Um, that scarf that someone made recently? That's a green colored Arabic writing and I think it says something like I love cookies, or I love choccy milk, I love choccy milk, and you see it, and people go terrorist and it just says I love choccy milk. That's supporting Hamas. Hamas, yes, that's right. You know, god forbid. You support a revolutionary movement.
Speaker 1:Listen. I want to and I really don't want this to come across to you or to the listeners as like some kind of grotesque kind of like let's dissuade people of their bullshit racist views, so please don't take it that way. No, people of their bullshit racist views, so please don't take it that way. But because it's been so instrumental to white supremacy to create that divide and to enforce that demonization. From your personal perspective, I want to hear about growing up in a Lebanese family and I want to hear about because I know your dad was so beautiful and you very sadly lost him at the end of last year, which we'll talk a little bit about losing a parent shortly but I want to hear about your beautiful memories of food and culture and music and all of the things that we've talked about privately about your dad. What are those joyful memories for you?
Speaker 2:Oh man, food. Food is the cornerstone of everything, right? Like food is what brings us together, what unites us, what we. It's the currency of love. Food, it's how you show someone, you make them a sandwich. And you know, it's how you show someone, you make them a sandwich. And you know these memories of my parents making me. Food is their way of showing us they loved us. Inviting people to your home and opening your home is a way to show your love and care, which is the cornerstone of our community, right? So food is this, this big cultural corner stone. Um, love, loud love. My people love very loudly. We um feel, we squish, we bite, like you know, like I grab my kid, bite him, and and there's this, like real, um violence to our love. That, um, you know how do we express it. It's so explosive. Maybe it's a little too much.
Speaker 1:Can I just interrupt quickly on that sort of the violence of love. When you said that, I thought of and annoyingly I can't think of the Arabic word for it now but one of the Arabic translations to say to a lover I love you is you bury me, burne, burne.
Speaker 2:Burne yeah, you bury me. Yeah, bury me, bury me. You know my kid Mama. What does burne mean? I'm like oh, it means that I love you so much. May I be buried in the ground. And he was just like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't leave me. You bury me before you leave me. Yeah, you can't leave me. You bury me before you leave me. No, that's right.
Speaker 2:Like it's this real passionate, you know, almost violent. You know love because it's so strong and we feel that for anything we love, whether it's food, whether it's people, whether it's coffee, whether it's, you know, like our homelands, we love them so deeply. And then, growing up, you know, moving to Australia, that didn't exist right. So that was just behind closed doors and I had this real split in my personality, who I was Nadine outside the home and Nadine inside the home. It almost you know I'm still working through that in therapy now Like I, that divide of who I was.
Speaker 2:I remember as a teenager I didn't even wear gold jewelry because it looked too ethnic. I wanted to be this little punk pop indie girl, you know, before Manic Pixie Dream Girl came about, but certainly then, uh, when it did, I was like, oh yeah, that's what I want, not that. Um, salma Hayek, beautiful ethnic girl that I could have been looking at and going, I want, but she didn't exist yet. I remember the first time it was, um, from dust till dawn, salma Hayek plays this vampire. It was the first time I saw this woman. That was this beautiful Mediterranean, middle Eastern, long hair, arab woman with a big snake.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know doing this dance and I remember being like, oh wow, there is beauty in this, um. And then I think it was our friend, joanna, joanna Nielsen, who you know, um, who said to me like what the hell are you doing? Why aren't you wearing gold hoops? Get that shit on, you know. And she sent me a pair of gold hoops and she was like wear these bitch. And I remember wearing gold hoops for the first time and you know again like I wore them in my teens as an ethnic girl, but then again in my 30s and kind of rediscovering that I'm allowed to be brown, you know you know, um and yeah, and to love and to love yourself sensually in that mode and body, totally, totally, because that's not something also in childhood.
Speaker 2:You have right, it's a very innocent, uh, love of your culture and your ethnicity and your whatever. So I think that's a really good point. That I've never even thought about is getting to know myself as an adult ethnic brown Arab woman. That's so interesting. I still have never dated an Arab man. I'm almost scared.
Speaker 1:I'm scared of the love it sounds nuts, eh, I mean, I think it sounds like the product of colonialism, right, it's like it's, it's. I can't obviously personally relate and I and I don't have that but I can, I can empathize with what you're saying and I think that that fear, I suppose, of being exposed too much is something very common to other brown women and brown people who you know speak the way that you do about this kind of conflict between what happens behind closed doors and what happens with family, versus going. It's like that constant code switch, isn't it? I have to ask you, were you as a little girl, were you shy?
Speaker 2:Very, very, very shy Did you used?
Speaker 1:to chew your hair.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 2:I had a little bob and I would chew it Suck on your hair. And my nails. Did you wear sandals? I did, I had little red sandals.
Speaker 1:And did you like to run off and hide?
Speaker 2:from people. Yes, I did not like people believe it or not. Despite being the loud mouth that I am now, I actually still am very much that little girl, by the way, but once I put it on, I'm not yeah, no, I yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Oh, just for anyone listening.
Speaker 2:What did you vibe?
Speaker 1:on, just like code code her by looking at her now. Um, I did a little tune in before we got online today and, yeah, I went to my, my space, my, my meditative space, and I tried to connect. I tried to connect with a few people. Actually, I got your dad, I got little Nadine and I got higher self Nadine and with little Nadine I got a very strong image of a little girl wearing sandals and maybe like a gingham dress or a dress or something. I also got the feeling you didn't like to wear dresses, like you used to take them off. Did you used to take your dresses off?
Speaker 2:I hated dresses. I was a little tomboy. How did you know that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, because this is going to sound so weird to people listening. But I saw you as a little girl in my little heart space and you sort of didn't really want to talk to me.
Speaker 2:You were too shy too shy to talk to me. Yeah, that was me. I didn't like people.
Speaker 1:And you were chewing on the end of your hair. You were wearing sandals and I just got the feeling that you often, as a kid, ran off and hid places, particularly if there were lots of people in the house and you didn't like wearing these dresses and your parents would always find you without the dresses on, just wearing your knickers.
