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I was born in the mid sixties in a lovely little town of ble top of the South Island. Um, didn't appreciate it much growing up, but when I go back to visit Mulberry now, the place is just beautiful. The whole area, the surrounding areas, the sounds, the valleys, the mountains, even snow Sometimes, um, I love my hometown. Didn't when I was growing up, though, I was glad to leave. What didn't you like about it? It's very small. Um, [00:00:30] population 16,000. Um, life was school, church, youth group. There was one movie theatre. Um, there wasn't a lot to do. Um, so I didn't like that smallness. I always felt contained. Um, but when I think back over it, the education education was very good. Um, I had lots of opportunity around sports and being involved [00:01:00] in that way. Um, but I felt like I always felt like I needed to get away. Yeah. And who's in your family? Well, there's my mom and dad. Um, they both passed away when I was 30. Um, they were quite young, and they were late sixties. Got my older sister. Um, Rosie, who's 60. She was 60 last year, I think. Then, um, my brother, um, Linzi passed away at [00:01:30] the age of 50 of the complications of a benign brain tumour during surgery. And I have another brother who's, uh, who's Michael. Michael lives in Timaru, the thriving metropolis of Timaru, and he's happily married down there, Um, to the lovely gay. Um, there's when my brother died seven years ago. I said to my remaining siblings, and now there's three. That's us. Um, and we've got closer as we've got older as you do. [00:02:00] So, um, you're you're pretty close. I. I went to your wedding last year, and I think you had family there. My, my, um my sister was there, and my brother and his wife, uh, were were at my wedding to Mary Mary and I met in 19. 0, my gosh. Uh, I knew about Mary in 1991 because when I was leaving to Christchurch, someone gave me a present, an artwork by [00:02:30] Mary and said if you ever met Mary, you would like her. So that was very prophetic, because I met Mary. Then four years later, in 95 through a choir, actually through what was known as the the lesbian choir back then we went for a couple of years. Where was that? Uh, in Wellington. I'm trying to remember how that set up. I was involved with some of it, but there were three or four of us who were musicians. I got back from Christchurch. People were talking about it. There had been a lesbian [00:03:00] and gay choir in existence called Galaxies, which met from 1991. And they got together at Advent for the purposes of doing an Advent service at Saint Andrews, which was a lesbian and gay identified choir. But we also had a lesbian choir group of about 15 of us, and we sang it Woman's spirit rising and different women's conferences. But, gosh, this is a long, long ago. So I met Mary in that context. And, um, we went for a walk on a beach on the [00:03:30] 12th of January of 1996 Beach and when we moved in together in the the week my mother died, when I was just starting to move my gear and my mother died suddenly. So that's how my Mary met my family, Um, at at that huge event, it was overwhelming. Really? Um, yeah. So that's 96. We've just celebrated. So when we we decided we [00:04:00] were together, um, we thought about what date would signify that. And that was a That was a day we walked on the beach and we read some feminist books and and quoted academically at each other and and then ate a magnum ice cream on the way home. And it was all very sweet. So we just celebrated 19 years. And in the course of that, I remember around about the four year point. None of my relationships have lasted beyond four years, and I remember saying to her, [00:04:30] What do we do now? And she said, Don't we just carry on? And, uh, I remember laughing and thinking, Yeah, actually, you do. So we've had three major ceremonies, Um, in our life, 2003. I was very ill. I was told I had something in my brain that could have been a a lesion or an infection or, uh, MS, and we didn't know what it was. And so they sent me home from hospital saying, Put your fears in order and we'll know in six weeks whether you're sicker or better, and it could have grown, [00:05:00] Uh, So Mary and I, in 10 days put together a commitment ceremony because, remember, this is 2003. We didn't have civil unions legalised even then. Hard to think. 