Tag: writing

Posted in Learning, Life, Writing

An answer

Posted on by Sharon

Tyson Yunkaporta’s book Sand talk: How Indigenous thinking can save the world has answered a big question for me. One I’ve been seeking an answer to for years. The way he answered the question was humbling, but it was an answer nevertheless and I was instantly calmed by it.

It made sense.

Existential crises are nothing new for me. My first memory of said crisis was in Year 7 (first year of high school – called first form back then). High school was big and scary and I was introverted (called shy back then) and felt bewildered. So many people, so much movement and action and interaction and confusion. So much talk, so much noise filling my head. Finding my way and fitting in. Or not.

A steel door slamming shut in my mind. The familiar refrain ‘so what? so what? so what?’ bouncing around the walls of my newly closed mind.

It was a refrain that ran through my adolescence. And beyond.

From the outside, it might have seemed like an attitude of not caring, but it masked a deep desire for meaning. For understanding the experiences of high school. For understanding myself and my place there, and how I fitted in. Or not.

So what?

It’s a fundamental question that can tie you in knots if you linger on it; if you seek an answer that has meaning for you and for your life to this point and for your life into the future.

It’s a question I ask a lot. I try not to because of the damage it can do, but it pops into my mind stealthily, when I least expect it.

We’re born, we live, we die.

So what?

Far beyond high school the question continued to plague me. There were times when I’d bounce from one existential crisis to another. None would bring any answers, or at least none that I was happy with. None of the usual answers made sense to me.

meaning of life

I tried Googling it. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t help.

But then I read Sand Talk and that did help. Enormously.

Yunkaporta says “Some new cultures keep asking, ‘Why are we here?’. It’s easy. This is why we’re here. We look after things on the earth and in the sky and the places in between” (p. 109).

We’re custodians. Of things in the places between earth and sky: People. Animals. Ourselves. Each other. Knowledge. Ideas. The processes through which we generate and share knowledge and ideas.

Humans, according to Yunkaporta, are a “custodial species” (p. 102). It’s a slightly different rendering of the ‘man has dominion over …’ we learnt in Sunday school; it has a different quality. A nurturing quality. A caring quality. A quality that works against exploitation.

The idea of being a custodian is a powerful one for me. It makes sense as no other response to the ‘so what?’ question ever has.

There are many other insights in this book that have made sense to me in ways nothing I’ve read or heard have done before. For me, it’s an important work that helps make sense of my thinking – not necessarily what I think, but most certainly how I think.

‘I have previously talked about civilised cultures losing collective memory and having to struggle for thousands of years to gain full maturity and knowledge again, unless they have assistance. But that assistance does not take the form of somebody passing on cultural content and ecological wisdom. The assistance I’m talking about comes from sharing patterns of knowledge and ways of thinking that will help trigger the ancestral knowledge hidden inside. The assistance people need is not in learning about Aboriginal Knowledge but in remembering their own’ (Yunkaporta, 2019, p. 163).

Perhaps this book has helped trigger [my] ancestral knowledge. Whether that’s the case, it’s certainly making a lot of sense for me.

Sand Talk

Source: Booktopia

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Learning, Life, Melbourne

Is that a light I see before me?

Posted on by Sharon

It’s been a tough few months. Not anything health related I hasten to add.

Thankfully.

Although before I venture into the toughness, I’ll give a brief update.

If you’ve been following my journey, you’ll know that around a year ago I found a lump in my breast. It was cancer. I had it removed in January and then in February through March had radiotherapy. It wasn’t pleasant and I’m still feeling the after effects. Last week I had a checkup with my medical oncologist. My breast tissue is still swollen and still very tender. Of course I already knew that as I feel it every day. What I didn’t know is that it’ll continue for another year or so – both the swelling and the tenderness.

Other than that, everything is fine. I still get days of exhaustion – I went to work on Tuesday last week, worked for an hour or so, went to attend a meeting and just couldn’t. Instead, I went home and spent the day in bed. And that might have had to do with the toughness than any lingering after effects of radiotherapy.

So, to the toughness.

Tim started a new job in late June and in the time between jobs we spent a week in Tasmania, touring around to places we’d been before and places we hadn’t. It was cold and wonderful and punctuated with moments of family just to make it even better.

When I got back to work, I was asked to work on an undergrad ethics unit for financial professionals.

You’re right. I know nothing about financial professionals, but had taught ethics some years before and so knew some of the basics.

‘Work on’ initially meant working with the unit chair to develop materials to ensure students were more active in their learning during the seminars. I’m very familiar with the principles of active learning and with unit design and so this was something that spoke to my skillset.

Not so the unit chair.

He struggled.

He couldn’t fathom why you’d want to teach in any other way than through lecture.

He couldn’t fathom how you’d teach in any other way than through lecture.

He quit.

I became unit chair.

And learning designer. And developer of the materials – both online and for the on-campus seminars. And the builder of the online site.

I had help of course. A colleague would send me ‘content’ which equated to discipline-specific information on things like fraud and tax evasion and fiduciary duties.

I asked lots of questions (beyond the obvious: ‘what’s a fiduciary duty?’).

The question I asked most often was ‘what are students going to do with this information?’ Providing students with information is important. Learning doesn’t happen in the absence of information, but there are ways and ways of presenting information, some more effective for learning than others. And then there’s how students start to make that information real for them – for their personal and professional lives.