Speaker 2:Probably that sounds about right. I didn't like dresses. So there was a specific time where my cousin Nikki she was a very frilly dressy, frothy dress girl and I had this really cool pantsuit that was turquoise that I really wanted to wear and I had my hair cropped. At this point that's a whole different story. But I had my hair cropped and Nikki decided she wanted to wear my pantsuit and I didn't want to. But my aunt and uncle pulled me out of my pantsuit and we were going to a function and put me in the frilly frothy dress that I hated. I was, like you know, hating this. I was a little tomboy and Nikki got to wear my pantsuit and I never forgave them, ever. And then, yes, I did take the frilly frothy dress off and I remember getting in trouble for it because I was running around without the clothing on. So that's really interesting. That's um, no one knows that story. So that's weird, you little weirdo.
Speaker 1:Uh well, you know, I should have asked your permission before I told you that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you'd like me not to share it.
Speaker 1:I can cut it out of the order. I told you that. No, I've told you to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you'd like me not to share it, I can cut it out of the order no share away I've told you there's free reign between me and you. We don't have any of that stuff, that's. I just think it's you know, because, as you know, I'm a hesitant believer, right?
Speaker 1:So when you pull, this shit out of me. I'm like, yeah, I mean, I feel it's something that I guess I've kind of segued into this topic because I think that it's actually like, rather than being about, you know, spooky, woo-woo kind of like I'm going to like tune into the angels or whatever my personal kind of belief about that is. I actually feel like this idea of tuning in in quotes is very deeply connected to joy and food and love. And the reason I thought about it was because thinking about you know how you describe your family everything has a sort of energy around it. Right, and I'm not going into the kind of woo thing here, but I mean even just you remember like being at home and the energy of your house and the energy of love that you grew up with is still inside you today. Like that is what fuels you.
Speaker 1:I think I look at you and I think that one you know the probably the most brazen, like fire lit word I would think of to describe you as love. Like Nadine comes with love and she leads with love, and that is your sort of modus operandi is love. Like you don't have ulterior motives, you don't have anything to you that is propelling you forward. I mean, obviously we've all got our own ambitions, we've all got our own dreams and stuff, but fundamentally I feel like the spirit that kind of fuels you is love, and so it's not difficult to kind of look at someone like you and think, well, what you know, if I, if, if, if I think deeply about that. I mean, who knows, maybe I did talk to your fucking little girl, nadine, in an energetic sense. In my head it sounds like no one knows that fucking story.
Speaker 2:So go on.
Speaker 1:Or maybe it's just that I didn't, yeah, I don't know. It's weird. It's the older I get, the less willing I am to kind of close myself off to lots of things, and I'm and I'm curious about all of the ways that we're kind of connected and I think it's interesting that you and I started off not friends because of our own kind of younger, more immature you know I mentioned the word ambitions before, like our own kind of ambitions, some of which were petty and some of which were not, but that I really feel like maybe we were meant to be friends.
Speaker 2:I think we were. I think so very deeply, I think so. Um, I think we needed to navigate um a relationship. You know, you know, sometimes there's people in your life you've got to. There's something oh fuck, it sounds so cliche. Something I need to learn from this person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know like that does sound like a cliche, but cliches exist for a reason because they're real.
Speaker 2:But I think that in my relationship with you I really learnt something really powerful letting go of nonsense that isn't yours. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? I?
Speaker 2:had this tendency to be fiercely no, fiercely loyal. That's the wrong word.
Speaker 1:Well, that's one of the things I love about you, though, is that you are fiercely loyal, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I am, I'll stab a bitch for my, for my crew, but um more in that. Sorry, my neighbor's dog is uh is having a bark, if you can hear him in the background.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fine Dogs. Dogs are always welcome, hi, guy.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I don't know. I think there was something that I needed to learn about friendship with you in particular, and I think there's been something really powerful about our friendship Learning to navigate women, specifically learning to navigate powerful women. Learning that for me to not be afraid to, to just go, hey, lady, come here, I'm gonna, let's just I that was my thing like I just wanted to grab you and go, hey, what are we doing? Like what's going on? And we did, and there's something really cool and and fascinating and beautiful about that. Yeah, because at the end of the, I think everyone can get along as well and if we can get along, we can have potential for these beautiful things, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that's what makes so much sense about you saying you know like learning, I guess, to identify which fights are worth having at a basic level. You know like you don't have to go to every fight you're invited to, but you don't have to stay in every fight that you thought was worth it.
Speaker 2:That one. That second one is really, really important. I want to go whisper that into baby Nadine's ear. So if you meet her, just go like hey, lady Well you know, she's always with you. Yeah Well, apparently hey lady.
Speaker 1:Um, well, you know she's always with you, yeah, well, apparently I do think that inner child work is really helpful. I think that spending time with ourself is like nurturing that that person. You know I, um, I often think about teenage me and how alone and lost she felt and how I mean god, if you could go back to your teenage self and say you have no idea how brilliant things are going to get and how much you're going to love and how your heart, yes, is going to break. But guess what? If your heart breaks, it means that you were in love, it means you did have an experience and you're going to grieve and I actually I mean that's a really good opportunity to kind of move into talking about you as a teenage girl and all of that hidden landscape, but then also becoming an adult and losing a parent and really growing up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Wow, whole new world right I am. I'm a lot closer to who I was as a teenager than I've been in any time in my life.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, I feel like my teenage self was my authentic self, before I put up all these walls and barriers, and I think for the first time in my life, I am a lot closer to her than anyone I was in between and I kind of like want to reach out to anyone that knew me in between in what I kind of call my growing bullshit years. You know just that that was a persona that I was working through almost. You know I didn't know who I was yet my family was always really, really important to me. Of course, in childhood, you know, coming displaced, war, all of that stuff you cling so deeply to your family, right, because they're the only ones who know you and the only ones who are safe for you.
