The Conversations I Brought Home

Some conversations finish when you shake hands, walk away and get on with your day.

Others seem come home with me.

I've had plenty of conversations over the last couple of weeks. Some light, some funny, some hopeful and quite a few with people who are doing it bloody tough.

These are only a few of them.

But they're the ones I brought home.

One was with a mate trying to support another mate after an attempt to take his life.

He cared deeply about him. That was obvious. But underneath that care was the uncertainty I reckon so many ordinary people feel when someone they love reaches that point.

What do I say now? Should I ask him about it? What if I make things worse? Do I ring every day? Do I give him space? What am I supposed to do if he tells me he's struggling again?

There wasn't a lack of care.

There was almost too much care, mixed with the fear of getting it wrong.

It reinforced something I've been thinking and talking about a lot lately. Somewhere along the way we have created this idea that when somebody tells us they are struggling, we are suddenly expected to become a counsellor and produce the answer that fixes everything.

Most of us can't do that.

I can't.

What we can do is listen without immediately reaching for advice. We can ask another question. We can help someone connect with people who are trained to support them and, probably just as importantly, we can come back tomorrow or next week and ask again.

And we need to remember the person doing the supporting can be carrying a fair bit themselves.

That mate needs a mate too.

Another conversation was with a young mum.

Her little boy is still young, but she knows there is a day coming when a much harder conversation will have to happen.

One day he is going to be old enough to ask the real question about why his grandfather isn't here.

At the moment there are answers that fit his age and his understanding, but she knows there will come a time when they won't be enough anymore.

You could see she was already grappling with that day even though it hasn't arrived yet.

How do you explain something so complicated to your own child?

When is the right time?

What words do you use?

How much do you tell them?

There was something about that conversation that really stayed with me because grief isn't only about looking backwards at what has been lost. Sometimes it's also looking forward and knowing there are conversations, birthdays, milestones and questions still to come.

She is carrying a conversation she hasn't even had yet.

Then there was an older bloke who told me he was lonely.

Not because he lived hundreds of kilometres from anyone or because he was geographically isolated.

He had simply lived long enough to outlast so many of his people.

Brothers gone. Mates gone. People he had worked beside, laughed with, argued with, had a beer with and shared decades of life with.

There are still people around him.

But fewer people who know his history.

Fewer who remember the same stories.

Fewer people he can sit beside without having to explain thirty or forty years of context first.

That one really got me.

We talk a lot about isolation in rural and regional Australia and we tend to measure it in kilometres. The further somebody lives from town, the more isolated we assume they must be.

But loneliness doesn't work like that.

You can live hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town and feel incredibly connected, while someone can live surrounded by people and feel completely alone.

Sometimes loneliness isn't about having nobody around you.

It's about no longer having your people around you.

Another bloke became very emotional as he told me about being involved in a search for a missing local man.

They searched for days.

Eventually, tragically, they found him and helped bring him home to his mother.

I don't need to share any more detail than that.

It was written all over this bloke's face as he told me.

I could hear how much he was still carrying.

We rightly think about the family and friends when something terrible happens, but sometimes there is another group of people carrying a piece of that story too.

The people who searched.

The people who turned up.

The people who helped.

The people who saw things they wish they hadn't seen or had to do something they never imagined they would have to do.

Particularly in country communities, people step forward because that's what communities do. They drive roads, check paddocks, open gates, search creeks, make food, sit with families and do whatever needs doing.

Then eventually they go home as well.

Sometimes what they carried home goes with them.

I think we need to remember the helpers.

Then there was a woman who lost everything in the January bushfires.

Everything.

We use that word pretty easily sometimes, but sit across from somebody who has actually lost everything and suddenly the word isn't simple anymore.

A home isn't just timber, bricks and a roof.

It's photographs you didn't think to copy. Things the kids made at school. Something your parents or grandparents handed down. The chair someone always sat in. The shed. The garden. Clothes. Tools. The familiar sounds of home. Your routines and the thousand insignificant little things you never think about because they've always just been there.

Until they aren't.

The fire might have taken those things in a matter of hours.

Living with that loss doesn't follow the same timeline.

Months later the grass can be growing again, fences can be replaced and sheds can start going back up. From the road things can begin looking better.

None of that tells you what is happening inside somebody.

Recovery can be another insurance phone call, another form, another argument, another decision, another thing you suddenly remember you lost, another night lying awake or another person innocently asking when you're going to rebuild.

I've spent a lot of this year talking with people recovering from disaster and it keeps reminding me that rebuilding things and rebuilding lives are not the same thing.

Another conversation was with someone who wasn't carrying one massive event.

They were carrying lots of things.

One thing followed another, then another, until what might normally have been manageable suddenly wasn't.

I reckon we misunderstand that a lot.

We see somebody react strongly to something that looks relatively small from where we're standing and think, bloody hell, where did that come from?

Maybe it didn't come from that one thing.