We’ve recently had a Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry in Australia. It identified a lot of unethical – and illegal – conduct. It was a gold mine in terms exploring ethical issues, but it was outside the range of interest/thinking/relevance for many of the 662 second-year students in the unit, many of whom were international students.

So making ethics personal before we thought about professional ethical responsibilities was important to me. We started with a case study on ‘what she makes’ – a campaign involving comedian Sammy J and Kmart. He asked, through the medium of comic song, what the women who make the garmets Kmart sells make. Are they paid a living wage and was it ethical if they weren’t? We moved on from there. Some students couldn’t see the point of it and struggled from the start. These are, after all, mostly accounting students.

I’m not quite sure what I’m saying there, but I think my point is around the idea that they’ve been trained in a particular way to think about how university learning is done, and this wasn’t it. Some said it was ‘nonsensical’.

This work took all of my time, all of my energy, all of my intellectual capacity. I had to learn about the finance profession, about governance structures, executive and non-executive directors and organisational culture, the differences between tax minimisation, tax avoidance and tax evasion (which ones of those are il/legal and which are legal but unethical; which one is a tax agent obligated to do?); I had to learn about the ethical hierarchy and the AAA decision-making model, Baird’s four ethical lenses (apparently I sit squarely between the responsibilities lens and the results lens meaning I get the best of both of them, but also the worst), how deontology and teleology relate to ethical decisions in the finance sector; I learnt about APES110 and Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act, and I now have a much better understanding of the role ASIC and APRA play in regulating the finance sector.

And so much more.

SO much more.

I designed seminars the nine male tutors baulked at. This isn’t teaching. Where’s the lecture? Where’s the space for me to talk to students – to tell them what I know? Our students don’t/won’t work/learn this way.

It felt like a fight the whole time. A fight to get the materials up in time, a fight to wrestle some sense out of the information I was given, a fight to record videos and to see myself on the screen without wanting to get a professional makeup artist in to turn this old woman into someone others could stand to watch. It was a fight against time, against my own ignorance, against others’. It was 14 hour days and most of each weekend. It was responding to students’ requests for extensions – when there are 662 students, there tend to be a lot of extension requests. It was finding markers to mark student assignments and providing markers with ideas for giving feedback that was empathic and supportive rather than punitive. It was students coming to see me to ask about how to do a mind map (something I’d mentioned as a potentially useful tool for determining the links between the various bits of information they were engaging with). It was students emailing me to say they couldn’t see the point in what they were doing and ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be learning’. It was emails asking if [this] was going to be on the exam, even after I’d written in the unit materials that everything was going to be on the exam.

And then there was Charles.

Charles, a 24 year old international student, came to see me late one afternoon. He was struggling, not only with the unit but with life in general. He sat down, started to tell me his story and cried. His business had gone badly, he owed an eye-wateringly large sum of money, his girlfriend had dumped him. He felt that life wasn’t worth living. I sat and listened and thought, I don’t know how to help this young man, but it seemed all he needed was someone to listen. I could do that. He came to my office regularly after that, always just as I was packing up and we’d sit and he’d talk and cry. Over time, his voice began to change – there was more energy and more life in it. He’s back in China now and still writes to me. Life is still tough for him but he says I made a difference.

And then there was Rohit.

Rohit, a 22 year old international student, asked lots of questions in the online seminar. So many that another student asked him if he’d even engaged with the materials. He asked more questions via email. Eventually, I asked him to come and see me. He burst into my office, full of energy, and just as full of questions as he’d been online. He told me, quite proudly, that he was ‘immature’. I asked him how that was working out for him. That question stopped him in his tracks. He wrote that question down, and said how it was an important question for him to consider. He showed me a photo of his mother, who he loves dearly. I asked what he does to make her proud. He wrote that down too. He told me that the exam was on his birthday and so I sent him a happy birthday email the morning of the exam. He came to my office one day last week to give me a box of chocolates. He said that I had had a profound impact on him and that he felt blessed by God to have had a teacher like me.

Before the end of the trimester, when I was still trying to finish the ethics unit, under mounting pressure as the days ticked down to get the work completed but feeling like I was getting close to the end of the tunnel, I was asked to work on another ethics unit. This one was for those who are financial advisers. Sharon, you’ll be academic lead on a unit, taught in two different ways (so, effectively two different units). Please work with the learning designer and the subject matter expert to complete the work by the end of October.

The learning designer and subject matter expert did very little. My workload, which had been easing slightly (I was only working 12 hour days and fewer hours on weekends), skyrocketed again.

But it’s come to the end of November – or close to – and I can start to see a little light at the end of what’s felt like a long tunnel. I only have a few rubrics to write now, and some development work to do on one of the units – and I have my unit chair duties to do, but they don’t take too much time.

Was it worth it? Spending all my time and energy working on the development of the ethics units?

No.

And that’s not being as blunt as I could be about it. I’ve enjoyed some parts of it, don’t get me wrong. I had a great day on Thursday for instance. I had no meetings and sat at my computer and put together resources on the ethics involved in organisational culture and whistle blowing, and that felt satisfying.

But I haven’t been to Tasmania since June – unless you count the day I went down for Emma’s birthday in October. I did manage to get to my 40 year high school reunion and spend the weekend with my 40-year friend Michelle. I also managed to fit in a quick trip to Deb’s. But I haven’t seen Byron since he was a week old and now he’s just over 6 months. I haven’t seen Mum since July. I haven’t been north to see my sons and grandkids since April.

