You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.
Mamma Mere acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. Well, shit, here we are, hey, and how many of us are exactly where we thought we'd be at the midway mark. Those lists we made, the ones of the things we wanted. By twenty thirty forty, we don't even know them because we're here in the middle of our lives, with more, with less, with everything different. When I was twenty, I wanted to live in New
York City. I imagined a life of shoulder pads and magazine meetings in gleaming skyscrapers, of rightily brown stones with stoops, cocktail parties and dive bars. Do you know where I live? I live in a tiny town by the sea on the opposite side of the world. It has one pub and a bowling club, a butcher, a baker, and something called a bottle o that twenty year old me would have happily frequented despite not knowing what the hell was.
Would my twenty year old self be disappointed, Well, she'd be confused because she thought she knew who we were and that we panicked when the pavement ran out.
We didn't drive.
We like the energy of crowds and endless choice and people everywhere. And she was right, But we changed. We're allowed to do that, my mid friends. Change our minds, our opinions, our lives, make a choice, fuck it up, make another one, take a turn, go oh wrong way, go back, make another one. Find ourselves somewhere we don't want to be, find ourselves doing things we don't want to do, Find ourselves with someone we really shouldn't be with.
Surprise ourselves with the strength we have inside us. To pull ourselves out of relationships that don't fit us, jobs that don't value us, friendships that only take make mistakes and apologize for them, Learn something we didn't know, Try something we've never tried. Return to a passion we'd talked ourselves out of. Leave something behind that's making us sick.
We're allowed to.
Do all of that.
And it's not too late. It's not too late. It was just too early before. It was too early when we were twenty to truly know what it was we wanted. It was too early when we were thirty to understand what it was we needed. It was too early to settle, too early, to choose, too early, to limit to closed doors, too early, to turn our backs on experiences we didn't even know that we wanted to have.
So shit.
Here we are, at midway and thinking, well, that escalated quickly. A lot has happened, some of it joyful, some of it boring, some of it devastating, some of it entirely unexpected, blindsiding, shocking. But all of that, Bess has woven a life, a great, big everything life, and it's not too late or too early for us to reset. In fact, it's the perfect time, because we're wise enough now to know what's in it
that matters and how little everything else does. Twenty year old me really just wanted adventure and she got it. It just didn't look anything like she imagined, and that is exactly what mid has taught me. Hello. My name is Holly Wainwright, and I am mid midlife, mid family, mid identity crisis, and this is our show where we
unpick all of that. So far in season one, we've talked about mental health, dating, alcohol, burnout, bodies, big kids, grief, and today we're finishing off our first season with a conversation about well, all of it that's not how this interview is meant to go, which kind of fits in very nicely with that intro about how things are rarely how you think they're going to be. It wasn't even supposed to be the interview that was going to be
our final episode. It was meant to be a conversation about something very familiar to me many many midwomen divorce, and look, it is a conversation about that, but it also became one about something much, much bigger, and it became clear that it needed to be our first resting point, because well, it's everything. Christine r Nu is an Australian icon.
I can't tell if she'd liked me saying that about her or not, because she's certainly a no bullshit kind of woman who has no time for me blowing smoke. She's a Generation X icon, that's for sure. Christine became a huge star here in Australia in the nineties, a Torres Strait islander woman whose song my Island Home became an anthem, and with it she an enormous star.
You might be struggling to relate to that.
We might never have met me in you, but it's possible you've never performed on a musical theater stage in front of thousands, sung at an Olympic closing ceremony, or one swags of shiny awards for the work you do.
But there will.
Be something in this wildly honest, raw conversation that brings it close you. Maybe you've had days when you couldn't get out of bed, when the choices you've made and the people you've put your faith in turned to shit, and it's not clear how you're going to climb out. Maybe you've had to apologize to your kids for the mistakes you've made and allowed them to hold you up on a difficult day. Maybe you've struggled with addiction. Maybe you've wondered where all your friends have gone when the
shit hits the fan. Maybe you've been told you're too old to keep chasing the thing you've always wanted. And maybe you've finally decided to stop letting other people tell you who you should be and what you're capable of. That is what this very mid conversation with the extraordinary, brilliant, honest, and supremely talented Christine are.
Knew is all about. Enjoy it, Christine. This is a podcast.
For midlife women who feel all powerful and also midlife women who are still wondering when it's all going to start making sense.
Where on the.
Spectrums you reckon you sit in that.
I sit on the Let me just take bits and pieces of what you just said. Hello, by the way, it's so lovely to be.
Here catching up much.
