WOW: Wise Older Women
“Wisdom That Grows Louder with Time.”
Welcome to WOW: Wise Older Women a podcast dedicated to raising the status of ageing women and dismantling the narratives that silence them.
Here, older women speak with authority, beauty, depth, and fire. Their stories challenge, inspire, and illuminate.
In a world that too often ignores, isolates, or diminishes older women, we choose to listen. To revere and celebrate the brilliance, courage, humour and tenderness they bring along with plenty of high‑vibration wisdom carried in their words.
These conversations aren’t just stories, each one of them is a teaching. A personal map from the past, forging the way ahead, full of magic, medicine and momentum.
This storytelling series presents ageing not as decline, but as ascent. It’s a platform where older women don’t need to hide. This is where they are honoured, uplifted, heard and held; with reverence, respect, and wonder.
Their voices are powerful, their wisdom is vibrant, and their stories are a gift to us all.
Welcome to the podcast. Settle in. Let their voices guide you.
WOW: Wise Older Women
S2 Ep2: Eliza Rix
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode we sit with a herbal rebel who helped spark a cultural movement.
Heard of HHH? (Happy High Herbs). That's the one! We get to know an artist who builds worlds out of imagination and recycled magic. We’ll wind through psychedelic forests and enter a story of queerness before language, of sensuality as a compass, of menopause as meno-morphosis, and of a body that has been both battleground and oracle. It’s a story of losing pleasure, fighting tooth and nail for it, and reclaiming it in ways that defy medical expectations. But that's only part of the story.
Eliza’s life is art and rebellion. Full of grief and grit, humour and magic. It is the exquisite mushroom growing from the compost.
Eliza also speaks about women's sexual health particularly Lichen Sclerosis which she discusses in-depth, covering all aspects including where to seek support and how Eliza manages the condition naturally these days. Yes, it can be done!
This isn't just an interview, it’s a herbal initiation. A journey through the alchemy of becoming, unbecoming, and becoming again. A strong theme that weaves throughout the WOW series.
You are about to enter the world of Eliza Rix in this CBF grant funded Series WOW: Wise Older Women “Wisdom that grows louder with time”
*Tissues may be required.
Links to Lichen Sclerosis Support and Information:
- The Coyle Institute a woman’s hospital in Pensacola Florida is promoting a special laser treatment for Lichen sclerosis in particular. Awaiting to hear of peer reviews about it now. - https://youtu.be/JTiVWTIJkIE?si=0oZgUesXoX8EwMYS
- Groundbreaking lichen sclerosis treatment - https://youtu.be/hlR-Qmc_YEE
- Pelvic physical therapist - Ashliecthepelvicpt on TikTok
- Clitoral Myofascial release - Clitoral Myofascial Release for Lichen Sclerosus: Un-fuse Without Surgery
- Pelvic Guru Online training MYO facial Clitorial Release - https://lssupportnetwork.org/she-reversed-severe-clitoral-adhesions-without-surgery/
To find out more about Eliza head to Elizabeth.Rix IG page.
Series 1 & 2 were made possible with assistance from the Community Broadcasting Foundation. cbf.com.au.
Support future episodes of WOW: Wise Older Women - Here
Contact Host & Executive Producer Rasela Torise - aloha@plantationstudios.com
Music generously provided by Purple Planet Music
S2 Ep.3 Guest: Gayle Cue COMING SOON.
Welcome to Wow, Wise Older Women. Wisdom that grows louder with time. It's a podcast dedicated to raising the status of aging women and dismantling the narratives that silence them. Here, older women speak with authority, beauty, depth, and fire. Their stories challenge, inspire, and illuminate. In a world that too often ignores, isolates, or diminishes older women, we choose to listen, to revere and celebrate their brilliance, courage, humor, and tenderness. They bring along plenty of high vibrational wisdom carried in their words. These conversations aren't just stories. Each one of them is a teaching, a personal map from the past, forging the way ahead, full of magic, medicine, and momentum. This storytelling series presents aging not as a decline, but as a scent. This is where they're honored, uplifted, heard, and held with reverence, respect, and wonder. Their voices are powerful, their wisdom is vibrant, and their stories are a gift to us all. Welcome to the podcast. Settle in. Let their voices guide you. In this episode, we sit with a herbal rebel who helped spark a cultural movement. An artist who builds worlds out of imagination and recycled magic. We'll wind through psychedelic forests and enter a story of queerness before language. Of sensuality as a compass. Of menopause as menomorphosis. And of a body that's been both battleground and oracle. It's a story of losing pleasure, fighting for it, and reclaiming it in ways that defy medical expectations. Eliza's life is art. It's rebellion. It's grief and grit and humor and magic. It's the exquisite mushroom growing from the compost. This is not just an interview, it's an initiation. A journey through the alchemy of becoming, unbecoming, and becoming again. You're about to enter into the world of Eliza Ricks in this CBF grant-funded series Wow. Wise Older Women. Wisdom that grows louder with time.
SPEAKER_01Hello, hello. Hello, hello.
SPEAKER_00When you think about who you are today in this moment, what energy are you bringing to this conversation?
SPEAKER_01I aspire to presence. Present moment. As well as revisiting and remembering the experience of chapters and moments of my life journey and picking and pulling out shining threads and fibers of meanings and the rich tapestry of beauty and pain and laughter and love. And a little of the adventures my single thread of life has navigated. I don't think of life as anything like a box of chocolates, more like sewing a rich, wildly interesting tapestry whilst riding on a roller coaster.
SPEAKER_00How does it feel to be part of a podcast series that raises the status of older people?
SPEAKER_01It actually feels absolutely sensational to be a part of a conversation honouring elder embodied experience. I mean, everyone's life is this crazy fascinating journey. We share, we care, we relate, or feel thankful we've not needed to relate to some experiences. I've learnt to be thankful for everything, the good, the bad. There is actually no ordinary and there is nothing mundane about life. It is just one big storytelling experience, and it's so lovely to hear other people's stories.
SPEAKER_00When you look back at your childhood, growing up in Alteroa, New Zealand, what parts of that early world do you remember most vividly?
SPEAKER_01I grew up in the North Island of New Zealand to really loving parents. My first memory is rather delicious. It's actually having my nappy changed, my bottom washed and powdered. I still uh quite like that feeling today. And I know that it was quite an early memory because I was potty trained really, rather young, my mother told me. So that was one of my first experiences. Sadly, the second memory that stands out most clearly is when my parents split up suddenly and rather explosively when I was four and a half. I can still remember, like it was yesterday, me standing frozen with fear, confusion, hearing my father's realization, devastation, anger and grief. When we came home from a day trip to a dark house, some of the furniture gone, along with my mother. And being born blind, my mother was my connection to most everything. So yeah, that was a memory of feeling deeply lost and scared trying to comfort my father, and later hearing him crying in his room and feeling helpless. I remember there were also crickets chirping outside, and for most of my life the sound of crickets chirping felt like a very sad sound. So I did an exercise a few years ago to heal that. It wasn't the crickets' fault. I now am happy to report that the sound of crickets no longer makes me sad.