I haven’t written a blog post since August. I haven’t taken a photo of a flower in months. I haven’t been enjoying the little bits of photography I have been doing, and I wouldn’t have been doing any except that I’m doing a part-time photography course and that requires me to take some photographs.

I’m tired. All the time.

ALL the time.

It’s been a tough few months.

Bring on the light.

 

Posted in Life

Un/scrambled

Posted on by Sharon

You  might think this is a post about eggs.

It isn’t.

It’s a post about ideas … or maybe not ideas so much as thoughts.

Or threads, but not of the clothes variety.

As an introvert I have a very quiet outer world – I’m not the ‘greeter’ – you know the one, the person who exuberantly says hello to everyone in the office each morning, or the one who bounces up to each person at a party to welcome them even if they aren’t the host.

I’m going out on a limb there you realise. I’m such an introvert that I don’t go to parties – apart from the one I’m going to today. But that’s different because that’s my eldest granddaughter’s birthday party and the only other people there will be my children and grandchildren. Maybe an odd friend or extended family member as well, but ostensibly a family party.

Family parties, when everyone there is an introvert, are interesting, particularly when there’s so much family.

Only three of my five children will be there, but between the three of them they have 10 children, plus four steps. It makes for a lot of people – who, yes, are all related, but who have more conversations going on in their heads than from their mouths.

I’m making it sound as though we stand aroung not talking, and that’s not the case at all. We talk non-stop. We’re just all so worn out at the end of it from talking so much that we need alone time to recharge.

But I digress.

Scrambled.

Thoughts.

Threads.

My sister wrote a comment on my previous blog post along the lines of ‘you have so many ideas’ and she also wrote, in her own blog, ‘I might look like I’m doing nothing, but in my head I’m very busy!’

I completly resonate with that sentiment – it’s a hallmark of an introvert – the quiet on the outside but busy on the inside thing.

And that called to mind this image I saw on social media a while ago. 

unnamed

I love those opportunities to have deep conversation with someone in which the scramble of thoughts/threads gets unscrambled.

I usually pay for those conversations, but that’s okay because the person I’m paying knows how to take the tangle and unravel it a little. Or maybe it’s because they listen so that I do the untangling myself, just by getting the threads out of my head and therefore out of the ravel.

[If you can unravel something, does that mean you can ravel it?]

When my students didn’t know where to begin in writing a university assignment, I’d tell them to just start, to put something down on the page and keep tugging gently at the idea/thought/thread through writing, so that eventually there are lots of ideas on the page and you can re-arrange them as required, throw some out, develop some further, add new ones, so that eventually you have a piece of writing that is as clear and unscrambled as you’d want a university assignment to be.

[Unlike that paragraph, which had too many ‘so that eventuallys’ in it. I could edit it but I like the forceful movement forward it implies.]

Deb’s right. I do have lots of ideas/thoughts and I’m getting much better at recognising when they’re in a tangle and knowing how I might go about untangling them.

I talk.

It’s exhausting. But ultimately far less exhausting than having the thoughts continually scrambling around my mind.

If you want some clarity – talk to someone trained to listen.

An unscrambled mind is so much less exhausting and far less heavy to carry around.

 

Posted in Learning, Life

Confluence

Posted on by Sharon

I click on the ‘add new post’ button and a blank page opens, with the blinking cursor sitting in the ‘Title’ box.

The word ‘confluence’ pops into my mind, so I type it in, then quickly check the dictionary definition to make sure it’s the right word for what I want to say.

A title is important. It helps synthesise our ideas in a way that suggests there’s a core idea the author wants to communicate and the author knows, at the start of the writing process, what that idea is.

Sometimes when I start writing a blog post I have no idea of the core idea I want to communicate, and so I leave the title blank. The act of writing helps distill my idea and it’s at that point a title emerges.

But not this time. In this moment, as I sit writing, I know the core idea I want to communicate and so the title is easy. Plus, I’ve been thinking about this for over a week now and that thinking has acted as a distillery.

Over a week ago I saw this on my Facebook feed.

we-only-live-once-snoopy-wrong-we-only-die-once-43819656

I remember being struck by the sentiment because we mostly hear ‘you only live once’ as an exhortation to make the most of things.

I’m currently, with lots of support from others, developing an ethics unit and am constantly on the lookout for case studies, resources, stories of ethical misconduct in the financial services sector (which is not hard to find at the moment), but when you search online for something, you enter into a rabbit warren of ideas and perspectives and views and things the internet believes you might be interested in.

One of those things was an interview Charles Wooley did earlier this year for 60 Minutes. I don’t ever watch 60 Minutes, but on this occasion, when the video was in my ‘Up next’ menu in YouTube,  I decided to watch it because I was interested in who Charles Wooley was interviewing: Ricky Gervais.

The interview opened with them both walking through a cemetery and at one point, Gervais says something like, “you don’t exist for billions of years, and then for 70 or 80 years you do, and then you don’t”.

It’s a cosmic view of life – a long-range look – one that perhaps brings a different perspective to our lives.

And as I sat thinking about his comment, Carl Sagan’s video ‘Pale Blue Dot’ sprang into my mind.

Consider that dot … on it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives … on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. ~ Carl Sagan

I could feel the confluence starting – ideas beginning to merge.

The idea that we don’t only live once, we live every day of our lives.

The idea that we’re here for such a small part of all time.

The idea that we’re all together, on this one tiny planet.

How am I living each day? How am I making the most of the opportunities my being here allows? How am I caring for others and for the only planet we can currently call home?

I don’t have answers; I rarely do.

But the questions are a starting point.

