On living “bigger and beyond ourselves”

My earliest experience of giving was witnessing the community work that my parents were involved in. They came to Australia as immigrants in the mid-1970s, and although dad was an educated and articulate professional, his qualifications weren't recognised here. He worked two menial jobs to provide us with the best start we could have in Australia, while still finding time to give to the community. Both my parents would help cook and feed people who couldn't afford to feed themselves.

As a little girl, whenever we went shopping and people were collecting donations for the Red Cross or Good Samaritans, my parents would always give. I think it’s because of my dad's culture and the religion he grew up with, that the idea of giving a portion of what you received to those less fortunate was ingrained in his values.

Those values were gifted to me. My view on life and the mantra that I've now passed down to my three 16-year-old sons, is that our responsibility as people who are privileged, is to live a life that’s bigger and beyond ourselves.

We speak a lot about how there's so much in life that we can't control, but we can control is our response. I think there's so much truth to that. I've have experienced a lot of challenges and trauma, but I sit before you healed and rebuilt and strong, because I was blessed with great professional help.

Witnessing the discrimination my parents went through when I was a little girl, and having my childhood taken away from me through sexual abuse, I often felt like a misfit and an outcast. But I decided to turn what had happened to me into a positive driver because, from an early age, I had the sense that I was here to serve.

Those seeds were planted through very tough experiences which have reinforced my need to live a life bigger and beyond myself. And this led me to working as an international humanitarian lawyer. I spent several years in conflict zones and theatres of war, where it was a daily diet of horror. I saw the absolute worst in humanity but amongst all of that, I learned to look out for the beauty and the best of humanity. It will always surface eventually if you're willing to look for it.

That has been my inspiration and my hope. And even when I get waylaid worrying about the small stuff, this is what brings me back to the perspective of a giver. To be honest, largely the best of humanity that I have seen, has been in women and children. And this is where I have focused my giving and my philanthropic and community service activities.

One story is that of a beautiful young woman who I met in Iraq. She was an English lecturer, who became a journalist because of the war. She wanted to report on the impact that the war was having on the education and freedom of women and girls. When I met her, she had recently suffered the death of her business partner and best friend. He was executed by terrorists for writing about the breaches of human rights by the extremists in Iraq.

She was grief stricken and almost paralysed with fear that she was going to be next. There had already been several attempts on her life, which she had somehow managed to escape. She walked 20 kilometres from Basra City to our base at Basra Airport and asked to see me because she had met me in a crowd while I was doing some community work with the Iraqi authorities.

She was at the front gates of the military base where the British were based and refused to go away until the security guards called me. I was a bit puzzled and concerned that this might be a trap, but my gut told me to go and meet her. That meeting was the beginning of an incredible interaction that turned into a friendship.

She wanted to be a source of information and to give me the stories of the women and children. It was her way of showing defiance and telling a truth that had been silenced. In return, she asked me to share these stories. We met week after week, and it broke my heart when I had to return to the UK at the end of 2005. Not long after, I found out that she had been shot twice; one to the head, one to the spine but somehow, miraculously, survived. She spent months in hospital and was eventually repatriated to the US where she was looked after by the widow of her business partner who was executed the year before.

When I talk about ‘the best in humanity,’ she is an example of this. The absolute strength, defiance, grit and resilience of a young woman who risked everything to tell the truth of her sisters and the community around her.

My giving takes several forms, and it has changed over the years as my circumstances have changed. When I was single, there was more disposable income so I could give more money. However, when I had my triplets, circumstances changed, and they changed again when I became a single, self-employed mother.

I’ve worked more than one job to give my children the best opportunities, which has meant I haven’t been able to give as much money, but I've always committed my time, my heart and whatever professional expertise and lived experience I have.

I have been fortunate to build a sphere of influence and to become someone who, when I speak, people listen. This is what I’ve been able to give in greater measures at this stage in my life, when money is not as plentiful.

I believe that how you give and what you give changes as life goes on. But there is always the opportunity to give something of ourselves. Giving is not just a selfless act, it’s a selfish one. The richness, the joy, the feeling of contentment and peace that you receive when you give is immeasurable. When you give to others, it's actually an act of self-giving.

It's exactly what we're talking about. It's an opportunity to lend my profile and my voice, as well as a little bit of money, to an organization that is committed to the idea that every one of us can create ripples of change and give in whatever capacity we have.

100 Women is about the power of the collective. When one of us becomes two and then three becomes one hundred and then a thousand, those ripples turn into waves. It's the ‘people power’ of positive change and that resonates deeply with me. 

The other thing that resonates is how it harnesses the superpowers that women have of resilience, generosity, kindness and forgiveness. Of holding each other up and empowering each other. It harnesses all that magic and uses it for the good of girls and women who may not have felt that before. And then, when they receive it, they have that experience to pass it on to someone else.

I’ve learned that giving breeds joy. It gives my life more meaning, more purpose and a richness. It can take on many forms and it is more than just an act; it’s a value that has become part of my very core, and one that I pass on to the next generation.

I think part of my answer is around my professional work, not just as a human rights lawyer, but as a consultant. One of the things that we have lost in our society, is trust. A lot of the work that I do is about building trust and helping others to understand that from trust comes respect. I think the act of giving and the value of ‘living a life beyond oneself’ is the single most powerful thing we can do to restore and rebuild trust in our organisations, in our communities, in our leaders and in humanity.

So that's my motivation for the work I do now and it’s what I see happening around me; through our Indigenous communities and the incredible work that some of my beautiful Indigenous female elder friends are doing. I see it in the work that asylum seekers and refugees are doing, particularly the women in those communities, and dare I say, because sadly I have personal and lived experience of this, I see it in the advocacy and the lobbying that is being led by women for victim survivors of family and domestic violence, which has become not just an epidemic, but part of the fabric of our culture.

There is so much inspiration all around us in this country, but there is also so much work that needs to be done. My inspiration and motivation, until I draw my last breath, will be to do my part and add whatever small value I can, to ensure that work gets done.