by Petrea King
I have also done many interviews for ABC Radio with most of their regular broadcasters, starting in the 1980s with Caroline Jones on The Search for Meaning, then with Margaret Throsby on Midday, Dr Rachael Kohn on The Spirit of Things and Richard Fidler on Conversations.
Caroline Jones is a wonderful interviewer, as her calm and quiet manner underpin her skilful questioning. When I was interviewed by her for The Search for Meaning, she introduced me as having suffered through the suicide of my brother, Brenden, among other things. After the interview went to air, I rang my parents to see how they felt it had gone—it being my first major radio interview about my life.
Geoff sounded breathless, his blood pressure surely skyrocketing, and all he could say was, ‘Why did you have to say that?’
‘What did I say?’ I replied, somewhat alarmed.
All he could do was repeat the question a couple of times, then he handed the phone to Rae, too upset and angry to talk to me.
‘What did I say to upset him so badly?’ I asked her.
Unbeknown to me in the five years since Brenden’s death, Geoff had never told his friends and colleagues that my brother had taken his own life. Geoff had told them, ‘Brenden died in a mountain-climbing accident.’ The stigma of suicide runs deep for many people, and Geoff had seen it as a potentially negative reflection on his family.
He rang me uncharacteristically early the following morning and said he’d had a sleepless night. He was relieved that the truth was now ‘out’ rather than kept as an agonising secret through some sense of dreadful shame.
Families have complex structures, and it has been a long and difficult journey for our family to speak openly about painful subjects. We always assumed that we loved one another and gave kisses on the cheek that missed. Since making our journey to emotional vulnerability, we’ve had no difficulty in expressing our deep love and care for one another, and the ructions so common in many families have long been put to rest. It took the tumult of Brenden’s long mental illness and suicide, my near death and many other challenges to bring us to this place.
Every time I spoke about suicide publicly, it was difficult for Geoff. Sometimes he wouldn’t speak to me for days if there was an article in the print media or a radio interview in which Brenden’s suicide was mentioned.
After my interview with Margaret Throsby went to air, two women called Quest to say that they had planned to end their lives that day, but on hearing about the terrible distress that suicide causes families, they changed their minds and reached out for help.
One of the women, a young mother, described how she’d prepared her children’s school lunches that morning. She had put notes in their lunchboxes telling them how much she loved them and always would, her intention being to take her life before their return home. Both these women attended programs with us at the Centre, where they were given more personal resources and connection to services.
When Geoff learned of their stories, he understood how important it is to speak about the consequences of suicide, and from then on he fully supported me in this.
***
There were many television interviews too, starting with Ray Martin and The Midday Show, where I was a regular guest; I spoke about living with illness and grief and many other issues that cause us to suffer. Then, when I lived in Crows Nest, I was often interviewed on the news broadcasts of nearby Channel 9 about topical issues such as the importance of a nourishing diet when you’re living with illness. I was also interviewed on Compass, A Current Affair and Stateline, and twice on Australian Story.
Sadly, A Year in the Life of Petrea King never aired in Australia. Many years after its production, the ABC decided to broadcast it after all, but fortunately reconsidered when I asked them not to. I had no way of contacting many of the families involved in the making of the film, and it would have come as a shock for them to see their loved ones onscreen without warning. When the documentary aired in the United Kingdom, it was enthusiastically received, and I was sent many letters of support and encouragement afterwards from people touched by the story.
Everyone loves to share their stories with people who ‘get’ them. I’ve received thousands of such letters over the past thirty-plus years, and I have answered all of them. I think it is essential that we communicate around things we find difficult or painful. And, whether we speak or write them, our stories can become avenues for deeper reflection and understanding. I am often called upon in complex family situations where there is conflict and the potential for escalating angst among members with opposing views.
***
Naturally, This Is Your Life came as a surprise.
I thought I was meeting a marketing executive with one of our board members, Bob, and we were standing in the foyer of a Sydney hotel when I saw Mike Munro walking up the stairs, film crew in tow. I said to Bob, ‘Some poor bugger is about to get sprung!’ as Mike continued to walk towards me. I thought he was going to ask me directions to someone else and was shocked when I was the subject of his attention. If there was even a hint that the program’s subject knew about the surprise, the show was cancelled no matter how many months had gone into the research and preparations.
Mike left me with a ‘minder’ while he returned to the studio to prepare for my arrival. I wasn’t allowed to make any phone calls, and even when I went to the bathroom, the minder accompanied me to ensure I didn’t ‘do a runner’.
While I waited, I considered several things. The first was that Mike would undoubtedly talk about Brenden’s suicide on national television, and that would be very difficult for my parents who I imagined weren’t in Brisbane as they had led me to believe—I thought it likely that they were aware of the surprise and might be part of the program.
The second thought I had was, What if they don’t mention that Wendie is my partner? as that would be appalling. I was reassured on that account when I arrived at the studios and saw my suit bag hanging up in the room where I was to shower and change; this meant Wendie had to know about the program.
