Untethered...with Clementine Ford
Untethered...with Clementine Ford
MARIEKE HARDY – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Growing Up
Marieke Hardy is a stalwart of the Australian creative scene, with a career in writing, performance and art spanning decades. As presenter of the podcast Marieke Hardy Is Going To Die, Marieke is fascinated by rituals of loss, longing and saying goodbye. In this intimate and beautiful conversation, Marieke and I explore the good, the bad and the ugly of growing up. We discuss our mutual (if independent) choice to estrange ourselves from a parent, the role of trauma in these decisions and what it means to form a ‘chosen family’. From learning how to apologise to learning how to assert boundaries, this is a wonderful opportunity to eavesdrop as two women with a friendship spanning almost twenty years discuss the things we’ve learned and what we would say to our younger selves.
Follow Marieke on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marieke_hardy
Check out Marieke’s Podcast “Marieke Hardy Is Going To Die”: https://www.instagram.com/goingtodiepod
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Contact: untetheredpod@gmail.com
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Become a direct subscriber of Untethered here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319318/support
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 everyone, and welcome back 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. This week, I am honored and thrilled to be joined in Untethered by one of Australia's greatest screenwriters, greatest art producers and just all round excellent fucking human beings.
Speaker 1:I have long been a fan of Marie Carty, but I've also been very grateful to long have been a friend of Marie Carty. She is inspiring, she's wonderful, she's whimsical and she carries her heart firmly and fully on her chest, and I absolutely adore her. She's the presenter of the podcast. Marie Cardi is Going to Die. She's fascinated by rituals of loss, longing and saying goodbye, and in this conversation we explore the good, the bad and the ugly of growing up, and we discuss our mutual if made independently choice of estranging ourselves from a parent. That may be familiar to some of you, that may be familiar to some of you, it may be triggering to some of you, but it may also be something that some of you are considering doing yourself, and we hope that you find some solidarity and connection and love in this amazing conversation. Welcome, Marie Carty to Untethered. Welcome, Marie Carty, to Untethered. Marie Carty, welcome to Untethered. It's so delightful to see your beautiful face.
Speaker 2:I love you. Any excuse to hang out with you. I mean, you could have just said let's go for a walk and eat a hot dog, and it would have been like, yes, okay, that's fine, but let's do this instead. Let's do that as well.
Speaker 1:Good idea. Marie, how have you been Really good?
Speaker 2:Great, great. No, I mean the usual challenges and obstacles that come with being alive, but um, but you know, you would know. As you get older, your toolkit gets more and more robust and you know what to reach for in those challenging moments.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a really good place to start because, just to give a little bit of background to anyone listening to this, I have known Marique.
Speaker 1:I've known of Marique for probably about 15 years I'd say, no, 20 years, I reckon about 20 years, um, and then we've been friends maybe for about 15 years, I think, and I was just saying to you a few weeks ago when we had dinner that I remember, when I'm back in the days when I used to read your blog reasons you will hate me I remember you posting about turning 27 and you're like, today is myth birthday and it's so interesting to kind of you know, you and I both in our forties now. It's so wonderful to get to the point where you can look back on these younger women and feel such like glorious love and affection for them, because, of course, when you're in your twenties, you you just sort of stumbling blindly through the world. I mean, you still are to an extent now as well, but I feel like there's something so beautiful about being able to reflect on that past version of ourself and really send her the love that she needed at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's celebration, but it's also protection.
Speaker 2:I feel very protective of that person. Even you saying what my blog's name was, which I thought was very funny reasons you will hate me and I I mean, I don't think anyone should hate me now. I try really hard and and you know, of course people do have their opinions, but you know I try hard to be a nice person. I fuck that up sometimes and I try and take accountability and try harder, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't call something that I was working on that. Now my self-talk is is much stronger and I think at 27, I probably thought there were a lot of reasons that people would hate me.
Speaker 1:It's like a protective shield I think that you put up, isn't it when I mean, for a start, I don't know how you felt, but in my twenties I hated a lot of me too, you know, I was so agitated in my own skin and I felt in so many ways like I, I failed on some level of being a woman, you know, being a good woman, um. And so it's kind of almost like that preemptive be the funny one, be the. You get the joke before anyone else can make the joke. And whereas now I feel like I'd love to go deep with you on the earnestness of love and how beautiful it is to get to the point of embracing that earnestness, Well, I mean, gosh, there's a lot to unpack there.
Speaker 2:And, yes, you're right, you get the jibe in before anyone else could put it in the quote-unquote Murdoch press or otherwise. But also for me. That reasons you will hate me, and I barely use the word hate now, barely ever, because it's a very violent word to me. I say cunt more than I say hate really, but for me it was a self-fulfilling prophecy is that I would act like an arsehole because I thought I was an arsehole, and then that thus the cycle continues. You know, when you self-sabotage relationships or friendships or you act out in a way that you think speaks to your inner monster.
Speaker 2:And I remember when I started the mountain that is, the lifelong therapy journey that we're on and the privilege of being able to access therapy in the first place and really speaking to a therapist about something terrible was inside me something dark and monstrous and sort of making the space to turn around and look at it and it wasn't really there.
Speaker 2:You know there's nothing, but you run from that for a long time or you want to block others from seeing it, so you act in a way that they will leave or write you off and then they never get to see that terrible, monstrous part. So as soon as I realized there was no monstrous part, that was an untethering in itself. You know, that was a liberation in itself and the earnestness that's come with stronger mental health, with accountability, with acceptance of who I am instead of who I'm trying to externally show the world. You know, my husband, when I met him, referred to me as a weird little earnest beauty and I thought that was, that was very nice. That's why I mean I love working in America as a screenwriter. But that earnestness in Hollywood I'm amongst my people there the sarcasm not so much, but the earnestness definitely.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time I went to America and I was in New York and I was 28, I think, and I just sort of started writing for the public and someone asked me in a bar, what do you do? And I said, oh, I'm a writer, but I'm not a very good one. And I remember the look of because, of course I mean, part of that was my own insecurity, but also part of that is that Australian tall poppy thing where you cut yourself down before anyone else. Can I remember looking at their face and they were just so baffled at why I would say something like that. And then when I started to realize that in America you know, certainly in like places like New York and LA people talk themselves up because you have to, that he must have thought that I was just really fucking bad for me to say something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't get it at all. That was I mean, that's Hollywood and I had to learn that as well. I mean, I've been working there on and off for about 12 years now and I used to go into meetings saying you don't want to hire me, I'm a piece of shit. Lol, because that's funny, that's how we talk in Australia. You know, like you don't want this dickhead ruining your company, like, yeah, I'm just a fuckwit. And then you, you would see those baffled expressions and they go, oh okay, I won't hire you and you have to steal yourself to then walk into. We call them the water bottle meetings in hollywood, because you get a tiny little water bottle, not environmentally friendly at all but and uh, you go.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I'm sorry, I've dropped my award for best writer ever on the floor on my way and I'll just pick it up and you hope that no other Australian sees you engaging in this horrible self-puffing up practice. But I mean, you know, I work a lot on my inner self-talk. So now I think, yeah, you want to hire me. Yeah, you want to date me. I'm so nice and I try really hard.