SPEAKER_00Was your mother still present in your life, or was it your father's role to raise you?
SPEAKER_01She left the family unit and then there was basically four years of custody battles through the courts. But in between the court cases and things, there were weekend visitations and basically I was with my dad till I was eight and a half and eventually I went to live with my mum from that time on.
SPEAKER_00You did grow up differently from other people, not just because your parents were separated. Tell us about the younger Liza. What was different about you?
SPEAKER_01When I was about eight months old, my mother noticed that I would feel for things rather than reach for things, and it was discovered that I had congenital cataracts from exposure to German measles in utero. So I spent my first five years of life blind to the edges and details of everything. I could see a degree of light and dark, very diminished colour, so my early life was all about following movement, sounds, feeling into my world with my ears, my hands and body, taste and touch, all the forms of connections all babies employ. Of necessity, I naturally grew and strengthened plenty of extra sensory perceptions, acute sensate empathy, heightened smell, taste, touch, lots of sensational gifts it turned out. My childhood memories are all about the delicious, comforting sounds of my mother's body, especially her swallowing her tea, delicious smells like coffee beans being ground, yummy food being cooked, yucky smells after my dad had been in the toilet smoking like a cigarette that just shat itself. The wonderful theme songs from TV shows like the O'Nein Line, which started off my deep love of classical music, and all the other wonderful soundtracks to musical and movies my dad would play. And of course, the epically amazing music of the late 60s and 70s, my favourite period of pop music. The first records I ever purchased were Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I commenced the first of multiple eye surgeries at age five, and I continued to have four more surgeries between then and age 14. That was when eye surgeries basically begun in New Zealand. This field of medicine has completely evolved during my lifetime, and I've got to experience all of it. I have perfectly unaided vision these days, thanks to the wonders of laser surgery. But back then I was told I was the youngest person in the southern hemisphere to have cataract surgery and to be fitted with contact lenses. Glasses were not an option for me because they would have had to have been over an inch thick. After these surgeries, my eyes would have to remain bandaged and covered for a couple of weeks before each reveal. And parents couldn't stay in hospital with their children back then. They were big, cold, old places, and I felt constantly abandoned and left alone and quite scared. But nurses were very kind, and the hospital, it was the same one I went to every time actually, was filled with old people mostly, and they were also very kind and comforting. I've always had a lot of time for older folks. Which is just as well now that I am one. I always remember a very old lady saying to me as a little girl in the hospital, No matter how old you get, you will always feel like you. So make sure you behave like someone you would like.
SPEAKER_00How did navigating the world through touch and energy and that intuition influence the way that you perceive people and places now, do you think?
SPEAKER_01In retrospect, the gifts that this experience has given me is that I don't understand what boredom is. I have a deeply active, self-generating imagination. With each reveal along with improved sight, I was gifted with hypervision. So for some months following each surgery reveal, I would see auras shining clearly, and these weren't subtle things, they were more like neon light surrounding things and people, and so it was all very psychedelic, really, my childhood. As my sight improved, I gained a deep appreciation and fascination with rather ordinary objects and situations. For instance, being absolutely mesmerised by sunlight shining off a pair of my brother's satiny blue running shorts on a clothesline one day. I remember being fascinated at last seeing the abundance and golden splendour of dust particles floating suspended in a backlit room. And I remember my amazement when I could finally see what comes off when washing one's hands, and I understood why we needed to wash our hands at last.
SPEAKER_00Your parents were also creative, resourceful, and unconventional in their own ways. What do you think you inherited from each of them?
SPEAKER_01My mother Joy was a very beautiful and creative soul. She loved to paint and create warm and comfortable, pleasing spaces, and as I got older and gained sight and eventually went to live with her, I could see that my home was a confluence of lively still life scenes. And although we were really rather poor financially, she always made our home feel rich in every other way. Joy was no doubt a big influence on my sense of aesthetics and the beautiful arrangement of textures, colours and objects. My dad, Jim, he was a super social war pensioner, and he had suffered huge injuries in Korea. He'd spent a couple of years in hospital being given a new face which got blown off. His jeep drove over a mine. All of the other occupants died. Those early cosmetic surgeons did amazing work. You would never have known he had been through such trauma, and his face didn't match the photos of him as a young soldier before the war. Jim loved participating in theatre and musicals, and he was a lively member of theatre groups and operatic societies. I used to accompany my dad to rehearsals of musicals like The King and I and Carousel. I wasn't really interested in being in these musicals. I was always most fascinated by all the activity going on around the actors, the players, the set, design, the building, the mural painting. And I am sure that the fascination for the creation of worlds started there and has stayed with me all my life. My dad loved a good project and was always interested and engaged in doing home improvement stuff, and I'm sure I get my endless sense of motivation to engage with improvement and endeavour from him. He was my biggest fan and I miss him a lot. My grandpop Lance was my favourite older human when I was a child. I would sit happily watching him in his workshop making, creating and fixing amazing things. It was a tiny workshop really, with tools all hung in chaotic order, and a deep smell of putty dust, wood chips and various other lacquers and things. I have a big workshop myself these days, and I remember walking through the door around ten years ago and I stopped instantly. I had arrived somehow. Oh my goodness, my workshop smelt exactly like my grandpop's.
SPEAKER_00You said that if you had have stayed in New Zealand that you might have ended up in the hobbit world. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_01Well yes, when people enter my home, they most often comment that it feels like they have stepped into Middle Earth. I think there may be a little bit of elvish in me, I'm sure. Perhaps a bit of hobbit. I do have big feet. I came to live in Australia some 34 years ago. So well before Peter Jackson started production on The Hobbit and Unexpected Journey, the first of those epic films. My love of set design and building, that definitely would have been a dream job for me. It's such a strong part of my living aesthetic, anyway. My home is very alive. I share it with lots of lively creatures. They are my furry, feathered, and finned family. Their company and care bring me so much joy and delight. At times also sorrow and loss, but they often tend to live for a very long time, and I feel very blessed to share my life with them.
SPEAKER_00You are immersed in the wonders of nature, and it's such a big part of your life. But take us back to the moment that herbs first entered your life, as more than plants, as allies and teachers and medicine. Yes.