12 years ago, we didn't have that. And we had a small group of 12. Um, for me, I said it at the at the reception table. It felt like the last supper. Um, you know, there was 13 people at the table. Um, but we had a commitment ceremony, and my family flew up, [00:05:30] and it was a very, very beautiful commitment ceremony. And then we waited. And then I turned 38 and then I had a Christmas, and then we realised what I had wasn't going to kill me, which was quite celebratory, as you can imagine, but did put a different flavour in our relationship in terms of what were we going to do with it with my partner? Um, Mary is 20 years older than me. And, um, that does make a difference in terms of life [00:06:00] change. So we came up to and had a look around at properties and we looked at this one. It was the fourth property we looked at and then went Now it's too small because this house is 70 square metres, the same as what our house was in. But we only had one metre between properties in Kilburn. But we knew we had to move up here. We knew this was the next part of our relationship. This was, um So in 2006, [00:06:30] um, we bought the property in 2005 and 2006. We chose our anniversary that we worked on, walked on the beach. That would have been our 10 year anniversary. And we approached Marie Maman at the Saint Andrews on the terrace. Maggie being supportive of of, um, marriage, equality. And I remember the debates leading up to civil unions, and Mary and I stood on the continuum of not supporting civil unions. Um, because we believed [00:07:00] that was less than a marriage equality. Um, we got talked into supporting the campaign via our music and and being visible and accepting the more liberal view that this was a pathway to marriage equality. And we stood in Saint Saint Andrews on the 12th of January 2006 and, um, reset our vows to each other. We had said in 2003 in a public ceremony was probably 60 people from my various workplaces and, um, [00:07:30] had the most beautiful Mary had returned to Catholicism at that point. And, um, we were fortunate enough to have a priest who who did a family reunion Mass for us before we went down to Saint Andrews and and had that ceremony. And that was the way we started our partnered life. Our our legally partner partnered. Life was up here in, and we moved here full time that year. Not long after that ceremony, and then [00:08:00] the miracle happened. Um um, Louis Louis Ward's bill got chosen to be be heard, the Marriage Equality Marriage Amendment. And we knew it wasn't going to be as huge as the Civil Union because it didn't require the same rule change and lo and behold, a past. And I was in Chicago and I I know I knew the time difference was 19 hours, and it seemed like Wellington was still paying at 4 a.m. [00:08:30] because I was up watching it. It was about nine o'clock at night or something. And I'm thinking what's happening in Wellington. And then I tuned into the and I. I rang Mary and said, Will you marry me? You know how I go? It was like getting down on my knees for the commitment ceremony because I was very sick. So getting on my knee at that back in 2003 in 2003 he had proposed was going to propose to her. I I had the S Island trip plan to stay [00:09:00] overnight and propose, and I got sick and I was in hospital. But this was so I rang and proposed. And then, of course, I did the Facebook proposal. And when I woke up the next morning, there were 33 comments saying, Is Mary going to say yes? Oh, no, She hasn't answered what is happening. What's the sign? So I had to text her and say, Will you please get on Facebook and put people out of their misery? And I came home from, um from my America trip. I was picked up at the airport. Mary was at a at A at a prayer meeting, um, for social justice issues [00:09:30] and the civil trial that was going on. And I arrived at Saint Andrews and texted it to come out, and I got down on one knee on the steps of Saint Andrews. Um, and I had a a labyrinth, uh, cup that, uh uh, a bowl little bowl that I bought from New York near the site of the 9 11. And that labyrinth got a special meaning to us and, um, had a had a rosary ring in it. Um, just for a little, you [00:10:00] know, down on one knee and I was so wobbly and so jet lagged This stranger walked by and ran up to me to grab me because she thought I'd fallen over. And then someone said, No, no, she's proposing. And, um and everyone's laughing because a couple of friends were watching what was happening, and she stood back and went, Oh, and applauded us. So So Mary has been a huge part of my life 19 years together. Um, we we're laughing at each other because she retired [00:10:30] fully in June last year. Um, as I decided to move my, uh, home business out of the home to a place down the road so we didn't spend too much time with each other. Um, but I'm coming into retirement myself now. And we've just been joking with each other about, you know, leaving the butter knife on the bench and, uh, who sweeps the floor. So, uh, we're trying to I guess we're doing role definition again now that our life is changing again. So Mary has been a huge part of my life. [00:11:00] Um, if someone had said to me 19 years ago, I would be happily married, living up the coast and with a with a family of my choice as well, because it's got Children in it to have seem to have adopted us. Um, it's just a whole new phase of life, and we're loving it. Tell me about your adopted family. Wow. Adopted family. Um, the well known family, um, Adrian, the [00:11:30] papa of the family. He was one of the three, as we call them in 2008. 