Speaker 2:And then I kind of like in my 20s I moved away from my family a lot because I needed to discover myself and discover who I was without them. So I went overseas and I came back and you know that was Nadine's solo glow-up years almost. But then I think I've come back to being so dedicated to my family and and and them and that coinciding with the genocide and coinciding with the world doing all this chaos and my father passing away. Whilst you know, october happened and my dad died in the end of December, seeing this war humanise him as a man who had lived in a war. I don't know if any of that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you're making complete sense.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:It's that sort of circular kind of route to. You know, we spend so much of our life, I think, and a lot of people stay in this mode. But we spend so much of our life, I think, and a lot of people stay in this mode, but we spend so much of our life trying to escape who we were when we were adolescents, you know, particularly those of us who felt weird or out of place in some way, or you know, if we stayed in that mode, we would never be accepted or welcomed and we would never have the kind of love that we crave. I think that all humans crave love in some kind, whether or not it's physical love. I think we all crave and need love.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're connected creatures, you know, but we shouldn't feel ashamed of saying that we want love and we shouldn't be ashamed of like you at this fucking fireball of love. Like we shouldn't be ashamed of loving as deeply and as authentically and also as as earnestly as possible, you know. So I feel like we spend a lot of that, that early kind of adulthood, really trying to outrun our teenage self, because she shows us exactly who we are. Yeah, you know, like I don't want to be you. I never wanted to be you. I didn't want to be you when I was you. And then you get to our age and you go full circle back around and you're like okay, not only am I ready to be more like you, I am aspiring to be more like you. Like you are my actual style icon, right.
Speaker 2:That girl could wear anything she wanted. And, just like you know, I remember having white jeans and I walked through Target yesterday and I saw this white denim skirt and I was like holy heck.
Speaker 2:I wonder if I could. Right, I did hold it up and I'm. I'm content because you know, I only wear black, which happened in my twenties because I was a theater person and worked in a cafe, and only black, you know. But this teenage Nadine was so different. She could dance to Salt-N-Pepa in the middle of a disco and like, just groove and do whatever, and suddenly I'm her again. I can do that now In my 20s. I would have been way too self-conscious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, when I say style icon as well, I mean I mean fashion, but I also mean like daydreaming. You know to daydream like a teenager again, to sort of look at life and think what could I be, who could I become Like, what do I want? You know there's there's a lack of even for those of us when we're teenagers who feel really insecure and feel scared that we won't kind of have that sort of magical existence. Yeah, we still daydream about it.
Speaker 1:And you know I often say to like women I mean you and I have both been through a major separation in our lives and I often say to women in their 30s who are considering that or who were just kind of, you look at them and you're like I just sense that you are not present in your world. And I often say to them go somewhere in your mind and find your 16-year-old self and describe your situation to her. And to be clear, I'm not talking about people who are in abusive scenarios, I'm talking about people who are just in sort of humdrum. I don't know if I'm happy, but you know what else is there out there.
Speaker 1:Go and describe to that girl your life and who you're with and if you feel in any way, shape or form, embarrassed or sad or like you want to tell her to run, then that is your answer, because our 16 year old selves Powerful advice. We wouldn't sit there and go. God, I can't wait to marry a man who just lets me do everything for him, who doesn't even care about my day. I can't wait for that. You know, we wouldn't want that for ourselves and we wouldn't want that for our teenage girls either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one I say is imagine you have a daughter or a son and they're living your life right now. What would you say to them? Because I think motherhood has actually you know, sounds a cliche motherhood healed me in some way, and sorry, I'm just going to just yeah, so motherhood has healed me in a certain way.
Speaker 2:It's made me do things I thought that I would never do, and that's in terms of caring for myself, because I need to be healthy to care for this other human being that I have in my life, and it's made me leave an unhealthy relationship. You know, like people ask me, I was with someone for a very long time and then at some point I left with my son and they were like, why did you wait to leave? And I was like I would have stayed in that relationship for me forever because in my head I could put up with anything this person did or threw at me. I was this self-sacrificing, um, mother, invincible, kind of whatever. But the second it started affecting my child, I got the hell out of there.
Speaker 2:And it's not until you know now, when you go back and you kind of analyze it, and all right, I do deserve what my child is getting finally being able to see it. But I do think that that process of motherhood saved me in a way, because I wouldn't put up with things for my child that I would put up with for myself, and there's something really beautiful and powerful in that as well. And again, if we go back to that talk of the genocide, I'm really seeing women who now have families, and I don't just mean their own children, but like nieces and nephews and nibblings around them. Seeing this genocide is something that they need to stand up to so that they can care for that next generation. It's not just about us. It's about what world are we leaving to the kids around us and who?
Speaker 1:would we want to fight for our kids if it were happening to them?
Speaker 2:you know exactly.
Speaker 1:I love this idea that motherhood saves you and I, I feel that same thing too. You know, for me I feel like motherhood, and you know. Again, I want to stress to anyone that motherhood is a very specific experience for people, and I don't. I definitely have never believed that anyone who's capable of birthing a child must do it so that they understand what real love is Like. I just think that that's nonsense.
Speaker 2:I knocked off four before I had mine. I was not ready let's hear it for abortions.
Speaker 1:But I feel, like you know, for those of us who do become mothers, and especially who wanted to become mothers and were able to become mothers and then found something really powerful in motherhood For me it has been the most important love of my life and that's not going to be everyone's experience, but it's my experience.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be either.
Speaker 1:No, exactly, I feel like looking at my son, oh, I'm getting like chills up the back of my head even thinking about it. He, I mean, he looks exactly like me. For a start, he does. He's seen photos of me as a kid and he's gone. When was that taken? Where was I? And I was like that's me. And he's like no, it's not he me. And he's like no, it's not like that, he's just the spit of me.
Speaker 1:Um, and it's really really hard to maintain your insecurities about your physicality and the negative self-talk you kind of give yourself when the thing and the person that you love most in the world, you would literally I wouldn't just die for him, I would kill for for him.
Speaker 1:Same, when they look exactly like you, you're like, wow gosh, that's weirdly healing in its own way, and I think being loved by him as well is so pure, like his love for me is so beyond. It's not dependent on what I do for him, it's not dependent on what I look like. It's not dependent on if I make him laugh, you know. It's not dependent on what I look like. It's not dependent on if I make him laugh, you know it's, it's, it's so. It's so much more primal than that and that's been really healing and powerful, and I think it's also made me a much stronger person and a much more um, ferocious person and and a more empathetic person too. So, yeah, I agree with you in that healing way, it's been probably one of the most important lessons of my life.
Speaker 2:Totally. Look. I don't know, if I'd had children earlier, whether I would have been the same kind of mother that I am now.
Speaker 1:Same Right.
Speaker 2:You know like I don't know, but now that I do have a kid, there is parts of me that goes oh, wow, yeah, maybe the 27 one. You could have done that and maybe you would have grown up a lot sooner. You know, maybe you would have done this growth and healing. Then you wouldn't have your kid. Right, exactly. But you know, I think there's no shame in also acknowledging that.
