bo ep

Bo Wong, a 44-year-old woman, talks about her earliest memories of her body, which involve being active and playing sports. She recalls fond memories of riding her bike and doing handstands. She also mentions a memory of her auntie making a comment about her body, which made her feel ashamed. Bo's parents were separated, and she lived with her mom and stepmom for part of the week. At their house, there was a focus on dieting and being thin. Bo felt hungry all the time and would binge on food at her dad's house. She believes that her mom and stepmom's emphasis on being thin was a protective mechanism because they faced discrimination as women in the corporate world. Bo also shares that she went through a phase of wanting to be a boy and even changed her name. Despite these experiences, she always felt powerful and strong due to her involvement in sports. All right, welcome, Bo Wong. Thank you for having me, Sarah. I'm very excited to be here. I'm excited to have you. I think we're just going to get into it. Let's do it. First of all, do you mind telling me your age? I do not mind telling you my age. It's 44, or 40 plus GST, as my friend said to me the other day. Do you know, I absolutely love the double digit numbers. Yeah, there's a vibe. It's a full vibe. 44. My next one's 55. What a great number, hey? Yeah. You know you're winning when you're just hitting. It's like doubled. It's like another reason to have another kind of party. It's like you don't need a zero on the end anymore. We need to move the party slightly closer together. So we're going to choose double digits or any, you know, what if it's an even number? You've given me a good idea. Right. That's it. I'm having a rocking 55th. Yeah. Let's do it. Okay. What's your earliest memory of your body? Like what were you doing or, and where were you? My earliest memories of my body are a lot to do with being really physical, being outside. I don't have any like particular memory that I can think of, but I do have a general sense that it was, you know, a lot of summer, that Perth summer outside, no shoes, burning feet on bitumen and just running around a lot. There was just a lot of moving. How old are we talking? Oh, I don't know. Maybe four or five. Yeah. Yeah. Did you have a particular kind of movement that you loved? Like I loved riding my bike and I, I had this memory the other day of living in Albany actually and there's a street called McLeod Street. I don't know if you know it because I know you live in Denmark. And at the bottom, I don't think it's there now, but at the bottom of, you go to the top of the hill of McLeod Street and there was this huge hill down to a tip, I think it's called Miramar. Anyway, I must've been so young and be riding my bike, steep down this hill to the tip, which was also really fun to have a scavenger round into. That is so classic. That is such a classic memory. I think a lot of my memories were more around, like I'd be riding my bike, my brother's seven years older than me. So he, we did this thing again, that you just reminded me where we would run down, he would run down the hill and I would ride my bike and try to be as fast as I could. And I just think, I remember thinking he is so amazing because he could run as fast as I could ride. And he would like, I would like sit on his back and he would do pushups like that kind of, and I'd be like, Oh my God, he is so cool. That is like a pinnacle, pinnacle person who can do a pushup with their little sister on their back. Yeah. I love it. I mean, he still impresses me to this day. I was going to say, Kieran. Another body schooler. Love it. Do you remember anybody talking about your body when you were like quite young? Look, I had this auntie actually, because one of the things I did love doing was handstands. I was like an endless handstand, an endless person, you know, gymnastics, cartwheels. Against the wall or just in the air? Anywhere. Against the wall. Not against the wall. That's the two options. Next to the couch. Yeah. Next to the couch. But I was always flipping and, you know, tumbling and turning and, you know, we had a trampoline. So it was like a lot of movement and a lot of handstands, a lot of gymnastics. And I remember an auntie of mine, it must have been a Christmas or, you know, we hung around with our cousins and stuff quite often in Fremantle. And I did a handstand and my top must have come up. And I can't remember what she said. She said, but it was very clear that that was not the right thing to have had happen. And I, you know, and just- How old were you, do you reckon? I reckon I was like six or seven. And I remember very clearly that sense of like, oh, there's something here. There's something that I can't, you know, there was some sort of edge. But because she's not, she wasn't my mum or my dad or my, you know, it was also, it just didn't really have a huge impact, but it definitely lodged that first memory of something to do with your body being somehow shameful, like somehow, you know, got to hide, there's something about it. I think it stands out for me because generally my family didn't really make comments about my body. And I think most of our, you know, we were really physical kids, sports, sports, sports, just non-stop. Yeah, so you played lots of sports, did you? We played all the sports. What sports? Just start naming sports now. Yeah, go on. Basketball, volleyball, all the athletics. I did gymnastics. I did trampolining. I did diving. So would you say then that your mum and your dad were really supportive of you playing all these sports, like the driving and the, you know, signing you up and the name? Oh no, we just, we did it all ourselves. Did you? Yeah, there was nobody drove me to anything. Didn't they? Yeah. No. Really? No, we walked everywhere. I walked from home. I'd go to train at the Claremont pool for diving. I'd walk there. I'd get the bus. I was always on public transport, so my, or on foot. My parents were separated from before I can remember, so I don't really have any memory of them being together. But yeah, I don't, my parents were also, because they were separated, working, both working full time, they definitely were never on the sideline. Yeah. Unlike my life as a parent where I'm just, you know, getting hypothermic on the sideline of every football and soccer game and, you know, it was not like that at all. But that's pretty interesting, isn't it? So you were this incredibly physical kid, including all the walking everywhere, but you were doing it really quite independently, weren't you? Totally. Yeah. Totally interesting. Okay, so do you remember your mum ever talking about her body when you were little? I don't have any direct memory, but I... Or dad, for that matter. Yeah. So my mum partnered with a woman, my stepmum, Sue moved