What's it been like eight years since my last Mamma Mia chat? And this would be kind of like a pickup from that, wouldn't it. Really, that's true. I've been through a lot, and I think I'm at that time in my life. Char answer your question is that now that everything that's happened and gone before me is all starting to fall into place, not necessarily like ducks in the road, because that's your future. It's all beginning to
make sense. And I go, God, I wish I knew this when I was, you know, twenty, Yeah, geez, I wish I knew this at the beginning of my year. But you know that's when you just go, well, wow, I mean, there have been great times, there have been not so great times, and all of them make up. You're the sum of all of that, aren't you. That's all of who I am right now? And you just take it when you're going through it. It's a cloudy day. My mindset has always whenever I do get to those
sort of like, oh, it's a rut. It's not moving today, you know, it's I'm bumping into it like a like a getting over a hump that won't I can't get over. I always look at a sunny day that I'm going to have some day. I imagine it. It's there, it's coming.
Do you literally do that?
I literally do that. It's a practice, it's an absolute visual practice of mine. And then it becomes just this beautiful hum a hum that just a vibration that takes over your entire self because you know that you just got to get through, just ride it through, because there's no way to do it. Can't go over it, can't go around, it can't go under it. You got to go through it. That is so true.
That's a really good point. Right, So eight years since your last conversation at MoMA Mia and you relatively recently divorced, and this amount of time is actually a perfect time to look back on, Like when you're in the middle of things, you don't know, like you don't know what is this? Teach me how am I what's going to it's going to turn over next. But with a bit of hindsight, as you say, you can kind of go, oh, I'm beginning.
To see that now.
What would you say to you then, like or a woman who's listening to this, who's having one of those moments in life that we all have where you're like, this isn't how I thought it was going to go.
Again, always waking up with that positive vibration of like, I'm going to get through this. I am going through what I'm going through now because Christine at the other end of this is what I'm informing. And to do that, I have to write these letters right now, these words. I've got to build them to get to that person that I'm going to be, whatever that is. And looking back on that, it's like you never go into a partnership marriage thinking that it's that you're going to end
up not being on the same page together. You don't do that, and when it happens, it's not like a clean cut of a pie, you know, knife slice, beautifully cut down the middle. It's like a cookie, Yeah, break it, and it's never perfectly down the middle, and there's bloody crumbs everywhere and along and those crumbs are the people
that are involved in that. You got kids, and in my situation, two children with two different fathers, so the man that I married wasn't their father, so there was a lot of relationship building and that there were relationships right there and that were going to be affected with the decision to do that. But you have to do it, and you have to move on, and you have to let them see you be a bumbling mess and allow
them to be there for you in that way. Oh kids. Yeah, and also know that you've got to assure them that you're they're not your parent, that it's okay that you're not having those great days, and that at the other end of it, we're all going to celebrate and be happy. And that's exactly what happened. There were some days where they were they be breamy coffee in bed, or they'd be seeing how I was and you know, kind of
taking on that parental role. But then you know that, you know, you wake up one day and it's not like that anymore, that you have picked up the pieces and you've moved on. But gosh, it changes them when they see that. Momentarily they're having to take on parental responsibilities for themselves.
That's really interesting because I spoke to a woman recently about burnout who said, your children are waiting to take care of you, like I don't, not necessarily just when you're old, but like in the moments that you need them, because you've been giving, giving, giving, and it's okay to
receive as well. Is your sort of point around that is that I think so often women in particular, I'm sure maybe men do it too, Like we've got to pretend everything's fine, like this hasn't gone according to plan, but Mom's fine, Everything's going to be great.
I'm not sad, I'm fine. Look at me smiling. What you're saying is.
It's like it's actually fine to not be smiling and be like, actually, kids, I need you to hold me a bit.
Well, you know that's absolutely true, And like I find I look after my mom now or I am responsible for the care and the welfare of my mother. She's in a home. We never wanted her to be there, but that's where she is. And I really take that idea as of being there with my mum in her later part of her life as a huge privilege, you know, the same way that you give your own children, or I gave my children the sense of that privilege to take care of me and my emotions. Like the world
that I've built for you isn't a perfect world. It's you know, it's not. It's not going to always be feel like it's secure. I have to be able to have a wobbly day and you need to be able to see that, and I'm giving you permission to hold
me up on either side when that. When those days arrive and they do they see I think that they really saw those moments as a real privilege to be there for me because I reached out to help from them, not from others, and we kept that within our world amongst each other.
That's really beautiful, Really, it's really beautiful, because, as I say, I think that sometimes we really punish ourselves if we're not painting this very secure, safe, like you know, scrubbed clean world for our kids. Because I'm imagining the woman who's sitting where you were sitting at that time and finding it hard to get out of bed because it's not the world she thought she was going to have.
She's not Is there a period of time that it sort of took you for the sunny day mantra or those practices to start like moving you in that direction. You know, did you feel like there was there a pivotal moment where you began to.
Feel like, oh, okay, the moment started changing was when I took what I felt was the very thing that wasn't making me and therefore the family happy. Was when I decided to make the decision to have to have the divorce and remove the component that was really not making things happy and bubbling along as they should.
And that's a difficult place to come to, right.
