Unsilencing with Abelia Hissink

One afternoon during a rather lovely but uneventful book club, someone that I had known in various incarnations – my son’s school teacher and fellow lover of books – very lightly dropped her own story like a bomb into a calm sea - hitting the surface of this casual gathering and then as if in slow motion, commanded with such steadiness by this woman in control of it’s affect, it’s splashback rose out of that quiet setting high into the air and sent waves of disbelief, grief and awe through a little Byron Bay book club. 

In this episode, that story is shared. And in it a message of connection for survivors, a warning to abusers and a reminder for all of us, that we just never ever know what could be sitting deep in the heart of anyone, no matter how it seems on the surface. This is a conversation about how we surmount that huge obstacle of silence and a reflection for me personally on how in this episode, I do not even broach the massive part of the conversation around how the heinous behaviour of perpetrators, that's so very rampant, is stamped out.  That we will address down the track. 
This story belongs to Abelia Hissink, the fighter, the survivor, the author of her own adult story. The Mother, Wife, Teacher and all round excellent human being.