in when I was 10, so I lived with mum and Sue three and a half days of the week. And then my dad and his various partners, so I had sort of various stepmums with him and step-siblings. So I went between these two houses that had really different, similar values in a sense, but really different lifestyles. And so at mum and Sue's, it was very much around, they were both, you know, working in a really forging forward in a man's world, in the corporate space, in the academic space. There was a lot of diets. It was like non... Was there? Yeah. A lot of dieting, a lot of focus on... I mean, I've got vague recollections of Aerobics Oz style on the telly. And because they were two women, I think the dieting factor was quite high. The way that it kind of overflowed to me, like my sister is five years older than me and she was on a Jenny Craig diet when she was probably 13 or 14. So I would have been eight or nine at that time. And we had Weight Watchers biscuits. I remember being starving all the time, so fucking hungry. I don't know if you're allowed to swear on this, but I'm going to swear, but you cannot. There's going to be swearing. I was so hungry all the time at Mum and Sue's house. So I would basically go to Dad's for that three and a half days where there was shit loads of food and he had like Nutri-Grain and Two Minute Noodles and all this other stuff that we weren't allowed at Mum and Sue's house. And I would basically binge non-stop at Dad's, fill up so that I could go back to Mum and Sue's... Go back to the Weight Watchers. Yeah. Go back to the fucking Weight Watchers biscuits. So I think that's obviously has informed a lot of... I do think the messaging that I got from Mum and Sue, it did have a lot to with being... It was always important to be thin. It's not good to take up space. It's really good to be thin and especially because you're already in a world where being a woman is considered an absolute disadvantage. Mum used to tell me you have to work twice as hard for half the recognition. That's what the world is like and that's actually... That is the world that she was in. She was shamed for being a woman. If she said something that men didn't like, they would say, oh, well, is it that time of month? And she was the only woman at executive level all the time just being constantly just sort of diminished for being female. And so I think a lot of that stuff I was brought up very masculine. It was very important to show masculine traits for me because any sign of femininity was very much a... It's a weakness. Well, they were out there and experiencing it, wasn't it? They actually were. At first hand. And would you say then that as far as the body stuff and the dieting stuff goes, then this was a bit of a protective mechanism from your mum and her partner? Yeah, probably. And look, looking back, Sue was younger than I am now when she... She would have been 30 or something when she moved in and suddenly she got three, a 10 year old, a 15 year old, and a 17 year old in a same sex relationship when it wasn't hip. I mean, I just said the word hip. I mean, if that doesn't indicate the amount of time that has passed. Yeah, having masculine traits was really important. And there was a whole section of time where I changed my name to a boy's name and I said, I'm a boy. I cut my hair short. Wow. When was that? I forced my sister to call me when I was probably seven or eight, I think. Yeah. And just, I want to go back to that in two seconds, but rewind back a bit about the... When you were talking about doing all the sport, do you remember or can you remember feeling at all like you were quite powerful in any way because you did all this physical activity? Yeah. Always. Yeah. Always felt really strong. And then now I want to go back to that other story about the wanting to be a boy. Oh yeah. Well, you know, I guess, you know, the context of, you know, gender identity now is quite different to what it was, you know, 35, 40 years ago. But I think, yeah, I think now I look back at that and I think actually part of that was the fact that I didn't feel feminine. I didn't feel like all the girls things didn't really suit me in terms of like, you know, just the girls activities did not resonate with me. And so my other option was a lot of the boys stuff. So by the time, you know, and that really, I could really express myself through sports because you could be, you know, it was important to be aggressive, to be strong, to win, to be competitive. Like, I really expressed that whole part of myself, took it a little bit too far and probably let it overflow slightly in other areas of my life where it's not necessary at all. But yeah, I do remember that feeling of, you know, being really strong. And also I was always put into a leadership role. So if I was on a team, I was the captain. By the time I was in year seven, I remember I was the only girl still playing soccer and I captained the team. OK, so let's move from there then. Do you remember before you got your period, do you remember your mum or your dad or anybody for that matter coming and talking to you about that? I do not remember anyone coming and talking to me. I do remember there was a talk at school where the girls and the boys got separated and there was some sort of, you know, complicated, you know, images of like a cervix and fallopian tubes. And I remember thinking I could not see how that I couldn't work out where or how that a fallopian, like I was like, where are they? Like what are these? Where are these fallopian tubes? It all makes no sense. I couldn't work out what angle they were trying to show me from. And of course, there's never any realistic images of a vulva or, you know, like there's nothing like that. So it's all just... Or blood. Yeah, that's right. So it's scientific sort of stuff. But when I did finally get my period, I think I must have been 13, maybe 14. And at that time, I shared a room with my dad. So we because we were kicking around a lot of different rental houses, we moved around a lot. And in, I mean, my dad was basically a single parent with three children, and two of them, you know, a male and female older, you know, brother and sister. So they sort of ended up with their own rooms. And then I would always end up with dad. So I shared a room with my dad in multiple houses. And we just had this bookshelf that we used to just put, we'd go into a new rental, there would be the room, bookshelf goes in the middle, dad's on one side of the bookshelf, I'm on the other. Cute. It was cute, actually. Yeah. And I remember climbing into bed with dad and being like, dad, I think I've got my period. And he said, oh, this is a great, this is exactly what my dad sounded like, oh, talk to your sister. Go talk to your sister. And I remember thinking at that time, that