Radical love for empowerment

Innocence, your history of silence
Won’t do you any good
Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don’t you tell them the truth?
– Sara Bareilles

Anyone who really knows me understands that I go my own way and make up my own mind when it comes to my health and that of my family.

For decades I’ve been ‘that person’ in any given situation who was on some ‘crazy’ new health kick or supplement regime that later became ‘mainstream’.

And when it comes to parenting, I’ve held views that made me unpopular but helped me to stay empowered – especially during those long years of raising my tribe of daughters alone.

But I’ve always been open minded, curious and, above all, supportive of other people’s choices in life.

Since early 2020 I’ve pretty much held my tongue on what was happening in the world. But it wasn’t easy. Several years at university completely immersed in the study of semiotics, ideology, politics, psychology and power – all the theories relating to how we create and interpret messages – mean I can and do unpack a narrative faster than you can say “coincidence”. My career as a content writer – across many domains including medicine, policy and government – have left me hardwired to seek a deep understanding of research.

“Question everything, especially the truth”, is my motto. So I’ve listened to every point of view, and dedicated way too much time obsessing over studies and media articles. I even watched hours-long conspiracy ‘documentaries’ – most of which were alarmingly well constructed and produced.

But I already knew that no conspiracy theory is necessary for a basic understanding that many among us are unable to trust historically corrupt governments and corporations: anyone who has ever suffered marginalisation in society or had been stripped of their bodily autonomy through medical or pharmaceutical ‘management’, as a couple of examples.

For most of us, handing over our personal power to people in positions of authority has been hammered in since early childhood. So there is no mystery in how easy it has been, since the outset of this pandemic, to convince almost the entire population of this planet to queue up for tests, multiple doses of an experimental ‘vaccine’ or to tune into daily updates on the pandemic.

There is no mystery in how effective the message of fear is and how effortlessly ordinary humans have been recruited to perpetuate and even enforce it. And it is not difficult to understand how people, believing that they are ‘doing the right thing’, could find themselves down the bottom of the slippery slope from ‘advocating’ to outright attacking anyone who doesn’t – or can’t – do the same.

After all, we’ve seen it before.

If I hadn’t adopted the stance of being my own authority, many years ago, I would have had a very different and much less satisfying life. But I did, pulling myself off the floor again and again instead of being defeated by poverty and the willingness of others to keep pushing me down.

And I’m raising empowered, independent and healthy daughters who can think for themselves. Disobedient, feminist, creative, free-range chicks. Badass, authority-defying warrior women who can both stand up for themselves and for others who need it. I make no apology of the fact that I expect my daughters to shape the world to please themselves instead of being told how to live and being satisfied with that.

So when I saw how low this pandemic has brought my daughters when they all came home for Christmas it almost broke me. Then, after I spent New Year’s Eve in the emergency room with a child who had decided that there is no future, I finally started to feel truly angry.

Within days my whole family and everyone I know had the virus and my anger became fury. We shut down the world for this. We’d been expected to do so much, and our governments and their single solution had failed and abandoned us. My daughters had been masked, expected to continue education without the benefit of peers and face to face discussions with their educators. They’d queued and complied and tested and gone without. They’d cancelled their lives and stayed home when told to. They used up all their savings when they couldn’t go to the casual jobs they relied on for income. They have been prevented from walking this earth and breathing its air in the sunshine because of ‘close contacts’ and lived in terror of a police-issued fine. They’d been pressured by housemates to submit to multiple unnecessary covid tests to gain entry into their own homes.

“The risk is too high, Mama.” My eldest daughter told me from isolation in her Sydney apartment. “Going outside is a $5000 fine!”

Living on the Gold Coast has had its benefits. Lockdowns have been brief. Up until this year, my school-aged daughters have not been expected to mask up or offer their arms for science. Our business has prospered in spite of the challenges of travel restrictions, border closures, rising freight costs and skilled labour shortages. We’re the lucky ones and we know it.

Nonetheless, I’ve been radicalised by the systematic theft of my daughters’ personal power. I will fight for them with everything I have against abuse from historically corrupt pharmaceutical corporations and the fast-tracked, provisionally-approved ‘vaccines’ that work most effectively for billionaires. From media brainwashing that encourages bullying and hatred toward vulnerable humans and which silences the voices of those who ask questions or offer other ways of managing the pandemic. I will fight for the return of my daughters’ autonomy; stolen by authoritarian governments that are doubling down on their failed pandemic responses and ignoring the data from overseas that show none of it is in the best interests of populations.

And now, because I went to Canberra, I know I’m not fighting alone.