13

IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN

When the ground beneath me crumbled, it was my dark night of the soul — a sort of spiritual reckoning in which everything I’d known to be true had collapsed. For so long I had chased the external fix to bring me happiness. I had always looked outside myself for reassurance. In my child’s mind I’d come to believe that being sick and helpless was how I would be noticed and loved.

Some of my most vivid childhood memories revolve around times when I was in need. When I was knocked off my bike during my early morning paper round and was scooped up off the road by a lovely couple in a passing car who had swerved to avoid running me over. They brought me home, and I tearfully showed Mum my buckled bike and bloodied knees, revelling in her attention. When I was home from school with a cold or a stomach-ache, and Mum would wrap me in her fluffy black-and-white sheepskin coat and lay me on the couch. We called it the ‘sick coat’, and wearing it was always a treat. Even now, when I return home, just running my hands across its soft down makes me feel safe.

As desperate as I felt in those days when I had lost all will to live, it was perhaps an unconscious attempt to go back to that familiar childhood state that brought the ones I loved rallying to my side, just as they had for my brother. But it was a narrative that no longer served me. I was not the problem child. It was time to stop viewing myself as broken. Veronica put it to me: ‘It’s a cocoon. It’s warm and cosy and you don’t want to leave, but you have to ask yourself, what is the cost of remaining here?’

My parents, 17,000 kilometres away and feeling helpless, were frantic. Mum’s instinct was to get on the first plane. But she was sick herself, struggling with a blood-pressure problem that left her exhausted, anaemic, and prone to passing out. Her doctor strongly advised her not to fly. We shared a distraught Skype conversation and she was adamant she was coming anyway. I wanted nothing more than to feel Mum’s arms wrapped around me. But I couldn’t let her risk her own health. And what would she do when she got here? The sick coat wasn’t going to fix me. I needed to start looking after myself. I told her to stay home and get better.

This was a turning point. I fought for myself harder than I’ve ever fought for anything in my life. I began to claw my way to the surface of a deep well, my nails cracked and bloodied with the effort of dragging myself up, inch by inch, to a place where I could finally snatch a few breaths of clean air.

A huge part of building my resilience came from journalling. It allowed me to wade through the murky soup of anxiety and shame that took up so much space in my head. Committing my thoughts to the page was like opening a pressure valve. I was completely uncensored. Nothing was off limits. I wrote about my deepest fears and my most irrational out-of-touch-with-reality beliefs. It was all recorded in a stream-of-consciousness brain dump that often made little sense. But in the hours or days that followed, something would shift. At a time when I was trying to move away from helplessness, just writing down my thoughts was a form of self-care that allowed me to strengthen the part that had for too long sought reassurance from the outside.

During those tough times, when a good week was one in which I managed a whole morning without crying, I went full Rain Man and started documenting my wins in a colour-coded sticker system on a large wall calendar. It was a visual reminder that I still had choices. Green was for when I’d exercised, blue was for meditation, yellow was for when I’d managed to get out of bed before 9.00 am, red was for eating, and pink was for when I’d practised being a good parent to the child part of myself by not acting on the irrational thoughts she so regularly conjured up. It allowed me to note correlations between my mood and the actions — or lack of them — I took, to give myself the best chance of getting through the week. Invariably, when my calendar was a riot of colour I did much better than when there was a whole lot of white space. The colour reminded me I was not powerless.

The sticker system has since been retired, but I still keep a journal. The collection of prettily patterned, brightly coloured notebooks takes up a whole shelf in my coffee table. Despite external appearances, those pages are predominantly filled with pain. The journals are, by design, a safe space for unadulterated grief and angst. I rarely read back on what I’ve written. If I did, it would give the impression that my life is one long purgatory of abject misery. It’s not.

For this reason, I also keep a gratitude journal as a counterweight. Every night before bed I make a note of three things I’m grateful for or which went well that day. Sometimes it’s easy. The morning walk that left me feeling energised. An intimate dinner with dear friends. Meeting a deadline for a complex piece of work. But it’s on the tough days I have to look a bit harder. And yet the more I practise, the more I find that even on the shittiest day, when life kicks you in the crotch, spits in your face, and steals your lunch money, if you keep your eyes clear and your heart open, there is always something to be grateful for.

When I’m consciously looking for positives, they start to present themselves. As I clawed my way out of the well, it was a small comfort to commit to paper something good I had achieved that day. Of course, there’s a clear difference between being grateful and the ‘think positive’ movement, which wants us to grin our way out of the blues. When I was really struggling, I’d read those ‘inspirational’ memes on Instagram and want to put my fist through the wall. Happiness is a choice. Live in the moment — it’s all there is. Go fuck yourself. What if the moment is an excruciating purgatory that feels like being slowly stabbed to death by your own brain? I was more drawn to the growing ‘demotivational’ counterculture, which cheekily takes aim at the motivational quotes blanketing the internet in a sickly sweet hue of positivity and offers a different view. I started following Unspirational, an account that, instead of offering peppy life lessons set against images of tranquil beaches and rolling meadows, appealed to my dark sense of humour by providing advice such as, Don’t cry because it’s over. Cry because eventually everything will be over too. Or, Success is just failure that hasn’t happened yet. Giving thanks privately, in a confessional space such as a journal, is not the same as plastering a smile on your face and repeating affirmations in the mirror that ‘all is well’ as your life blows up around you. Gratitude is about accepting the hard times but realising all is not lost.