SPEAKER_01From very young I was surrounded by people who were avid gardeners. My paternal grandpop, my mum, my dad. My grandpop bred birds and dahlias, and I was always fascinated by the geometry and variety of the beautiful forms that they come in. Also, of course, loved the gorgeous smells of the garden. They always got my attention and my interest. And so I have always been drawn to the semi-formal herb gardens of old. I built my first small formal herb garden at age 16. My personal favourite herbs are rosemary, basil, English lavender, pineapple sage, patchouli, rose geranium, all the times in the world, and the list goes on really. I've always used herbs to make hair rinses, draw in dream pillows, lotions, potions. I love cooking with mixed herbs. Herbs are the magic that make other food ingredients sparkle and come together. I believe herbs are not mystical. They are magical food and preventative medicine. They are meant to be included in our diet for health, just as fruit and veggies are. I can't imagine cooking without herbs.
SPEAKER_00Damiana played a profound role in your life and in your healing. Can you share what that experience taught you about the intelligence of plants and the intelligence of your own body?
SPEAKER_01Well, the moment of understanding how powerful herbs can be was actually years in the making. A bit of background. My mother was a heavy bleeder and I had a lot of pain and heavy bleeding issues from the age of twelve. I thought it was normal. It's taken me all my menstruating life to understand that my female line overproduces estrogen, leading to excessive bleeding and eventually things like endometriosis, fibroids, etc. And I know a lot of women suffer similarly, so there's a heads up. Avoid all estrogen rich foods if you are someone suffering these problems. At eighteen, when I fell in love and wanted to start a sex life, I tried to go on the pill and proceeded to bleed through all of them. So eventually a family planning clinic suggested I try an injected birth control called DepoPrevera. One injection in the bum every three months. The first three months went okay, no bleed through, and nothing to remember to take daily, I thought that was pretty great. So I had the second injection and I started to notice rather big weight loss and I was not overweight. I lost my breasts and I went down two sizes, and then what I noticed was while working as a nurse aide in a sweet little community obstetric hospital, helping in delivery suite and caring for newborns. It was a job I really loved. One day I was in a linen room folding birthing and baby packs in front of a lovely picture window. Outside was a beautiful little tree in glorious autumn colour. I still remember the moment clearly to this day looking at that beautiful tree and thinking a clearly shocking thought that it would be good to be dead. Followed immediately by the thought, where the hell did that idea come from? That's just not me, that's so fucked up. And I knew it was this chemical messing with my brain chemistry as well as my reproductive body. So I never had another injection and later found out that depot has been banned in a lot of countries decades ago, but it is still being offered to women in Australia and New Zealand today. Moving forward some five years and then needing no birth control, because my partner very kindly had a vasectomy for me, still I never got my pre-depot body back. Until that is, I started drinking Damiana tea, which I found at a little herb store at Camden Loch Market in London. The first thing I noticed was a few very erotic dreams. During the first week and a half I started drinking it. I normally only had one or two of those a year, so that was a good enough reason to keep drinking it. At about the month mark, my breasts became really tender as at puberty, and back came my glorious pre-body. After five years, I felt fully myself again. That's what showed me how powerful and residual some drugs can be, and how powerful some herbs can be in the best possible way. Damiana is also great for cleansing and strengthening the kidneys. Everyone has a weaker organ in their body. Mine has always been my kidneys. As a kid, I used to get UTIs a lot, and my mum called my kidneys bargain basement specials. Good healthy kidneys are all about afternoon energy and general joie de vive life force energy and fertility. Damiana is also the big deep breath and a warm hug for anxiety and stress. It even tastes lovely, so there is nothing I don't love about this herb. It is revered in its place of origin, Mexico, as a fertility herb. Healthy kidneys make you horny. Brew it weak, drink plenty of it, flush your kidneys with it. Taking it in any other form is fun, but won't fix your kidneys. It needs to be a T for that action. So we brought Damiana to Australia and we talked about it on Triple J way back in the day. And that's one of the main things that fueled our passion to grow happy herbs and continue to spread the herb word in Australia.
SPEAKER_00When do you say we, you co-created something very iconic? What was the spark that s came between you and your co-creator of Happy Herbs that made you both say, Well, let's do this.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Ray and I were in a partnered loving relationship for some twenty five years and are still the best of friends. We love to work hard and play hard. We've always loved to dance and to party. I feel so blessed that the eighties and the early nineties were my clubbing and recreational growth time zone. Later in the nineties, the heavy crackdown on pure recreational substances led to the rise of nasty cut, unpure, unpleasant options, and we were looking for better new options to party with. We were in London at Camden Lock Market and saw a modest tiny stall selling alternative teas and smoking herbs and a book titled Happy High Herbs, and we purchased the book and purchased some herbs and mixes and this whole subject began to percolate. And we, as a couple, formed the perfect crucible for this idea to grow and expand. With my practiced grounded passion for herbs and display and raised sales, distribution experience and passion for helping people, HHH wasn't just a business, it was a cultural shift.
SPEAKER_00What did you want people to understand mostly about herbs or pleasure and natural alternatives?
SPEAKER_01To remind folks how medicinally amazing and supportive plant medicines in their more natural form can be. It became our combined passion, and that passion became a cause and a movement as Ray had to defend our right to use and share natural plant medicines many times. He is a herbal warrior. I am very proud of him and us and the legacy we have left. We always plan that it be passed on to the next generation, and it is in very good hands today. Nature contains the answers to most of our unwellness issues, which is why Big Pharma are constantly scouring what's left of jungles and wild remnants, looking for interesting new compounds. They spend huge dollars seeking, studying, testing, creating patents and pills and marketing programs, which is well and good. Our issue about all of this is they then make the original natural plant source restricted or scheduled, restricting our access to using things in a more natural form. Plant freedom, pro-choice, and sustainability, we must continue to demand access to more natural products. Just like non-GMO fruits and vegetables, grains, etc. Powerful herbs need to be protected in the wild as well as nurtured and growing everywhere sustainably for our benefit. Revered, not disappeared.
SPEAKER_00What did building nine shops on a shoestring teach you at that time about creativity and grit and all the magic that surrounds that?
SPEAKER_01Well, it was all a very natural flow really. We started off with a couple of card tables at a market, and then for years we did big festivals to showcase safer party alternatives. Big days out, home bakes, livids, all of those kinds of things. We built the Nimbin shop, the mother shop, and on it grew from there. I personally built nine shops. I crafted these with love, creativity, and recycled materials mostly. I love creating spaces, and I was aware of the insane amounts of money people spend fitting out shops and businesses, etc. I loved the fact that of necessity we had to craft beautiful spaces out of things other folks leave behind, just like a womble for those who remember that great little show. They should bring it back.
SPEAKER_00The wombles of Wimbledon common are we making good use of the things that we find, things that the everyday folks leave behind.
SPEAKER_01Such a great show. So the people came and loved and responded to our ethic, our energy, our spaces, our aliveness, and today still it grows.
SPEAKER_00Ray wasn't your first love. He was your partner at that time, but you had already lived through some profound love and devastating loss. Can you take us to the time in Cal Coppa Copper in Aotearoa, New Zealand? The land, the LSD, the softness of the bush, and the life that you were building before tragedy struck? Yes, I can.