she hates me, because, you know, we were going through a phase where I was a super annoying person to her, and she wanted nothing to do with me. And I remember thinking, shit, I wish I'd listened to that class at school. If only I listened at school, I would know what to do. But dad must have had a conversation with mum in the handover. And so mum, I can't remember, she gave me some pads or some tampons, but there really was not, there was not much contact. It was a zero fanfare situation. So do you remember how it made you feel being this kind of sporty, sporty kid, super sporty kid? And, and around that time, was your body changing at all? Do you remember? Look, to be honest, I don't think I was aware of huge amounts of body changes. And I think part of that was because I don't have big breasts. And I didn't have, so I didn't have that, like I had girlfriends at the time who, you know, growing boobs at an age where your brain is like a kid, and your body's turning into a woman's body. I could see how difficult that was for them. But for me, it was not. I mean, I've always been pretty flat chested. So you know, I guess I've had, because I'm tall, I'm broad shouldered, I've got a very, yeah, I think I just was, it just didn't really affect me, to be honest. So it's just a slight inconvenience. It was a slight inconvenience. And I don't really remember it being a thing. Like I remember other, like people would make a thing about trying to get out of sport, you know, using it to try to get out of school. It was like, now we've got this tool in which we can like get out of things. But especially because parents didn't want to talk about it, don't you reckon? So you'd go, oh, I can't go to school, Dad, I've got my period. And they're just like, oh, right, okay, just don't say that word again. You're becoming a, you know, like that middle school kind of, you know, adolescent. And did you, then with mum or dad or mum's partner or brother or sister, you're having chats about sex or any of the other stuff? Oh, God, no, there was no, no sex talk at our home. Yeah, like everything I learned about sex, I learned, you know, on the job. Yeah, I just got straight on the tools, basically, like a fucking tradie. What age? Um, I reckon I was a bit, you know, a bit of a sexy kid. Were you? I was a bit naughty. Yeah, I was pretty naughty. I think I just also like, we, I had a group of a couple of friends, and we were called, I mean, even in primary school in year five, we were, it was duly not, we were called the terrible trio, right? We were so naughty. The three of us just amped each other up. And I think by the time, I don't know if we were maybe in year eight or nine, you know, like we were definitely out there doing, you know, having all sorts of sexual experiences. Really? I was. With all sorts of, well, we used to have the bases. So you'd go to base, first base, second base, third base. And it was really important to, like, be meeting these bases. And I got this recollection where me and this friend, this is like, obviously, I've got, I hope that no, I mean, everyone I know probably will listen, but it's okay. That's okay. Anyway, we used to have this, so it was this, I can't remember if it was second or third base was fingering. So it was basically about letting a guy put his fingers into your vagina. And I remember, like, me and my friend were like, right, let's do it. You know, like, going to get out there. And we're just like, I don't know where we'd find these guys. Like, we'd go down, I went to a private school at that time, and we were always looking for public school boys. That was important. But do you remember the feeling? I don't remember. Look, I've got no recollection of any pleasure. Okay. Yeah. I remember it being really exciting, really fun. We used to constantly lie and say we were sleeping at each other's houses. We'd go out all night. We'd sleep in these, you know those bins for op shop clothes? Yeah. We used to sleep in those. Wow. Because they're full of soft clothes. And you couldn't go home at two o'clock in the morning. And you had to find somewhere warm to sleep. So we would sleep in the, I don't know what they're called. So you were a bit of a tear-away teen then? I was definitely a tear-away teen, that's for sure. And I was so naughty. I got expelled from school. I left school in year nine. Oh, year nine. Yeah, and then I had a little go at trying to do year 10 and year 11. I tried to go to school at another school, and it was just not possible. Okay, so we've got both being a bit rebellious, these kind of 14, 15, 16. And do you know how you had this early childhood of all this movement and sport? Were you still playing sport and doing these things in those teenage high school years? There was a little bit of crossover, but it didn't last long. And then when I stopped sport, it stopped very suddenly. And I was straight into smoking, drinking, drugs. And then that moved into taking much harder drugs. Looking back, I sort of think, Jesus, my parents, no wonder, I mean, my dad had a heart attack during that time. And I was sleeping, like I was living in a squat in Subiaco. I was going out with some guy that was like 20. I was like, you know, and I was 14. Wow. And I was in the police station. I'd have, you know, so naughty, just constantly causing trouble. Well, you were forging your own path, that's for sure. You know, we can see that, can't we, in the line, you know, that you were going to do it both ways, you know. And this was your way for that age and that time. Can you remember how drugs felt in your body or any thoughts about your body around that time? I think I had a lot of, like I was always using drugs to escape. Did you like that feeling? Can you remember liking that feeling? Yeah. And I think it was like, you know, so alcohol, like I was always the kid who got so, you know, I would drink till I vomited, you know, it's like all the things. I would always, instead of just taking, you know, one acid trip, I would take two acid trips and some speed and some ease. You know, it just went on and on and on, where it was like constantly upping the ante. And I think that, you know, obviously I was building like a tolerance, but I also just had this kind of intense drive to just be completely obliterated. And so that was, you know, looking back, I'm like, you know, my parents, I know they in some ways, you know, blamed themselves and their sort of tricky, you know, the tricky upbringing that I had and that sort of thing. But I don't know whether it was also the combination of the time, you know, and the availability of drugs was also really high. I mean, there were kids, you know, people were dealing drugs at the bottom of my school oval, you know, so it was really easy to get hard drugs. Some of that, when I think about