Speaker 1:You were born into a sort of a familial legacy. You know your grandfather's frank hardy um. You were a child actor. You were in the henderson kids. You had a role in neighbors I'm I don't want necessarily for you to go too much into that, unless you want to, but I would love to know what the process is, I mean as as a woman getting older in the world. Anyway, there's there's always some kind of aspect of coming to meet yourself, learning who you are as opposed to what everyone else thinks you are or who everyone else wants you to be. But for you in particular, I think you're one of the rare examples of people who, even from a very young age, you were obviously performing as an actor, and was there a process of having to disentangle who you were through other people's eyes, in light of that performance, to really figure out who you are as marieke hardy today?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I was performing as a human being as much as I was performing as a and look, you know, my self-talk is good, but I'm also I'm not a very good actor. That's not me negging myself, that is, that's just how it is. I'm a, I'm a good writer, I can write. I know what I'm good at. But acting was and it's so interesting again, that evolution into understanding that I'm a shy person, that I'm an introvert, that I don't like. I mean the book club that I did for 11 years I absolutely loved, but in terms of acting in front of the camera, not my comfort space at all. So you know, really I'm just trying to understand the person whose drive was doing that for so long, from the ages of 8 to 18, which is the most physically awkward period of my life which is captured forever on film. But yeah, it comes with.
Speaker 2:People understand or have an idea of Frank, my grandfather, who was a very prominent hard left communist author. He was declared a public enemy of the Catholic Church, which I'm quite proud of. Actually, my great-auntie, who was the first woman to say fuck on Australian television. I mean, there was an element of ratbaggery around the family name and of course I meet people now who knew Frank or met Frank, or I was in conversation with Jim Magini from Midnight Oil at Byron Writers Festival recently and he went oh you, frank Hardy's granddaughter. I've read, read all his books, and so there's the expectation that I mean I'm nothing like Frank. You know, I hope I'm a bit of a shit stirrer, but you know he was like a man of his generation and um, so yeah, there's a definite sense of disentanglement, as it were, um, to understand that I'm just me you know, I want to talk to you about, um, endings and beginnings as well, because so much of what you're saying is making me think of that cycle of, you know, coming to an end of a particular project.
Speaker 1:You've done and created so many amazing things in your life and they've run their course and then you've created something new you know a lot of listeners will know you from women of letters, um, and then you've gone on to create better say, sorry, better off said, which is this beautiful, I would say, like a natural evolution really, of women of letters, because not only is it it doesn't invite everyone to speak, but it's this beautiful acknowledgement that time on this planet is very finite and we have only a certain amount of it to be able to say the things that we need to say, and a lot of that, I think as well, comes from the maturity of age, the ending of youth and the beginning of something that recognizes that more ephemeral kind of nature of living. What are the things that you have not said that you regret not saying now, if you feel comfortable going down that path.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, ama, babe, ama. Well, I hope I've said a lot of them only because and it's interesting when I look back at my body of work because I've been more publicly discussing death in the creative sphere with the podcast about death and Better Off Said, which is about living eulogies and a lot of death stuff but then I look back at Laid, which is a TV show I wrote 13 years ago with Kirsty Fisher about a woman who everyone she's ever had sex with in her life starts dying in the order she's had sex with them, which has just been remade in the US, which is wild to us. Um, with Stephanie Sue from Everything, everywhere, all at Once, and Zosia Mamet.
Speaker 1:It's wild, how wild it's actually unbelievable, your life. Sometimes I look at it and I think it's like knowing two separate people it's weird, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I know the weird thing is, though, I deserve it, so it's fine you absolutely do.
Speaker 1:I love that energy.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, you know, and I wonder if it's the same with you when you look back at essays you've written or pieces you've written, and you start seeing a thread through that.
Speaker 2:For a long time, for me it was sex and sexuality, and I look at a really public wrestling with a sense of trying to understand what sex and sexuality was, and then I see this death motif keep coming up and I just look back at that creative body of work and I go, okay, there's something that you're needing to process and thank you, creative self for me, trying to put it on the page or put it on the stage or whatever it is. There's an ongoing theme there. So that in itself has forced me to reconcile saying things before it's too late and the loss of a beautiful friend, mike Noga, in 2020, who was someone that I had a beautiful, chaotic, romantic entanglement with many, many years ago and who died very unexpectedly. And I watched his funeral on zoom and I realized I'd said everything I needed to say to him and vice versa. We'd had a real moment in the previous year where we'd said I'm sorry and I love you and I forgive you and and that felt really great.
Speaker 2:Um, not great that he died, obviously that was awful, but to know that we're all going to die. And it made me reflect on some unspoken words and some unfinished business. And I wrote quite a few letters and emails off the back of that, saying sorry and taking some accountability for my own behaviour and actions in the past. There are some people who those words don't need to be said because I don't think it's safe for them or me for us to have contact again. But I mean, three weeks ago I wrote to someone from my past who I haven't spoken to in five years and just said just want you to know we're clear, there's no hate at my end anymore. I wish you all the best to know we're clear, there's no hate at my end anymore. I wish you all the best.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry for my part in what happened and that felt great and I said it might not be safe for you to write back and that's fine. And they didn't, and so I'd like to think that you know if I leave here and get hit by a bus. I mean you certainly know how I feel about you. I'm very forward in telling people how I feel about them. Words of affirmation is my love language, so I'm always telling people I love them or thank you, or I'm sorry, no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is. That's a really hard one to wrestle with, isn isn't it? Um well, we may as well just get straight into that estrangement now you've opened the door on it.
Speaker 1:I had, uh, I had some other ways to kind of lead into it, but actually one of the cards that I pulled for you in terms of discussion topics today was the 10 of swords, and the 10 of swords is like it's it's a very dramatic card in the tarot, but it also signifies not just a brutal ending, but this person lying on the ground with ten swords sticking out of them, where they kind of it's kind of like you've hit rock bottom, there's absolutely nowhere to go.