SPEAKER_01New Zealand is so beautiful, and I adore the South Island especially. Um and a really tiny part of the North Island, near a little village called Calcoppa Copper. It consists of a primary school, a general store, a garage, a pub, and a hall, and New Zealand's smallest library. I spent five years of my primary school childhood there. It's centrally located in the narrowest part of New Zealand, eighty kilometers north of Auckland. Favourite parts of my childhood were spent there, so when I met a beautiful man called Michael Ricks and we fell deeply in love with each other, after spending three years getting to know each other, we got engaged, we pulled our resources and purchased a beautiful property back there, which included two gorgeous Belgian cottages and ten acres of land with magical deep, soft cowrie forest. There were a couple of trees in that forest that were over eight hundred years old. We used to get naked and go crawling around in that forest and make love. Everything in New Zealand is soft. It's completely different from Australia. Soft, fluffy, fuzzy, and you got a real sense of the Maori culture and the spirits in that forest. I would see spirals and all sorts of things glowing on the pungers, and it was quite trippy actually, even though it was quite a small tract of forest, you could get so disorientated and lost in there. It was like some kind of portal. So Michael was a champion competing glider pilot. We wanted to share our lives and have children. I also got to fly and see beautiful parts of New Zealand with him. We set a wedding date, send out the invitations. But a few weeks before our wedding, Mike and two other flying friends decided to go on a fun flying week away with their new self launching sailplanes. For some time before, I was given some clear signs from my universe that Mike would be exiting this stage. I could never, would never ask him not to go on the adventures he loved. For a solid week before his flying adventure, a little fantail bird was relentlessly, consistently trying to get into our home, moving around, tapping on the windows. The Maori culture believed that when a fantail bird comes into your home, it is a harbinger of death. Or a presence giving loved ones time to prepare their hearts for a loved one leaving. Even though it's been over thirty five years since it's still quite raw for me. It was as though the veil between the worlds grew thin and both the bird and perhaps his own spirit were trying to prepare me to soften the blow that was coming. The night before he left, I felt like I was standing on the edge of a deep chasm of grief and impending loss. I felt hysterical, a bit nutty, and I could not hide my strong emotions that evening. He asked me if he should cancel his adventure. I responded I could not ask him to do that, and I would not that he must follow his own heart and sense of adventure. When he flew away the next morning, his last words to me on the airfield were I love love love you, I miss you and I've not even left yet. We laughed. I cried and we enjoyed our last kiss. I knew that was the last time I would see him alive, and a few days later he never arrived at his day's destination. The wreckage and his body were located three days later in the mountains bordering Wellington. I heard it announced on the radio news first. That kind of knowing when the unseen reaches into the scene is something that lives on in the body. It doesn't just become a memory. It becomes part of how you understand the world and what lies beyond it. It flows through everything. Grief and self-discovery are often born and exist in the same moment. So much love, so much beauty means so much loss, so much to lose, you know. But to experience and feel all of that beauty is worth any loss. It also instantly gets rid of all of the illusions of the things people obsess about and think are important. At the end of the day, at the end of our life, what matters is kindness, caring, presence, and enjoying time spent with people we love.
SPEAKER_00After that great loss, that great love, you eventually did meet Ray. It was a friendship that became a partnership and then a business and then a lifelong bond, as you've explained. What did Ray bring into your life that you didn't know you were looking for at that time?
SPEAKER_01Yes, well, losing such a powerful love was obviously totally devastating for a couple of years. I really did not want to still be here either, and I lost myself studying books on the afterlife in an effort to stay feeling connected. But ultimately, a vital, alive, healthy human gets very tired of being sad. So after a year I decided I needed to make myself go out and find new work that was not nursing. I threw myself into learning new things and found that because I had already been through the worst loss imaginable, it somehow made me feel very brave. I focused on finding my joy in creativity and being kind to myself through learning new things like meditation. Eventually Ray came into my world. He loves to rescue and I certainly needed it, so I will be always eternally grateful. He was running a sales organization and running morning meditation classes and goal setting seminars, all things I most needed. We became firm friends and eventually lovers. Initially I thought he was gay. I love gay men, they're my favourites.
SPEAKER_00What made you think that he was gay?
SPEAKER_01Oh he used to wear these wonderful, very, very Miami vice kind of suits and little bow ties, and he was always immaculately groomed and he always smelt really nice, so he wasn't your average Kiwi bloke. In fact, he's Australian. He eventually invited me to move back to Australia with him, and it was a good idea. Everything in New Zealand reminded me of what I had lost, and I knew I needed a big reset. I had quietly grown to love Ray's deeply positive kindness, and we were life companions, as I say, for 25 years after that. We started separate journeys twelve years ago, but we are close friends and family always.
SPEAKER_00You moved to Australia, um, rebuilding, I guess, a life, your life, and part of that rebuilding is an otherworldly sculpture that you've been building for about 27 years now. Tell us about your home and what that space expresses.
SPEAKER_01My home is different, that's for sure. It is my biggest sculpture art piece. It's very organic, it's very lively, it's always evolving. It's a love story in action, it's uh earthy, grounded, fully alive. The outside is inside and the inside is outside. I am definitely more of a maximalist than a minimalist. My home is also a living sculpture evolving alongside and with me. It's my life's journey, past, present, future. It's always stimulating as well as relaxing and engaging the great outdoors. Next to the river is awesome for contemplation. It's not just a home, it's a world. I have built with my own hands and I've collaborated with awesome humans at times as well. The space is full of a devotion to crafting. I live alone, but it's full of inhabitants, furry and feathered and finned. They are not pets so much as fellow citizens in the microcosm. They're woven in. There is more than one aquarium full of fish. They're like living jewels with the lights and the broad green leaves. I asked one of my dearest friends what my home says to her. Her response was Joy lives here. Quirkiness is welcome. Nothing is too beautiful to be useful and nothing is too humble not to be made beautiful. When I'm in the microcosm, I laugh more easily, I notice more, I leave nourished in a way that's hard to explain but impossible to mistake.
SPEAKER_00And it has a mushroom bedroom. Tell us the story behind that creation and the humour and the love and the symbolism that's woven into that mushroom bedroom.