A confluence has to start somewhere and it may as well be here, as I sit, musing from the cold.

Posted in Life

The next phase

Posted on by Sharon

I woke this morning to Tim getting ready for a bike ride. Did I want to go? No, not today thanks. After he left, my mind and body had a bit of a tussle: get up and go for a walk! No, I don’t have enough energy.

As I’m now listening to my body I got up and went for a walk. And it felt good. It was a lovely 22C, ahead of an expected top of 39C, the sky was blue, and the sun was warm on my shoulders. My feet led me up the hill of our street and then up the slightly steeper hill of Glenferrie Rd, which isn’t the way I would’ve gone if I’d given it any thought but my body was obviously ready for a little extra challenge.

It’s been almost three weeks since my surgery and my body is healing well. The swelling has gone down, with only one isolated spot still swollen but even that is reducing each day. The numb patch under my arm is still numb but that’s not likely to change apparently, and the itching has finally (thankfully)  stopped. I’m back at the gym for my twice-weekly personal training sessions and this coming week I’ll re-introduce upper body work to my workouts. So no problems with my physical recovery.

And I was feeling good about that. Well, really, why wouldn’t I feel good? My body is recovering strength and soon I’ll be back into training for the runs I’m keen to do this year. I am, after all, a runner. So I’m feeling good physically.

Not so much emotionally it has to be said. My oncology appointments on Friday discombobulated me. They reminded me that surgery wasn’t the end of this particular life episode. I haven’t wanted this to be a big deal – I had a lump that needed to be removed, much like an appendix or gall bladder. It’s been removed and I’m recovered, as someone who’s had their appendix or gall bladder removed recovers and then goes back to their regular life.

At the moment though, it does feel like a big deal. Hopefully the bigness of the deal will decrease over time, but I’m trying to be honest here and sort through what I’m feeling and that’s like this is a big deal. Or at least a bigger deal than I wanted it to be.

Meeting my radio oncologist and my medical oncologist makes it clear that I can’t go back to my regular life – at least not just yet. If I’d had my appendix or gall bladder removed I wouldn’t have to worry about my appendix or gall bladder ever again; appendicitis isn’t ever going to pop up in another part of my body, or even in the same part. Mind you, I’ve not had my appendix out, so what would I know? 

What I do know is that the analogy I’ve been using to help keep me grounded – that this is just like having my appendix out – isn’t working for me at the moment. And so the deal is somehow bigger.

Karen, my radio oncologist, is lovely. She has extensive notes about me but asks me to tell my story in my own words. I resist the urge to start with being born in Sydney, in March 19**, the second daughter of Noel and Sheila Pittaway ….

Karen is compassionate and patient, working through the information in a structured and rational way. She explains why I need treatment, what the treatment entails, how it’s delivered and possible side effects. There are possible side effects for the short term, the medium term and the long term. She draws diagrams to help explain the ‘how’ and answers our questions. We talk dates and it’s likely my four weeks of radio therapy will start on February 18 meaning I’ll be done by mid-March. I might get red, irritated and blistered skin, my breast might swell and change colour, and I might get tired. I might get all, some or none of these side effects. If I do get any of them it’ll most likely be in the final week or two of treatment and then continue for a week or two after treatment.

I sign the consent form and Karen says she’ll see me on February 11 for the planning consultation.

Lara, my medical oncologist, is just as lovely. She’s quiet and kind and works through the information in a rational and structured way. She explains why I need endocrine (hormone) therapy, what it entails (a pill every day for five years), possible side effects, and when I should start treatment (after radio therapy). The side effects are minimal: hot flashes, hair thinning, crankiness, and joint stiffness (which exercise can help alleviate). Lara gives me a prescription and says she’ll see me six weeks after I start the medication.

I know I’m in good hands but I’m still discombobulated. My analogy is ripping apart and the bigness of this particular deal is reasserting itself into my consciousness. I try not to let it, but all I want to do when we get home is to crawl into bed and pull the blankets over my head. I resist this urge, telling myself that it isn’t such a big deal: it’s four weeks of radio therapy then five years of taking a pill every day and that’s all. That’s it.

It isn’t a big deal.

I don’t/can’t/won’t believe it. It is a big deal.

I lie on the couch in my favourite PJs and Tim lays a blanket over me. It takes over two hours for my body to warm up. I eventually emerge from my cave but my ambivalence remains.

Is it a big deal? Should it be?

At the moment it is to me.

And in this situation there are no ‘shoulds’.

Photographing flowers is good therapy

 

 

Posted in Life

Living though not loving the reality

Posted on by Sharon

I can distinctly remember a phone call I received from a close friend in late March 2012. I was on my way to Launceston to run a weekend class for my online students when my phone rang. My friend rang to tell me she’d discovered a lump in her breast and after some investigation had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

I cried all the way to Launceston and had to admit to my students that I was a bit distracted. Because my friend lived over 1500kms from me I didn’t see her live with the reality of surgery and the subsequent treatment. I saw her recently and almost seven years later she’s looking the best I’ve seen her in ages. But the intervening seven years have had their ups and downs and while she doesn’t talk much about her experience I know it wasn’t easy.

I’ve just received my own breast cancer diagnosis and the reality of the experience has hit me in a way I wasn’t at all prepared for. No one ‘expects’ to get breast cancer and I don’t imagine it’s anything but a shock to all those who hear those words but it was so far from my mind as a possibility that it’s taken a bit to be even able to say: I have breast cancer.