it in relation to my relationship with my body, it was very, very disembodied. Yeah, really out of your body. Totally. How many years do you reckon that continued for? Well, different types of drugs took my fancy for different time periods, but definitely, like, right up until my early 20s, I was taking hard drugs and pretty much really had just met my now husband. And that was kind of the end, especially of the sort of, must have been in the early 2000s. I think, you know, it was really easy to get opioids. So I had an opioid addiction for many years. And then when I met him, you know, things started to shift really quickly. So... What form of opioids? Heroin and essape drugs, which are basically, you know, you can get people who can get scripts for those. Yeah. So I was living over east, living up in Darwin. You know, I was, yeah, working, taking a lot of drugs, just... Did you inject? Yep. How was that? I know that's a hectic question. Sorry, but, like, do you remember... I don't really know how... It just was what it was. I mean, that's just what you did, you know? Like, that's what everyone was doing. I lived in an entire household of people who were doing it. Everyone I knew was doing it. So how'd you get off? Well, that's what's interesting, because I really have spent a lot of my, you know, this part of my adult life reflecting on habits, addictions, you know, cos I've basically just, you know, I've shifted from one addiction to another as time's gone on. I'm kind of, you know, I'm just sort of sick of moving the ball around now. I'm like, right, I need to just, like, get on top of this shit. Multiple locations that I lived in, and every time I moved, it became harder to obtain drugs. So it was, you know, and also the kinds of people I was hanging out with, and, you know, most of all of this time, this is all against the backdrop of environmental activism and blockading, which I can sort of see how they, you know, you look at that, and you're like, that makes no sense. But, you know, looking at the blockade movement, the feral movement in Australia, you know, that sort of travelling feral world, it was just the time, I guess. And, yeah, I think I didn't have any, like, I didn't have any rehabilitation or go to any, you know, I just... Do you remember thinking anything about your body during that time, even from the drug taking or messaging about weight or anything like that? The things I definitely remember, because I haven't ever fit, I guess when I went to school, the aim and the top version of girl you could be was to be small, to have blonde hair and, you know, have boobs. So there was sort of a... And I had none of those things. I'm big, I've got a flat chest and I've got brown hair and, you know, I'm Chinese, so, you know, that's also unpopular. Very unpopular. And so I think the messaging I had for myself around my body was that it's not attractive, because it didn't fit that mould. And, actually, we, you know, I was involved in Reclaim the Night and a whole bunch of things happening in the late 90s in the Northern Territory. And, I mean, we were just walking around with no top on. We were just covered in ochre and we had, like, a... You know, we just had these lap-laps and we were just... I've sort of ended up in suns. By the way, though. So that was a movement, and still is a movement around the world, for women to be able to walk safely on Main Street. So, you know, friends of mine... I guess the environmental activism also, you know, then diagrammed into feminism and different types of activism. And, of course, I'm always more drawn to extreme types of activism. You know, it's like... So, you know, I always do it. It's like, if there was an elite, you know, it's like, you have the option of a peaceful protest here, or you could blow some stuff up. We'll call it heroin activism. Yeah. Like, if you would like to do an act of terrorism against some sort of mining company, like, that's the sort of thing I would be into. Whereas I wasn't into, like, painting a placard and then doing... I was like, that is bullshit. By the time I was in my 20s, I was ready to fucking straighten up. By the time I met Rikki, I was like, I am ready to straighten the fuck up. OK, so how old are you? 22. Where are you? Tassie, locating there. Yeah. So, meet Rikki. And had you ever thought about having children? God, no. No? No. Like, the opposite of that? I had the opposite thought of having children. I don't think I ever expected to be interested in having children. And I really surprised myself. Um... LAUGHS But, so, Rikki had a daughter, a toddler with him. She was... OK, so you ran into a relationship where there was already a kid. Yeah. He was 21. Wow. I was 22. And Silva was... I think she'd just had her third birthday that summer. So, um, I kind of ended up straight into parenting at 22. And then I did surprise myself by, you know, actually really wanting to have children. Really? I was really... Inspired by, um, parenting? A bit. Do you think? Look, as a step-parent, I remember saying and thinking, oh, it's brilliant getting a kid when they're three. Like, this is the best deal. Because there's no... You know, by that stage, she's just about out of, you know, like, accidental poos were pretty, um, you know, rare. You know, I thought, jeez, I have hit the jackpot. This kid's pretty much toilet trained. LAUGHS Sleeps all night. I'm like, honestly, guys... Puts his own food in its mouth. Guys, guys, I've worked out this life hack. And the life hack is find a guy with a toddler. No, um, yeah, I think in some ways, I guess we were just already parenting. We have just, you know, we've been... We're still together and we are still... You know, we've still got one of our kids at home and... Yeah. So you've got the... You're step-parenting, you've got this little kid that you're living with and how much longer after that did you get pregnant? Uh, three years. Three years. Planned? Unplanned. Unplanned. But we really did want to have a kid. Like, I was so keen. And it was so... But it was so... I had such a struggle because I kind of... I sort of felt like parenting or being a mum was something that other people did. I never would identify... Like, even now, if people... Like, if I was to, like, write on my Instagram handle, I would never write, Wife, mother. Like, I would never write any of those things. Like, I do not, you know? But absolutely, I was so, um... I was so excited about having, you know, a kid with this person who I already, you know, had been through. I could just say it was just top-class dad material. I was like, oh, my God. Oh, true, of course. You get the... Yeah. You get the... Fucking try before you buy, mate. Try before you buy. That's... I hadn't thought of that. That's so good. But obviously, you must have been a beautiful step-parent too. Like, taking that... Taking that job on. You know what I mean? Well, you know what's interesting? You know, nobody, no little girl goes, I want to grow up and be a step-mum. But, you know, I've grown up with a step-mum, multiple step-mums, one in particular, you know, one main one, and I've become a step-mum. And I think, you know, being a step-parent, it's a... Yeah, it's a really amazing journey. One for another podcast, I think. Yeah, that is really interesting, all the step-parenting in your life, isn't it? OK, so you're pregnant with your first child. The bare-chested, ochre-covered beau of yesteryear is merely a whisper in the distance. What are you thinking about being pregnant? And this whole new, incredibly healthy life, I'm presuming. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, very... You know, it turned on a dime for me, pretty much when Rikki and I got together. Right. Yeah, it all turned on a dime. And also, I am quite a moral... You know, despite all of the... You know, you may be surprised, but I'm quite a moralistic, you know, ethical person. So I just didn't... I would not want someone... I wouldn't want to be smoking around a kid. I wouldn't want to be taking drugs around a kid. I don't want my kids hanging around with adults who are wasted. I don't... You know, it's like... That stuff, for me, is a hard line. Yeah. So I think by the time, you know, becoming a step-parent at 22, it was just a very fast... You're the saviour in some ways, right? Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm, you know, I'm thinking outside of myself then. You know, I'm not just getting trashed all the time. So when I was pregnant, I was 25. Or, no, 24. And, yeah, it was really... I found it... You know, my body has always been really strong. And going into the whole idea of birth was frightening. All I had ever seen was, like, in the movies, women with their legs... You know, women on their backs with their legs up in the air, screaming, it's an emergency, there's ambulance sirens. Like, when I really thought about it, that was all I had consumed in terms of cultural information around what birth would look like. And my partner suggested this idea of a home birth, which I was like, oh, well, that seems edgy. I'm not sure whether I'm into that. And then I started poking around, had a bit of a look around at the different options. And then I thought, actually, that's totally doable. Were you having a pretty seamless pregnancy? Overall, yes. My body still was overall felt pretty similar. I'd put on weight because I ate... We lived in this house in Melbourne and we were both studying at that point. We were both... You know, we'd decided to become uni students. We were so broke living in this really shitty house in Melbourne. But anyway, but we did live near this ice cream shop, Jell-O Bar on Ligon Street in Melbourne. And, yeah, I would... You know, so I would just eat ice cream basically all the time. And I'd never really been overweight. I'd sort of been chubby here and there. But I was ravenously hungry when I was pregnant. So I was like, oh, you know, you eat and then you have the baby and then all the... Anyway, so I ate a lot. And then when I had my baby, I was like, oh, I look the same. LAUGHTER It was a real shock. I was like, oh. Oh, no. Were you OK with it? Or were you just... I don't know, like, I don't... Look... Hang on, rewind for a sec. Let's just... We've got to just spend a little bit of time on the home birth. Did that go OK? It did. And, you know, we had my stepdaughter and my partner. You know, we had a little birth pool. And, yeah, by then, I think I'd just turned 25. You know, I think there's like a confidence in what my body can do. And so in the back of my mind, I just knew... I was like, my body is built for this. My body can do this. Like, I just had this real sense of mental fortitude and strength. And looking back, I mean, I had no reason really to believe. I've got a lot of just false confidence. Well, is it false? I mean, you know, you're right. And you'd always kind of been like that. If you look at the story so far... Yeah, I've always landed on my feet, you know, that's what... Been independent and felt yourself to be quite strong and powerful. So why would that change when you're going to birth, you know? Yeah. I mean, I do remember it being... There being a point, like, the level of pain was so high. And I also would absolutely describe myself as a person with a really high pain tolerance. So fit, high pain tolerance. And I was young as well. I do have to add, when you're 24, 25, you know, shit's just stretching and bouncing back and, you know, things just aren't as hard. Yeah. And, yeah, I remember that point of mental... Like, you really do pass through a... You know, it felt like an absolute rite of passage to have been in that amount of pain. And what the midwife would say to me is, it's pain with purpose. Yeah. You know, it's not suffering. And she would say that to me, you are not suffering, Beau. And it was really, really important that I wasn't suffering. I wasn't under some... You know, I wasn't a victim to anything. I was having this pain because there was a strong purpose behind it. She had to get this baby out. Yeah. And I think I really need that kind of... So all of the midwives, because I then went on to have also a home birth for Felix later, you know, I need to have this matronly person saying, Beau, you're not suffering. Stop whining. You know, like, I need someone like that. I can't have anyone wishy-washy. That's why I like having you for training, you know, because you're not like, oh, poor Beau, poor this... You're just like, come on, Beau, get up. Well, it's bizarre you should say that because I'm reading this book about back pain at the moment. And there's all this guy... It's an investigative journalist, but there's all this stuff around pain and how this kind of who, what, what allied health people you deal with or doctors or whatever. But there's a big thing. It's always been doctors, but actually, you know, there's all these other allied people who can help you and in other ways, including pain specialists and psychologists, et cetera, and your partner, whoever. But it's like it has to be done with confidence and you have to believe in them and that they have to deliver it with confidence too because pain is so much about the brain, yeah? We suffer more with stress. We suffer more pain because of stress and also because of personality type and obviously because of what's happening in the body. But that's interesting, isn't it? That you're saying that, you know, this person, you had confidence in this person. So you could get past that pain, which is on another level. Yeah. As you're heading in towards your 30s, had you taken up, like, were