Speaker 2:I thought that was just like me on the dating app and they were all like dicks or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's just dating. But the good thing about the ten of swords is that the sun is rising in the background, so it's sort of this sense of like you know, tomorrow is another day, the the dark, the darkest moment before the dawn, but I think that what you're talking about, that feeling of it's. It's interesting because I also last week sent one of those apology texts to somebody, and, yeah, you know, know, it was an apology that I've been meaning to make for a while, that I knew that I needed to make for a while but that I wasn't brave enough to make. And that reminds me, just quickly, of something really profound that my son said when he was. You know, children say the darndest things, but they actually are a very fascinating study in the moment that something clicks for a person, expressed in a beautifully earnest, childlike way. And I remember when he was about two, two or three, maybe, maybe three, we were at a play center one of the worst places on earth and he was playing with his little friend and and he pushed her off of something and I got really mad because I'm, perhaps fairly or unfairly, really hard on him when it comes to, you know, navigating those physical boundaries, particularly. And I'm particularly conscious because he's a boy, and I'm particularly conscious of how he treats other children and girls especially, which you know. I have to also remember that he's just a kid.
Speaker 1:Um, anyway, he, he ran away from me because I was cross and and I was still learning how to be a mother which I'm still learning how to do now and I went and I found him and I was really mad and I said to him that's not okay, you can't just do that. I said you have to go and apologize to her right now. And he was crying and he went to bury his head in this mat that he was lying on, and I went to sort of storm off because that's what my parents did, that's how they parented. They got mad, you felt ashamed and they were like well, I'm not going to hug you because you've done the wrong thing. And as I turned to do it, I sort of thought oh no, that's not, you got to break those cycles.
Speaker 1:And I turned around and I crawled in next to him and I gave him a hug, which immediately, of course, he just kind of collapsed into my shoulder and started sobbing, because I think that reminding children that even if you're cross, you'll still always love them is so important. And he kind of collapsed in me and I soothed and softened my voice and I said, darling, you know, it's okay, I love you, but it's just not okay to push people and I really would like you to go and apologize to her. And he sort of fiercely shook his head, no, and I really would like you to go and apologize to her. And he sort of fiercely shook his head, no. And I said, is it because it's really scary to say sorry? And he said yes, and he looked at me and he said it's scary, like going into a haunted house. And I thought what a fucking amazing way to describe what it feels like to say sorry to someone.
Speaker 2:Can I ask what you were scared of in sending that text?
Speaker 1:Nothing retaliatory. I think I was scared of confronting myself, I was scared of acknowledging it's, like all that shadow stuff. You know like that person inside where you know like that, that person inside where you're like, well, sometimes you do this because you're embarrassed or because you're, you know all of our negative aspects, or rather, um, the aspects of ourselves that we don't want other people to see. And I think I was just scared that in naming it I was kind of just having to bring that aspect out. Um, but I but like you, I said I don't expect to reply, it's, but I just really wanted to say this and I haven't received a reply, and that's okay. You know this. That's I don't feel to be. To be clear, this is my personal feeling. I don't feel absolved because I just said this text, but I do feel like at least voicing it.
Speaker 2:Even if that person stays angry forever, at least they don't stay angry and also feel unacknowledged, maybe that's the wisdom is the acknowledgement of things have you had people apologize to you that you haven't replied to I?
Speaker 1:have. But I'd have to say that probably the apologies I've received that I haven't replied to haven't been out of any kind of fuck you, I'm not apologizing, I'm not responding. It's it actually weirdly. In some cases I've had apologies from people where I'm like, oh, I didn't feel. You know, I didn't really feel slighted by that at all and and you probably have had a similar experience with this too because you're a public figure, but someone as well, whose writing has definitely stirred angry, fevered emotions, namely and largely in men.
Speaker 1:Throughout the years I've received some apologies from readers who maybe have said something about me publicly or who've pushed back on something in a way that they later came to feel was unfair, or um, or you know, I've received this beautiful card from someone at um, the Newcastle Writers Festival this year, and he was actually volunteering with the festival and he came and he handed me this card and he said, you know, I want you to read this later, but, um, yeah, I just wanted to give this to you and I read it later and it was.
Speaker 1:He'd sort of arced up at something I'd written, I think, a few years ago and kind of was in the car to remember him saying that he'd been cocky about it or something, but then, reading more of my things, he'd come to realize that he was in the wrong and it doesn't really matter, because I didn't even really remember what he was talking about, but I appreciated that for him, the process of coming to that understanding and writing that card and making amends for him was important for his sense of himself, and so it's. It can be nice on the other side to be sort of party to that too, where sometimes you're like I really have no recollection of this at all, but I'm glad to have been some key part, I suppose, in in you becoming, as we all are trying to do, a better, more evolved human.
Speaker 2:It's amazing of him as well, like really proud of him for doing that. That would have taken courage and really speaks to his value system. Just going on that thing you said about, there are parts of ourselves that we don't want others to see, and I think that's what I struggled with for so long, because I had a lot of trouble with emotional regulation for a long time. I get very overwhelmed and act out in various capacities and then anyone that had seen that I just wanted to get away from them. I didn't want to sit and look at it, I didn't want to sit and reflect on it. It proved that I was that monster that I was running from.
Speaker 2:I went they saw the monster. No, I have to get away from them. And now I really understand that every day I'm doing my best. I'm a product of really intense years of trauma. I have complex PTSD and some days, you know, are not amazing. But, as you would know you know this so well you can't control how other people react to you and what you do now. That doesn't mean you should. You know, march through life giving double fingers in the air all the time. I think it's if you feel like you've hurt someone or you've upset them or your behavior is not being true to your value system, reflecting on it. You know, know articulating that, apologising. I had an incident a couple of weeks ago, an incident that makes it sound police.
Speaker 2:I killed a man no no, no, I was away with friends and just really hormonal and not quite coping at this really late dinner and we were very far from home and I felt stuck and obviously it was bringing up all these things. I felt kind of panicky because I was an hour from. I just wanted to be home, I didn't want to be out, I was hungry, I didn't get enough to eat. All this stuff was coming up and I thought I was dealing with it but I think I was just like slumped in a corner and to the point where the next day two of my best girlfriends were like what was going on with you? And I was so mortified and embarrassed I felt like a surly child.
