Читать книгу The Gap Year(s) - Nathy Gaffney - Страница 12

Detachment – Stage 4

With little possibility of my overnight becoming the other ‘Cate Blanchett’ that everyone had somehow overlooked for 20 years, I toyed with the idea of teaching. Nearly thirty

years after my mother had gently suggested that ‘perhaps teaching drama might be more reliable than acting’, I belatedly (if not begrudgingly) heeded her words and enrolled in open university to obtain my post-graduate diploma in secondary school drama teaching. While I was there, I decided to sign up for a Masters in Linguistics, too. Academia would be a great distraction – I could be a student again!

Part of my semester-one assessment was to do a three-week practicum (practice teaching) stint in a public high school with class after class full of recalcitrant, spotty teenagers who had taken drama because they thought it would ‘be a bludge’ (for non-Australian readers, this means an easy option requiring little to no effort). I valiantly worked (what I thought was) my magic in an effort to get them engaged in play making, scene work, and improvisation, only to be met with outright disdain and sniggers, or just be completely ignored. The one or two students per class who genuinely wanted to learn stood no chance amidst the mosh pit of conscientious objectors to my pedagogical brilliance. My bold naivety that I could bring artistic enlightenment to these ‘young minds’ was short-lived, and after the required three weeks (which felt like three months), that dream came to a rude awakenning.

I conceded defeat. Beaten but not broken, I marched bravely out of the schoolyard with a song from the musical Sweet Charity playing in my head.

“There’s gotta be somethin’ better than this….”

And, channelling my inner Shirley McLean, I was determined to find it.

(To this day, the sight of a teenage girl with her headphones fed up through her school shirt and into her ears makes me want to rip them off her face, along with her nose piercings and $20-eyelash extensions.)

Disclaimer time: several of my dearest friends are secondary school teachers, and it is out of absolute respect for them and what they do that I stepped back from secondary education. I have neither the stamina nor the patience to bring to life what is required to teach youngsters well (I have one teenage son, and he’s enough of a challenge on his own!). The people I know who teach children do so with passion, talent, and brilliance, and are a rare breed to be revered.

A Shameful Statistic

Up until this point, I’d been only vaguely aware of how poorly women (in particular, mothers who have dedicated years of their lives to child bearing and rearing) are financially prepared for life alone. The Australian Institute of Family Studies has found that the financial impact of divorce can last for decades and carry on into older age, with women downgrading their homes, or going through what is for some the ultimate horror of losing their homes altogether. The study also says that it’s women with children who suffer the most financially.

(Family Pathways: The Longitudinal Study of Separated Parents AIFS – 2016)

Now, I couldn’t help but notice I was at the midpoint of my life and still hadn’t sorted my shit out in terms of being able to support myself – not only as a single woman, but as a single parent.

Enter Shame!

A woman I have never met (my secret girl crush) was my absolute saviour during this time. Brene Brown is the world’s foremost authority on shame and vulnerability. Her books The Gifts of Imperfection, The Power of Vulnerability, and I Thought it was Just Me (but it isn’t) to name a few, along with her Ted Talks, helped me feel not so alone and ashamed of... well, pretty much everything.

When I first watched her TED Talk “Listening to Shame”, I wept with the body-wracking sobs of complete catharsis, such was the deep resonance her words had with me. It was like she had written that whole talk and posted it on the worldwide web just to reach me!

I was desperate to find a way, personally and financially, to create a life for myself and Leo and finally free myself from the heavy cloud of shitful shame that had been trailing around after me for so long.