After more than a decade of sharing my heart, soul, flaws and failings with the nation – and hopefully doing some good along the way – I feel as though I've earned the right to speak honestly about rural advocacy from a lived-experience perspective.

And there is a mountain of good, bad and ugly within it.

When I first stepped into what Theodore Roosevelt famously called "the arena" (and if you've never read The Man in the Arena, I strongly suggest you do), I arrived carrying exactly what most people carry when they decide to publicly tackle difficult issues: hope, determination, conviction and a genuine belief that if enough light could be shone into dark places, then perhaps a few less people would have to suffer in that same dark place alone.

In my case, the darkest of places involved alcohol.

Like many rural Australians, I had spent years caught in a cycle that looked normal(ish) from the outside – but was utterly catastrophic from the inside. By 2015, after decades of life that included chaos, injuries, trauma, near-death, and all the collateral damage that excessive drinking leaves in its wake, I woke up in a country hospital bed with tubes attached, stitches in my face and a life that could no longer continue on the trajectory it was heading.

Many of you know the story by now. If you don’t, you can watch it here. And, as always, I thank Australian Story for telling this all-too-common tale with care and love.

What followed wasn't a grand plan to become an advocate or a ‘guru’ or an ‘influencer' … in fact, those are all labels I have resisted with every fibre of my being from day one, and always will, because I know far too well my own failings.

All I wanted to do was speak the truth about alcohol, recovery, and the broader rural culture – and how, behind so many neat fences, beautiful homesteads, successful careers and smiling family photos sits a silent and often deadly kind of pain that rarely makes it into polite conversation.

What I didn't realise back then was that advocacy itself would become one of the greatest teachers of my life. I never imagined talking about alcohol would end up being the easy part – and that what I learned (and am still learning) about advocacy was FAR more complex.

It taught me about belonging. Or perhaps more accurately, it taught me about the often-unspoken terms and conditions attached to belonging …

The observation that finally crystallised this for me came during a conversation with a woman I respect enormously. We were talking about rural Australia, culture, expectations and all the things that sit beneath the surface of country life when she casually remarked that she sometimes found it difficult that there seemed to be so many terms and conditions attached to truly ‘belonging’ in a rural community.

As a human who doesn’t drink heavily, hasn’t yet had her own family, and is a highly accomplished professional – but somebody who doesn't neatly fit every traditional expectation often attached to country life – she gets me, and she somehow managed to articulate for me what I'd been circling around for years without ever quite finding the language for. And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all.

She helped me see clearly that, while rural Australia remains home to some of the most generous, resilient and community-minded people on earth, many of us also instinctively understand that certain versions of ourselves fit more comfortably than others – and so, we unknowingly sometimes shrink ourselves to fit those parameters rather than risk the discomfort of others or being ‘spoken’ about ...

We all know there are conversations that are welcomed and tolerated, and others that make people subconsciously shift in their seats because they challenge the status quo of a (still) largely parochial space.

Yet after twelve years of working in the space of alcohol harm, mental health, recovery and lived experience, I have become fascinated by the gap that sometimes exists between the things we say we value and the things we feel comfortable publicly embracing.

As rural Australians, we care deeply (and repeat often and loudly) our concerns about topics including mental health, suicide prevention, family wellbeing, community resilience, workplace safety and healthier futures for the next generation.

What I do wonder, however, is whether we are always willing to sit with the conversations that lie directly beneath those aspirations when they challenge long-held norms, traditions, or aspects of our identity that we would rather leave unquestioned. 

Enter, alcohol: aka the clearest example I’ve ever personally encountered of our willingness to turn our back on the very one topic that sits under and is directly and inexorably linked to all the much easier-to-discuss topics. 

As I’ve repeated endlessly, not everybody who drinks has an issue with alcohol, and I am no prohibitionist, nor am I in the slightest interested in dictating to others how they should live their lives. My husband enjoys a drink. Many of my closest friends enjoy a drink.

The issue has never been drinking, as it turns out. It’s been about our collective willingness, or lack thereof, to discuss the consequences of what happens when drinking goes wrong. And how it is we can all so very easily be part of solutions and change I have seen working for a decade now.

Over the years, I have watched countless people be deeply moved by stories of recovery that we’ve shared and curated through Sober in the Country – and I’ve been deeply moved by messages from friends, strangers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, farmers, business owners and community leaders who have quietly shared that a particular story made them cry, made them reflect or made them finally feel seen.

What that tells me is that there is care, empathy, and the desire for change. And yet, there remains a curious reluctance in some corners to publicly engage with those stories in the same way we engage with conversations that feel safer, more familiar or more socially acceptable.

There are ironies playing out daily in the rural space that challenge me daily - like watching endless fundraisers and events that are allegedly focused on wellbeing or development, that refuse to cater for options beyond alcohol. Or watching celebrities, politicians, and ‘Alpha Bros’ using farmers and related topics like suicide prevention as a leverage point for kudos while on-selling alcohol to the very same men struggling because of their own addiction.

And perhaps that shouldn't surprise me ­– because what I am also beginning to learn and understand at enormous depth is that lived-experience advocacy is rarely about ‘information’ per se, but more about the discomfort that comes with holding up a mirror while we challenge others to examine truths they know exist.

The longer I spend in this space, the more convinced I become that this applies not only to alcohol but also to the way we view the people who choose to stand in the arena itself.

One of the most unexpected lessons of the past decade has been watching how quickly society can place people into neat little boxes, whether that’s the strong woman, the resilient bloke, the inspirational survivor, the change-maker, or the role model who inspired many. And how quickly those neat little boxes can be tipped over when life, tragedy, grief, change, illness, or exhaustion happens… and when, suddenly, the underdog the general public felt happy cheering for is back in the trenches and navigating exactly the same messy, complicated realities as everybody else, and generally just being a human.

When my own world was turned utterly upside down by profound personal loss and a medical disaster that knocked me sideways in ways I never anticipated back in 2023, and affects me to this day, I learned something that many advocates learn sooner or later, which is that, for the most part, people are generally very comfortable with vulnerability, provided it’s in retrospect. I discovered that an audience loves a comeback story, but that the same audience is far less comfortable witnessing someone in the middle of the struggle before the nice, pretty, neat ending arrives.

Perhaps, in the end, that is just another part of being human: preferring certainty and solutions to uncertainty or to more suffering? I think, perhaps, we’re all a little bit guilty of preferring stories that are tied up neatly with a bow – despite our knowledge that life rarely operates that way.

And all of these ponderings bring me to where I find myself now, twelve years after waking up in that hospital bed and deciding I was done pretending.

As I’ve also said countless times … the older I get, the less interested I become in ‘fitting in’ or seeking recognition, applause or public praise ….  and the more interested I become in true sustainability, and asking (in my usual fashion) hard questions around how it is we can all take part in better supporting the people willing to step into difficult conversations?

I increasingly find that I want to deep-dive into how we can all ensure that passionate, valuable, rural, lived-experience advocates are not simply celebrated when their stories are useful but supported when the weight of carrying those stories becomes heavy. And I also want to be part of creating communities where belonging is not conditional upon fitting a particular mould, staying in a particular lane or making ourselves small enough to keep everybody else comfortable.

And I want to dive into how we can all become better at checking in on those who spend much of their lives checking in on everybody else.

Because behind every advocate, ambassador, volunteer, committee member and changemaker is simply a person who is carrying their own burdens while trying, in some small way, to help carry the burdens of others.

And if there is one thing I have learned from twelve years in the arena, it is that none of us was ever meant to do that alone.

If you’re an advocate reading this, may I remind you that:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." – Theodore Roosevelt.

I see you. And I salute you. It is a hard road we walk, so if nobody has said this today, thank you.

Please take the moment to tag an advocate who has helped you. Show them some support. I promise it helps us keep going.