you moving again in any particular way or did you have any ideas about your body or how was your body going? Three questions in that one. I think I, a few things were going on. So I've, you know, what people would call, what my parents would have said, oh, she's got a big appetite, you know, I eat a lot. So to manage that, I would have to exercise a lot. So I have to say in my 30s, my life basically looks like I'm just doing everything at top speed. I'm parenting at top speed. I'm working at top speed. I'm doing exercise at top speed. I'm just, everything I'm doing at 100%. Looking back, that wasn't a good idea. In hindsight. Yeah. But yeah, my relationship with my body. You couldn't get out of parenting. I couldn't. You probably had to work because you had to bring home the bacon and you move it, yeah, exercising at top speed, then maybe you needed that time for yourself and you wanted to move your body. These times are not ideal, but they all, I'm going to be that nurse in the, I'm going to be that midwife now, okay? I definitely, a lot of it had to do with, I think I spent a lot of my 30s with my relationship with my body being around my weight. So. In what way? In the way that I'm constantly trying to work out how to, I think prior to having kids, things change so substantially, I think, from having, from pregnancy and breastfeeding and all of that sort of stuff that my, I guess I just didn't kind of, I couldn't just exercise and that was enough. Like I could just, I could just notice my weight slowly creeping up all the time, okay? I mean, I've definitely got a metabolism that is built for the apocalypse. Like I am ready to go on a loan right now. And I can, if it, you know, I mean, I don't know how to build a shelter or any of the things, but I know that if I had the mental fortitude, I could stay and that my body fat reserves, like my body would just go, oh yeah, I know this. Also, my parents were hungry as children. Both, my dad came from, he lived in the forest, hiding in the forest of Borneo during the Japanese occupation. So, you know, food was scarce. Same for my mum. Growing up, very working class family with a mum who had left an abusive partner and was now single parenting with no single parent's pension. Like getting food on the table was tough. So I do, I don't know whether, you know, there's all this research into all of this stuff now. Epigenetics. Epigenetics, and I sometimes wonder about that sort of thing about, you know, my body is just ready to starve, or so it's kind of constantly building fat. So although I'd love to say, and I think I have been very focused on what my body does, not what it looks like, I still live in this world. Sure. I still absolutely live. And I think when, just to come back to the question about my 30s, a lot of that time was spent trying to work out how to get back to how my body was, and there was no going back. Right. There was just going forward and getting older and also just having different limitations. Yeah. And I think that, I guess my understanding of limitations in that way in the past had always been to push through things, to keep going, to, again, to win at things and have this kind of supercharged version that would, you know, and that somehow might- Well, you got through, hadn't you? Yeah. With your body, no matter what. Yeah, exactly. You'd always got through, and you had that confidence. That's what's happened in your story. So you were just doing it again. You were just doing what you knew, essentially, and probably trying to get your body what you wanted it to do, which it had always done. And you really stretched as well when you, like, I would have spent that whole time, you know- Working and parenting. Totally, you know? Tired. Yeah. Tired. Yeah. I definitely had equated movement with weight, whether it was, like, management. Yeah. And I was doing, I think I started your fitness classes probably when I was, I must have been in my early 30s. I must have been 30. Yeah. Probably 30. So I would have spent all of those, you know, I would have been doing my Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 6 a.m. Let's not forget that you did not have a sit-down job. Oh, super physical job, yeah. Such a physical job. I mean, your body was also your lens, your tool, that was the way you earned money. Absolutely. Right? It has absolutely been the way I've earned money. And when I go, you know, I'm at the camera store and having a chat here and there, there's always other pro photographers coming in and out. You know, after I had my shoulder operation and, you know, in, like, constant, like, all of the photographers that I know who have been in the game for 10, 20 years, some of them 30, have had multiple operations on their shoulders. Wow. And these- How heavy is the camera, though? To be honest, it's not the camera. Okay. If you're looking at a couple of kilos here and there, it's not that. It's the rest of the gear, because we're carrying all of the other gear and we carry it awkwardly. So I carry a portable studio that includes lights. It includes weights. Like, literally, when I went to your classes and we did that thing, it's called a farmer's carry, where you carry 10 or 8 kilo, two of those in each hand. I'm like, this is my job. This is literally just my day at work, which is carrying all my stands, all my lights, weight bags, and all of my gear. The other thing about being a photographer is that you're sometimes carrying multiple cameras and you're often, I'm often up ladders. I also handle a lot of artworks. And it's, you know, those artworks are, you know, some of them are extremely valuable. Yes. And you absolutely get taught in art handling to put that artwork before your body. So we're getting to the end of your 30s. The kids are getting bigger. What year did you move to Denmark? How old were you? 2013. So it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago. Yep. So you were 34. 