When I discovered the lump I decided not to tell anyone about it, not even Tim, my husband. He was going through a stressful time at work and didn’t need this added stress at home. I made an appointment to have an ultrasound but couldn’t get an appointment for four weeks. It was a long and difficult four weeks but with the help of a playlist I’d made some time earlier on Spotify – a playlist I’d called sleep songs which consisted mainly of Enya songs – I managed to keep my mind calm and my increasing stress and anxiety from Tim.

Or so I thought. He was worried about the times I’d come home from work and head upstairs to have a nap but figured that my gym sessions were wearing me out more than usual.

I went to work, tried to not think about it, not dwell on it, but every morning in the shower I was reminded of the lump’s presence. A little voice in my head told me to go to the doctor, but I was convinced the process was that you go to Breastscreen first and if they find anything a process is then put in place. Over time, the physical discomfort grew, adding to the emotional and mental discomfort I was feeling. It wasn’t pain, but the discomfort was certainly increasing.

I asked Tom, my trainer, if muscle went that low in your chest. No, he said, it doesn’t. He looked at me a moment then asked ‘are you getting it checked out?’ I nodded. ‘Have you told Tim?’ I shook my head. We talked about it sporadically at my twice-weekly sessions. It helped, but talking sporadically didn’t get it off my chest. Figuratively or literally.

Finally, the day came. I went to the Breastscreen appointment on a Friday afternoon, turning my phone off so Tim couldn’t locate me through find my friends. If you’ve already found a lump, we can’t do a mammogram I was told. You have to go to your doctor and she’ll organise a more thorough examination. Four weeks of waiting, I thought ruefully. If only I’d listened to that voice in my head.

Luckily my doctor is easy to get to see and I made an appointment for Monday afternoon. I raced out of my second meeting of the day, turned off my computer screens, grabbed my bag and headed to the appointment, pleased I have a level of independence at work that didn’t require me to account for my whereabouts every minute of the day.

My GP is quietly spoken and calm. Yes, she said. It’s a lump. I’ll make an appointment for you to have a mammogram and ultrasound. She called one imaging place. Friday? I shook my head. She called another place. Tomorrow at 9:30? Yes please. Booked.

When Tim came home that evening I told him. It was much, much harder than I thought it would be.

Next morning he finished his early morning meeting in half the allocated time – due to being super organised – and was able to come with me.

Mammogram.

Ultrasound.

She lingered for quite a while over the lump.

We were out of there by 10:30. We were quiet on the way home and waited nervously for the result, not sure how long that wait would be.

Two hours, as it turned out. My GP rang and said she was sorry but she had potentially bad news. The radiologist’s report indicated the lump was ‘suspicious’ and that further investigation was needed. She’d made an appointment with a breast specialist for Thursday – I liked that she was super organised. Take someone with you, she said. Two sets of ears are better than one.

It meant a day and a half of waiting, of excruciating uncertainty, of tears and hugs and it’ll be alrights. Of possibilities flooding my mind, of endless what ifs. None of it helpful, but all of it normal I guess.

My request for sick leave was approved and I could at least relax a little knowing I didn’t have to worry about work as well.

Off to meet Alison in the city to watch the taping of The Yearly with Charlie Pickering. It was a good distraction, but dinner afterwards was difficult. We went to our usual place, but the food tasted like sandpaper, and our dribbles of conversation always came back to what-ifs and wonderings.

Wednesday. I called Deb, my sister, in the morning. She told me she’d dreamt about me the previous night and her sleep was so disturbed she’d had to get up and read at 4am, something she never does. If I hadn’t called her, she would have called me. It’s comforting to know our connection is still so strong.

Tim found a patch of rainforest in the Otways and we packed our lunch and headed there for the day. We always find consolation in trees and these trees were particularly consoling as they were very similar to the deciduous beech trees we were so familiar with from our many years in Tasmania. Little fagus-like leaves scattered across the forest floor took me instantly back to Cradle Mountain and I felt some of the tension dissolve from my body.

We drove home via the Great Ocean Road, so I had the double delight of trees and ocean on the same day. It was beautiful, all those trees and all that ocean, but the anxiety didn’t ever go away and potential outcomes flitted through my mind all day.

Thursday. My appointment with the breast specialist was moved from 9:30 to 11:20 – not long in the scheme of things, but the delay felt much more like 24 hours than slightly less than 2. I was instantly put at ease when we met her though. She exuded confidence and compassion, and patiently answered our questions. If the result was positive, I would have surgery to remove the lump on January 15. I’d have an overnight stay in hospital, some weeks recovering, then further treatment starting six weeks later depending on the status of my receptors. A good outcome was to be oestrogen positive and HER2 negative. That would most likely mean radiotherapy but no chemo. 

But in the meantime, given the suspicious nature of the lump, I needed a biopsy – my super organised GP had organised that too, for 2pm that afternoon.

We wandered to a nearby cafe for lunch feeling more relieved than we’d felt in a few days. At least we knew what the process would be, even if we didn’t yet know the outcome. We had information – something objective and real to hold on to. And I had a glimmer of hope.

A mini-faint after the biopsy but otherwise it was a no fuss, though not at all pleasant, procedure. The nurses, Nina and Athena, were lovely. Very caring, one rubbing my ankles as the biopsy was being performed and the other noticing the pain on my face when the needle went beyond where the anaesthetic had reached. Two samples would have to do. A wet washer for my forehead, a fan to cool my body, the sheet off my feet, the blood pressure cuff wrapped around my arm, an icepack on my breast and after a few minutes all was right again. Athena went to get Tim and we went home to wait some more. The specialist had said she’d call on Monday with the result.