SPEAKER_01In my world, a home doesn't just reflect who you are, it is who you are made visible. It's got to be a totally nurturing refuge for those under its roof and fit into its environment. I live under a mountain, next to a river, in a massive garden under a giant mushroom, which is in fact my bedroom. Back in the early days at Silver Oaks, I'd be up on the roof clearing gutters, and it's such a great view of the river from up there. I'm like what are we doing just being down there? And so was born the upstairs bedroom project. I had lived on the property and in the house for around a year at that time, so was fairly certain of what I needed to change, which pretty much involved gutting the old house of its many small rooms and going rather open plan and building an upstairs bedroom. When I got to the roof profile part of the design, I could not get at all interested or excited about anything traditionally linear. It just did not fit. I've never been fascinated with straight lines, and Silver Oaks has always been a magic place for fascinating fungus. We get earth stars, puffballs, bioluminescent bracket fungi, tiny glow in the dark mushrooms. So a giant mushroom grew out of my space. It was the obvious choice. And it was also a labour of love that took me two years. We had to sleep in the middle of a building site for those two years, and I would have to also comment that they were some of the wettest years we've ever spent in the Tweed Valley, and it can get pretty wet. Ray had his sixtieth birthday looming, and I set my hands and my heart on completing the build and setting a bed upstairs as part of his birthday celebration, and it got done. I wrote on his birthday card, Dearest Ray, this is the biggest erection any woman is ever going to give you. And I'm sure it's true to this day.
SPEAKER_00What does it mean to build or be even be able to build a home that evolves as much as you do?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's that whole thing about living in the present moment. It's not a stage set that doesn't change. It needs to organically flow, move, and morph with what's going on for me and the other people who are passing through. What you need, what you no longer need. That's why hoarding is so unpleasant and such an issue for people. I am a maximalist, certainly, not a minimalist, but I only keep things that can be used for art, that have sweet associations and memories for me, and they are not stacked in ugly piles, they are on display for me to enjoy every day, and I regularly curate my space and pass on things as it feels appropriate growing up blind for the first five years of your life meant that you lived without early visual cues and you learnt to love through energy and scent and all of those extrasensory vibrations.
SPEAKER_00How did that shape your understanding of gender and attraction, do you think?
SPEAKER_01Being born blind, I felt people and I smelt people before I could actually see people. So I feel like I evolved gender blind. I'm going to be attracted to people's frequency and energy ahead of what gender they might present. As far as physical attraction goes, I have noticed through my life that I have always been most attracted and fascinated by androgyny and non-binary folks. I feel these circumstances gave me a lot in the way of extra sensory perception of the energy and frequency of things. Still to this day, when I enter a space, I can physically sense and feel how everyone in the space is feeling without looking at them. It can feel like a lot at times, and for a long time I thought this was normal and the same for everyone. This early life circumstance also meant that I really had next to no gender cues or conditioning, which maybe is why I've always leaned toward a queer sexuality.
SPEAKER_00What does queer mean to you?
SPEAKER_01What does it mean to you now? I mean the word queer originally meant strange, odd, and unusual, and those descriptives could all apply to me. But it's my preferred descriptive without getting into details about my sexual orientation and activity. It allows privacy while still indicating my gender identity falls outside heterosexual norms. First and foremost, I am having a wonderful primary relationship with myself. I've taken my four and a half-year-old self to come and live with me now as an adult, and I am giving her complete, present, absolute love. I probably describe myself as pansexual, and that's not because I fall in love with fairies called Tinkerbell, it's because it doesn't really matter to me what genitals a person has. It's all about everything else.
SPEAKER_00What about your relationship with pleasure? How has that evolved across your lifetime?
SPEAKER_01I took responsibility for my own pleasure into my own hands as soon as I discovered masturbation and orgasm at the age of twelve after reading about it in a smuggled copy of The Joy of Sex, a friend of mine brought to school. Once discovered I absolutely adored pleasuring myself often. I was such a wanker for most of my youth, which was cool because I never thought about needing another body to experience ultimate pleasure. Eventually I evolved to enjoy deeply loving, long-term relationships with men, women, and those glorious beings who inhabit that perfectly wonderful, fluid space in between the genders. Intimacy, love, caring, fun, all of that means the world to me. It's one of the most pleasurable birthrights to be in given a body, I reckon.
SPEAKER_00And what has that body of yours taught you that no teacher or book or even lover could teach you?
SPEAKER_01It's taught me that my body is amazing and incredible. It wants to be well, healthy, it wants to thrive. Experience it all. The gifts of pleasure and beauty, which are as much our body's birthright as the potential for discomfort and pain and disease. It's all about acceptance and loving. Relationship with our bodies, not resistance.
SPEAKER_00Do you have lived many beautiful love stories, loving men and women deeply? What have those relationships revealed about your own heart?
SPEAKER_01My heart is as big as the sun, and it has the capacity of an ocean. The sun does not do exclusivity. Here's the thing about the sun. Nobody accuses it of being unfaithful for lighting up Monday and Tuesday, and every other day of the week, actually. And the Pacific Ocean does not get jealous of the Tasman Sea. We humans have an unlimited capacity for all kinds of love and kindness, no matter who or how many we may love, self-love and care of others is always the answer. I have test driven every form of relationship and found monogamy to be the least workable for me. I am very secure in myself and I am all about honesty and open communication. I know jealousy. Jealousy and I have met. I've seen her, I've felt her, we've been introduced at parties. Jealousy loves tight dark places. It looks at the light and space in my heart and leaves. I love to see my loved ones being loved. What kind of a monster would I be to stand between someone beautiful and more beauty? Some lights are built to make a small tight circle of light and love, and some will flood a room, and some can light up a whole stadium. There is no right way or wrong way to love. Love is always the way, and to allow others freedom and non-judgment to love as their capacity allows is perfect.
SPEAKER_00You describe menopause as an alchemical process, a rebirth. What did your own menomorphosis what did it reveal to you?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's a huge whole subject, all on its own, really. A lot of it is still not understood. I think it is important for older women to understand this is not a sickness, but a deep transformative process. A process, an opportunity towards increasing coherence and self-wisdom. It's big and it can be as profound as being born, navigating puberty. Indeed, I feel it is an emotional spiritual rebirth to one's own true self. I named it my menomorphosis.
SPEAKER_00You've spoken about becoming invisible in plain sight during this time. What does that invisibility feel like and what power have you found inside of it?
SPEAKER_01Yes, invisibility. It's kind of interesting and weird becoming somehow invisible in plain sight. The general attitude about menopausal women is that we are no longer attractive, productive, useful, contributing, or interesting. We are energetically abandoned by Western society, except of course by plastic surgeons, weight loss companies, and cosmetic companies who spend gazillions assuring us that nothing is okay about the way we naturally age. Our projected invisibility in this culture is not evidence of irrelevance. It is evidence of a culture that only values what it consumes. We have simply moved beyond being consumerable. We have earned the right to say no to things that don't resonate, to speak our truth. For some of us, physical and emotional symptoms can be rough and tough. I noticed this change ushers in a new inner strength and focus to become more outspoken, more determined to speak our truth, less tolerant of bullshit generally. Truth telling has us labelled as problematic, difficult, aggressive, and heaven forbid even most unattractive. What I wish the world understood about aging women is that our sexuality does not retire with our fertility. It's deepened, actually. It's stopped performing and become present. Presence and aliveness. We have not faded, just distilled. We are still sexual beings who experience joy, pleasure, and aliveness. A full inhabiting of this body, this life, this moment on our own terms. We've been through lots of stuff to know what is real, what matters, what is simply decoration. We are still becoming. Age is not a closing of a door. It is finally arriving in a space we were made to fit. It is about being alive in our bodies on our own terms to enjoy consensual pleasure, no matter what age or orientation, in ways younger women are still learning is even possible.