Speaker 1:oh okay, you know, maybe yeah, there's so many different paths and opportunities, like if I didn't have a kid.
Speaker 2:I might have discovered that in my puppy. I might have discovered it in self-love, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:You might have trekked around the world and found it in yourself Totally, but this happens to be the storyline that you have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and again, that primal love for family, um, because my parents loved so fiercely as well, I had a pretty good, uh role model of, uh, that fierce kind of crazy love, um, and then loving my child and then loving my dad. Once I had my son, before I had my son, before I had my child, my relationship with my dad wasn't the same and then I kind of got it the penny dropped for me. Oh, that's why he was so banal about me in a protective, you know way, in a loving way. Um, having a kid brought me a lot closer to my parents as well and gave me a lot more empathy for them that I'd ever had before in my life. You know, I I'd never really even maybe thought of them as people, um, until I had a kid. And then I was like, oh right, you guys and I'm not saying that's the case for everyone.
Speaker 2:No, this is my very specific.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad that that was the case for you. It's not the case for everyone, but I'm so glad that that was the case for you. It's not the case for everyone, but I'm so glad that was your story. I have two questions about that, and one is so your parents are, you know, essentially loves Young, dream Like they have just such a beautiful love story. The way that you talk about them is so beautiful. It's so clear from you know, which is not to say I'm sure that they had their own problems, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, they were awful, there were times where I begged them to split up, I was like, please get a divorce.
Speaker 1:But yeah, but they did seem, by all accounts, to really profoundly love each other. And I, my parents, before my mum died I was certainly raised with a story of profound love, especially from my dad's side. I saw that woman. I said I was going to marry her, all this kind of romantic stuff. He's since the separate story, he's sort of radically changed the narrative on that since he remarried after her death. But you know that's a different story.
Speaker 1:The point is we both grew up, whether true or not, with this perception of that is real love. That is what love looks like and I think, importantly for us as feminists, that is what a man in love looks like to be devoted to the woman and not in a sort of self-sacrificing way. But one of the things that I remember so beautifully about my dad was that he really considered what it was that my mother needed, and it was so clear to us all in the house, like three kids, my mother was the most important person. You know she came first and you know I remember things like when we'd go camping. My mother was not a camping type of person. She didn't like it and she didn't like to be unclean, and so my dad made this sort of makeshift this is like.
Speaker 1:Back in the 80s, made this makeshift shower using like a gallon drum and designed it so that the water could be heated, so that when we were camping on this beach, my mother would have a hot shower, you know just little things like that, where you grow up with that and you're like that is what it looks like to be loved, is to be considered, is to be respected and is to be attended to. Yes, and I feel for me I'm interested in your answer that on the one hand, it was so beneficial because it meant that I didn't ever settle for um I? I'm conscious that using that term makes it sound like I'm blaming other people, and I'm not, but I didn't ever believe I wasn't raised in an environment where I believed that I was just lucky to be picked.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:At the same time, it's a very fucking hard ideal to live up to.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it's almost impossible to achieve the level of love they had. Right, like you look at it, and because we don't see. We didn't see the downsides really as children. We didn't see the secret discussions at night. Yeah, we didn't see the hours of talking the whatever the silent, the many potential separations. Yeah, we didn't see the hours of talking the whatever the silent.
Speaker 1:The many potential separations, yeah.
Speaker 2:We didn't see it. We just saw that here is this man that is in love and he shows us his love and that's what love is Right. My dad was, was so in love with my mom his whole life, more so than her. She was very chill about him. She was like, yeah, you know I love him, but you know, we knew deep down that she adores him. But you know, my dad was the guy with the flowers. Like even the way they met it's almost, you know, nowadays we'd go, oh, that's stalking, dad, don't do that. But it was the 60s, he would wait for her Stay with my parents Right.
Speaker 1:My mum said he just never left me alone, he was just not there.
Speaker 2:That's what dad did to mum, you know, yeah, exactly, he would stand outside her walk to work, no matter which way she went. He would be there somehow holding a white jasmine flower every single day for a month, like he was just there, and he'd step out and, like you know, cheeky little grin and give it to her and then eventually she agreed to have a coffee with him. Um, and you know, that in itself is is insane and beautiful and, and you know, uh, unhealthy and so lovely, um, that I would, no one could do that right, I wouldn't let them.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I was just thinking, as you described, that if that came across our Instagram page, oh and finally she relented and went out we'd both be like.
Speaker 2:We'd be like get out, girl, Get out.
Speaker 1:This is stopping. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not okay. Yeah, totally, I mean, maybe that's a good lesson for us as well to kind of think that.
Speaker 1:I do think that obviously, like, social media flattens a lot of things and and I do think the times have absolutely changed, like I think we live within you know the, the framework of whatever we we have, it's, it's but I'm gonna confess something to you, and the confession is that I also think that we have lost some. I mean, obviously, like we would, for obvious reasons, you would never go back in time not least of which is because just nightmare for the majority of the world Especially, yeah, but also people of colour, like there's no, I'm aware of not romanticising the past, sure, but it also is true that the way that, the acceptable way that people speak to each other now, and the way that men have been emboldened to treat women, obviously it's a different kind of abuse. It's not like it was. It was always been abusive, but yeah.
Speaker 2:You know I do a lot of comedy right Like I tell a lot of jokes and it's one of my ways of like getting people to understand ideas of what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:And one of my favourite little quips is I really miss polite racism. I really miss when racism was behind closed doors, Like growing up in Australia. You know, I know that that family across the road didn't really like us, but they'd come out and be like hello, blah, blah, blah, and then they'd go back behind their quiet doors and you know whatever. And I remember there was this turning point, sort of like early 2000s, Pauline Hanson time, when it became acceptable in Australia to yell a racist slur at someone.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I never heard a racist slur yelled at anyone in my childhood, which you know, like I'm talking about like on the street kind of thing, and like I grew up in low socioeconomic brown neighbourhoods. They weren't very privileged areas or anything like that, so if it was going to happen it would have happened then I mean, there was slurs in the schoolyard and things like that, but I'm talking about like it was a lot politer. I do genuinely believe that at some point in our society people have become really awful, openly awful. You know, yes, the percentage of people that are more woke or whatever have increased, but I also think that those of us that were those of the people that are awful, are more blatantly awful.