Speaker 2:I felt like I'd been sulking at an otherwise lovely group dinner and we were supposed to have lunch that day and I said, listen, I'm just going to sit out lunch. I'm going to meditate for a bit because I felt very overwhelmed emotionally. I felt shame and horror and embarrassment and self-flagellation and I felt it kind of spiraling and I thought I don't want to go, I don't want to be around them just yet. I want to sit and reflect on what was going on last night. I want to do some self-forgiveness and try and really speak to myself in a gentle way and understand what was going on.
Speaker 2:Um, and then when they came home, I cried and I explained and said I was really sorry and explained what was going on. And and then, when they came home, I cried and I explained and said I was really sorry and explain what was going on. And they were beautiful about it. And I went, wow, that's being accountable for you know, that's that's sitting with a way that I hadn't acted in a way that is true to my value system but was definitely part of probably inner child stuff. Or you know that I wasn't quite able to meditate my way out of or breathe my way out of in that moment. And I forgive that person, you know, but I was, I just wanted to run. You know when, when they acknowledged that they'd noticed that I was not acting my usual cheery self, uh, that was mortifying. I was really embarrassed.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting because I mean, I feel a lot of shame around certain behaviours, usually involving, you know, drinking a little bit too much, and I would have to say that I'm not an aggressive drunk. I know that might surprise people, but it's more just that sense of being too annoying, you know like too enthusiastic about things or whatever, and I think that probably you and I share some fear of that. It's not sometimes it's not about people seeing the monster inside it's, people seeing the child, the enthusiasm, the kind of, the naked need for love and affection and care. Um, I'm interested in how meditation has cause.
Speaker 1:I think you were one of the ones who encouraged me to get into meditation, which I do daily now and I love, and I know it's not for everybody. Some people can't, just can't, they feel more agitated by it. That's fine. But meditation for you has become a daily practice as well, I think. What are some of the things beyond being able to, I guess, navigate those moments like the ones you just described, what are some of the things that sitting with yourself has helped you to make peace with?
Speaker 2:I mean, I've spoken about this publicly a few times, so I'm okay saying it now, but I nearly didn't make it through 2015. That was a really, really tough year and I didn't have the toolkit that I have now, and it got very close to me not making it through the end of that year and I really sat and assessed what I needed, which was therapy and meditation and a better relationship with my body and a more forgiving relationship with my brain. And I'm a workhorse. I've got a very strong work ethic and I made staying alive my job. So, meditation I clawed my way to it. You know, if I didn't do it, I probably wouldn't be here to be honest with you at that end of 2015, and I guess what it's given me in the intervening nine years is is a better sense of myself. I get to sit. I've become, you know, I extricated my way out of a really complicated, toxic, codependent relationship and became my own wife and my own church and my own home, which I also had to do because of being estranged from my family and it gives me a better understanding of the little guy inside me just doing their best. All the time.
Speaker 2:I'm like what do you need? Are you hungry? Why are you active? Why did you say that? That wasn't a very nice thing to say? Should we sit and think about that for a moment? So you know, like as going through perimenopause, what do you need? How is my body changing? What, like? Let's, let's talk, let's not be enemies. So having that time and space to really sit with I mean it's wise mind practice as well. You talked about, you know, tuning in that to me is sitting going. How do I really feel, not, how do do I wish I felt, how do I think I should feel, um, how do I aspire to feel? It's what's actually coming up for me and you need to make for me. I need to make the time and space to have some listening there.
Speaker 1:I think the beautiful thing for me about meditation as well is not just that time and space for listening, but there's a real kindness to it that I I find with meditation I don't it's. It's not an experience for me of sitting there and going well, you giant fucking sack of shit, you haven't done this or this or this, or why are you?
Speaker 1:why are you trying to meditate, you big fucking loser like all of that meditation language no there is a real sense of okay, well, I'm just trying my best here, even with this meditation practice. All right, we've, we've.
Speaker 1:We've sort of hinted at it a couple of times, but let's go circled around, let's talk about, let's go right down the drain in it the estrangement uh the drain that is my family let's talk, talk about and that's very Ten of Swords energy, but also coincides with the second card I pulled for you, which is justice, the justice card, which, interestingly, is the 11, number 11 in the major arcana, so we've got 10 and 11. The next step on the justice in an ending and why sometimes cutting those relationships off is about justice for yourself. What prompted you to become willingly estranged?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, look, I am open, talking about this. If I cry, I'm okay about it too and I really trust you, which is interesting because it's been nine years now and I do feel a lot of peace about it and a lot of strength and a lot of work. But you know, it's like any grief, every now and then you think you're okay and it might bubble up. So just warning you that that might happen.
Speaker 1:I just want to reassure you. You don't have to go into great detail.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I'd like to, because I think it's important, especially because, you know, the main person I'm estranged from is my mother, my blood mother, and that's a really complicated relationship to navigate, I think for any woman particularly, or AFAB, and making a permanent estrangement from that person is a very hard thing to explain to people, because people who have a different relationship with their mother I mean, I know, having talked to you so much about your mother and you've created so much of an empathetic understanding of who she was after her death but that was still had its complications. But there's a piece made between you two I, I think, even though she's not around really acknowledging that a relationship is not going to change or get better or is not safe, which is the case for me it's not. It's not a safe relationship, um, but people go, but that's your bloody mum, that's your mum, you got, you got. You gotta say sorry to your mum, you gotta make peace with your mum and you just think, no, I don't, I don't owe you or anyone else creating what your version of a mother-daughter relationship looks like and I get to decide what my emotional safety looks like. And honestly, clem, these last nine years have been the best and happiest and safest years of my life, which is bittersweet in a way.
Speaker 2:I'm an only child, so you know I have a relationship with my father, but it's intermittent and not what I would like it to be, because they are still together. So my father and I see each other maybe every three months for lunch and don't talk about anything difficult. And I see each other maybe every three months for a lunch and don't talk about anything difficult, and I have to accept that that's that's the only relationship I get with him. I pushed for a long time because I have a real aversion to things not being said, because our family really and I'm not just talking about my immediate family, I'm talking about the extended family on my mother's side just suffocated under the weight of really horrific secrets for years and years and years, and I am and was the whistleblower in our family, something that I'm incredibly proud of and have been able to reflect on how brave that person was, because it happened a few times at eight and at 14, so I was really little and still learning. I have a lot of space for that brave little fella.