Friday. I stayed in bed for most of the day, Enya playing through my headphones, my mind not at all calm, but the music did help. Tim swapping the icepacks regularly – one warmed on me while the other cooled in the freezer. No phone call, no matter how desperate I was to hear. By the afternoon I’d convinced myself I was going to get the all clear.

Saturday. No run club for me this morning. No swelling or bruising from the biopsy though, so that was good. I’ve learnt to rest properly and not feel bad about spending time in bed. My two hospitalisations in the last two years have convinced me of the importance of rest for proper recovery. We had some last minute Christmas shopping to do, so slowly ambled down to the Hawthorn shops. Tim went for a coffee while I let my eyes wander over the books in Readings. My phone rang. It was the breast specialist. The report was in and she told me the result. It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear. Did I want to come in to see her that afternoon? Yes please, I did, very much.

Again she was all compassion and confidence, answering our questions patiently. The surgery was booked in for the 15th. It meant I could still go to Tassie for Christmas, then to Queensland for the first week of January with one of my granddaughters to visit family.

I remember snatches of what she said as we drove home: my receptors are the ‘good’ ones, the lump is slow growing, it’s not life threatening, I won’t need a mastectomy, it’s treatable, I’ll have a radio oncologist and a medical oncologist, I’ll have a sentinel node biopsy meaning they put radioactive material into my chest and track it with a geiger counter to know which lymph nodes to remove, the second week of recovery will be worse than the first week, take as much time as you need/can to recover, hormone therapy, radiotherapy, possibly no chemo … if you’re going to get breast cancer, this is the one to get.

I feel fortunate.

And not.

At least I know now, the uncertainty is over. I know the process, I know that the cancer will be removed from my body, that I’ll have a good medical team providing excellent care, that I won’t lose my breast, that I may not lose my hair, that the cancer will be gone.

Fortunate.

I’m fitter and stronger than I’ve ever been in my life before, I have a tremendously supportive and capable husband, I have an excellent specialist, and I have a beautiful array of family and friends who will do what they can to care for me.

Sunday. I decide to tell the children. They all live in different states to me so that means five phone calls. It’s interesting how differently they reacted to the news. I let them know there’s a little bit of bad news but then some better news. None of them were expecting this particular piece of news. Ben makes me laugh by telling me about something he’d supposedly read in a medical journal last week. Daniel’s voice deepens with concern and I know to tell him as much information as possible. Rochelle is shocked into not being able to say very much at all. It’s hard for her to take in and she goes quiet in that way she does when she’s processing difficult information. Chase tells me he loves me through his tears. Emma offers to come over to support me through my recovery, cries when it’s time to say goodbye, and I hear ‘love you Mum’ before the phone hangs up.

I also tell Mum. It’s safe to say it came completely out of the blue for her too. She’s with my brother for Christmas and I’d warned him I was calling her with some news. He called me afterwards to let me know she’s okay and to get some more details. The telling makes it more and more real but also re-emphasises the positives. It’s not life-threatening. It’s slow growing. It’s treatable. The outcomes are good.

I am fortunate.

I am worn out by the telling and re-telling and admit to bouts of crying throughout the afternoon as my emotional energy dwindles.

It’s been a big week!

Stick with me over the coming weeks. I’m not sure if I’ll write more about this particular journey, but I just might. It might help me work through what I’m going through and it might help others too in the sense of coming to more clearly know it’s not all doom and gloom. I’m not actually sure about that part of it, but that’s my hope.

I’m fine – tired but otherwise fine – and I know I’m in good hands. I have a great medical team, good access to all the services I need, and just as importantly, if not more importantly, I’m surrounded by warm, caring and generous family and friends.

 

Posted in Learning, Life

Because you are my Dad

Posted on by Sharon

Monday 22 January 2018

Dad lies completely still apart from the rise and fall of his chest, his breathing regular though shallow: a quick breath in, a just-as-quick breath out, count to four, another breath in. On the odd occasion his body misses a breath my heart races and I watch closely for the rise and fall of his chest.

Music wafts gently around the room Dad’s called home for the past 18 months and despite the scurry of nurses outside in the corridor there’s a sense of peace and calm here in this room.

I never imagined keeping watch over my dying father, but here I am, sitting on the hospital bed the nurses brought in and placed next to his, thinking about what I know and who I am because Noel Pittaway has been my Dad.

I know the importance of spit-clean shoes – polished and buffed till they shine. People notice shoes, Sharon, he’d say as I’d present them to him for inspection. Make sure they’re clean.

I know how to spell by breaking words into pieces and sounding them out.

I know that it annoys Mum when we do that (you’re just like your father, she says in that tone she has that indicates she thinks we’re clever but a bit show-offy.)

I know to eat my vegetables first before even touching anything else on my plate.

I know it’s best to eat cauliflower and cheese sauce while it’s hot.

I know how to swim because Dad insisted I stand in the shallow end of the Nowra pool and while all the other kids got to muck around I stood there and practiced my strokes and my breathing. I was never a fast swimmer but I had a nice style (just like your father, Mum used to say in that tone she has that speaks of admiration).

I have an eclectic musical taste because Dad had an ever-expanding record collection that ranged from Rachmaninov to Ray Charles via Ravi Shankar.

I know how to be comfortable with silence; that I don’t have to fill it with words and that in the silence there’s still warmth and togetherness.