Speaker 2:You know there's something about being able to anonymously say that on the internet that, um, you know pushed people in society to say awful things. Um, you know there were boys growing up that now I see them talk shit on the internet about women. You know you go back and you find that guy from high school You're, I'm one of those super curious people and you know he's like men's rights, blah, blah, blah. And I was like you would never have said that shit when we were kids. You know you would never like. You probably thought it, but you'd never have said that. I, yeah, and he'd still never say that to me, to my face, to this day. But the internet has emboldened him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's something. So I think, being as both of us are the mother of boys, there's something so fucking scary about I found. You know we were talking about like motherhood being kind of a healing thing before, and one of the things that I found really beneficial for me as a person is that my son has healed a lot of anger that I've got around men and behavior and and and fear, I think around how easily misogyny is is kind of wielded Um, at the same time, I'm so keenly aware that not every misogynist who is out there operating enthusiastically in the world was necessarily raised in an environment where women were spoken about like that, that the influence of you know people like fucking Andrew Tate, etc. Etc. You know, and everyone thinks, oh, we just got to get rid of him. It's like misogyny is a fucking multi-headed hydra. You cut one head off and three more spring up in its place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we could get rid of Tate, but Peterson and Rogan and whoever else was already there.
Speaker 1:Remember Milo Yiannopoulos? Yeah, that's right. No one ever talks about him anymore.
Speaker 2:No, he was too openly gay, so they cancelled him.
Speaker 1:So I feel like, looking at that and you know, and I find it in a childishly naive kind of way.
Speaker 1:I suppose it's weird to know so much about like the worst parts of how people behave and yet remain constantly kind of like childishly naive about it. Like I see it, and I'm like what is wrong with you? Like, on some level, I really am just like I do not understand why you are the way that you are, how you can say the things that you say, and now bringing the son factor into it, now that I'm a mother of a little boy, I can't help but look at them and think who were you before this happened? What has happened that has robbed you of this humanity? And I feel so. So I I mean, obviously we're both angry about men behaving like this, but I think we probably also share a profound distress and sadness for the men themselves, because I look at them, I'm like I'm like I'm so sad that that's how you see women you are. You are deprived of, of knowing women emotionally, and what a loss for you.
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be like that, bro, it doesn't? You know, like it it. It doesn't have to be like that for you and you would be so much happier. Yeah, you know like and there's this funny thing about feminism, right, like we hate men, blah, blah, blah. But the irony is we don't we actually look at the empathy we have for men. You know like, we don't we actually look at the empathy we have for men you know, like we don't hate men, we love men.
Speaker 1:Some feminists hate men and they've been given good reasons to, you know, and they mistrust them.
Speaker 2:I mistrust some men, I hate some men, but out of doubt I think, I think there's this real something's got to heal right.
Speaker 1:My friend yeah, my friend cecilia um cecilia winter fox, it's the best name she she always character yeah, but she changed it because, um, she's well, for reasons that she would explain.
Speaker 1:It's not my place to to say it on on the internet or on a podcast, but anyway, she's an amazing person, she's an amazing feminist, and she was the first person I heard say well, basically, highlight. You know, women are always feminists, always accused of hating men, but no one will ever hate as much as men hate women, like we could not hate men, yeah, anywhere close to the amount that men hate women and have hated women.
Speaker 2:But we also couldn't hate men as much as men hate men. Yeah, as much as men hate themselves and each other, that is the, you know, who hits men, who is violent against men, who is creating these men that are hateful and hurt?
Speaker 1:It's not women, I think it's the hierarchy of power that men you know sort of feel themselves to be operating in, because Marilyn Frye God, I fucking quote her all the time she's got this amazing quote about, you know. She essentially says male culture is homoerotic, it's man-loving. She says the things that men you know. I'm going to read the quote out, actually correctly now, and the editor of this podcast can just come in and cut me off.
Speaker 2:Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1:It's like Marilyn Fry says. You know one of my favourite feminists. She said, and she wrote this in the 70s to say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex fucking exclusively with women. All, or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, adore, respect, revere, honor, whom they idolize, imitate and form profound attachments, to whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire, those are overwhelmingly other men.
Speaker 1:In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism. What passes for honor is removal to the pedestal From women. They want devotion, service and sex. Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic. It is man-loving, and I agree with you that men hate themselves and they hate each other and they fear themselves and they fear each other. They fear being discarded by men in the way that men discard women, but at the same time, that core of that is because they are obsessed with each other.
Speaker 2:Obsessed with men. You know something really interesting. You were reading that and I remembered a friend of mine who I was hanging out with last week. His name is Johnny Mubarak and he said to me and he's a he's a Lebanese man. And he said to me Lebanese men love our mothers so much and we respect them so much that anything they say to us is almost gospel. And I'm really curious about this divide, this cultural divide that I definitely do see. I hate to say it, look, it's a generalised rule, but culturally for me, the men that I know respect women in that traditional sense a lot more than white men respect women. Cut it in dry, my opinion.
Speaker 1:That's a fair assessment. I can't speak culturally on your behalf, but I can say as a white lady that white men I mean respect for anyone in white culture is pretty fucking slim.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, yeah, so for us, you know, and that always stems from this dedication and respect to their mother, and if their mother is someone who respects women, they will grow up to respect women, and if their mother is someone who doesn't respect women.
Speaker 1:they will take her misogyny or lack of misogyny so they'll love and devote themselves to her, but they'll see other women as being in service.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, absolutely they can, because you know that there's. Then women are often affected by misogyny and carry misogyny themselves. So you know, um, we see cases of like you know, the the moral police in saudi are women with sticks or whatever you know, chasing people around. When you see that happening, women are often enforcing that misogyny for whatever reason the hierarchy or whatever. But certainly in my culture a lot of our understanding of women comes from their mothers and from women and their devotion and respect to their mothers.
Speaker 2:And I was asking him last night because I'm writing about the fact that my dad married a woman who was a widow with two girls in the late 1960s unheard of, right, or early 19s, uh, yeah, yeah, in the 60s, so it was completely unheard of. You don't marry early 19s, yeah, yeah, in the 60s, so it was completely unheard of. You don't marry a woman that is a widow with two children already and she was 19 and she was widowed. When they kind of started hanging out and I kind of wanted to know, I was like you know, what is it about men in our culture that they don't? They don't date or marry women? And he said it all depends on your mother.