Beyond that, it was all a complete and utter surprise, as well as a wonderful delight to be reminded of so many special people in my life.
They had even found Padre Ilarino. In addition to his contribution to the program, he sent another half-hour talk to me on video. My Italian son-in-law translated it for me—and, in part, Padre Ilarino asked me to return to Italy and visit him.
A viewer of the program wrote to me after it aired; she owned a small fourteenth-century farmhouse outside of Assisi, and she told us that we were welcome to use it if we ever decided to visit. We were touched by her kind gesture and gratefully took her up on her generous offer, making this beautiful stone house—which overlooked soft hills and gentle green pastures—our base for a wonderful holiday when we returned to see Padre Ilarino. He now lived in a monastery for elderly or retired priests outside the beautiful town of Amelia, a couple of hours’ drive from Assisi.
The only thing I could ever do for Padre Ilarino was to send him possum socks—a warm blend of wool and possum fur—every year, as the Assisi winters are harsh and his vow of poverty meant he bought nothing for himself. I had brought possum socks with me on this final visit.
While Padre Ilarino looked content, he was obviously very unwell and quite jaundiced. His carer, Pepino, had helped him out of bed and to dress just to see me.
In the delight of reunion, we again talked with and over each other. I thanked him for caring for me, a stranger, all those years ago, and for seeing something of value in me when I’d held so little regard for myself.
As I lifted his brown habit, his swollen ankles and cold purple feet were revealed. With tears of gratitude and much love, I gently put the possum socks on his feet. Later, after we had lunch with the priests downstairs, I returned to his bedroom for his last blessing.
Pepino told me that Padre Ilarino refused to have anyone remove his possum socks from his feet, and he was buried in them two weeks later.
***
> Dozens of articles have been written about my work in almost every Australian newspaper and magazine. Most of them have been done very respectfully.
I was disappointed, to say the least, when the Daily Telegraph published a picture of me, on page three, sitting at my desk with the grim reaper superimposed above me and the headline: ‘Woman helps AIDS innocents to die’.
The story was about my work with AIDS sufferers who had been infected through blood or its products, and it described children or the people who were haemophiliacs or recipients of blood transfusions as ‘the innocent ones’. This was so not how I thought or will ever think. I am yet to meet the person deserving of their suffering.
On page four was a picture of me with my head thrown back laughing, accompanied by the caption: ‘Eight of her patients died in one week.’
***
In 2000, Richard Glover invited me and Michael Rennie from McKinsey’s onto his ABC 702 program for a segment called Midweek Conference.
Like me, Michael had survived cancer, and we had both used the valuable practice of meditation to make peace and find respite during the turbulence of illness. We discussed the benefits of meditation and how helpful the ability to quieten the mind becomes during times of high stress. Listeners would call in with various issues and stories that related to their own lives, and these interviews proved very popular.
After a few weeks, Michael left the program when he relocated to New York. Richard and I have continued with it about once every six weeks to this day.
Over the past seventeen years, we have discussed many challenging topics. These include how to deal with angry people, what is helpful to say when a loved one is diagnosed with a serious illness, how to manage Christmas when there is conflict or a family member has died in the previous year, sibling rivalry, living with someone who has a mental illness, how to cope when someone you love ends their life, what to say when you no longer want to continue a friendship or see a person, living with chronic pain, dealing with a diagnosis, loving someone with post-traumatic stress disorder, the impact of family secrets, the effect that childhood trauma has on how we live as adults, why some people crumble under stress and others thrive, and how to move on after major disappointments—to name just a few!
I’m usually in Bundanoon when Richard rings around midday to choose a subject for Midweek Conference that afternoon. While driving to Sydney, I reflect on the topic so that I’m prepared for the interview at 5.30 pm. Richard is a wonderful interviewer and a good-hearted man, so working with him is always a pleasure.
Recently we were discussing how childhood trauma impacts on people as adults, when a caller rang in to describe the awful abuse she suffered as a child and the terrible impact it had on her self-esteem and relationships. She sounded despairing, and we chatted for a while about her options to heal some of her past trauma. I encouraged her to call the Quest for Life Centre to talk about attending a program with us. Our caller said that while she would love to attend, there was no way she could afford to come. I suggested she call anyway and we would see what we could do to help her. I also suggested that she get my book Your Life Matters from her local library, as many people find that it provides light and direction in challenging circumstances, along with a perspective that fosters us to grow through adversity.
Much to the surprise of Richard, the producers and me, listeners started ringing in to make donations so our caller could attend a program at Quest. The caller was so touched by strangers caring about her that she immediately began to take better care of herself. Since then, she has attended a couple of programs at Quest for people with symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and she has completely turned her life around.
It is so gratifying to have these deeper conversations with people about the issues that cause us so much pain and suffering. In each program at Quest, we have a session that gives attendees the opportunity to tell a little of their story and what they hope to achieve by participating in the program.
Many years ago, at a Healing Your Life program that I was facilitating, the first person to speak was a man in his forties. He started off by saying that he’d been sitting in his car with a pistol. He had fired the test shot. He didn’t know what had possessed him to turn on the radio, but he had, and I was talking. And, ‘It just made sense, so that’s why I’m here.’