SPEAKER_00You've said that this stage insists we give birth to our true selves, and if we don't, it will do that for us. Who emerged for you?
SPEAKER_01Who emerged for me? My focus has moved from sharing intimacy with others. It has become more sacred, more seeking into myself. So I am feeling wonderfully self-contained, and I absolutely enjoy plenty of alone time. Yet I absolutely adore sharing and enjoying all kinds of loving, creative, collaborative relationships as well. So it's kind of coming home to yourself in every sense of the word.
SPEAKER_00From a hysterectomy, misdiagnosis, like in sclerosis. All of these are things that a lot of women endure silently. But what compels you to speak so openly about these things? And please feel free to share parts of your own journey through those health issues?
SPEAKER_01It's a bit of a saga, so I'll kind of try and keep it brief. But I started menstruating at eleven years old. Bleeding was always painful, extremely heavy, and it continued to be throughout my menstruating life. My mother was also someone who experienced heavy bleeding and flooding, etc. I remember as a little girl seeing blood running down her legs when we were out shopping, so I thought this was kind of normal for many years. My heavy bleeding and endometriosis type symptoms grew even worse around 2012 at age 45. So every 18 days I would bleed for ten days heavily, and after numerous scans and ultrasounds, over five years I was repeatedly diagnosed with one eight centimeter fibroid on my uterus. I was referred to a specialist gynosurgeon at John Flynn Hospital. At that point I was seeking fibroid removal rather than hysterectomy. I did not want to have a hysterectomy if it was avoidable. The specialist that I was referred to was only pushing to do hysterectomy surgery. He didn't really know much about fibroid removal and was not really interested in exploring how to fulfil my desire for it. After I expressed my concerns around risks of hysterectomy affecting my ability to age naturally, I didn't want to lose connection to my sexual pleasure, and also there is a lot of evidence of increased bowel problems after hysterectomy. His response was Oh a woman your age, no longer able to have children, you don't want to worry about all of those other kinds of things. You know, a lot of women get a lot of pleasure from buying shoes. I told him that I didn't think we were ever going to get along, and that he was already affecting my bowels with his shitty advice. I asked for a referral to Royal Women's Fibroid Removal Department in Melbourne, Victoria, which he couldn't provide for me as you had to live there. I continued to manage this condition with alternative health diet, etc for a couple of years. But eventually I woke up one morning with a full bladder and I could not pass urine. I presented at Mwollombar Hospital A and E and they catheterized me, eventually telling me that my swollen uterus issue was pressing my ureters shut and that I would have to live with a catheter until I got it sorted. As soon as I could go down to Victoria, I presented at Royal Women's Accident and Emergency. My uterus was looked at under ultrasound. Apparently their machines are more calibrated to only be looking at women's parts. I was informed immediately and with a second opinion that I did not have a fibroid at all, but a condition known as adenomyosis. This condition is where endometrial tissue is heavily peppered all the way through the whole uterus, so every time I cycled this reactive tissue would bleed into itself, leaving my body in floods and clots and leaving my uterus many times bigger than normal and getting bigger all the time. Ultimately hysterectomy was my only option, which I obtained in Melbourne some weeks later. I was sad but glad that I had resisted previous pressure to have a hysterectomy for someone else's reasons. In the end I knew I had no choice and that I needed to find that out for certain myself. I went into the surgery feeling deeply nervous about after effects, but also resigned and empowered that this was my only option and that letting go of all the negative aspects of my reproductive life was of huge benefit. My hysterectomy could not be done by vaginal extraction due to its size. It was extracted by a large incision across my bikini line. I kept my ovaries and my cervix. Understandably, post surgery I had a lot of numbness and my whole pubic area felt completely different and disconnected. I was not in an intimate relationship at the time of my hysterectomy or for the year following my surgery, so I had time to allow for some healing and recovery. Wonderfully, a year and a half later I fell in love and commenced a loving and happily very physically mutually attracted relationship. Despite the fact that all the ingredients were there to facilitate ground pleasure, it became clear after a time that I was not able to achieve physical clitoral orgasm or climax to any degree any longer. In fact, just the opposite. Though I could still experience strong sexual arousal and readiness, the event often resulted in instant severe frontal headache and shooting pain up the back of my neck and skull instead of a climax for me. I coped with this confronting, concerning state of affairs by focusing even more on my partner's pleasure, giving me pleasure, on maintaining deeply open, intimate sharing around the subject and exploring every other form of mutual pleasure and intimacy available. Interestingly, I began to experience female ejaculation at this time, something I had never experienced previously, and though super grateful for any release of sorts, these left me feeling drained more than pleasured, and it's a messy business, requiring much preparation and laundry. I continued my efforts exploring what this clitoral disconnect could be caused by, but of course long term it was not ideal for my partner or myself living with such a restriction. Something was definitely wrong and out of order. Was it physical, psychological, emotional, or becoming all of the above where to start? Channelling my intense confusion and physical frustration and anger, I commenced a personal journey exploring all things related to what climax is physiologically, in an effort to understand what had changed for me since my surgery. The people I consulted in the medical profession after my surgery had nothing to offer me by way of help or explanation. Ultimately, I have worked out that my dysfunction seemed to stem from an inability to build blood pressure within my clitoral pelvic area beyond a certain very low point. I understand that similar to an erection in a man, the pleasurable sensations of arousal and orgasms are created by this building of blood pressure in the pelvic floor area to a point of eventual throbbing release, giving that full body exquisite, pleasurable experience the lucky ones of us know and love. Once I understood that I wasn't able to do this naturally on my own anymore, I got a doctor to prescribe me with Viagra hoping for a quick fix. That was not to be at all noticeably effective, nor was anything else I tried over five years. It was suggested that a branch of my vagus nerve might have been damaged in the pelvic area at the time of my hysterectomy. So your vagus nerve is a massive nerve that runs the whole length of your body and it has all of these branches running off to all parts of your body. So the bit that actually went to my clitoris was probably inadvertently severed because all the nerves and arteries and things to that area are generally clumped in one big area and they avoid that area, of course. But your vagus nerve is a bit of a wild card and it goes wherever it likes. Not being able to fully pleasure her partner, an eventual lichen sclerosis diagnosis for me turned out to be a deal breaker for my relationship of six years, which ended. Losing my sexuality post hysterectomy, losing my body's favorite toy, my comfort, my joy, my passionate aliveness, it felt like a deeply personal attack. Six years later, I was diagnosed with lichen sclerosis, a benign yet chronic autoimmune disorder affecting most parts of a woman's external vulva area. It has affected my clitoral hood, labias, and perineal area. I presently have a fully fused clitoral hood, and my labias have been resorbed, disappeared almost completely. It affects mainly aging women, but it can also