It is, And it's why isn't this working? And why aren't I happy? It's because the other person's not happy, and you've got to have that conversation. It's a it's a really big conversation to arrive at. You're not happy and you're not admitting that to yourself.
It's one of those conversations that come up in a life where you go, if we have this conversation, everything will be different, and sometimes you're very you have to take a deep breath for that because you're like, am I ready for everything to be different?
You know that's right? Because starting in your own backyard, and arriving at that place, you start to look around the second part of your world, you know, when it goes around in this concentric thing and you I started looking at the flow in my business, in my professional life outside of the home, and it starts to effect everywhere. You start to see, well, okay, there's a chink in here that's not working, and that's all a good thing because you've got to shed. When you're shedding, you've got
to properly do that. But there is everything is a process, and you've got to do one thing at a time because you're only human and learning as you go. What do I look like? I've never been married before and going through a divorce and now I'm going to divorce a partnership that is like a marriage with your management, so that all of a sudden there's all of these yeah, yeah, yeah, work and family was enmeshed. Yeah. You start to really
see how time is such a precious thing. Is that what I was actually grieving was the time I can't get back and what and the time I perhaps missed with with just sweeping the children up and making them be a part of all of these decisions. But now because the divorce is happening. They're a part of that process of rebuilding who we are as a team as a unit. And then that, until that was ready, I couldn't move on to the next development of what that
would look like. And that looked amazing because my son went on to find his own feet and not live that dream that I had had for him, you know, you know what, and he was you know, yeah, well the first he's there's six years between the two kids, so his leaving was it was a it was a hard thing, very hard for me to let my oldest not be around helping me with his little sister. You know, Now I've got to do it on my own, like
single parenting sort of. I look at my life and go, maybe I was always supposed to be that single parent, because I was before I was married, a single parent, and then after that I was ultimately going to be a single parent, but only for a couple of years still with a dependent Yeah, and then it just feels like I've just had this beautiful little shadow in my daughter that that whole time we've had these triumphs together, like so many wins, and you know, she's she's brighter
and she's better as a human for having been a part of seeing me as her role model go through the things I have and see my inner strengths and what that looks like and how what's the result and how do I repair? And she's been there to watch what it is to be a woman, and she's watched that and she's it's been great to have her to talk to about you know what it's like, you know, grieving my son, leaving home, who's now a father. You know, I'm going to be like my parents. Do you want to see a video?
Definitely?
Afterwards? I wanted a video. Yes.
So when you just said before, maybe I was meant to be a single mom. Yeah, when your divorce happened, and as you said that you had your your kids were relative. Actually, you know, I was reading that the average age from Australian momented divorces in a early to mid forties. That's when it happens, right, And I think that's actually when when you I.
Got married at forty.
Yeah, there you go.
And then but the thing is is it's a time of life when you do have a lot of responsibilities around you, right, like financial and all those things.
As you were saying with work, and.
It's it's a really stressful period of adulthood anyway. And then you throw this in on it when you say maybe I was meant to be a single mother.
Do you think like you're.
Good at it?
Like because you're you know, you're.
A strong woman, who know you don't think you're.
Good on it?
Oh god, I know it, don't much. Rather not do not. I will not rewrite that book. I had two children and that's all that I could manage in my lifetime.
And how did you always juggle the work? Like the fact that your work takes you traveling and away and all those things, because that's another thing when you're.
By yourself, right, that's harder. You know, my son always says, or you're such a different mom to supporr was also different. And you know I say two different things, mate. When I had you, I was like twenty six and six
years later, I'm a very different human being. Not only am I now a single mom and I'm single mom traveling and I've got between you know, that beautiful babysitting company called Angel, Yeah, I another one you yes, and grandparents or friends or my family, my sister, Between all of these people and not to mention my beautiful, beautiful family and friends who who you know. It takes a village, doesn't it. And it's the village that are helping raise
my children. I never felt that they were without or I was without because I wasn't with their respective fathers. Things happened and I just couldn't. Relationships and raising children were just not something that a partnership we saw eye to eye, and you know, strangely enough, before children, the thought of them and I always said I'd never get married because looking at my parents, it's like shit, you
guys should get it together. And I just didn't have great role models or a good example on how to do that right. And I just thought, well, maybe that's it. I'm not built for it, and I think I know how to raise my kids and am I a good mother. My son and I really really had it out about that. He said, you know, you you should have married that guy. You're stuffed up big time, mum. And I said, we can lower our voices now and not yell at each
other because I'm on the same page as you. I agree, I agree with you, I agree that I'm not you know, let's come to terms with or be on the same page about the fact that I'm not a perfect human being and I have stuffed up majorly along the way, but we've still got each other. I've come out the other end, or I've woken up every day just knowing that I've still got you and your sister, that I will always be someone's mother, and I've always got you
two to love. And it's what got me up every day and moved on to the next thing.
Always so back to that point of the dark place after that when you're trying to picture the sunny day.