Speaker 2:I'm okay, um, so me wanting to talk more to my father about things or say why. But I want, I want this to be a different relationship. He didn't come to my wedding, he was invited to my wedding. He didn't come to my wedding, he was invited to my wedding. He didn't come to my Writers Festival, he was invited to my Writers Festival. I think those things are too complicated and difficult for him to sit with. So I've had to grieve that and really understand that that's all he has the capacity to give is quarterly lunches where we talk about books and politics, and that's that quarterly lunches where we talk about books and politics, and that's that. Um, so I've had to make peace with that and I also have to sit with as anyone does, as you do, as someone who his mother is dead and has a complicated relationship with their father.
Speaker 2:Yeah, christmases and birthdays and Mother's Day and Father's Day, which we all know are kind of like sentimental wallpapering days and there's always you know it's a hallmark day and what about men's day, all that kind of stuff. But those days they're easier for me to navigate now. I used to find Mother's Day really complicated. I used to find Christmas Day really complicated, because I grew up with big family Christmases and I remember the first time I spent a Christmas on my own, which was it 2015? It might've been 2014. But I thought I just have to stay alive this day. I just have to do whatever it takes to stay alive.
Speaker 2:And I got out of bed and I drove to Edgar's Mission, which is an animal rescue shelter that Women of Letters raised a lot of money for, and I volunteered for the day. I shoveled lots of animal shit and was near pigs and happy cows, and then all the beautiful kooks who volunteered for Edgar's Mission. We all had a Christmas lunch under a tree, and then I eventually got to a friend's house. I just white knuckled it through. That was it. I thought I've got to take whatever I need to get through today. And now I had a Christmas on my own in 2019 in Bali.
Speaker 2:I took, I had the best day and I was by then. I was like look at me and I just I went to. I took myself to Adiga station. I was reading a really good book. I remember there was a family sitting next to me at this restaurant going, would you like to join us? And I said no. I was so happy.
Speaker 2:So I definitely had to white knuckle through a lot of those significant anniversaries for a long time. I don't feel that as much now, but there are times where I had some health problems. This year I'm okay now, touch wood, but um, for three months I was quite ill and those are the times when you think no one's, really no one cares. You know, obviously my husband cares and his beautiful family, which is complicated for me to even allow their love in because I love them so much. But I fear it will get taken away If we break up. They go with him. He gets Christmases and all those days.
Speaker 2:But I've realized I'm parented in so many directions, not just self-parenting, which I know you've done a lot of work on, which is liberating. Self-parenting is a liberating exercise and process. But I have a beautiful woman named Andrea, who is like a surrogate mother to me, who walked me down the aisle at my wedding. She's in her 70s so I get to talk to her about aging and bodies and death and loneliness. I get to talk to Eamon's mum about a lot of these things. Andrea will text me saying it's your doctor's appointment today. Don't forget to call me afterwards.
Speaker 2:And my friend Simone. Her dad went and picked something up off Facebook marketplace for me. I just went. These are mum and dad things that are being done. I have those parenting relationships not just within myself, but within my chosen family and my community. So while you'll always mourn a blood parent relationship, especially because I'm an only child, you know, that's it. They don't have any other kids and, and I think for a long time, that unfortunately added to the monster narrative, because I thought, well, if, if I'm easy to not protect and to let go of, then there must be something very wrong with me. Yeah, um, and I don't think that anymore. I think there's something very wrong with her, but that's her journey and not mine.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to let you speak through that whole thing. But I just want you to know that I, if I could reach through the computer screen right now and just and next time I see you, I'm just going to do it. You know that I just love you so much.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think that what you're saying about the chosen family is, to a to a degree it doesn't matter how much work you do the grief that you feel over consciously ending those relationships with family members who have let you down repeatedly, over and over, and who don't seem to understand what it is that you're even asking of them, which is really at a very basic level. Could you please just protect me, could you please just choose me, which shouldn't be that difficult to ask of a parent, one of the? I mean, I'm a big fan personally and I think you're probably the same of seeing it's a little bit Pollyanna, but seeing the silver lining in things you know well, what have I learned from this? What do I? This happened and I don't like it, but what do we learn from it? What can I? What has it led to?
Speaker 1:And I think that what you're demonstrating about creating those familial relationships and bonds with people like Andrea and, you know, your friend's dad, who picked the thing up from Marketplace Pete, pete, good old Pete is actually the expansive nature and magic of love, and that is that, yes, we grieve those familial bonds, but isn't it wonderful as well to know that it's not only family who can fulfill those roles, because it also means that you don't have any biological children of yourselves. But I think that what you do out in the world, Marie, the bonds that you create with people and the art that you make, that magic that you put out there, is actually creating that love in so many people. And it's a really nice way, I think, to kind of think more expansively about legacy, about connections, about how we move through the world, the lessons we learn about what it means to love in the world and ultimately, even if you are making those choices to end relationships or to you know, people would mistakenly say it's holding onto anger. It's not. It's holding onto yourself. It's saying I value and I matter and I'm going to protect myself. But actually what you're doing is you're saying the most important thing I can learn in this life and the most important thing I can use in this life and leave for other people is love and care and kindness. And however I have to do that, that's what I'm going to dedicate my life to doing.
Speaker 1:I was thinking yesterday, I was riding around and contemplating all of this because, thanks, by the way, one of the amazing things that meditation does is turn you into a complete Pollyanna, but I was. I was riding around and I was thinking about the importance of love, particularly in the time that we're living in now, where everything is just so imbued with anger and and hostility and agitation and I'm not as well equipped as you are to not using the word hate I'm still working on that but I was thinking about the importance of love and just saying over and over to myself when I create everything with love, love creates everything with me. And there's another thing as well that I've been saying for a while, which is with care I can create anything and with care I create everything. And I think having that reminder of you know someone like Andrea finding you and going well, Marit's my surrogate daughter. I don't know if she's got children herself, no, she doesn't have kids and I don't even know that.
Speaker 2:She'd refer to me as that and she'd probably take umbrage at me calling her surrogate mother. She's like no, no.
Speaker 1:We're friends. We're friends.
Speaker 2:But they're no oh no. We're more than friends. It's a familial relationship, but it's an undefined familial relationship. We are not a traditional mother-daughter model. It's just that I feel that there's someone out there who cares if I'm sick, who will say don't forget to you know, get your shot or whatever it is you know, and I feel so lucky to have that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I really love as well how it kind of again going back to that word expansive, it really expands the notion of what it means to fall in love too. I mean, you're a very loving person. You love with your full heart, I think, and whether or not that's been a process for you to get to that point I don't know. But I look at you and I just see like this huge hearted person, but we're so limited. One of the reasons why I wanted to make this podcast, especially for um, the kind of listeners who I know are going to listen and tune in, is to see how much more you know, how many more possibilities there are for them to be people in the world, for them to love in the world, for them to be adventurous and courageous and, you know, make their mark and make themselves. I know it's a cliche, but the main character. I think that exemplifying all of the different ways that we can fall ferociously in love and it not like romantic love, sexual love is just one tiny aspect of that, because really you and Andrea, more than anything you could say, you've fallen in love with each other and that's, that's a beautiful thing, to think that for the rest of your life you could live in a way where you are constantly just falling in love with people.