3 Catholic worker men took some action, um, against the spying base in and in. And they went down there and used a sickle and disarmed it in the name of Christ. After the Isaiah verse that's printed on the United Nations wall in New York, Um, that that [00:12:00] we will turn the swords into plough shares, so disarmed it in the name of peace. And I knew who the family was, and I was watching television. One night it was about was 10. It was late news. And there is a man with a beard from church being carried away, being taken away in handcuffs and a boiler suit. And I went running and woke Mary up and said, You've got to see this. And, um, there was a very, very big [00:12:30] split in the community over the rights and wrongs of what had occurred. And and Mary and I were definitely on the support, this family. So about that time, um, the trial came along. My the little one who's six now was about to turn one, and we were facing the potential for a to be in jail for that time for maybe 10 months a year, we had thought. And that meant, um, seven Children, um, and Mary [00:13:00] and I just became more and more active, and the little ones loved us more and more, and we loved them more and more back and If anyone said there'd be a little one in my life, I would have laughed at them as well. Um, and the jury saw not to find them not guilty on the basis of, uh, particular points of law about what they were doing, that they weren't terrorists, that they were activists. And they, um I just love this family's politics. And then I saw Then I saw [00:13:30] the family that I would have loved to have grown up in, you know, home schooled, a big piece of land, Um, growing up fully loved. And when I proposed to Mary and said, Will you marry? She Me? She looked at me and she said, I'll do it. We'll do. I'll do it because she didn't want She's an introvert. Her idea of a party is two people. Um, she said I want to be married in the barn, and the bar is quite [00:14:00] significant because we've had lots of band dancers in there over the years. So years, and then when it came to the wedding, this family and they are our family hosted our wedding, and when I counted out later, it was a community event. So it was an open invitation for 157 people came through the door that day and they fed them with the the hospitality. And there there are. So this Catholic worker ethos, which is, um, live off the land as much as possible. Um, there's [00:14:30] Catholic worker farms all around the world, and, um, it's open door. You need a place to live, you need a place to stay. And I've many times taken refuge there. I've never had to sleep there overnight. I've never had a fight with Mary That's required me to go and sleep there overnight. Uh, but they do have my couch because I donated it there. Um, so we eat there, We fellowship there. We pray we meditate together. We, um I think one of my most favourite events [00:15:00] at that house was five years ago. Every five years, there's six Catholic worker farms in New Zealand, I think, and they rotate. So this year it was back to their farms that they've just had a about what Catholic workers are on the social justice left side of things. Um, but the most fun workshop I ran there he I was asked to come and present a workshop. This is five years ago, um, on being a Christian feminist, and I didn't [00:15:30] leave it there. Uh, Christian, Feminist anarchist. The anarchy was important. And so I also added in lesbian, lesbian, feminist, Christian anarchist What is that? And what does it look like? And it was the most incredible two hour fun as we looked at continuum and how they crossed each other and and again, pushing forward away from dichotomy into into progressive Christian thought. So So so right on the left hand [00:16:00] polar opposite to extreme fundamentalism. Um, so that's kind of that's the kind of things I get up to Mary and I get up to with our adopted family. Did you grow up in a Catholic family? No, not as straightforward. My father was Catholic and my mother was Anglican. Um, but my mother's parents were Salvation Army. So when my mother, my grandmother had conceived my mum out of wedlock in 1928 things fell apart at the Salvation Army. And, [00:16:30] uh so because they were originally McMillan and Scottish, they went to Presbyterian. But my but it just keeps swapping all over the place and then on the Catholic side of my family, which is my father's huge fight. When his, um, his father became an Anglican out of a Catholic family when there was a fight over land, so half the branch stayed Catholic. But my grandfather was not. My [00:17:00] father's father was not baptised Catholic, and when his wife died and she was Irish Catholic, something happened at the funeral, and it was the year I was born a big fight, and, uh, I wasn't offered the opportunity to attend a Catholic school. My father would have nothing to do with that, so but I was. His grumpiness didn't come until a few months after I was baptised. So when I was very sick in 2003, I wrote to the Catholic Church and said, You know, was my father grumpy with you at the time? [00:17:30] Or did he actually let me be baptised? And that came my baptism certificate. But in terms of church upbringing, it's always been part of my life. I think my because