34. Or maybe 33. So you moved down to beautiful Denmark in the Great Southern here. And did anything change then? The first five years that I lived in Denmark were just me doing a lot more travel. So a lot of sitting in the car and then coming up for work and then doing these really intensive bursts of shooting work and then driving home and then sitting in front of the computer for a week. And then five years into living in Denmark, things did shift substantially for me. And that was because I started swimming in the ocean. And that was just the game changer. How did that happen? My daughter was at surf club and I didn't, I mean, now apparently you're not supposed to drop and go. I mean, I don't know. It's a real drop and go there. I guess I've always assumed that surf clubs are not for people like me. But when you go to a country town, everything's for you because there's only so many options. And so I've never been part of a surf club. I thought they were for, I don't know, blonde, white, beach side, suburb folks. We have a community swim in Denmark on Sunday at 11 a.m. Anyone can come. And it's an opportunity for, to try to go and swim out in the ocean. And a lot of the lifesavers will come and swim next year. They'll paddle on boards. And this guy said to me, you know, Beau, you should come for a swim. And he was like one of those really enthusiastic people. And I was like, oh, I just don't know if I can make it that far. And I'm scared of the waves. I'd never, I didn't grow up going to the beach. No? No. Wow. I mean, I grew up in Perth shore, but my family were not a beach going family. And just to loop back to some body stuff, because my dad was obese, really, you know, he was so overweight, he never would go to the beach. He would never go somewhere where his body would be in that sort of space. So it just wasn't a thing that we did. And yeah, so anyway, this guy said to me, look, if you, I'll swim out with you. I'll swim next to you. And if you want to turn around, I'll just turn around with you. And I was like, well, that's a, you know, that's a great offer. Ended up swimming out, ended up swimming right out to where the other people were swimming and I thought, holy shit, this is doable, you know? And after that, I just started slowly building my tolerance to cold water, my understanding of waves, because I'd never really understood waves. I just found them really frightening. Understood how to manage difficult ocean conditions and have been swimming, you know, have spent many years just swimming with great folks down there, amazing. Can remember when you first started doing it apart from learning all those amazing things, do you remember how you were feeling, like how your body felt? I do, yeah, it's so strong, so powerful. My body feels amazing in the water. You know, because you're also weightless in salt water, you're just really supported. You know, there's like some technical skills that you need to learn to swim without injuring yourself. You know, so there's sort of things to learn all the time and then there's also interesting sea life to look at. There's just a lot going on and it's also social, it's in nature, lots of great women swimming down there. And you swim all year round, don't you? Yeah, yeah, up until this year, I would swim all year round. Okay, so you're still working pretty hard, pushing pretty hard, but you've discovered this beautiful thing of swimming in the incredible ocean at Denmark and you're heading into, you're now getting towards your 40s, your early 40s. Did you know much about, or has anyone spoken much about perimenopause or any of those kind of things? Non-stop chatter, mate, non-stop perimenopausal chatter. Yeah, you're lucky. So yeah, one of the things that I really value about my friendships is the age differences and I love speaking to women, hearing about their experiences. It gives me a little bit of a taste, so I sort of feel like it helps me know what to prepare for. Has your swim group got lots of different age women in it? Yep, it does, and up to their 70s. Amazing. And the other thing about these women is that they are so bright-eyed. Like when you see people getting out of the water, I look at them and I think, that's what I, you know, it's that feeling of being vital. Yeah, like usually, yeah, and I guess I'm also, you know, they're role models for me. I'm very much like, I look at that and I think that is an amazing way to be, to have that vitality and that glint in your eye. It's like cheeky and fun. And, you know, just to have that in older people around me is so amazing. Did it veer you away from this kind of idea of this weight management thing? Absolutely. Yeah, good. Yeah, game changer on that one, because there's so much, you know, it's, you don't notice, you know, you're not clocking, you know, how much you're doing or how long you're doing it for. You're working to conditions, time. So metaphorically, you know, it's really good for your mental fortitude because you don't say, I'm going to go in and I'm going to swim two Ks. Hmm. You get in and you go, okay, let's check the conditions. Let's have a look. Let's swim out to that rock and then let's check what it's like. And then we might get really excited and swim really far or we might just go, you know what? I'm not feeling it. Let's just go in. And you've had these great role models around perimenopause and have you experienced any of those kinds of symptoms yet or any of the symptoms of perimenopause or any, I know you've had a challenging time this year. Did you want to talk around that a bit? Yeah, so this year, so just sort of to, in stark contrast to a high level of body confidence and, you know, me having a very, you know, being very focused on what my body's doing and, you know, being a really strong person, this, in the last 18 months, I've had a slow march into chronic fatigue syndrome, which then got compounded by long COVID. So that has been so difficult because I can't exercise and it is killing me. And I've had to, so what I kept trying to do was I'd be like, I'd be really tired, really exhausted, try to push through. I'd be like, maybe if I just, if I could just break the back of this, you know, if I could just, so I'll go and I'll do something and go for a swim or, you know, lift some weights or do something really high intensity. And I'd be wiped out for days, like flat, like as though every cell in my body has just stopped producing like energy. Now I've learned this thing called pacing, which is now what I'm doing to manage my symptoms. But it's, you know, it is so tiny. Like I'm talking, some weeks I think I have improved 0.05%. Wow. And now I'm plateauing and it is intense. But I mean, I have to find the silver lining in it. To be honest, many people thought that chronic fatigue syndrome is a neurological condition because it looks a lot like depression, you know, because you're really tired all the time. And of course it does make you feel pretty depressed to be completely exhausted from doing nothing. So, you know, I can sort of see now, because also it's a syndrome that's defined by exclusion. So other major immunocompromised scenario, you know, you have all the blood tests and then you have a list of symptoms. So it's just a very big catch all, mostly experienced by women. One of the things I have found useful is pacing, which basically means finding a sort of a baseline that means that I can... So for me at the moment, it is doing a short walk and a couple of stretches. I'll show you what, a couple of years ago, I would have considered that doing nothing. Like that would have been on par to being asleep. You know, in terms of like energy expenditure. So