They are a big part of it, right, big part of it. They're faces. And now my grandson, my little grandson Mondna his face. I mean, do you know I don't sit there on TikTok looking at all the funny videos. I just rewind all of the photographs and the videos that my son sends me through. Do you know it's love on a next level. It's what I hear. It's it really is like people say, you like your children, but you love your grandchildren good A little bit they true there, I think, is it.
Because mea obviously who baba me?
Is MIA's business.
But she's recently become a grandmother, and she says, it's just all the joy and not the stress of parenting.
So it's like the love that you have for your kids.
But then you also.
Don't have to do all of the things. I can take full responsibility for them. So it feels like it's like lift it is it is.
Having said that, though it's just your kind of you do want to steal a I want to steal more cuddles than I can because we live in different states, right, I don't have to go through the pregnancies, gosh, and they were two very difficult ones for me personally. I look at the parents and go, yeah, I can, I can give the baby back, and there's all of that, but you do stress a little bit about the decisions that they make. Just quietly, you just you just don't.
It would never turn out as a great conversation because you have to learn to bite your tongue. You do
have to learn to bite your tongue. And I'm not a bite your tongue person, but along comes your children as first time parents, and you've got to learn to decide what you're going to bring up or anything like that, or just make sure that your ears are big and waving around and waiting to hear anything that they that they come to you with, because if you know, all I can do is go, I've got two kids, and I did it on my own, and I've got a lot of advice for both of you, if and when you want to.
Yeah, if and when you want to, And I'm sure they will want it up next when your kids are grown and they look back at how your choices affected them and they want to tell you all about that. How do you have that conversation and is it helpful and healing or is it a bit like pressing on an old bruise that's after the break. That's a big thing. When you were just saying that your son and you had a conversation about you know, that period of time and like whether or not you were a good mother
and whether or not you made the right calls. That's a tough conversation.
To have with your kids. Right. It wasn't a conversation. It was pretty much a yelling match. It was a screaming match. I remember that. And he'd never had it out with me as an adult as well ever as a kid both, so it's like it was going to come it was a thing that was coming. And there were several points that he wanted to up and leave, and eye would go, no, you're not. I'm giving you
permission all of it. Just put it. I want you to everything that you hate about the decisions that I've made in your life, you know, because it is your life. And once that happened, it just became it went from a raw to a beautiful little hum.
But you must have That's those kind of conversations they you know, as you say, the raw turned into a hum. But did you feel bruised or did you feel well? I'm glad now I know, Like you know what I mean.
I'm glad now I know. But also I think I'd always given him permission to tell me. I always the permission was always there. I just the needed to be a moment for it to cross over and for him to get to that point where right, and the fact that he was yelling and it was emotion, it's built up, it's his whole life where I'm looking at here, I'm looking at this him metamorphosizing, and I'm going he needs and I was looking at him and I say, you
need to let it out. Tell me. I'm I'm not going to disagree with anything that you've got to say, because how whatever those decisions were, you had to deal with that in your life, with the people that I put you in your world, with some things that he told me. It was they were really hard to swallow, but I was ready for it at the same time.
That's incredible, Yeah, because a lot of families never ever ever all these things.
Well, I've got one of each, right, I've got a boy and a girl, but I've also got a black one and a white one. And you know so and their parents, so their fathers are from completely two different worlds. My girl's father is a Caucasian white man, Australian, you know, sixth generation, and Quiam's father is Torrestrate Islander, same as my background. You know, We've got the same values, same everything. And her world is a completely different world that she
juggles every day. You know, he gets treated like a black man when he was growing up. Oh you're a black kid. You're running around and you must be a naughty little black fellow. Both in modeling agencies and she got more work and he got mum. But you know, they were happy to take them along, but they looked very different, and you know, we were in a very different editorial world now, like it's very different we see
in advertising, isn't it. We are representing the truer, you know, landscape of Australia than what it was when I was raising my kids, because I'd get I'd walk down, you know, the streets of Newtown where we lived, and people would go, oh, she must be the old pair or the nanny, because they'd look at them and look at her and look at him, and they would be Their relationship to me would be clearly like, oh, she's the mum. But that's strange.
They look like a very you know, an odd bunch of people walking down the streets and the odd bunch.
Yeah, it must be a particular thing for a mother too, As you were just telling me about that, about raising your two kids in the world treating them so differently. Gosh, how as the parent do you relate to that, because you know, you're obviously bringing all your culture and your own experience to that, Like, it must be strange not for that to be.
What does that conversation look like? What do those what are the dialogues? What are the words in your household when you're talking to your children about relating to the world around them, Well, it was important to ask themselves how they relate to each other first. How they relate to each other is how they relate to the world outside of them, and keeping that dialogue very open. And because I'm not he wasn't raised with a man showing him the road or the ropes or whatever. It was
very hard. That part of it was always really hard to juggle because in our culture, a man goes through his own initiations into the world to become a man, stages in the world, marks on his life that will show him progressively as he is being acknowledged and validated to become a man. There are those things that happen in our society as tryst rd Islanders. But she's just you know, she looks like the run of the mill Australian kid, and you know she doesn't have to go
through the same prejudices as what he does. But I made sure that his coming of age ceremonies always happened, and that his father, you know, as much of his drag and him along, they happened. I made sure that they happened. And again with the help of the village that we're helping me raise my children.