be found in men and children. They say it can affect up to ten percent of the female population, but nobody talks about it. Within Australia no one so far has been able to provide me with any truly useful strategy or knowledge around female sexual function, dysfunction or effective treatments. I've even attended appointments where the practitioner has not even looked at my clitoris or my genitals. It's felt like a very bitter pill to swallow after years of frustration following my hysterectomy. This disease mentally and emotionally slayed me and mortified my sense of self as a sexual being who deserves to seek and enjoy physical intimacy and pleasure, or to imagine I had anything to offer someone wanting to share a healthy, fulfilling, satisfying sexual relationship with me. I also became increasingly saturated with an evolving deep anger, a rage on behalf of all the women in Australia, a rage that built and grew from my experienced ongoing medical misadventures, specialist ignorance, and a widespread generally disinterested attitude towards advances in other countries around female sexual dysfunction and conditions like lichen sclerosis, paired with a general patronizing attitude I receive from specialists charging high prices to offer no help to me at all. To my mind, if you specialize in something, you want to be an authority, completely up to date, exploring everything being discovered in the world that might be of assistance to your patients, but apparently not. It is mind-blowing to me how far we haven't come in the Southern Hemisphere. In this area of women's health, still, it's really not good enough. I guess we need to get informed and start demanding more. Being more informed is a start, and that's why I'm speaking out. I feel like my ongoing general rage contributed to this inflammatory condition. And so this motivates me to speak out. No woman should have to go through the lack of interest, support, or services that I have, and there is a massive room for improvement here in Australia. Lycan sclerosis is an incredibly distressing disorder. It is a condition of such discomfort and agony at times. It has the power to take away hope of physical love and its expressed pleasure, and I am sure it has ended many relationships. It has felt huge, just resisting the psychological weight of the condition, feeling like a shameful secret, a venereal-like disease one does not want to share about in a conversation with others. This diagnosis, on top of everything else, I would have to say was the lowest point in my life. My sexuality, my passionate aliveness, has always meant the world to me. This condition can cause all manner of irritation and severe painful symptoms. It is said to be manageable yet incurable, and constant use of steroidal creams seems to be the only treatment on offer in Australia to slow progress of this disorder.
SPEAKER_00For those women of all ages out there listening to this, feeling that you're speaking their words, where would you recommend that they reach out to or who? What help is available for women living through these sorts of conditions?
SPEAKER_01I am in full gratitude for YouTube and the Internet. It has been my most informative friend and has given me renewed hope. These tools enable us to locate all presently available information and otherwise remote support. The Lycan Sclerosis Support Network has been set up by a couple of wonderful American women a few years ago, suffering from this diagnosis and seeing there was next to no information out there. Today they have built a wonderful trove of informative interviews and offer support groups, and now even organise a yearly forum dedicated to pushing for increasing awareness, relief, and research for sufferers of this quiet horror. These two women have done such amazing work bringing this diagnosis attention. They in particular are doing the most towards understanding and actually giving some caring attention to this issue. Bless them. I would recommend women, if they think they may have it or they would like to just be sure they don't have it, take themselves to like a sexual health or family planning clinic. They were the people who finally got to the bottom of what was going on for me.
SPEAKER_00You've explored tantra, plant allies, toys, tools, and deep somatic work. What did you discover about the body's ability to rewire and reclaim pleasure?
SPEAKER_01It is indeed true that every challenge or loss gives you gifts. I have discovered I discovered through my predicament and research that there are over twenty different types of orgasmic pleasure options possible for women outside of climax through clitoral stimulation or vigorous penetration. We are indeed more multi-orgasmic than I or most women could ever have imagined. I have become a joyous and fascinated, excited explorer of deep new ways to access and experience physical pleasure. Explore interventions like Tantra, internal energy work, fun and fantasy work is huge. We all know great sex starts in the brain. And explore all those other avenues, as you say, toys and tools, etc. I am receiving this voyage of discovery as such a gift. I created my own non-steroidal cream, a combination of castor oil, wild yam, colloidal silver, DHEA, and numerous other things that came across my path that I felt drawn to. It has given me control of this condition. It is not controlling me anymore, and that applies to this very moment. And then drum roll, at last, my old friend my clitoris got some long overdue attention and stimulation. It took the form of a small sucking toy new to the marketplace at the time I purchased online. I figured if it artificially did the job of drawing blood to the clitoral area, it was just perhaps what I needed. And hey Presto This small object finally gave me sensation, something to build on and work with. This one object has given me back something that approaches clitoral orgasmic pleasure and sensation, and I continue to explore the benefits of this type of equipment. And I highly recommend sucky toys for women generally. Give one a go if you haven't already, you won't be disappointed. Never give up a pleasure, just get more curious. I am pleased to report that these days I now have a divinely intense ability to experience super prolonged, multi-orgasmic pleasure which far outperform anything I experienced even in my younger days. Pleasure is not a frivolity or cosmetic. We earn it, we deserve it. Appreciate this, never take it for granted. Take full responsibility for loving yourself through anything that seeks to diminish your experience. Fight for it. If you have to hunt out good solid medical support, do it. Not all of it is what it should be, believe me. Get a second opinion, get a third opinion, do your own research. If you need scans and things done, go to a woman's hospital to get them. You'll get a more accurate result most often. It's far from easy, yet nobody knows or cares about your body the way you do. You are not broken. We just need to keep lovingly listening, adjusting and adapting our self-care. Never give up on discovering yourself anew every day. This approach will get you through any challenge.
SPEAKER_00After years of grief and health challenges and identity shifts, you met Pavlina. What was it about that connection that felt like a new beginning?
SPEAKER_01Haha Oh, on to the fun stuff. Mid last year I took myself on a journey and adventure, a reclaiming of newness after seven years of various kinds of trauma and loss. It felt right and new and exciting, a reset. I caught up with wonderful friends and family in England. I helped my sister out through surgery in Thailand, and it included a visit to Greece for a woman's festival. I made wonderful new friends and enjoyed a super sensational holiday romance with a super fun human called Pavlina. As my travels through Turkey and Morocco continued, we stayed in touch. Early this year Pavlina took me up on my invitation to come stay and play for a holiday in Australia. I have not laughed so much for years. Our connection has evolved into something profoundly joyful on every level, and we are dedicated to work towards being able to be together in Australia. In the meantime, I'm discovering and learning new long distance love affair skills like sexting and virtual dating. Making a partner and myself orgasm 16,000 kilometres apart is really heady stuff.