Speaker 1:I saw the most beautiful thing the other day from this woman who she sort of had this caption on Instagram and I'm just going to paraphrase but she said that what happened after she turned 50 was that she started hiking more, she started camping more, she started reading more. I do this and this and this. And the last line she said was and I fall in love very easily. And I looked at it and I thought it was a striking moment for me because for a long time I've kind of protected my emotions and feelings, particularly in a romantic sense. But I looked at it and I thought that's what I want. I want to fall in love easily, and not just with lovers, but with everyone. I want to fall in love. I want love to just be so easy to come by in my life that I can look at someone and think there is something I can find in you that I could fall in love with.
Speaker 2:It is easy to come. I mean, you know soulmates. I think Andrea and I are soulmates. You and I are probably soulmates, so you know, like soulmates are abundant for sure. And I mean I fall in friendship love all the time and I fall hard um, all the time. I, you know, you meet someone and you get really excited and I will say I really want us to be friends, like someone on a primary school. Yeah, like, can we be friends? I really want to be your friend. I'm not going to be cool about it, um, and I love that. That's really exciting to me. Um, and you're right, I mean it's look, I have always loved very ferociously.
Speaker 2:What I haven't been great at and I think you were kind of implying the similar is letting someone in, because the pattern that was set for me is letting someone in means that they would hurt you or you know, and make you unsafe. So why would I want to do that? And it's part of what I've been working on with Eamon and his family is like how do I let them love me? Because I so want to be loved and cared for. I'd love someone to look after me when I was sick or say, oh, I'll do that.
Speaker 2:But I've built up such a self-protective little castle that I live in. It is very difficult to get past that moat. I am independent, I don't need anyone, and that's a narrative that I don't need anyone, I can do it all myself because if slash when they go, I'll be okay. Yep, I'm not going to be relying on them for anything and that's really that's probably going to be a life's work for me is how to allow that love and care in, because it doesn't come naturally and, unfortunately, as a result of my childhood, I've got a ferocious independence and that's held me in good stead.
Speaker 2:And I do want to talk about, when you said, what an offer is for people who might listen to this, who might take something from this that they need. It's not hard for me to talk about this at all because I've had a lot of therapy of what we've been talking about today estrangement from family, um, fucking up, um, acting out, uh is okay. But I've realized from losing people in my life, at friendships or lovers, or because I've been grown up in public, everyone just assumes that you're functioning. It's like a public external hype. There she's in the paper, she's on the telly, she's on the radio. Those are confident in my life.
Speaker 2:What when I was more public and you know you and I've talked about the last maybe five or so years I've stepped back and it's been a really happy, healing time for me to not be so public. Facing those probably 15, 20 years of my life when I was in Frankie magazine, I was in the Age I was on Triple J, I was on Triple R, I was on the book show Were probably the most emotionally chaotic, broken, unhappy, complex years of my life. And this beautiful little silver haired fox that you see before you now, who people in the supermarket go you look a little bit like that marika harvey from the telly. Marika, marika harvey that I'm so much more sane and mentally healthy and emotionally happy. Uh, but that's really hard and I know I don't even think just public facing people in my life, people my lovers and my partners and my friends went. Well, you'll look at you, you're on the television and you're.
Speaker 2:You know I'm, I can, I can chat good game, but inside was an absolute inferno, like I was an absolute chaos demon. I had not reconciled anything in my past and behaved accordingly. Any of those wounds were just sitting right there in my throat and vomited out on unstructured occasions which I would then just run off to the next person. I think that I would say there are still people now who don't understand that about me, people who I've lost from those times, and all I can do is just keep going and be better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, I feel that so strongly for different ways, um, and not so much necessarily chaotic, explosive behavior with my personal relationships, but definitely chaotic explosions in public. Um, you know, a short-tempered impulsive, my impulsivity as well, and I think partly that was. You know, a few years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD. So everyone who's kind of got that experience, particularly being in mid age and making that realization about themselves, a lot of stuff becomes very clear, particularly that childhood stuff of like, you know, feeling like you're going to be annoying to people or that once they that you're just too much, too much energy for them to be around all that kind of stuff, around all that kind of stuff, I would say that my, even now I can get on a stage and I can hold a willing audience in the palm of my hand. Great, on a stage, I'm great, I'm charming, I'm, I can flirt with an audience, all of that. And the moment it's just me.
Speaker 1:My mom always used to quote Rita Hayworth saying they go to bed with Gilda and they wake up with me. You know, not to necessarily compare myself to Rita Hayworth, but that sense of it's so much easier to perform a version of yourself that you think people will like and to believe in it while you're doing it. But when it's just you, I always got the feeling that I would be unpeeled like an onion, and the closer someone got to the centre, it wasn't even necessarily that I would be unpeeled like an onion, and the closer someone got to the center it wasn't even necessarily that they would see a monster. I mean, maybe that that that's clearly your experience of that, that monstrous nature. It's that they would see the center and they would go, huh, it's a bit boring, isn't it? It's not very sparkly, it's not very, isn't it? It's not very sparkly, it's not very. No, no, I don't really want to be around that, because I grew up with um and I don't want to compare my experience to yours because I I had, I, you know, didn't suffer abuse and I and I had parents who made sure that I was fed and all that kind of stuff. But I also had, I took care of myself a lot, you know, emotionally, physically. I was the youngest of three kids, sure, but my mother, as I've spoken to you about before and on your amazing podcast as well, marie Carty is going to die, which we'll talk about a little bit soon. But my mum was really depressed and she had lots of trauma inherited from our own childhood. That's kind of carried through to me, um, so she slept a lot of the time, so during the day we would take care of ourselves.