I know that reading fiction opens up worlds I would never have been able to imagine on my own. Some of those worlds were beyond the comprehension of my 11,12,13-year-old self, but I discovered that being stretched imaginatively is important and immensely beneficial to a teenager’s developing mind and spirit.

I know the thrill of the rollercoaster, big slippery dips and rides that spin and whirl and fling you upside down and inside out and the added thrill of experiencing that with your granddaughter. Again and again and again.

I know it’s wrong for a girl to swear.

I know how to snorkel. And not to be afraid of the ocean. And the delight of walking on the squeaky white sand of Jervis Bay.

I know that travel is an adventure to be indulged in whenever possible and part of that adventure is the spontaneity of a detour or an unplanned destination or heading down a one-way street the wrong way.

I know that creative expression is an important part of life, whether that expression is theatrical, literary, artistic, musical or photographic – and the importance of taking the lens cap off.

I know what love for your wife(husband) looks like because of the depth of love Dad has for Mum … and I know that romance is not dead.

I know that people are deeply complex and that an external quiet doesn’t necessarily mean an internal quiet.

I know that laugh-yourself-silly fun is contagious and being surrounded by your grandchildren and great grandchildren is joyous and delightful in ways that can’t be described in words …

and that when you’re in your 60s and you think you can still somersault off the 1 metre board at the Murbah pool and get up there only to find you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, that a poolside cheer squad led by your grandchildren will push the fear down and turn you into a hero as you run along the board and somersault effortlessly into the diving pool.

I know that the rougher the sea the more you enjoy the ride. Just hang on tight and ride the swell.

And I know that while the taste of beetroot is a flavour they serve in hell, Dagwood Dogs are a tiny taste of heaven.

I know that what your dad teaches you can be hard to learn and that you can fight against it (and him) and that what you learn might not have been the intended lesson, but I also know that Dad has influenced my life enormously and I am who I am in big measure because my Dad is Noel Pittaway.

The movement of Dad’s body … the rise and fall of his chest … stops in the afternoon of Thursday 25 January … but the movement of his life and his legacy have transcended his body and spread through his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren … it’s a legacy that moves invisibly yet steadily across and through the generations.

On February 14, 2016 Dad and I flew over Antarctica. It had been a life-long ambition of his. Here we are ready for our 14-hour adventure.

*Many thanks and huge appreciation to Alison Cosker for providing feedback on this post. It has been strengthened because of her input.

Posted in Life

Way better than never …

Posted on by Sharon

Life’s funny … and not always ‘funny haha’.

But funny, nonetheless.

In June 2014, I moved from Tasmania to Melbourne to live with my husband who’d moved here 5 months before. That move meant I stopped being a pre-service teacher educator.

I admit to falling into a bit of a hole. It took me some time to get used to the idea that I wouldn’t teach at university again.

And then, in 2015, I taught at university again – for one semester. And when semester ended I again stopped being a pre-service teacher educator.

I admit to falling into a bit of a hole. It took me some time to get used to the idea that I wouldn’t teach at university again.

And then earlier this year a former colleague from the University of Tasmania asked if I’d like to teach at university again.

I would. I did. It was great. One semester of interacting with students – students who were keen to learn, who were mature in their attitudes and capacity to think for themselves; some of these students I’d taught when they were in their first year of university. They remembered me, as I did them. It was great to reconnect, and interestingly, they thought so too.

And then the same colleague asked if I’d be interested in teaching the post-grad version of the unit in second semester.

I would. I did. It was great. Another semester of interacting with students – challenging their ideas about teaching, gently encouraging them out of their comfort zones, helping them see that they are more than deliverers of content, more than transmitters of what they know, and that students are more (much more) than empty vessels waiting to be filled.

I had marking to do, and I did it, and now I’m finished and the relief I feel is real and very (very) sweet.

So, am I a pre-service teacher educator? It appears the answer is ‘sometimes’ … and that’s way better than never!

Posted in Life, Melbourne, Writing

259

Posted on by Sharon

I came across Angelina in the city, sitting on an upturned milk crate, a typewriter in front her and a sign saying “I’ll write you a poem while you wait”.

Now that’s an offer I couldn’t refuse!

Angelina asked me for a word and as I’m doing a Faces of Melbourne project on Instagram, that became my ‘word’. So here is Angelina’s poem:

Faces of Melbourne

A sea of people in the corners
of a chessboard city,
passing lives,
drifting stories,
and suddenly – Poetry.
A gift of the briefest meeting
A moment of contact, sweeter
for its fleeting nature.
It is our faces, here
in the place where worlds collide
down the length of the patient Yarra
the ancient dirt beneath
our concrete kingdom,
and we.

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Posted in Flowers, Learning, Life, Photography

244

Posted on by Sharon

Realisation day (a long read)

If you’ve been following my blog (or even my Facebook feed) over the last few days, you’ll know I’ve been reaching for something … looking for some answers to questions about the type of photographer I am, what I do it for, what I find enjoyment in photographing, if I have any feeling or sensibility for it (notice I didn’t use the word ‘talent’ 🙂 ).

After much thinking and reflecting, and responding to questions Tim posed, I have come to some important realisations.