I was going to ask you about the village and that and culture and family and how that helps at the dark moments like those, the days you're talking about after the divorce, when you're like, what the hell does my life look like now?
My family look like? Now? How does that help? How does it work? My friends? When it came my family, I'll call them my family because that's exactly who they are, and it's a really large lgbtque family. And because I've only got one sister who lives in Sydney, the other one in Newcastle, and then the rest of the family
are in Queensland and the Torres Strait. Sometimes it's really hard because I look at myself and it's really hard to see somebody that you care so much about going through something in their life because you don't know what to say, You don't know how to first of all, if you find the question, are you okay to actually sit there and then listen to what they're going to
tell you and find a way to process it? And I think for most of us we don't know how to process it because we don't know how to help them fix that situation when often, more often than not, it's just about sitting there and being with somebody, even if it's in silence, Like I am there for my mother, It's like, it's not about having conversations, it's her knowing that you're there, just sitting there with her physical process. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of times I would think, God, they're
just fair with the friends. Everybody just wants to be around for the laughter and the smiles and the happy times and the joy, happy, joy, joy, but nobody really wants to talk about the pain that you're going through. I understand it now. I understand it now because my son is in the process of building his village and I am a part of it. I'm a matriarch, so I've got a very different role to play in what
that looks like. But now I'm seeing what his village looks like, and now how he's choosing those people that are going to be around to help him through those not so sunny days. That's not up to me. But the people that I chose to be around are people that I've made godfather for my daughter, and you know they have or godmother for my daughter, and being there as really important people that my son calls uncles and
aunts and he calls them grandma and grandpa. They did what they did, and I'm very grateful to the village. I'm very very great to them because they could. They only did what they thought they could, you know, as far as they could. You can only ask so much of someone. Really, then beyond that, it's like, I'm very grateful. I'm happy. I'm grateful. At the time, it's like where is everybody? They've left me standing here holding the babies.
But it's not that simple, it really isn't it. Really, it's not cut and dry, and you do find I did find places that where I could just but mostly it was with my children at home. Really yeah.
Really, It's interesting because I think for a lot of women when they go through a divorce and their children are small, that loneliness is quite common. Like there's sudden thing of like where has everybody gone, particularly if you had a social But the strength, the strange.
Thing is that they're there. Yeah, they're there.
I like that advice about you know, just being like just being there because it is hard when you've got your people who you love going through really difficult things and you don't know what to say.
Yes, but also as some who's going through it, don't feel like you always have to just be talking about that every time you see somebody, and you know, we're so encouraged to just talk about it. You know, you just get it off your chest. D da da da. I think there are other ways to talk about it and get it off your chest other than it. Yeah, what that way is is different for everybody. It might be going to the gym and punching the crap out of a punching bag, and it could be different for everyone.
But sometimes I think you have to shut the noise down, and that means stop talking about it. Listen to the noise in your head. Let it be. It'll actually go from a boisterous cacophony down to something that's just a beautiful hum It really does. And don't feel like you have to talk about it to everyone because everyone's scared. Everybody's scared that they can't help you because they love you so much. Yeah.
I remember reading an interview with you not long after the divorce. Why you said, I'm done, I'm done with love? You said, did you silly?
Go?
I mean, who knows whether you really said it?
It was.
They may have made, they may have embellished. No, I'm thinking again about people listening to this who may be like I am. Here's something I see sometimes is with people in my world they're like, that's it, never ever, ever, And then maybe after a year or so, they're like.
Hm, things are like things are coming back together, like.
Did you did you think I'm done after the devastation of that situation.
Yeah, there's no embellishments. I think it's sometimes context. They take what you say and then put the context in their own context to create the story. I will have to say sorry, I'm just I get emotional talking about all of it. For me, the emotions of getting in touch with emotions again was something that I felt I could that is, that is the part of love that I can I can wait. I'm going to put the pause button on on the fields as they call it these days. What I crave and what if you're if
any woman's honest is the physical love? Yeah, the physical side of it, the touching, the eyeballs, the words, you know, it's those sorts of immediate you know, the smells and all of that. It's those sorts of powerful things. The physical sides of things that I think you miss immediately that's not there anymore, the cuddles, but the emotional stuff I wasn't ready to be invested in in right away. Love though. Love is where it is where you place it.
I placed love in my children, and because I know how that will be not just reciprocated, but reciprocated immediately and tenfold compared to what you think you've just lost. You think you've just lost something, but that can be replaced in a lot of things. You can find love in a lot of places. You can find love in just simple passions. And what is your passion? Find it immediately, come out here and look for it. It's not a person. It could be a thing, and it could be an activity.