SPEAKER_00You have described your intimacy now as expansive and healing and beyond expectation. What does pleasure mean to you now at this stage of your life?
SPEAKER_01I not only feel reset, I actually feel reborn. It is a rebirth, not founded on innocence, but on so much experience. So much of it is so deeply challenging. Challenges that I have overcome. So there is a massive amount of so much deep appreciation and thankfulness for any and all of the good stuff. Passion, intimacy, health, pleasure, relationship at any age and stage. These things feel good at my age, having been challenged with the loss of most of those things. All of those things are the most wonderful magic treasure in my life. Every day I wake up breathing, feeling, thinking, imagining, it's a sensational day. My life is so full, so creative, so blessed at finding someone so deeply compatible is just such a joyful magic happening. We delight in little things and big things, ordinary things, exciting things. We both love travel, we both love to laugh, we have each been dedicated to doing our work and healing ourselves, and our connection feels like a reward for hard, tough work well done. Immigration often doesn't make it so simple for people who love each other to be together. But we are dedicated and determined, and so I'm excited to spend our lives together as soon as we can.
SPEAKER_00What are you creating now that feels like the next chapter for you?
SPEAKER_01Well, I've always been fascinated, entranced, amazed by the magical exquisiteness of natural forms. The very large to the smaller than small, the tiny worlds within our world, and exploring our place within the wonderful entanglement of it all. I live in what's locally known as the mushroom house, next to a river under a mountain in a large garden with many creatures, my happy place, my microcosm, my worlds within the world. This is what inspires me, what I love to share through my art. I am thinking about sharing, opening up my space sometimes. This is a beautiful part of the world. I feel like the world today needs to be reminded, wants to be reminded of the magic of the natural world, wants to receive positive, inspiring messages about environmental challenges and solutions. I am halfway through building an environmental awareness sculpture art piece, and I am planning to create and promote a sculpture garden walk exhibition at Silver Oaks. Get a load of my amazing, wonderful creative friends and hopefully some strangers who also love to make amazing things out of recycled, upcycled, repurposed objects, and throw in the added challenge of an environmental message component. Share my beautiful garden space with people, share messages, ideas, innovations, inspirations, sharing magic and beauty. That's what I would love to see happening in my future.
SPEAKER_00So when you think about legacy, what do you hope to leave behind and be remembered for?
SPEAKER_01Well, a garden is of course a living legacy. I'd like to share creativity through my garden long after I'm gone, workshop gallery and craft afternoons, and inspire and teach my nieces and nephews to carry on that work after I'm gone. Inspiring those that visit Silver Oaks to create their own whimsical, magical, imaginative homes and gardens. And for the last few years there's been a lot of maximalist shaming going on out there. Not everyone wants to live in a white room with nothing in it. All power to those that do, but of course, for those that want a richer palate, I want to remind them that that's okay. And of course, I want to leave this land, this space that I live in better than I found it, and well prepared for the future. My family and I all agree we want to grow and protect this place as a sanctuary for our future generations, for art and inspiration.
SPEAKER_00You have lived many lives within your one. What truth do you hold now that the younger Eliza could never have imagined, even with her extravagant imagination?
SPEAKER_01Nature, the natural world is my place of worship, I guess. It's my church. Mixed salads are a big part of my diet. Medicinal plants, I talk to plants regularly, ask them questions, and I receive answers. I'm endlessly inspired, refreshed, fascinated, and humbled by the big and small and the beauty of it all. I've actually labelled myself a Hildegardian. There was a a child put into a convent, a nunnery at a young age. Her name was Hildegard von Bingen. And she stayed in that world her whole life and eventually became an abbess of one of the biggest convents in Europe. And she was a fascinating human. You can still hear her choral music played on the radio today. She wrote the most beautiful music. She was an amazing artist. She actually had visions and created her art around her visions. And being the twelfth century, it was actually remarkable that they didn't throw her in a pond, you know, with a weight around her neck. But somehow she was revered and respected. She was also someone who pushed the envelope. She got into trouble with head office, you know, the Vatican, a few times, but she always prevailed. She created a language. She actually wrote the world's first herbal encyclopedia. This woman was phenomenal. But the thing that made me fall in love with her completely was reading this line. She stated that it is a sin against God to let oneself dry up. One must remain juicy.
SPEAKER_00Go Hilda. If you could offer one message to otherwise older women out there navigating their own menamorphosis, what would you want them to hear?
SPEAKER_01I want them to hear the word into me see. That's actually three words to me. That is the gift the crone carries. True intimacy, not with another, but with the self that was always worth knowing.
SPEAKER_00And finally, how would you describe yourself right here, right now? Who is Eliza Ricks today?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a cute question. And I did this workshop thingy exercise a couple of years ago, and it was all about that age-old question, who am I? And how to work that out for yourself. Outside of the name your parents gave you at birth, and of course they had to give you a name, some way to get your attention, but that is not who you are. This was my completed descriptive about who I am. I am a vibrant, kind, courageous, dynamic, inventive creatrix. A visionary who inspires, encourages, and supports others passionately. A multidimensional, earthy, starseed warrior queen surrendering to the ever-present adventure that is this life now.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for your part in this series. It's been an honour to have you here.
SPEAKER_01It's great to be here sharing with you and everyone else. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00What an audio adventure. We just travelled together. Such a journey through light and shadow, pleasure reclaimed and power rediscovered. We traversed through the wild, ungovernable terrain of a life lived in full spectrum, psychedelic rainbow colour with mushrooms on top. To our guest, Eliza Rex, wow, thank you for your boldness and your pure honesty, your humour and your erotic intelligence, and your outright refusal to apologize for existing in exactly the shape you are. Perfect. You exhibit to us aging not as an easing of experience, but as this grand expansion. It's a real deepening, a widening of the lens. Thanks for listening. I hope you've left with something from this conversation. A spark, maybe a question, or even a permission slip. And don't forget that you too are allowed to become something new. You can shed your skins, you can rewrite narratives, you can reclaim your own pleasure, and step into the version of yourself that feels the most alive today. Who is that, I wonder? If you'd like to find out more about Eliza, there are some links in the episode description for you. Join us next week for episode three of WOW, Wise Older Women Series 2, with my guest Gail Q. Vibrant, wise, grounded, and endlessly curious. She's exactly the kind of elder we can look to, to be reminded that as life expands, so do we. You can find more episodes of WOW, where you found this one, or any other major podcast platform. Series one and two were made possible with the assistance from the Community Broadcasting Foundation, cbf.org.au. If you'd like to support future episodes, you can do so via the links in the episode description. I'm your host and executive producer, Rasella Torres. It's been my absolute pleasure to bring you this and all the episodes of the WOW Project.