severe alcoholic who died in her thirties of liver failure. When she died, his father deteriorated into a type of shutdown. My father had been born with fetal alcohol syndrome. His oldest brother was severely handicapped. So their mum died, and their father wasn’t coping. They got a stepmother who was violently abusive towards them — she used to beat my father regularly. And then they threw my father out of home at 14. Two years after his mother died, he got kicked out of home. He grew up on the streets in Parramatta in men’s shelters and churches and youth hostels.
Ross:
That’s just awful Mary, … so much suffering. This has obviously affected you greatly. (We sat in silence for 10 seconds or more, Mary looking downcast). Can I say, for a young woman, you have a lot of detail in your mind about all of these things. You can recount with tremendous accuracy the lives of your mother and father, but also your grandmother’s life, including the number of siblings that she lost, and being part of the stolen generation. Is that because you’ve heard the stories a lot, or because you had a deep interest in your family history or some combination of those factors? Why do you think you can so readily recount all of these histories so very thoroughly?
Mary:
I think it’s both. I think I have a very vivid mental life, and I had a very vivid imagination as a child, and so all of these people that I’d never met became real human beings to me. Although I’ve never seen photos of them, I have an image of what they look like and the world in which they lived. But they were talked about a lot. My family rehashes their stories a lot. They’re big on storytelling, I think. And as I’ve said, some of the stories don’t even make sense. There’s a story about one of my grandmother’s brothers joining the mafia and getting shot at, that is just absurd. It’s these tales that I know can’t be true, which came to influence my view on reality.
Ross:
I’d like to ask you more about your family history. I’m particularly interested in your grandmother and the stolen generation, and its effect on her, your mother and then yourself. How much do you think that history — the history of the stolen generation in Australia — has had an impact on you all?
Mary:
Oh, massively. I think my family wander around believing they are in an unsafe world where they don’t fit in. I remember from a very young age that if I took a day off school, my mum would look out the windows at every car that drove by. If any of them slowed down she’d panic, believing that it was child welfare coming to investigate my absence and take me away.
And I remember so many other odd moments that showed her fear of me being taken. One of the strangest, weird experiences of my youth occurred when I was five or six years of age. It was a period in which dad was fighting to see me more. I remember the scene very well. Mum and dad were fighting, and he called the sheriff. It was this massive emergency situation for my grandmother because she was convinced that the police were coming to get me. I remember her grabbing my mum and I and sneaking us out the back of the house. She took us next door and put us in the neighbour’s cupboard. We hid there for an hour because of the terror of them taking me away. It was absurd. It makes no sense. But I distinctly remember that image and my mum holding me in the cupboard and being terrified.
Ross:
You being terrified?
Mary:
I think so. Now I’m not sure. When I look back at my memory I’m amused and I keep thinking that my family were all crazy. But I think that’s because of how I see it now. I remember my mum being distinctly terrified, and me looking up at her face and watching her.
Ross:
That’s awful. Your mother was obviously a very anxious woman, which is understandable given her experiences and her psychotic illness. Is there any other history of mental illness in your family that you haven’t mentioned?
Mary:
Oh yeah, a lot. Perhaps most importantly, I had a cousin with the same problems that I later developed. It was my earliest experience with someone truly like me. She had agoraphobia, OCD and severe anxiety and was in and out of mental hospitals her whole life. It terrified my mother because she was always scared of the system — of going into the system because the system is where you just go to die. Hospitals are where you go to die. Mental hospitals. But my cousin Suzanne didn’t quite have that fear. She saw hospitals as safe places I think. She eventually died quite young too. She died in her forties. How it happened was never discussed.
That was one of my first experiences of true traumatic death of someone close. I was only 17. Because I’d always linked myself to her, her dying was fairly significant to me. She suffered the fear of death so prevalently, and then she died Ross! (Mary stared straight at me with an expression of disbelief). I never found out if she killed herself or not.
Ross:
I see.
Mary:
A few of my aunts have attempted suicide. There’s also a lot of addiction in my family — from alcohol to ice. Several cousins have bipolar, and phobias seem very common in the family.
Ross:
So there’s really a very broad range of fears, phobias, anxiety, substance issues, and significant mental health disorders — bipolar and psychosis.
Mary:
Yes. My family is riddled with mental health problems.
Ross:
I want to turn away from your family now, if that’s okay, and move the focus to you. What are your earliest memories of your own anxiety? The earliest memories you have of being fearful, worried, or afraid?
Mary:
I think they start in Darwin. When I was four or five, it was after my mum took me. We went to Darwin to find my dad because he’d gone there with some idea of joining the army. I also had an aunt who lived in Darwin. As I’ve said, I was already rattled about leaving my nan. I was scared that she was going to die when we first left home. But in Darwin, traumatic things kept occurring that still come into my mind.
I remember a terrible incident when we were driving in Darwin. We came upon a dead man — he was just lying there on the side of the road. We slowed down and I could see him clearly. It was terrifying. Then a man came and knocked on the window of our car. He wanted my mum to call for an ambulance. My mum freaked out and got really scared. She wouldn’t do it, ‘No, no, no, I have my little girl in the car’. She just drove off. She didn’t want to be part of the situation. I remember being torn — I wanted to get away as well, but I was overwhelmingly sad at the same time.
Dramas seemed to follow us in Darwin. We were broken into while we were inside the house. I remember being scared, but my mum was terrified. Her mental health was always delicate. She could have short psychotic episodes when things were too stressful. I remember her breaking down after an indigenous man, speaking a native language, was screaming at a shop owner. I don’t remember the scene being extreme, but my mum got me and stuffed me in the footwell of the car.
Ross:
Oh dear. Each of these events would have been quite traumatic. I’m not surprised you remember being very anxious and fearful. But what about the first things you came to fear in an ongoing way? What were the earliest stimuli that had you afraid on a regular basis? The first fear objects or fear situations in your life?
Mary:
I remember being terrified of the toilet at around this time. I was afraid of being pulled into the toilet and of falling into the toilet. But mainly it was a fear of an arm rising up from the toilet and pulling me in. I wouldn’t go to the toilet by myself. I’d always ask my mum to take me to the toilet.
severe alcoholic who died in her thirties of liver failure. When she died, his father deteriorated into a type of shutdown. My father had been born with fetal alcohol syndrome. His oldest brother was severely handicapped. So their mum died, and their father wasn’t coping. They got a stepmother who was violently abusive towards them — she used to beat my father regularly. And then they threw my father out of home at 14. Two years after his mother died, he got kicked out of home. He grew up on the streets in Parramatta in men’s shelters and churches and youth hostels.