Some days, when I’m doing it really tough, my gratitude journal entries are as basic as they come:

• Lady in the pharmacy was kind when I was sad.

• Made it to the gym even though I didn’t want to get out of bed.

• It was nice being cosy in my apartment with the rain lashing down outside.

On other days, my list can spread over two pages. This nightly ritual has helped me appreciate the simple things. My friendships are richer as a result. Recording the moments when I’m grateful for the love and support of those around me allows me not only to feel lucky but also to remember to convey that to my friends and family, which in turn deepens our connection. It makes me realise how fortunate I am to have the basics. At home, I find myself sometimes just happy to have a warm bed or an apartment that feels inviting and mine. When my knees creak at the gym, I’m reminded that I’m still healthy enough to work out and financially stable enough to afford the membership.

Science is starting to catch up with what some religions and philosophies have extolled for centuries — that counting your blessings is an integral part of health, wholeness, and contentment. University of California at Davis psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough — the world’s pre-eminent experts on gratitude — have conducted experiments which showed that people who kept gratitude journals reported fewer health complaints and felt more optimistic and more motivated than those who recorded their daily troubles or neutral life events. Their research also shows that gratitude practice can be beneficial for people managing chronic conditions. In a group of adults with neuromuscular disease, they discovered a 21-day intervention resulted in boosted energy, engendered positive moods, and led to better sleep quality and a greater sense of connection to others.

Being thankful can change the way your mind processes events. A 2009 National Institutes of Health study found that gratitude triggers changes in the hypothalamus — the region of the brain that controls functions such as eating, drinking, and sleeping — and has an impact on stress and metabolism. It also activates dopamine, the brain’s ‘feel-good’ chemical. Actively seeking out the good just makes you feel better. This is the theory behind Grateful in April, a global campaign to help people focus on the good in their lives. Founded by Melbourne social entrepreneur and former crime reporter Melina Schamroth, it encourages people to spend the 30 days of April counting their blessings in order to cultivate an ‘attitude of gratitude’ that will help create a more positive world outlook. Schamroth told me that when people are having a run of bad luck, they often seem to attract more of it no matter what they do. But when they’re on a run of good luck, the opposite can happen because they’re focusing on the positives around them instead of the misery:

It’s like when you decide you’re going to buy a particular type of car, that’s all you see everywhere. It’s very easy to find something to complain about, but most of us, when we’re hungry, we have access to food; we have shelter; we have the basics. That’s not to say that bad things don’t happen and you shouldn’t acknowledge them. But it’s about refocusing your attention to realise that there are positive things you can take out of those situations.

Schamroth has seen the change that can come when people are able to unearth hope in the midst of adversity. She started the campaign after supporting communities affected by Victoria’s devastating 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. She realised that those people who had lost everything took strength from shifting their perspective and focusing on the things of value that still existed in their lives. This is a common theme for many who sign up to the gratitude challenge. ‘We’ve had people facing very dire situations, health problems, relationship breakdowns, who have reported back that at the end of the month they’ve been able to turn their thinking around, turn their actions around, and in some cases turn their lives around,’ Schamroth said.

When I reached my rock bottom, I had to make a choice. I could continue to believe I was helpless and broken, or I could rewrite the script. It was a daily, at times minute-by-minute, battle. But there was always hope, if I actively sought it out. And it started with me. Marco was right. Stark was strong. I just had to believe it.

I’ve lived a fortunate life as a middle-class, straight white woman in prosperous, developed countries. I’m acutely aware of how privileged I’ve been in ways in which so many are not. It’s undeniably easier for me to find gratitude in my daily life than it is for those not born into such advantage. Not long after I was back on my feet, I met someone who brought that reality into sharp focus. Chido Govera taught me a valuable lesson about the power of looking for hope and gratitude even when life makes that seem impossible. She was in Melbourne as part of a series of talks with The School of Life, an organisation founded by British philosopher and author Alain de Botton that is committed to developing people’s emotional intelligence and fostering social change. I was honoured to be asked to host her at an in-conversation event.

More than most, Chido could be forgiven for feeling angry and defeated by the obstacles life has put in her way. Growing up in Zimbabwe, she was orphaned as a child when she lost her mother to AIDS. At the age of seven, she became a parent to her younger brother and carer for her nearly blind grandmother. It meant waking up at 4.00 am to gather firewood, walking at least a mile to fetch water, working in the field, and somehow finding a way to attend school. She would often go to bed hungry. At eight, she was sexually abused by an uncle, and by her ninth birthday, the struggle of caring for her family and trying to put food on the table forced her to drop out of school. At 11, a family member offered her what they said was her only way to escape the poverty trap — she would marry a 40-year-old man and he would become her provider. But Chido refused. She chose another way, making a promise to herself that she would grow up and protect other orphans. Instead of giving in to anger and hopelessness, she channelled her suffering into a powerful movement for change. She learned to farm mushrooms, and through this most unlikely of escape routes transformed her life and those of more than a thousand women in Zimbabwe, Congo, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania, South Africa, India, and even in Aboriginal communities in Australia, teaching them to be self-sufficient through her Future of Hope foundation.