Speaker 2:Our mothers guide us. And he said, a lot of the time mothers want what's best for their boys, they want the purest and sweetest girl for their daughter, and I thought that that was really telling, right, and he was like not all, you know men are like that, but that's certainly where our understanding of women comes from and I just wanted to really dig into that. I've been kind of playing with this idea. I need to, like, grab a bunch of, you know, arab men and interview them. I want to know more about this. You know, and certainly in my household, my brother is very much guided by my mother's perspectives and my mother is a feminist. So in my household, you know, whilst I wouldn't certainly call my brother a feminist, so in my household, you know, we, whilst I wouldn't certainly call my brother a feminist in any means of the word, his respect for women isn't dictated by deep misogyny.
Speaker 1:I think that's really insightful and it may. I mean, obviously you're looking at it from a particular cultural perspective, but I think that that is probably universal in that. Does it cross over? Yeah, that's my next question is but I think that that is probably universal in that.
Speaker 2:Does it cross over? Yeah, that's. My next question is do you think that crosses over?
Speaker 1:I think just as a principle, it crosses over in terms of practice. I think that you know, white culture is extremely misogynistic and loves to point the finger at other cultures as being, somehow you know, the perpetrators of and that's been Of violence, right, yeah, brown cultures, sure.
Speaker 2:That of violence, right, yeah, brown cultures, um that you know, which is so funny to me, because we're a deeply matriarchal society. You know, the women in my culture rule the home, like you don't. We are deeply matriarchal, like our women, are our strength, our guides, our leaders, our. You know, despite that, not necessarily what the world seems to see or tell the story.
Speaker 1:It's so funny to me because, as a white person living in white culture, I look at it and I'm like what do you think we do differently to what you perceive or what your accusation is here? You know, every accusation is a confession. Yeah, that's powerful too, isn't it you?
Speaker 1:know, is here. You know, every accusation is a confession like, yeah, that's powerful too. You know, you mentioned, um, the morality police before and obviously we love to like point fingers, white people, we love to point fingers at other cultures and say, see that that's how they treat their women. And I always love the possessive, the possessive terms like we don't treat our women like that.
Speaker 2:It's like you fucking do and we do Maybe pick up a beauty magazine for two seconds.
Speaker 1:Look at the fucking Republican women who are legally like rolling back women's rights. Like what do you think? What are you talking about? But this mother thing, because my mother was, you know, my brother adored my mother, so can.
Speaker 2:I just jump in and you can edit this if this isn't right, but your mother also was a brown woman. No, no, no. Can we touch on that?
Speaker 1:She wasn't, no, no, no, she wasn't. She was white, yes, but Certainly white skinned. So my mother's mother was Lithuanian, okay, and my mother's dad was Guyanese, right, so my mother wasn't Anglo, yeah. So my grandmother met my Guyanese grandfather.
Speaker 2:So your mother was white, passing Well.
Speaker 1:I mean, for all intents and purposes, it's a really look, it's a really interesting conversation and it's one I'm definitely interested in having with you. Sorry.
Speaker 2:I shouldn't have just talked about it. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1:I'm really happy to have it. It's just a long conversation, that's all because so for me. Okay. So it's multi-layered in that my mother was raised by a holocaust survivor who was traumatised from her experience and, as a result, was a really like incapable mother.
Speaker 1:My mother was born in Guyana. She was the eldest of four children and when she was 10, my grandfather had sort of basically run off or disappeared or something, and my mother had been told that he died. But she found out later that wasn't true. I don't think he was a particularly good husband. My grandmother remarried and the story I was always raised with was that he'd said to my grandmother. This new bloke said to my grandmother you know, I want to take you back to England with me, but I don't want to bring the boys, you can only bring the girls. So my mother, who was the oldest of these four kids, my mother at the age of nine or ten I think and it's so tricky now because you know all the questions that she had when I was 26, and I knew a lot of these stories, but I would have so many more deeper questions now.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:So my mother and my aunt were taken to England and they were told the boys are going to come later and my mum kept asking when are Michael and Lawrence coming? And my grandmother, according to my mother, turned around one day and belted it I mean she was not shy of the physical sort of discipline and she said never ask me that again. And so my mother never saw her brothers again. She went to England with a, as she described it, a thick accent, a thick kind of like Guyanese accent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, she, yeah, she, yeah, she had a thick accent and she said that because she experienced, you know, hostility and she was called a wog and she was kind of she wasn't, she was an outsider, you know. So she was and she was called a wog and she was kind of she wasn't an outsider, you know. So she was and she didn't. She's not Anglo, so like she didn't look, but she was white skinned, was she pale, or was she? She was very pale.
Speaker 2:Right, but like when I like my mother is pale and had on her side green eyes, blonde hair, that side of the family.
Speaker 1:You know the thing is so anyway. So she said to me because she was so like relentlessly kind of teased.
Speaker 2:Here's when I get a Clementine Ford. She's brown. No, I'm joking.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. She said that. She responded by developing an accent that, in her words, could cut glass. Sure, so she and she never went back to Guyana. She never saw her brothers again. You know, obviously she, she was forced to leave school at 13 to go to work.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I've told you that the interesting thing to me about it is that I grew up with these stories from her. But my dad's side of the family is it's partly, I'm sure, a result of being white Australians and also just a result of it him being the man it was a very dominant feeling. So I, as an adult, I've reflected back on why, even in our own family, my mother's stories were kind of like. I loved hearing them, but they never felt like my stories. You know, they always felt like well, these are like some outsider stories and I did go through a period where, probably a number of years ago, where I was and I'll say this honestly to you and I'm happy to put it on the podcast because I think it's something that we're all you know white people attempted into, we're all you know white people attempted into is when you perceive criticism to be often leveled at you for your behavior or for your kind of you know your shortcomings, whatever it might be. White people are always trying to like.
Speaker 1:Look for the exception to look for the out you know the loophole, and I think I went through a period I don't think I know. I went through a period where I was really embracing it in a way that was actually inauthentic. You know, I was like well, but my mother this you know and my mother, like I, was trying to find this kind of exceptionalism so that I could somehow absolve myself, I think, of my crimes as a white person. And now I'm at the point where I'm like I am white, I'm not only white-skinned, I am culturally white, I am like ethnically. You know, there's no question that I'm white.