Speaker 1:Uh, I went to boarding school for two years when I was seven and a half, which is just slightly younger than my son now, which just and not not even like in the same country, like a completely separate country. And I think, just as an adult now, particularly with a child myself, I'm really starting to realize how insane that is Like to send a seven-year-old away and expect, and yes, they'll be taken care of by staff, you don't know. I mean, my boarding school was actually embroiled in a, an abuse. Um, I was going to say scandal, but that's such an awful way to reduce it, but you know the print anyway, I don't want to get into that, um, but I just had this experience growing up a lot. You know my parents would say come down and say good night. If they had like a dinner party, very 80s kind of thing to do, come down and say goodnight. If they had like a dinner party, very eighties kind of thing to do, come down and say goodnight but don't stick around, because we love you but no one else is interested in what you have to say and I don't think that they meant it to be, you know, sort of patronizing.
Speaker 1:Or I think that they were both people my dad especially, which is one of the reasons I don't speak to him anymore very deeply conscious about what other people thought of him and that's all of his own shit to do with his own childhood deeply kind of enamoured of his parents, who you know is one way to respond to. You know, my dad used to joke we got a beating on Fridays, whether or not we deserved it, just to keep us in line. You know, 1950s, western Queensland kind of style parenting. But his inability to deal with that definitely filtered over into his parenting to the point that the the final straw really for me was that, um, a conversation that I had with him at the end of the last year. I mean he just sort of exclusively watches Sky News now and has been.
Speaker 1:It's been very, it's been experienced for me as a betrayal in terms of his political views, because I can no longer see a trace of the man who raised his daughters to to be in control of their own bodies, to be able to make decisions about their own bodies, to believe that they could go out and do anything and be anything. And I spoke to him about how Sky News was going to be doing a segment on me because of my pro-Palestinian views and I said to him it's just outrageous that they're trying to present me as a Nazi. And he replied well, I hope you're not. But and then you know just, and I just thought you know what I've tried so hard for years, through real emotional betrayals, through the persistent choosing of his new wife, who's horrible, over his own children, and you would, you would have this experience too.
Speaker 1:I've tried, and I've tried, and I've tried, and I've tried to meet you at the door and just ask will you let me in? And that's the final straw. I just am not going to do it anymore. I'm not going to sit there and see, it was one thing for you to choose your parents over your own children for years of our life. It's quite another for you to choose Mark Latham over your daughter. You know.
Speaker 1:Oh, that classic family conundrum, yeah, I feel very liberated by that choice in lots of ways. But I also feel sad about that loss because you know my mother's dead. So in lots of ways I feel and you must feel this too even though you get to see your dad once every three months, it's not the same. You do feel like an orphan. Anyway, I think that all of that kind of conspires to make me feel that people can look at you on the one hand and they can think well, that person's famous and that person is listened to and they're prolific because they don't see that also, one side of the prolific kind of work ethic is that you're just constantly producing so that you have value to people, because if you don't constantly produce then you're just yourself that you prove.
Speaker 2:For me it was like I'd prove my worth to be protected. That was it. It's a performative thing that if I can prove that I'm shiny enough and can achieve enough, then someone will look after me in a way that there was such a vacuum there. Do you? Would you go to your dad's funeral?
Speaker 1:I told him in the final messages that I sent to him that I wouldn't um I it was when you asked that before about. You know, when you said that thing about, would you feel sad about not having said everything? Hmm, I'm sort of at that point where I don't know if I would and and I think that the reason I say I don't know is because that the reason I say I don't know is because I wouldn't want to not go out of some stubborn kind of you know. But I also feel like if I went, I don't necessarily feel like I'd regret the loss of the years, because I have said what I wanted to say and he's chosen not to listen and he's chosen not to try and make amends. He just thinks that he can wallpaper over it.
Speaker 1:Like usual, I just had to return to send a birthday present that he bought for my son, which some people might again like it's your mom.
Speaker 1:You can't do that, but, partly for me, what I'm trying to do is show my son you don't have to let people stay in your life just because they're your blood relatives, particularly not if they make you feel small and ashamed and insignificant.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, I don't know that's something that I'm going to take away and ponder, but it's a great question and it makes me think, then, that this wonderful podcast that you're making now and that I was very lucky to be a guest on, where you bring together all of these interesting people and you ask them about dying because I one of the things I love about you is how comfortable you are talking about death, because so few people love to talk about it Um, what have you learned through the process of season one and you're just about to start making season two? What have you learned through the process of season one and you're just about to start making season two? What have you learned about people's relationship with death that you didn't know before you started making it? Or you know? It's that kind of like, that adage of like teach me something I don't know about, something I thought I did.
Speaker 2:What a good question it's. It's. It's myriad things. I think one of them is even the people who are like, oh, I've thought about it here's, you know, I want a confetti cannon at my funeral or I want I haven't written a will, you know. So, even though we hypothesize about the song that we wanted our funeral, or, oh, I think it'd be a big gathering or whatever it is, and I want to do this before I die. I want to publish a book or whatever it is, they're still not really well articulated.
Speaker 2:End of life plans. There's a notebook that I really want to get called Fuck, I'm Dead, now what? And it's on my list this week to buy it, because you put in all your passwords, your end of life plan, your funeral plan, your financial everything, and it's there as a I mean a legal will is great as well, but there's all those little things like passwords and bank details. And you know, kimber from Last Hour, I mean, I love Last Hour and everything they do. So even though we intellectually understand that we're going to die, we still don't understand that me, the main character, can't die.
Speaker 1:It's always somewhere else in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think I'm going to get get very old. I don't know what that means exactly. I've never felt I'm gonna. I don't know, I'm not. I'm not um, as which he is my best friend, um, but uh, yeah, it's never felt that accessible and maybe that's why I've run so hard at everything and tried to do so many things. Um, and there's also I'm very I've had so interesting because I just said talked about how emotionally chaotic all those years were and they were.
Speaker 2:I think I've had a. I've had a very privileged life, that's for sure, even though I come from a place of really, really bad trauma and an unsafe childhood. The fact that I've had the access to things to help me claw my way out of that and create a life for myself outside of that is luck and privilege. But I would say I've had such a happy life. You know, even with all these really seismic challenges, I'm very grateful and full of love and I don't want for much more. That's the interesting thing. Everything I'm doing now is glorious and I love it. I love writing movies and plays and television. I love doing things I don't know how to do yet, but it's all just icing on a really beautiful life. I mean Clementine. The Beastie Boys dedicated a song to me on stage at Rod Lavera Arena. What the fuck I could have died then. Lightning could have hit me from the sky and I would have gone.