Meeting Chido was intimidating. Nothing makes you examine your contribution to the world quite like taking a look at what this woman has achieved, and all by the age of just 31. When we met at St Kilda’s White House — a classically beautiful 160-year-old former home to Victoria’s solicitor-general — she had only arrived in Australia the previous day, accompanied by two of her seven foster children, who range in age from 12 to 20. It was the first time either of these teenagers had left Zimbabwe. In the green room, as they tapped away on their phones, I told Chido that so much of what she taught resonated with me. She held my gaze and I felt energised by her strength and compassion.

It’s rare to watch a room of 100 people completely captivated for an hour and a half. There was none of the usual fidgeting or shifting in seats. The audience sat forward, transfixed by Chido’s warmth and openness. We had all come looking for hope, and she offered it freely, sharing the lessons she had learned from living through the greatest pain. When I asked Chido, whose name means passion, how she dealt with the abuse she had suffered and the loss of her mother, she told us that the anger had propelled her forward. She refused to give in to helplessness. ‘We are not what happened to us,’ she said, as she described how she encourages the young women she mentors not to view themselves as victims. When a doctor diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and said there was nothing he could do to help, it was a turning point. ‘I realised that I had to tap into the internal. I could not wait for others to make me happy or to relieve my anger. The power was within me.’

As I heard her utter those words, something gave way inside me. I felt a surge of strength and gratitude. I was reminded of that deep reserve of resilience that allowed me to keep going. And although our lives could not have been more different, I felt a profound connection to this woman. We shared the most fundamental of human qualities — the capacity for hope and perseverance. I must stress that I’m not suggesting people who find themselves struggling with ongoing trauma or emotional distress are somehow not trying hard enough. But meeting Chido helped me see that it is often when we are in a place of hopelessness that the power of hope reveals itself. As Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl observed in his memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning, those who survived longest in Auschwitz had often found a way to have hope and purpose; they comforted others or gave away their last piece of bread, and these active choices sustained them. ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,’ he wrote.

For Chido, having an open heart helps her find the strength to keep going. ‘A lot of hard things, if we allow ourselves to get stuck in that, and not be open enough to learn from new experiences and to have new experiences ourselves, then we will not survive.’

Without an open heart, she told me, we don’t see opportunities when they cross our paths. While anger can be a painful and challenging emotion, she believes it is one we cannot avoid. We can also learn from it. ‘It has to generate some kind of forgiveness and lessons that allow us to go forward with a light heart.’

I wondered how, in a world that can often feel bleak, with problems that seem insurmountable, she maintained this outlook and discovered to my surprise that it was her traumatic childhood experiences that shaped her sense of optimism. Instead of saying, ‘There’s nothing I can do, I’m just a child,’ Chido recognised that although she was only one person, she was someone who could drive change every day through her actions.

Chido can’t possibly reach all of the orphans in Zimbabwe, where almost 10 per cent of the population have lost their parents. But she’s making a significant difference with the girls she supports and, in turn, she hopes they’ll have a similar impact on future generations. ‘I hope to set an example — if not for the girls themselves, then for other people. If not for the people in that community, for other leaders in the world. And gradually the change I want to see in the world will be there.’

Chido pointed out that if she looked at the situation in Zimbabwe as a whole and waited for people in power to enact change, she would feel depressed and helpless. But by tackling problems in which she can make a difference, she has dropped a pebble in a pond, and the ripples are being felt far from home. The two teenage daughters she’d brought with her, bright and full of youthful possibility, face a very different future to the one they might have had if Chido had not intervened. She is not blind to the enormous challenges the world faces but finds hope in her strength, her convictions, and the belief that by taking responsibility for her future she can make a difference. The answer, she believes, almost always comes from within. ‘It’s important not to think that change will come from the outside, especially in relation to different kinds of hardship. My world changed when the doctors finally told me what I was suffering from, but they couldn’t help me. It was one of the most difficult things to hear, but when I look back it was one of the most empowering things because it enabled me to turn my life around to the way it is today.’

For me, the realisation that nobody could come to my rescue was also a pivotal moment. Helplessness was an appealing, familiar place that would have allowed me to abdicate all control and give up, railing against the hand I’d been dealt. But as Chido learned, handing the reins to despair and anger only entrenches our suffering. Finding hope and gratitude in that dark night of the soul allowed me to tap into a part of myself I didn’t know was there but I now suspect had always existed. I discovered that it is not our greatest joys that have the power to transform but our deepest pain. The things we think will destroy us are so often the pathways to growth and healing.