it's really been, it's been a lot. I wanna, and following from that description and everything else we've talked about, I wanna ask, what's the feeling and relationship being to this thing of you always having this strong, powerful body and then having to come down so many notches? Oh Matthew, it's been a huge knock to my confidence. Right. Yeah. Yeah. How do you navigate? What do you do about that? What do you do? I have to, look, I have to be philosophical about it because what are my options? Yeah. Look, as I say, from having this conversation and reflecting on the level of intensity that I've lived my life. Yeah. You know, some people can live at that intensity for a long time and nothing ever happens to them and they're fine. For whatever reason, my body has just, it's said no. It said no. From a philosophical point of view, I have to consider that my body's trying to protect me from living how I was living. As a person who has experienced depression and I know exactly what it feels like compared to just being generally down about my circumstances. Yeah. This is in my body, 100%, it is in my body. And the only thing that is keeping me afloat is that mental fortitude, looking for the silver lining and also saying to myself, this is not forever. Yeah. I have to, you know, and the average amount of time that somebody. Yeah, I was gonna ask that. Is four years. So, you know. And so, yeah, you can't have this thinking like it's gonna stop next week or even in six months. Exactly. You have to really, you know, for lack of a better expression of listen to your body. Yeah. The interesting thing about listening to your body is that we have been taught to suppress what our body's telling us. I personally have suppressed my body's, you know, because I'm just, I'm in that, I think it's, and I don't mean it in a negative sense to be in the masculine, but I guess I mean in a more cultural way of being in the masculine, about being in this do, do, do. Like people, I think I have long believed that people only want turbo bo, you know? Like they only want this version of me. That's who they want rocking up on shoots. That's who they want, you know. In every area, I have felt like the only version of me that's been an acceptable version of me is this version that is giving, as one of my sports teachers used to say, 110%. And, you know, I wasn't one of those kids who was like, well, that's not mathematically correct. I was one of the kids who was like, fucking yeah, 110 fucking percent, yes! You know? In that, it's a little bit like too, isn't it? That you, there's a massive amount of acceptance there. Like. Well, there's a small amount of acceptance. There's a sliver of acceptance. And honestly, I haven't, what choice do I have? You don't have a choice. But my point is that this is one, okay, put aside what other people think, yeah? But what is important here is about what you think. You know what I mean? And how you feel about this situation and how you feel about your body, you know? And what it's always done for you or what the idea of it and this idea of being of power and strength and all the rest of it. And ironically, you never probably before have you needed more power and strength. I don't know, physically. Yeah. I've had to really expand my perspective on time has been dramatically changed. Like, because I can't stack one activity onto another activity. Yeah. So what used to take me a day now takes me a week. So my expectations around that, and you know, I've got a really supportive partner, really beautiful children, really great friends. Like, I've got a lot of things packing me out for support, but it's still, you know, it's just every, I think I'm also, as, you know, people would say, I am so hard on myself. Like, you know, I'm so, my expectations of myself are so high. And, you know, to have to lower those expectations every day, over and over. Like, some days I just think I cannot surrender. Like, I can't lay down one more element of my life. Like, I just, I just can't. And my body's saying, well, you're gonna fucking have to. Yeah. And I'm just, it is. It's a stripping. Yeah. And it's, you know, you're incredibly brave and being incredibly patient. And we will really have to, it would be amazing to revisit in a few years. You know what I mean? To come back after when it all ends. Because I'm deep in it now, you know? That's right. Yeah. So when now, in the midst of this episode that you're going through, in the midst of the chronic fatigue and long COVID, as a woman in her, at 44, when do you feel most in your body? Oh, absolutely in the water, which is why it's been so difficult to not be able to swim this year. I think I have managed a lot of my mental health and I think a lot of us do, manage our mental health with physical activity. Having that taken off the table made me realize I had not a lot in the toolkit outside of movement. So yeah, that's a big one. Finishing up, what would your story like to be of Beau in her 50s and beyond, as far as in your body? How do you imagine her and what she's doing? Look, I know it sounds like a low expectation, but basically I would like to be alive, quite simply. And I know, you know, I know it's kind of, it's not trite for me. You know, I've got a, my mum was diagnosed with cancer, with breast cancer in her 40s and died in her 50s. So it is not, I wanna be able to, yeah, I wanna move again. I'm really, I so look forward to a time when I can have, feel that power in the water. I wanna be around for my kids. I wanna, you know, just, like I was saying- You wanna be one of those sparkly ladies that come out of the ocean that you threw me too, hey? Like that cheeky, cheeky grin. And I wanna just have that sort of, where you just, when you see older women getting out of the water, they, you know how we're kind of, they say that there's like a whole section of our brain that we're constantly checking from the outside in what we look like as we move through the world, women especially. When you're in that space, you've, it's like that whole part of you that is wondering, you know, what I look like and what my body looks like and whether I'm too fat for this and whether I'm too this or that. It's just gone. It is taking up no space at all. And when I see those older women getting out of the water, like they are, the reason they look so glowing is because they are feeling that too. They're feeling that strength in their body. They're feeling that aliveness. And I just think like that's what I want, you know, older beau to be. I wanna zing in my step, you know? Amazing. Thank you so much for your generosity. Oh, thank you, Sarah. Thank you for having me and letting me share my weird, my weird story. Your big story. You know, I really appreciate it. I appreciate everything you're doing. Thank you.