Speaker 1:What a great life, life you've already had more than most people could imagine or dream of in their life, and you certainly are the stuff of people's dreams, marie Carvey. Marie Carvey, I have so many more things that I would love to talk to you about that I would love other people to hear you talk about too, but we don't have any time, so I'm just going to have to beg you to come back on at some point in the future. I have just loved this conversation so much and I love and adore you, and I would like to know in closing, at this point that you sit at in your middle years, however far into the future you might go in this particular journey of your soul and existence, what would you love to send back in time as a message to little Marieke, and what would you love to promise future Marieke?
Speaker 2:How little are we talking here? Whatever you choose, it's interesting, clem, because I'm sure you do this as well in a child meditations, where you, you know.
Speaker 1:I spent a little bit of time with you when you were a child today actually in my tuning in.
Speaker 2:Oh, did you? Yeah, how is she?
Speaker 1:She says you're very pretty and she plays in a cave behind a waterfall. That's her secret special place. And yeah, she said that when she grows up she wants to be a dog.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's definitely me. Yeah, you got, yeah, that was it. Did you want to be a dog? When you grows up, she wants to be a dog. Oh oh yeah, that's definitely me. Yeah you got, yeah, that was it?
Speaker 1:did you? Did you want to?
Speaker 2:be a dog when you grew up? No, but I can see that, yeah, that that's a great career path for me, that I haven't there was something about a red bicycle as well.
Speaker 1:just there was a lot of sort of feelings of safety and freedom, like the cave behind the waterfall. And listen as well, you know, to a degree again I take everything with a pinch of salt because I know certain things about you. So it would make sense that I would kind of think that little Marie has a little safe space behind a waterfall. But it was very fairy-like, it was like playing with the fairies and there were lots of pictures of Bob Ellis up on the wall.
Speaker 2:Bob Ellis, the dog we need to say Bob Ellis the dog.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, what would I say I mean in those in those inner child meditations? I do find them quite confronting and I'm often in a very similar spot in my backyard of the house I grew up in in my school uniform. It must've been the first day of school, I think. There's a photo of me with little pigtails at five years of age, and whenever my meditation says, picture yourself as a child, it's quite specifically that moment and consistently in those meditations I come in and scoop that kid up and take them the fuck away from that house, consistently, like I put them in a car and speed away to keep them safe. So I feel like I'm still doing that work in terms of messaging that to that kid, that really brave kid, who I'm very grateful to as well.
Speaker 2:I think what I would tell that child, particularly from that age to adolescence and and you know I ran away from home at 16 and never came back, but it's to know your worth, because once I fucking figured that out I was like, oh god, I've wasted my time with some dead shit men. Um, particularly you know the amount of situations that I put myself in, thinking that I wasn't worth being there again to cycle back because there was something terribly wrong with me, uh, and now I'm like gosh, what a special, interesting, little strange person I am. So I know your worth is liberating and love yourself Like that's. That set me free. Once I learned to love myself, that's liberating. And to my older self am I wishing something for?
Speaker 1:them, or Well, I suppose like it's just that thing of sending a message back and forward in time. You know like when I think about it, there's certain things that I would say to my younger self, and maybe this will also kind of resonate with you that I often think about how women, especially like you and I, who have been subject to really horrendous, hateful misogyny throughout our careers and the things that I mean well before it started happening to me, I was seeing the most horrific things said of you in a in a time and place where there was no recourse for it whatsoever. You know, the things that that certain daily telegraph columnists have said about you are just horrendous, and people often say to women like you and I oh, you're so brave, you're so brave, how do you do it? You're so brave? And when I was writing Love Sermon and there's lots of stuff in there about inner child work I said there will never be a version of myself that is braver than me at seven going to boarding school by herself. And for you I think that's true too.
Speaker 1:You know well, you have to come up with however you say that, but we often think about those children as being, yes, of course we want to protect them, but we also need to thank them for coming into situations where they are utterly ill-equipped. They don't have all of the skills and experience that we have as adults, and yet they still find a way to survive and battle through, and they and they draw on that courage and bravery. Like I just feel like looking at them and saying, yes, I protect you and I love you, but, fuck, I'm so grateful for you. You're so courageous, you're so brave, you're so amazing. And so, then, to think forward into the future and think, what would I tell my future self for me personally, I think I hope that what I'm doing now to set myself on a path to become you is something that will make you proud of me, you know, or?
Speaker 1:so nice or something that you know. I hope that we're moving towards love. And I just tell myself I've already decided the date that I'm gonna die. It's, um, the night of the leo full moon, I think it's 2077. I'll be 96 years old, um, and that's just in my mind. I've just fixed that. So I do a lot of future self meditations too, like I see myself as an older woman in a house like a, with a beautiful garden and just photos on the walls of all the things that I've loved and the people I've loved in my life, and I and I do that meditation sometimes and I think of it as being the last day of my life and what I'm grateful for, because then I have a path as well of something that I want to keep doing. Well, of something that I want to keep doing, you know, adventures that I want to keep having.
Speaker 2:That's so nice and and you're so right about the bravery and courage, about child selves. And you, at seven, I mean, once I started realizing. So I, you know, like I said, I whistleblow at eight. No one fucking listens. So I did it again at 14.
Speaker 2:And you know, I always think about people who whistle blow within a church structure, which is all they've ever known. It was my family, that's all I'd ever known. This was, you know, to speak up and out against what was going on in the only world that I knew consistently. And when no one listened, I did it again. And when they didn't listen, I did it again. And then I just fucking left and left them to it and I'm like that's a fucking warrior that is. I'm very impressed by that kid and it's so interesting, clem, hearing you talk about that future self. I'm just grateful to be alive today. I don really think I don't think about the future very much. I'm so happy being alive and I know it's not going to last. So I just want to enjoy every single moment with our beautiful strange dog and my beautiful strange husband and my beautiful strange friends and chosen family and be very present in showing up for them until I can't do it anymore.
Speaker 1:What a wonderful note to end on. You are a present Marika Harvey I don't know Marika Hardy I have to stop doing that as a joke, because people might actually think that's her name and I love you and I'm grateful for you and I'm so glad that you're alive too. I'm so glad that you're in the world and that I get to be in the same world as you at the same time and also to get to have hugs with you and you know beautiful conversations and I hope that it continues for a very long time. I've put you up on my wall in my future house, on the wall.
Speaker 2:On the wall Me too, and I love that like. This chat is basically like what we would say to each other over dinner anyway, I know, including crying, because we would probably use a few more names of people that we wouldn't use here.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know I love that. You are you. This is not a performative you. You are a beautiful, earnest, trying person in the same way, and thank you for having these authentic conversations. Thank you, I love you so much. I love you too.
Speaker 1: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.