Mandy Nolan's Soapbox

It’s Mother’s Day next week so I thought it might be timely to write a letter of gratitude to my children. The people I...

Are we heading towards war? According to some media outlets, a war with China could be as little as three years away. Politically, banging...

Homesickness is defined as a longing for one’s home after a period of absence from it. It’s a strange anxiety and sense of displacement....

Parking anxiety. It’s a thing. It’s the fear that you will never be able to get out of your car; that you will miss your appointment or engagement, or never be able to start work because there is nowhere legal to park. You may never get out of your vehicle. You will drive until you run out of fuel, or die, or maybe both. Your skeletal remains will be found strapped into the driver’s seat with your indicator still on, waiting for someone to leave.

Women named Karen aren’t doing so well. They don’t find Karen jokes funny. ‘Calm Down Karen’ doesn’t make them calm. It makes them anxious, unhappy and unfairly victimised.

I stopped drinking. It was nine months ago. I feel great. Less anxious. Happier. I have more energy. I sleep better. I am more present in my relationships. I ask questions and listen rather than talk over the top of other people. I have lost weight. My skin looks good. In fact people ask me all the time ‘What have you done?’ Like there’s some magic answer. It’s not what I have done, it’s what I have stopped doing.

Why is the ultra-right targeting trans kids? Opportunistic neo-Nazis are using transphobia as their PR exercise. Like abortion, trans issues, and in particular issues around schools and the rights of trans kids, are emotionally charged. For those who have chosen bigotry and fear over acceptance and inclusion, polarised viewpoints create ignition points for hate and violence.

Tobacco companies are in your home and in your school. They are quite possibly in your kid’s school bag. They have their sights set on your children; your precious kids are their future. They need to groom your babies into addiction so that their shareholders can continue to suck in their grubby toxic profits. The lips of the tobacco industry are on the soft fleshy cheeks of your babies and they are sucking hard. They are vaping the life out of your kids.

I’m just a girl who can’t say ‘No’. It’s been my default setting for as long as I can remember. It’s probably why, when I’m offered a drink, I’ll have six instead of one. Or if I’m offered a piece of chocolate I’ll want the whole block. I’m not a moderate person. I don’t understand moderate people and how they think. How do they so easily set limits for themselves? I tell myself that moderate people live in beige houses and live beige lives. 

In 1997 John Howard introduced The Aged Care Act that privatised the aged care system. It was the beginning of the end of quality care. You don’t need to work in the sector to realise that juicing our elderly for cash is unethical.

Becoming a feminist changed my life. For me it was like finding home. It was fiercely intellectual. Fiercely compassionate. It was fiercely just. Feminism showed...

In Christian theology, Limbo is the afterlife condition of those who die in original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the Damned. In our region that’s how many are describing the last 12 months of interactions with the NRRC and insurance companies in their attempts to find not the ‘afterlife’ per se, but life after the flood.

Today I happened upon an episode of This American Life, which interviewed kids who attended a program called The Sharing Place, a kind of peer support for kids who have lost a close family member like a parent or a sibling. It was 5.30am and I was driving to the beach for my walk. I went to change it to something less intense, but then that voice in my head said, ‘Listen’. 

I have a disorder that is incompatible with living a comfortable life in the current system. Unfortunately it’s becoming less common, but there are people living in your street who will have it. Maybe even your friends, or someone in your family. Maybe you. It’s my deep shame. It’s why I will never be rich and successful. But probably why I am so deeply happy and why I am so full of love and care for other humans.

We live in a community where there is nowhere to live and the whole world is watching what we do next, wondering if we will do what their superstar tourist destinations did and regulate the housing market

Why does 26 January create so much anger, sadness and frustration? Because it’s a day that is not inclusive. It’s a day that celebrates inequality in this country. It’s a day that says 97 per cent of our population can celebrate the injustices done to thousands and thousands of innocent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the name of advancement and expansion of the British Empire.

This week I turn 55. It’s a privilege to be getting older.  I have a loving husband. I have a family I adore who, for the most part, adore me back. I live in a modestly beautiful house full of the things I’ve collected, or made, or been given, or ended up with. I live in a community that I value and who values me. That said, my life is not perfect. I have complex challenges that I try to use to enrich, rather than diminish, my life. I try not to compare others or myself. I try to embrace impermanence. I feel others’ pain at an intensity I’ve never felt before. I believe this is the beginning of the long labour of my eldership.

Lindy Lucena was the first woman this year to be murdered in an act of domestic violence. She was beaten to death in a street in Ballina. Her partner, Robert Karl Huber, is charged with her murder, and breaching a DVO. I heard this on the news. It chilled me to the bone. 

Meet Craig. He’s enlightened. He wasn’t born enlightened. And he certainly didn’t go out looking for enlightenment. It found him. And Craig, and Nerang, will never be the same.

It’s horrible getting old. I don’t want to end up in a nursing home. I don’t want to finish this story in a chair looking at the wall.