A woman in her fifties and to his left spoke next. She declared that she was terribly depressed. She and her daughter looked like mirror images of each other, and her daughter had also been depressed. Her daughter had been found dead, and the family would never know whether she had fallen accidentally or jumped. The woman told the group that at times she couldn’t bring herself to see her family because she reminded her husband of his daughter and her other children of their sister, and she didn’t want to bring them all down. She had been sitting in her car and eating takeaway food when she turned on the radio, and I was talking. ‘It just made sense,’ she said, and that was why she had come to the program.
The next man had been driving to the hospital to make the heartbreaking decision to turn off his son’s life support machine, having already lost a daughter and another son to an overdose, and his wife to cancer. He couldn’t bring himself to go into another intensive care unit; he could not, would not make the decision to turn off life support for the third and last time. He had been sobbing in his car in the hospital carpark. He too didn’t know why he’d turned on the radio, but I was talking and, ‘It just made sense,’ hence his arrival at the program.
There were ten such stories, one after the other, of people sitting in their cars in various states of despair, anguish and hopelessness, and they had turned on the radio.
Although I drive an hour and a half to Sydney, do about fifteen minutes on radio with Richard, then drive an hour and a half back to Bundanoon, it seems a worthwhile journey to make.
***
At the same time in 2000, I became a regular guest on Tony Delroy’s Nightlife program. Tony and I also discussed the challenges of living a meaningful life in difficult circumstances. However, because his interviews with me ran for a full fifty minutes, we could unpack the topics in much greater depth before we took listeners’ phone calls.
I was always very mindful that Tony’s program was beamed across the country at 10 pm. Our discussion was heard in remote homesteads by solitary individuals as well as in cities and houses in rural and regional areas. And I love the radio for that reason—it is such an intimate conversation. Often people who lie awake listening to the radio may find sleep elusive due to pain, loneliness, depression, grief or despair, and a warm and friendly voice in the ether can be a lifeline for them. I have had many letters from people all over the world who have listened to these interviews via the podcasts.
When Tony retired in 2016, his listeners were devastated. He had been such an important part of so many people’s lives for such a long time. They were often in bed or alone when he went on air. Tony was their friend, a constant in their life, a warm and familiar voice in the night. His show is missed by many, many people, including me, although I am happy to continue my Nightlife conversations with Sarah Macdonald on Sunday evenings.
Perhaps the strangest call that Tony and I ever had came from a man who was very angry because people judged him harshly for not working—because he was a drug addict. ‘People say I don’t work,’ he said. ‘I have to work bloody hard to knock off enough houses to get stuff that I then have to flog off at the pub. I have a $200-a-day habit!’ Tony and I looked at each other, trying to decide who should talk to our caller. Finally, I said something along the lines of, ‘When you’re ready to get help for your drug habit, your life can change for the better,’ and we both had a good laugh about it later.
Some of our listeners had imbibed a tipple or two by the time we were on air, and that added a whole other layer to understanding the complexities of their stories. We had so many wonderful conversations both sober and sobering with callers from across this vast land.
CHAPTER 40
The quest for peace
Given I have had no training in managing the various aspects of developing educational programs, establishing a happy, thriving workplace, creating and managing budgets and cash flows, liaising with architects and project managers, and a thousand other tasks that I’ve needed to address in the successful running of Quest, I have been grateful for the mentoring, support and guidance of many people, Wendie foremost among them.
As the founder and CEO, my role is focused on the mentoring and supervision of the facilitators, counsellors, support teams and therapists who deliver our programs and workshops, the development of the educational and support programs that the Foundation delivers and, in conjunction with our board, the overall direction and development of Quest.
My training in the School of Philosophy gave me an insight into the value of attention to detail, whether reflected in our printed materials, the way a stamp is placed on an envelope, the cleanliness of the building, the care of the grounds, the way a tablecloth hangs or the presentation of the food. The divine is in the detail.
Years ago, Quest was going through a quality review process, and I met with our housekeeping staff to see how they brought ‘quality’ to their work. There was silence for a while, and then one of our cleaners said, ‘Is that when I’ve finished cleaning a bedroom and I stand in the doorway and radiate love into the room?’ And another hesitantly offered, ‘Is that when I make a little pocket in the sheets for someone’s toes?’ What a pleasure it is to work with people who love what they do and who transmit that care and attention into their work.
What makes the professional staff of Quest unique is that regardless of our training in psychology, social work, psychotherapy, yoga and meditation teaching, counselling, medicine, massage or naturopathy, we have all had our own suffering. We are all a ‘work in progress’, and we do our best not to create a sense of professional separation from the people who seek our services. We are all students and teachers to one another. As health professionals, we don’t remain detached from participants—we recognise that we can all grow and change for the better through adversity. Everyone flourishes in an atmosphere of love and compassion, and participants feel nurtured by the deep level of care they experience during their time with us.