we weren't having anything to do with the Catholics. My mom desperately needed peace and quiet on Sunday, so she sent my brother and I off down to the Anglican Church down the road, and that was always fun. So Mark's was great. And, um because next door they had this little tiny town thing that you can go play with all the figures, actually, so, um, we were always shoun it off [00:18:00] to church. Um, but we got to do cool things, like, you know, plays nativity plays and things like that. So quite fun things. Who did you play? Well, I want to be the angel, but but some My friend got to be angel. I was never allowed to be the angel because I never had the long blonde hair. It was just wrong. I tell you, I'm traumatised. Same thing happened in sixth form at school when they were choosing the angels for the school. Anyway, don't go there. The the Then At the age of seven, my father had the [00:18:30] opportunity to sell this very, very old mansion we had that was falling down and needed lots of repair in a very poor area of B ham, actually an industrial area. And he took the opportunity to buy a newer house. 60 year old villa. It was a newer house for us and we moved to Redwood Town in Brenham. And so that was 10 days before my eighth birthday, and we moved there. And, um so I went to a different school, and, um and I grew up. [00:19:00] Um, I was apparently my friend. Phillipa tells me now she remembers me, and I remember this too. I would have been eight, and I didn't have any friends at this point, had anyone. And I was out on the lawn dancing to myself, and she reminded me about that kind of. I saw you across the road. You were dancing by yourself. I was so embarrassed. I thought, Oh, my God, the whole world could see me. But Philippa came from a Army family, and, um, I used to jump in their little Fiat on Sundays, and we we go to Sunday school and and then [00:19:30] I spent a good right up until 20 I was in the Salvation Army and went through all all this amazing youth group stuff, which was really my family, like it was really I got to go to Snow for the first time, and, um, but I was also an outsider, too, because I wasn't an inside Salvation Army outside. But the I love the stories I always loved the metaphor of the Christian story. It's all has been part of my upbringing, and I completely rejected it through my twenties once I left the Salvation Army. Um, [00:20:00] but I've redefined that metaphorically what that is. And it fits really well with my social justice. Nonviolent, um, responses to the world. And we talk about the nonviolent Jesus and and progressive Christianity. Um, yeah. So So that's how I got to go to Sally. And, you know, two years ago I found out Philippa and I shared great great grandparents. We were fourth cousins. So when I did all the history of the area, [00:20:30] I'm like, Oh, my goodness, that she was family, but we didn't know that she was family and blood. So since then, you know, a lot of us left the Army for various reasons. I left, of course, in 1985 because of homosexual law reform, you know, there I was 15 when we did, um, sorry, even 14, when the abortion debate started in the late seventies through the United Nations conversations and and protests, and I remember as a third former picking [00:21:00] up pamphlets at church that were slamming these women activists who supported and and starting to think. And then, at 15, I was 15 in 1981 when the Springbok tour. Yeah, and we had a lot of rugby players and, um, in our church instead of instead of being with them. On Friday night, the church playing in the brass band, I went on the protest march against the tour. So this gradual political awakening that keeps separating me from [00:21:30] from this particular core, as we call them this particular branch of the of the Salvation Army was I was just forming this politics and I didn't and I didn't fit. I can never fit that That same thing about needing to leave ble, needing to leave my family and needing and needing to leave the constraints of conservative Christianity feeling like I was bigger than that, but not feeling like I was good enough. [00:22:00] So at the end of my seventh form year, I was too scared to wear in my seventh form years see a lovely butch picture of me in my seventh form year. I'm wearing my school uniform, um, soft watch there, I think. But certainly that's where I'm starting to identify as lesbian. And, um, not knowing that word, just not knowing that word. And there's a whole pile of us. There's five of us. And, um, who came out for the other four guys and there was me, um, in that youth group [00:22:30] at that time. So we beat the one in 10 rule. We did the one in six. I engaged. I was engaged briefly to one of them, A lovely, lovely man who's one of my best friends. He lives in Melbourne Now, Um, we just love each other. The bits, Really? I contacted him when I was sick and he came down from Auckland. I hadn't talked to him for about nine years, and when I was sick, I was putting fears in order. And so I rang that I wanted to talk to. There was some I didn't want to talk to, and