Speaker 1:I can't try and find an escape course from that, and nor should I Like I should just reckon with the whiteness, an escape course from that. And nor should I Like I should just reckon with the whiteness. At the same time, I also feel like I have sort of an anger and a kind of a feeling of loss and a feeling of displacement from my mother and from my mother's side of the family and my mother's cultural history. That is almost irretrievable, because not only is she dead but also it's just culturally been stamped out by my own experience.
Speaker 2:By colonialism, by white supremacy, by these things. I guess there was something that you said about your mum that tweaked with me when you said she didn't like camping, she didn't like being unclean, and that was the brownest thing you'd say is a joke, that ethnics you know anything. Three stars or less is a is is a camping trip, um, and I guess I just want to like, whilst, okay, you are white, and by no means am I saying you're not white, you are obviously white but, um, you know, we talk about intergenerational trauma and we talk about intergenerational things being handed down and traditions and ways of interacting and ways of operating, and I do think that there's probably somewhere in there for you, a bit of brown culture that you're probably not even aware of, that might make us feel a bit closer to each other, without even realising.
Speaker 1:I just oh, I think that, that that definitely resonates with me, you know, and yeah.
Speaker 2:I definitely, because I can. There's things like the, the ability to love so crazily and fiercely, and you know these things that maybe aren't necessarily and I'm not saying white people don't have them, they certainly do but they're not standardized white culture. Right, there's going to be things that have been passed down through your family, whether you acknowledge it or not, that are there. They're just. Your mom's dad was black, like oh, he wasn't well yeah, well, he was brown yeah, my, my mom was definitely a.
Speaker 1:She always described herself as a fiery south american.
Speaker 2:You know your mom. Like your mom wasn't that white, like I've seen a photo. I think that, yeah, she's, I'm not disagreeing with you no, no, I'm just like, you know, like you put a photo of your mom next to me.
Speaker 1:Oh, she definitely had like similar skin colour to you, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I mean. Like I just I'm not saying you're brown.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, no. I know you're not and I'm not the weirdest conversation I've ever had. I'm just trying to be extremely careful so that no one's going to be like she's brown.
Speaker 2:No, nadine did no. I think it's an interesting conversation, shep. I just think it's really important that we don't let go of what links we have, what things we have, to our history. I would hate for my son, who looks like a white-passing young man sometimes, to not be connected if I was to pass away tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, and he wouldn't be connected to my culture at all if I was to pass away tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, and he wouldn't be connected to my culture at all if I was to pass away tomorrow.
Speaker 1:I agree with everything you're saying and I also agree that with my just even just growing up with my mum, and you know she was such a great storyteller and she was so passionate and so very complicated and messed up in lots of ways as any kind of child of war trauma and, you know, displacement I've never heard you talk about that.
Speaker 2:I've never heard you talk about the fact that your mother was from you know a traumatic war experience, that they were displaced, that there was this history in your family and Clem, can you see how much that connects us? Because that essentially means that your mother and I had very, very, very similar experiences.
Speaker 1:I think that my mother would have loved you, yeah, and I think that it.
Speaker 2:I've never thought that you and your mum and I had very similar childhoods. I would never have stopped to consider that.
Speaker 1:Oh, you definitely more in common with her than with me, even.
Speaker 2:Do you see, then, how that brought me and you?
Speaker 1:closer Absolutely, and I also see that. I think that that is having that experience, not just where I grew up, you know, like being outside of Australian culture. It wasn't like I grew up. You know, like being outside of Australian culture. It wasn't like it wasn't like I grew up with aggro's cartoon connection on every Saturday or whatever, whenever I never watched a fucking episode of hey, hey, it's Saturday in my life. Yeah, I did. I'm probably more.
Speaker 1:Australian than you are. But also just, I think there was, there was a huge benefit really in having. I watched this amazing documentary a few years ago about and I'm not saying that I'm biracial, but it was about biracial people and the kind of conclusion from this documentary particularly biracial people with a black mother and a white father was that when the kind of the non-whiteness occurs on the mother's side, it creates a much more profound connection with the child to that culture. And this is again generalising. Some other people will have different experiences. But also because mothers are much more generally involved with the children, they are better equipped to deal, like to educate children about racism. So when biracial children have a non-white father and a white mother, that is where they experience a lot of the trauma, because the mother doesn't understand the experience and may be tempted to erase them or minimize them we, we also mimic our mothers, right.
Speaker 2:So their habits, their behaviors, their, whatever, we sleep with them, we cuddle them, we learn from them. We spend the majority of our time with our mother as a primary caregiver, so we learn so much from the maternal side and I genuinely, you know, believe that, like, okay, I don't go around saying I'm Palestinian, point blank but, my mother grew up in Palestine.
Speaker 2:You know it's we, we have that. We are Palestinian, but again, because of colonization and because of the war in Lebanon and because of everything, we were taught not to talk about it, don't talk about it. At home we speak with the Palestinian dialect, we cook Palestinian food. You know, the whole area was called greater Palestine when, when my mum was like you know none of it, there was no Lebanon border back then. Um, so it's, it's this.
Speaker 2:I just, you know, let's just take a minute to acknowledge how messy and muddy heritage really is, um, and maybe how much closer so many of us are than we know and acknowledge.
Speaker 2:Really, yeah, with the intergenerational stuff and and yeah, I, I guess that's maybe me projecting on you I have this big fear that my son is going to lose connection to his heritage and his culture. You know, because I fight for him to have that so much and I see things going. I see, like his language, he doesn't. He doesn't speak Arabic. He understands it at home but he's not speaking it. And seeing that, you know, he lived with my parents, so he did speak it and then now, as time's gone on, we've gotten more and more far away, he doesn't anymore, and then my father passing away, that's his connection to someone who spoke Arabic 24 7 and it just I guess I probably am projecting on you a little bit. I just I just I think it's understandable. You have that connection to their culture. So much um to their people, to their homes, to their land, their, you know, and that's a really their land, to their, you know.
Speaker 1:And that's a really beautiful reference back to as well. You know you're talking about how you went through that period of time in your life where you kind of didn't want people to know that about you and you shied away from it. That so much of what you're kind of, you're not projecting at all, you're protecting, you're preserving. I was thinking the other day about and I know we're going to have to wrap up soon because I've kept you for so long but I was thinking the other day about how white culture hates children and how obnoxious and boring it is to just constantly hear fucking and I know it's not only white people do it, but it's a very white cultural thing to just feel completely at ease sneering about kids. I get it. If you don't like kids, you don't want them, that's fine. I would never force you to like them.