It could it's it's everywhere as long as you're looking for it, to not just be invested in one thing. If that makes sense, it does make sense for you.
I wanted to obviously talk about music. Is that does that help you?
Oh?
Gotcha?
I was going to say, because it's obviously it was there before. Obviously, it's what your world has been. Is it one of the things that helped you at your lowest or not? Does it feel like pressure.
Oh yeah, well no, I mean it depends the management that I was in before I changed. There was always pressure to be something right now, and in not necessarily the ways that I wanted to, because see, music is so connected to my core that it just did not feel right to be getting the end, to be getting something that's the result for a very pure monetary reason. The remuneration part of it is just it was just driving me insane and in fact away from something that
I love, that is like my passion. You know. I always think about, you know, that weird ball that's got this electricity inside of it and you put your hand and you can see it.
And it goes yeah, yeah, yeah, you put your hand.
Yeah. It just wasn't doing music. Wasn't doing that for me under that relationship, under that marriage, you know, and that was a seventeen year marriage that I needed. I didn't know, I didn't know what it was going to look like beyond on the other side of that in a different way, but I just didn't want it to be that anymore where it was just driven monetarily for you know, for all of these reasons, that just sucked the total love out of the room. I don't want to do music like that.
That's a fine line, right is that with your I mean art sounds like a hatty word, but it's true. When your art pays the bills, it's hard to be to marry those things when this is pulling the love of it away. Yeah, And there must have been pressure for you. You know, you're a single mom. You've got to make a living like.
Yeah, And that was the pressures, wasn't it, As is the roof over the head and the food on the table, education and everything that comes with, you know, giving them the extra curriculars as well, providing for them in every single sense of the word. Especially as a single mom. You've got to you've got to put it out there, har Yeah, to form, to create that the world that's going to bounce back to them in ways that you
want them to be rewarded by. And I found that it changed me in that my responses to say emails would stop, my answering or returning answering the phone or returning phone calls would stop. So it was affecting my business relationships. Every writing I was hiding, hiding from something I didn't want. But but it was It's like, well, It took a long time to realize that that's what it was, because, like, hey, it's music, haven't I got the best job in the world. I'm making money from
something that I love. It's my passion. It can very very quickly, and if you're not aware of it becomes something that you didn't always want it to be. And with creating the type of music that I want to create, which is the current shell that I live in with the right types of me feelings inside. With that, it just again, I've just reconnected with that. You know, that buzzy twenty two year old that signed a record deal back when I was twenty one, back in nineteen ninety one,
ninety ninety two, and I've rediscovered her. But I'm an older person now and I've had all of this stuff happen in the world, and with raising kids along the way, and relationships and a divorce. My god, it would have thought I had a divorce in there as well, and it all adds to the wonderful It's Yea flavors the music in quite a different way, I'm sure.
Well.
This album I was reading that, I was listening to the single today It's Beautiful. I was reading that it's taken you to different places Papua New Guinea, New Zealand.
Is that right?
For the influences and the sounds of it, you clearly still have like the adventurer, like a passion there for this, Like you clearly still you're like, I'm not done. I'm not just taking an easy road.
Like is that true? You've still got the fire burning.
I've still got the fire burning. Definitely. You get the right people, you get in contact with the right team of people. I feel like I'm in the right team of people right now, working with mostly women, which I haven't done in my life before. I've really been in that world that people describe as a male dominated industry. I feel like that that's where I put a stop to that and decide that, you know, there are women doing a lot more in this field than ever, ever,
ever before. And I know that because I judge for the Australian Women's Music Awards and just seeing the women, the vastness of women and what they've done in their
careers over the last thirty years is incredible. And maybe that was the secret too, is just placing women as part of my team to make that because you know, women know how to repair very quickly, and we decision make It's innate, It's instinctive, isn't it that a survival is like you know where to go to It's not too far to know how to pick yourself up and move right along. So that's how I've found where my music feels the best at the moment because it's got
the right team, mostly women. But then I've got to sort of now shine a light to the producer that's
done that I've worked with for this album. David Bridy is from a band called Not Drowning Waving, and his work goes way back to when he was in his early to mid twenties and the like minded people that were in the band with him getting a job in Rabawel in Papua New Guinea, falling in love with the place and the people so much that he now speaks the language fluently and has worked with a lot of Melanesian musicians, and I'm from a Melanesian culture and so
having his sensitivity and sensibilities about our cultures because they are different. You know, Solomon's to public and inst Torrestraate Islanders. I did revisit him way back with the last management. He said, it's not We're never ever going to make another Stylin' Up. It was going to be a reissue or a reimagining of Stylin Up, the first album. He said,
you can't. You can't reproduce a first album, not that as iconic as it is and was the first of its kind from an artist that was being introduced to the world with a Melanesian background, who's female. You're the first, You've opened the door for the rest to come along. We can't make another, not the way that you want to. So that saddened me, and I knew instantly that that there was something wrong in my style and in my
direction of the way I wanted to create music. So I sat with that for a long time, and then the pandemic happened, and so too did the end of my management at the time, and it was time to revisit that conversation with David and say to him, but you know what, as well, David, I'm not just shedding my management, but I'm shedding also this really dark relationship with alcohol as well. And in order to do where I want to go, I've got to get rid of all of that. So he was like yeah, I really
respect that. And if you're ready to go in that direction, just give us a buzz and we'll do it. We caught up on life and what had happened since that first album till that very moment, and he took on this idea of waku, which is something that women make. Women make mats. We make them out of coconut leaves.