1. I don’t have to take the same sorts of photos that others take.
This might seem self-evident and hardly worthy of days of contemplation, but for me it’s an important realisation. When I first started taking photos I predominantly photographed flowers. Up close. I even had a few exhibitions of my work and lots of my photos are now hanging in others’ houses. That’s immensely satisfying now that I think about it. But along the way I lost confidence in my ‘style’ or didn’t recognise that I had one, so I started taking photos that looked like other people’s or photos that I thought other people would like … and then I stopped taking photos, or at least stopped taking photos I was really happy with. My realisation came in the shower – that place of many realisations – a few days ago, and it was an acknowledgement that it’s okay to take photos that reflect my way of seeing the world.

2. My way of seeing the world focuses on the detail, not on the environment in which the subject exists.
My portrait work can be slightly confrontational for those who are being photographed. I get in close. I am interested in faces, in the diversity of faces, and what a face can tell us when there are no clues about who the person is or the environment they’re in apart from their facial features; when we can’t see the clothes they’re wearing, or the way they stand or sit. What interests me is the detail. It’s the same in my flower images. The way particular petals curve slightly differently from the others, the variations in colour across a flower or even a single petal, the shapes, the perfectness … even when its dying. They speak to beauty and dynamism and decay and … and life. And my way of seeing the world also involves a process – a process of envisioning, of thinking, of reflecting, of experimenting, of playing, of looking at different perspectives.

3. I enjoy the process.
I started working in community radio in 1991. I was an on-air presenter as well as a producer, a news gatherer and newsreader, an interviewer, and eventually music director. After three years and a move to a new city I had the opportunity to produce and present programs on ABC Local Radio. Throughout my 16 years working in radio, one of the elements I liked the most was getting the technical details right: making sure there was no dead-air, knowing a piece of music well enough to know when to fade it in (or out), making sure there was variations in pace and tempo of the songs across the course of an hour and of the program, knowing how to edit an interview to ensure it was coherent and told a story, leaving space for breaths (my very first ABC radio interview had no breathing space – it wasn’t good to listen to), finding the right piece of music to fit with the mood of the interview … it was in the process of making radio that I found most enjoyment. When I was a drama teacher, I enjoyed the process of developing a production. I wasn’t a ‘find a script and put on a play’ kind of drama teacher. Rather, the students and I (and for one memorable production we engaged the help of the amazing Lisa Roberts) workshopped ideas, played around with images and sounds, how to create them, and how to add them meaningfully into the production. We played around with how to use the space, how to light it, how to confront the audience or how to keep it at arms length. We played and experimented and even if we didn’t know where we were headed at the beginning, or quite how we ended up where we did, we worked our way through a process of experimentation and play and ideas and representation.

When I started taking photos, I enjoyed the process. I enjoyed working out where to put the light, how to reflect it, how to shape it. I enjoyed the process of figuring out which part of the flower to focus on, where to put it in the frame, what else to include in the frame or what to exclude. It was a creative process, and I liked the process as much as, if not more than, the product. It was a deliberate process, one I had to think about because I was so new to it; over time I have lost the deliberateness of the process. One of my realisations was that I need to become more deliberate about my process, because it’s not just the product that excites me; the process gives me a real sense of meaning and purpose.

4. Meaning and purpose.
In some ways I am a very pragmatic person, although I am also an idealist. But the pragmatist side of myself is the one that often causes me to derail. The question ‘but what is it for‘ bounces around inside my head with sickening regularity. The big existential questions are one thing, but to bring that thinking to the little things in life can rob them, I’ve realised, of joy. For me I mean. I’m not talking other people here, just me. If photography is for a pragmatic purpose – if it’s to exhibit or to sell – then it’s important that other things happen: you get clients, you know how to engage with people and make them feel comfortable, you spend your weekends shooting weddings and then the days in between getting the photos ready for the happy couple. You bill people and have contracts and meet people’s expectations. But what if that’s not the sort of photography you want to do? What if you just want to take photos? But what for, was a question I would ask. Constantly. To what end? What will I do with these images? Why am I taking photos? Those questions nag at me, tug at the edges of my mind, wear me down. Why am I spending time and money on this pursuit? What is it for?

Tim asked me a question the other day and I answered “Yes I really should”. His immediate response was: “Don’t use should. Use ‘will'”. And that was enough for me. Just that change of thinking. ‘Should’ has an expectation attached to it or a judgement. For me, the final image isn’t the thing I find of most value in the photography process; it’s the process of creating that image. That’s what brings me joy and excites me about photography – about anything creative. It’s in the experimenting, the exploring, the playing with ideas, with ways of representing the world around me (a world primarily of flowers and faces) … that’s where the meaning and purpose of my photography resides.

I went through many years of not thinking that was enough, but if I don’t have that, then I find little joy in using a camera. As it’s my only creative outlet (apart from the occasional piece of writing I do) it’s a very important part of my life.

Last week, for the 52 Week photography project I’m involved in, our theme was photographer’s choice. I decided to photograph a flower and initially I took the kinds of shots other people might take (sunflowers against a white brick wall in a jar) and used one of them for the final image for the project.

Sunflowers and jar
Sunflowers and jar

I like it as an image. But the process of taking it didn’t excite me, there was little enjoyment for me.

So I decided to go back to what I find enjoyment in and took a series of close-up shots. I used light, natural and otherwise; I played around with positioning, with framing, with considering what was important. I was deliberate in my process. What surprised me, no it was stronger than that, what amazed me was the excitement that came flooding back. It reinforced for me that it’s the process that gives me meaning and purpose in my photography work.

So after all that, here is what I came up with. This is not about which is the ‘better’ image, or which one I like the most. This is about which one was taken in a way that gave me a sense of enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose.

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One final note: yes, it was a very long shower! 🙂