Maybe it came from the six things before it.

Financial pressure, family stuff, work, grief, lack of sleep, a relationship struggling, health worries, uncertainty or just trying to hold everybody else together.

Life rarely has the courtesy to give us one problem neatly packaged at a time.

Eventually there can be no room left for one more bloody thing.

That's capacity.

It's something I understand differently these days because I've lived the other side of it.

For a long time I thought strength was about carrying whatever landed.

Work harder. Push through. Don't whinge. Someone else has it worse. She'll be right.

Drought, flood, financial pressure, problems within our family business and eventually losing the farm and a huge part of the identity I had wrapped around being a farmer.

I kept pushing.

Resilient. Persistent. Determined.

Until I wasn't.

There was a point in my own life when I attempted to take my life.

I don't share that to compare my pain with anybody I've spoken with. Pain isn't a competition and suicide is far too complex to ever pretend there is one simple cause.

I share it because I know what it feels like to appear to be functioning while underneath you're running out of road.

I became bloody good at looking okay.

That's probably why my relationship with the word resilience is a bit fractured these days.

Resilience matters, of course it does. It can help us through incredibly difficult periods.

But continually telling someone to be resilient can sometimes sound a lot like telling them to keep carrying something that is already too heavy.

Sometimes strength is pushing through.

Sometimes strength is stopping.

Sometimes it's admitting your capacity is getting low.

Sometimes it's allowing somebody else to carry a little bit of the load.

That is what Capacity Before Crisis has become for me.

Not another fancy wellbeing framework or another thing we are supposed to be good at.

It's simply asking ourselves some questions before every warning light on the dashboard is flashing.

How am I really travelling?

What's draining me at the moment?

What parts of my life are wobbling?

Who are my people?

Not the hundreds of contacts sitting in my phone.

Who can I actually ring when life turns to shit?

Who knows me well enough to notice I'm not myself?

And who knows that they can ring me?

Then there were two women who trusted me enough to share their own battles with their mental health.

They were incredibly open and incredibly brave.

There were tears and hugs, and there were parts of those conversations where I didn't have anything useful to say.

So I didn't.

I listened.

They thanked me afterwards for listening and I walked away thinking I should probably be thanking them.

Because somebody allowing you into that part of their life is a privilege.

I never want to become casual about that.

I never want to have so many conversations about mental health that somebody else's pain becomes content, a case study or another story to tell on a stage.

These are people.

Mums and dads. Sons and daughters. Brothers and sisters. Husbands, wives, partners, grandparents and mates.

People with histories we know nothing about.

These conversations are only a few of many I've had lately, but they are the ones I brought home because together they have reminded me of something incredibly simple.

People are carrying more than we know.

And most of it doesn't come with a flashing sign.

People still get out of bed.

They go to work.

They look after their kids.

They feed the cattle.

They turn up to community events.

They help somebody else.

They crack jokes.

They say, "Yeah, good mate."

And sometimes they're anything but good.

I don't think the answer is walking around trying to diagnose everybody or turning every conversation into a mental health intervention.

Maybe we just need to become a bit better at being human with each other.

Instead of asking questions that can be escaped with a nod and "I'm fine", stay curious for another couple of minutes.

How are you really travelling?

What's been going on lately?

What's been the hardest bit?

Then actually listen.

Don't spend the whole time they're talking preparing your answer.

Don't immediately compare what they're going through with something that happened to you.

Don't feel like you have to fill every uncomfortable silence.

And don't think you have somehow failed them because you can't fix whatever they tell you.

Sometimes being heard is the start.

Sometimes the next step is helping them connect with professional support.

And then come back.

That's the part I think we sometimes miss.

"Give me a yell if you need anything" sounds caring, but it still puts the responsibility onto somebody who may have almost no capacity left.

Send another message.

Make another call.

Have another coffee.

Knock on the door.

Sit in the ute.

Reach in.

We have become pretty good at telling people to reach out.

Maybe we need to become much better at noticing when somebody is reaching in.

I've felt incredibly humbled and privileged by the trust people have shown me over these past couple of weeks, but I'd be lying if I said some of these conversations haven't affected me.

They have.

That's probably why I'm writing this.

Because these were a few of many conversations.

But they were the ones I brought home.

If somebody came into your head while you were reading this, don't spend too much time wondering why.

Ring them.

And if you're reading this knowing you're the one carrying too much at the moment, don't wait until you can find the perfect words or explain everything that is going on.

Sometimes the first conversation can start with four words.

I'm not travelling well.

That's enough to open the door.

And none of us should have to carry the whole bloody lot alone.

Support:

Lifeline — 13 11 14 | Suicide Call Back Service — 1300 659 467 | Beyond Blue — 1300 22 4636 | TIACS — call or text 0488 846 988 | Virtual Psychologist — text/WhatsApp 0488 807 266 (eligibility/location requirements can apply) | If there is an immediate risk to life, call Triple Zero (000).