And my mother taught us how to prepare the coconut leaves, drying them out and then wrapping them in these circles and then leaving them out in the sun to dry from that process of the tree to the process, and then making them mat itself out of pandanus leaves, coconut leaves and this wild read that grows on Sideby Island where my mum was born. He took the idea of weaving the songs that my grandfather had composed and the story of my life, and we came up with this
beautiful concept of weaving all of these stories together. And the music just came naturally, because it's if you're talking from your soul, your heart, it's music, it's melodies, it's floating around and this might sound trite, but was it healing? This is my healing album. Addiction is so hard. Like people have addictions, it's okay, And no one talks about those addictions publicly in my family at least, well yeah, or in my SOAC.
I wonder if we're getting any better at talking about it or if it still comes with a lot of shame, which it shouldn't have.
Well for me, it comes with addiction. For me, it comes with a lot of shame, it really does. I'm going to be dealing with it to my grave, you know, And not that I have any plans on getting out of my life anytime soon, but you know, I guess it was the end of my last management when it was brought up. You've got to be dealing with your addiction and actually somebody mentioning it and you going, I know, and then you actually dealing with it. Are so different
components of dealing with addiction. My choice of addiction has changed throughout my life. But whatever that is, whatever the reason for getting to a place where you feel like you need to do something very bad to your body and your soul and your mind, working that out and why you actually like, what is the reason that you're running away from is the big thing isn't. It's the big question, what is what is making you do? So? No,
I don't think I have. Maybe that's it. Maybe I'm through the process of using my music to help me answer what that is for me, you know, And you can hear my voice now it's changed because it is I'm living it. I'm still living the process of putting finding out how to heal myself through music.
Now, how do you continue to be heard in an industry that's committed to keeping the mic away from mid women? I ask Christine next, at a time when so many of us have so much to say, how do you find the strength to speak up when everybody's telling you that they might rather listen to someone you know, younger? That's coming up next. The music industry isn't all that kind either to women getting older as well. They have a mind of bringing all your wisdom with you.
And you know, if if I if I can say it and be honest, yeah, it's you know, it's not kind because it's just not made for old women, is it. It's a whole other If music's about making is about becoming as famous as famous as possible and making shit tons of money, then the older you get. It's definitely not designed for older women like that, unless you had a crazy, crazy successful youth and then it just follows you as you reinvent yourself and then you know, become
this money machine. It's that would be easy, but it's just really hard to get the same recognition as an older musician than what you got when you're in your twenties or when you were younger than being in your mids.
I reckon, that's say.
It's kind of a mirror to the way that a lot of women's stories go, which is that as you get older, people are like looking away a bit like what has she got to offer?
What?
Actually, we're at the time in our life when we have the most to offer, because listening to you tell your story today and knowing all the depth you know, all the things you obviously behind that, and the depth of culture and experience, like, how could you not have interesting things to be saying and see putting into the world rather than if you were twenty Again, we do not to say you weren't interesting when you were twenty Christie.
And it was only in Sting because no one had heard of the Torres Straight Islands. And I'm not going to say that I'm obviously interesting because I can sing, and it's like, where did you come from? Oh my god, where have we unearthed you from? It was only interesting because people hadn't heard of where I'd come from, and it was just new. It just wasn't wasn't seen before I read. I read and look at I read magazine articles, I read all of that stuff that I did when
I was younger, like, and I cannot believe that. I yeah, it's a bloody shut up, you idiot. Oh god, what what the heck? Why did I say that?
Or oh?
They blew the context out of that one. It's like, I cannot stand things that came out of my mouth when I was younger.
I like, what.
Just different, just things. It's like, oh, that's so silly. It was so twenty three. Oh god, you know, just like the younger woman.
Again, that's that's like all of us, but all of us don't have it in magazines.
I can. I've got I've got evidence of how I used to say. But one thing never changed my love was the fact that I always I'm culture first, very proud of my my heritage, very proud. And this album is that right? Oh but I must see, music makes me get emotional.
My kids make me get I wanted to.
I'm gonna, I promise, I'm going to stop making you get emotional in a minute.
But I do.
You're saying that like it's a bad thing.
This is You're right, I should really be I shouldn't be.