Speaker 1:But children exist in the world and actually they don't just exist in the world. They are vulnerable in the world. They have less means to their disposal than we do and as a community that cares about each other, we need to take care of the kids. And that doesn't just mean protesting a genocide although it definitely means that, but it means also if we're in a cafe just fucking sucking it up sometimes and yes, there can be obnoxious white parents who don't keep their kids in line, but that's not the kids' fault. Like we have to invite ourselves to be part of a collective where we see children.
Speaker 1:I believe the children are the free you are preaching to the converted, but what I was going to say was that, because I know that's such a white cultural thing to hate kids and every other non-white culture I've had the privilege and pleasure of being around and observing has really like loved kids, and kids have been a huge part of it. I always just thought, oh, that's just a cultural difference, because their culture is more like child friendly and more like collective and they understand community, which is true. But then I was thinking recently that children are resistance, right. So you look at your kid and you think I'm scared that he's going to lose his culture. And it's not just, it's not just about preserving the culture, for on an emotional level, for you it's resistance.
Speaker 1:It's that you have deepened yeah, you've deepened your understanding and your experience of survival, have you?
Speaker 2:read in in um the Sunday paper. Uh, my friend Zaina wrote a piece called Motherhood as Resistance and it's a really important piece, if you get a chance, sunday paper, motherhood as Resistance.
Speaker 2:And it is exactly what you're talking about how important our children are to the fabric of our society. And it's not just our own children, it's the children of our loved ones and the children around us. And you know, growing up, children were adopted Like we. Just, I don't remember a time where there weren't kids living in my home. You know, parents went away during the war or whatever, or came here.
Speaker 2:I was an unaccompanied minor for a part of my life where I lived with my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and I was away from my parents because of the way, the war and the childhood, and whilst I certainly now can acknowledge that there was a disconnect, I didn't have that paternal stuff. I never felt alone. Because our community loves children so passionately. My friend Zaina's children are my children. I would die for them, I would kill for them your child. You know, even when we talk about our children with each other, we really we ask about the babies, we ask about how they are. I really want to know how he is. It's not just, you know, has a little one. Yep, good, yeah, I want to see the videos. I want to see the photos I I want and that's something I really think that I would love Western culture right.
Speaker 1:I have. When I was doing my pre-chat with you meditation and I was writing because I write while I'm doing it like automatic writing and I have this bit in it that says your favourite times are lying with your child in bed and talking, cuddling, reading and that's just one little mention that I had in amongst a lot of things I mean, and look, that's the kind of thing that you could just assume to be true of all mothers.
Speaker 1:No, that's so like. I just saw it in my head as I was writing and it's like that's the time when you feel at peace, and you often don't feel at peace, but that's where you're like, this is my time with my kid and it's restorative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like of course we love each other's kids. It's you who know, like you know me implicitly. You know that about me. I don't think we've ever had that conversation directly, but you know me. That's what you've gleaned from me. You felt from me yeah, absolutely and and same. You know, I know that that is something you have with your little one.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he's my most important project in the world, for sure, like raising him up to be a good person. Yeah, I know that sounds really cliched, like you said, but cheesy or whatever.
Speaker 2:But it's equally the easiest thing I've ever done and the hardest thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just want to finish, I suppose, on that kind of idea of resistance and community as resistance and love as resistance. Love is a powerful act of survival and resistance and we are taught to believe that resistance and obviously it's in service to really oppressive structures to frame resistance as always a bad thing but we never talk about as a society. We never talk about as a society. We never talk about love as an act of resistance and community as a spirit, a spiritual survival kind of thing. But of course, what do we have if we don't have each other? What do we have if we don't have, even with you and me, like the, the, the evidence and the practice of what can happen and what beautiful things can grow between two people. If you actually just sit down and go, hey, I think we might be more similar than we are different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and there's this real look. I've seen this in the last 40 years of my life, where I've seen factions across the Middle East who would have once killed each other now working together through unity and love and shared conflict and trauma and whatever. You know, we're seeing a certain healing in that part of the world, which is really beautiful to me. But love and resistance, as you're telling me, you know, as you were talking, I imagine, during the war.
Speaker 2:Everyone's sitting around in my parents' house growing up, playing cards. The lights are out, there's no power, there's no running water, there's barely any food, but someone's found some canned meats and some crackers and they're having a party and someone is singing and someone is hanging out and everyone is hanging out and everyone is loving. And that love as resistance has kept generations going and will keep generations going, that sharing of people and sharing of space and this building that we're doing. And suddenly the internet has allowed us to connect across spans of time and space and it's just this really beautiful, magical time in the world where love is so important. And, yeah, I think you're right, love is resistance.
Speaker 1:Well, I love you, nadine. I love you too, and I'm so appreciative that you've spent this time with me today.
Speaker 2:I feel like we've talked and talked and didn't talk about any of the things you wanted, because I do this.
Speaker 1:No, it's, the best way to do a conversation is to just see what happens. You know, throw everything in the mix. I actually pulled a card for you before we started. Oh, what did I get? Well, I pulled the magician for you, which is a wonderful, you know, it's the first card in the major arcana in the tarot. But the magician is the magician. Is you exactly? The magician basically looks at everything on the table in front of them and goes what can I make with this? You know, it's all good. What can I make with this? How do I channel this power through me, you know, and my spiritual power, from up high? And I point my finger to the ground and I channel that into the ground. What can I build and what can I grow and how can I do it with just what I have? And that's you to a T. You look at everything and you think that's great. What can I make with it? And I love you. I love you too.
Speaker 2:You're going to make me cry, and I love you. I love you too.
Speaker 1:You're going to make me cry Untethered is hosted and produced by me, clementine Ford, with audio production and sound design by the incredible folks at Cardigan Creative. If you love what you've been listening to, don't forget to subscribe and you'll get new episodes dropped straight into your podcast listening box each week. Please consider rating and reviewing the show as well. It really helps to get podcasts out there so that more people can listen. You can also find me, clementine, on Substack and Instagram, with all of the details listed in the show notes. Until next time, stay untethered.