they came. Why [00:23:00] did you want to be involved in the Butch and Butch photo exhibition? Well, I tossed and turned on that one. I tossed and turned on that one because Butch was a term I used in a relationship previous to, uh, the relationship now, and we did classify ourselves on those roles, but and that helped define our roles in terms of who did watch duties. But we also, [00:23:30] you know, we had those conferences going on through the early nineties. There were, I can't remember. But there were lesbian conferences. And so those issues were to the fore, and we had people coming and visiting about their books, you know, lesbian silence and all those kind of things and lesbian I. I can't remember them all, but so there were topics we were debating, and I remember thinking, Yeah, if I'm going to put myself on that continuum, I would be butch. So when the opportunity came up, I started thinking [00:24:00] of all the times in my life that I didn't fit, and I certainly wasn't feminine growing up, even though I had curly hair and, you know, I wasn't allowed to cut my hair the day I turned up with cut hair. After my grandmother died, my mother was went silent on me and she looked at me as I came in, and I had my hair cut off. I'd draw my own money out of my bank account. And she said your grandmother wouldn't like that. I was like, No, she wouldn't. Um but I never fit. I never fitted [00:24:30] the feminine image, so I was always a tomboy. Um, I got into lots of trouble through the conservative Christian, um, evangelical movement. I was a musician, so I would turn up in men's attire. I would, I would. I I remember one youth for Christ already. I was wearing a tie and I was having a good time on a cornet, as you do, um, and and and and remember being a cornet player in a Salvation Army band. You're in a male domain as well. So I was quite comfortable [00:25:00] in that, Um, But this woman young woman came up to me at the end of this of Christ rally and said, Jesus is asking me to talk to you that you have not accepted your femininity. And I mean, I laugh now. I was devastated because I didn't know I was wrong because I was just doing what I do. And I loved it. I loved it at school because we had school ties. I loved wearing the school tie This bloody gold and blue thing. Um [00:25:30] oh, God and I. So I was devastated, and I think it was probably the first time. It was brought to my mind that I really wasn't female, but it's only been in the last maybe five or six years that we've started talking about gender fluidity and and breaking down the dichotomies and and all those things. And, um, it was a really liberating in the end, liberating to me because I was starting to come out [00:26:00] and I then cut a long story short. The first lesbians I met, the church really cornered me. You know, like, stop hanging around with the refuge because they're full of dikes and, you know, and and people who have been abused often fall into You know, girls who have been abused often fall into feeling like they should be in a lesbian relationship, because it's nicer than you know. And they do that you become a lesbian because you've been abused blind, which is what I got quite a lot. Um, and I fell in love with one of those refuge dikes. Um [00:26:30] and, uh, so at 19, I moved in with her, the butch and butch piece. Do you want to read that to us? This is the narrative that you had with your photo. Well, I worked really hard at this because the the last bit that connects this is is that I'm an abuse survivor in my family, and I have a clear memory of locking myself in the bathroom at the age of eight, washing my hands, trying to get clean and saying [00:27:00] to myself, When I grow up, I'm going to be a man and rule the world and no one will hurt Children and and that stayed with me and that created a split in me. And I had a whole male character for me to survive the next few years. So this is how it relates to some of this. But is the rejection of gender and sex binaries and the acceptance of me expressed in my look choices, clothing [00:27:30] style, attitude and mannerisms? It is also the creation of my identity as strong in the face of violence. While growing up, some would call the splitting off into compartmentalised identities as mental illness. I have come to embrace it as strength, wise and intelligent, and have ultimately become the I who was all of those things in spite of what happened, Butch is therefore a part of how I see myself [00:28:00] rather than a separate part of the how we used to see me as ourselves. It's also a part of how others may or may not see me connected. Enhancing, challenging, creating, informing, identifying, entertaining, loving. Being 48 now 49 and nearly 50 being able to say this is who I am is the most liberating feeling I have ever had. I [00:28:30] think that one of the integral things we do as we grow older as we find better and new ways to connect and that part of that is telling our stories and telling them freely, Um so thank you for the opportunity.
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