No, no, no, I'm in a really happy place. I'm in a good place. I don't I don't obviously talk about my addiction a lot. So if that's the very thing that's made me emotional, remember we are here talking about my music as well, and I'm so so happy about my music. But as David Bradley says to me, Annud, this album was never meant to be until now. M it's my best music because it's my life. It's got my life experiences.
But so when you listen to it as you should be, menopause is ship.
Menopause is shit because you know, people say about your hormans and everything, but just oh my god, I've just got I've always got like a bag of tears that I have to pack when I get to virgin and quantas. You know, it's like they say, how many you know, how many kilos have you got in your bag. It's like, can I also count the bags tears that come along with me?
You're so right, like you just so teary, emotional post of the surface.
I one relate to that.
But what I was asking you is when you were just saying that and that this album is you and it's your culture and it's this is the moment. Does it make so when I asked you at the very beginning of this, are you a midwoman who is in her power and proud? Do you feel it when you think of that?
Because that, I mean, oh gosh, I am woman. Hear me raw? You know? Is such It sums everything up for this stage in my life, Like I don't care what I look like. I don't care what I'm wearing, and I don't givet flying epps if anybody doesn't like what I've got to say. I don't care about saying that I'm a bloody addict. I don't I'm not apologizing. I'm not apologetic. I have got no sorries and I'm not going to defend myself anymore. This is the music
that I was meant to record ten years ago. But as David Brady said, you know this is the music that you were supposed to be making now, because now is the time that you're already not your audience, not the world, but you.
There's one more thing I want to ask you about music that also ties back to where we started this, which was talking about your kids and your family. Your daughter is a singer too, right, Oh? Yes, and you sing with her, right will you?
Well? Hang on, she sings with me? Oh that's y.
Yeah, let's just get that order of the hierarchy. She sings with you, of course, she'd love that though, you sing with your daughter, don't you.
No, I didn't mean it like that. I meant exactly the way that you correct she sings with you?
Is that a joy? Oh? My gosh?
And did she?
And she got of course. So it's the obvious answer is she's joyful. It's a joy. But this she is, she's like a little manager. She's like a little she is a tutor force. She's a little pocket rocket. So she didn't get the annu height in the family. And I'm not saying many accounts that I'm a hom a tall person, but she is. She's she's larger than life. And that's what I feel like she was trying to tell me she's this person who just she has this
knowing beyond what young people her age should know. And she sings like an angel, but she doesn't sound like me, but we but yet we do compliment each other. People say you sound like your mom, and it's like, oh god, no, you should slap those people when they say that she sounds like herself. She sounds like herself, but she's also this impressive being and that wonderful part of motherhood that makes me feel like, gosh, you really did do well with that one.
You know you were saying before that the work you were doing that you didn't feel connected to. Is it really nerve wracking pushing something out there that you are really connected to.
Yeah, And we talked about pressure before and I'd live. I said, I didn't feel that pressure, but it is nerve wracking. And I've always said because I've had two years to, you know, work on you know, if people don't aren't attracted to the album and don't take it just you know, don't don't feel so personal about It's hard not to because it's your child, it is, but you know, if they don't, it's I've got to go back to why did I make this album? What have I been through to get to this point? And am
I proud of it? Regardless? Fuck? Yeah, that was so great.
I feel like I want to give you a hug. Is that appropriate or not?
No, it's appropriate.
Well I told you that was unexpected. I can't leave that conversation or leave Mid without telling you to listen to Christine our news new album. If you want to hear what it sounds like for a woman to return to her soul after years of battling with all kinds of bullshit, it's for you.
Coming back my weaving.
It's called Wakou mineral a Minila. And if you want to support a woman who's been told she's probably a bit too old for all this pop music stuff despite being at the napsolo top of her game, then it's for you. And if you just want to listen to exceptionally beautiful music deeply connected to culture, it's for you.
And now that I've stopped.
Telling you how to live your life, I want to thank you and Christine of course, and all the MID women and one man who've come on to share their stories on the season one of this podcast. It's meant everything to me as we've pushed this new little podcast boat out into the open ocean. So please, if you love this conversation, go find MID in your feed and scroll back and listen to Julie Goodwin talk about mental health. Listen to Helen Thorn talk about bodies, Catherine May talk
about burnout, Jackie Bailey talk about grief. Listen to all of them, and if you love them and they mean something to you and they helped you, then share. And we will be back with Mid season two in just a few weeks. Look out for us in your feeds in early August. I can't wait to bring it to you. Keep sending in the feedback to me. You can DM me on Instagram. You can jump onto the mid by my Mom and Mia Paige and tell me what you think of the show and what you think we should
be talking about. I also just want to send out an enormous thank you to our excellent producer, to Elysabizaz, to all of the Mom and Mia podcast and editorial team, and of course to you again for listening to MID.
I couldn't be happier that you're here.
Follow us, tell us what you think, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks