1986 is the year Richard Lowenstein releases Dogs in Space starring Michael Hutchence. But it’s the soundtrack to the film that captivates you. This is your first life-changing long player and you listen to it every night. For the first time you hear Nick Cave singing Roland S Howard’s timeless heartbreaker ‘Shivers’. You also love Iggy Pop’s ‘The Endless Sea’. You think he’s singing ‘The Embassy’ in reference to a secret spy agency, but he’s actually talking about shooting smack. You’ll use the song title to name your band eighteen years later. That’s Jen Cloher & The Endless Sea, not The Embassy. Cheers, Iggy!
Danielle Henderson is just a friend. There’s no chemistry. She’s like the gateway drug to your teen rebellion and she opens the door to a brand new world. You meet her gothic pals, drink goon in Rundle Mall, listen to The Birthday Party and dream of somehow escaping the drab confines of your Catholic girls’ school.
Thirteen is fast approaching and year nine will bring with it a whirlwind of change. You’ll get into a lot of trouble at school and start a secret life your parents never really find out about.
It’s scary now, looking back at the kind of danger you’re about to put yourself in. At the same time, I thank you for breaking free, for being an individual, for not fitting in. That spirit will cause you a lot of problems in life but also keep you moving forward and taking risks.
I recently found out that your year eight crush, Caroline Clark, committed suicide last year, just weeks before she was to be married. It made me feel very sad. I wonder how she really felt at twelve years old? And what of Danielle Henderson, the inspiration to your teen rebellion? She’s now a qualified nurse, married with two beautiful boys and living in Adelaide. I still see her from time to time for a cuppa and everything seems just fine.
In fact, Twelve-Year-Old Me, that’s the main thing I want to tell you: don’t worry, life will work itself out, you will fit in one day. Sure, it’ll take another eighteen years of feeling like a square peg in a round hole, but you’ll figure it out. Writing to you twenty-four years on, I wish I could somehow reach into your little heart, as a whisper from the future, and give you the confidence to put yourself out there. To pursue the ones you love rather than shrinking away in fear. To be a colourful creative and to trust you will make a living from it. I’d like to let you know you are already enough, that you don’t have to be anything more for anyone else. That you are beautiful, even though you can’t yet see it.
But if I wasn’t you then, I wouldn’t be me now. And that’s all that matters: now.
Jo Stanley is a TV and radio personality who grew up in Melbourne. She’s currently host of Jo & Lehmo on GOLD104.3, and previously hosted Weekend Breakfast on the Hit Network and The Matt and Jo Show on Fox FM from 2003 until 2013.
Dear 13-year-old Jo,
Right now, you think the world has ended. Your best friend, Lina, has stopped talking to you for no reason and even though you’ve begged her to tell you why she just gives you the silent treatment and goes off with Amy at lunch and you’re left on your own trying not to cry in the back of the library. I know. It is devastating. It’s a baffling and bruising pain that you will remember at strange times over the next 30 years, and you’ll be sad for that little girl who just wanted to be accepted and approved of and loved.
The great news is that while Lina will come around, you don’t need her. Tania is your true BFF (QUICK, go spread that turn of phrase, you’ll be the first by 10 years and be LEGENDARY!!). With Tania, you’ll laugh like you’ve never laughed before, cry without shame, dance and sing and – well, I’ll leave it up to you to live the next few decades hanging out with Tan. I’m envious you have that ahead of you. I’d relive it all in a heartbeat.
I must give you these little titbits, though, as a future version of you who has finally managed to get good hair (hang in there – it gets better).
First, it doesn’t matter how you argue it, Andrew is not the cool one in Wham! Stop insisting on it. Possibly that’s why Lina’s gone cold (just saying).
Second, you and Simon Le Bon DO have a special connection. Right now, he’s just a poster on your wall and the winner of your Spunkiest Hunk of 1985 Award. In about 23 years, you will interview him and he will look deep into your eyes and tell you that you’re beautiful and it won’t be a surprise because you knew it was meant to be.
Third, I know all you want in the whole wide world is a bubble skirt and your mum won’t buy one for you and everyone in your year has one and you could just die from the shame of it. But here’s a lesson that I wish wish WISH I had learned at your age, and not be still struggling to master now. You will never be happy if you compare yourself to other people.
You haven’t had the easiest of starts in life. Your dad died, your mum has been sad and single and struggling to make ends meet. You feel lonely often and can’t quite work out where you belong. The magical knowledge, though, is that everyone else feels this too. Everyone else has that voice in their head saying they’re no good. Everyone else is hiding the same pain.
So stop focusing on what others seem to have that you don’t. You have everything you need inside of you – kindness, humour, intelligence and tenacity. Allow those qualities to replace the self-doubt and fear that follow you everywhere you go. Be brave and curious. Laugh lots and listen carefully. Make the choices that are right for you, and always speak your mind. Make mistakes. Never forget, you alone are enough. And I love you.
With all of my heart,
43-year-old Jo
P.S. Just because I can, let me ease your mind: you will grow boobs, you will get a boyfriend, and yes, you will get a bubble skirt. You’ll be 37 and it will be for an 80s bad taste party, but it’s never too late for dreams to come true.
Josh Frydenberg is the Federal Member for Kooyong and the Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia. He was born in Melbourne and attended high school there. He was elected to the Australian House of Representatives in 2010 and re-elected in 2013. He is the seventh person since Federation to hold his seat.
As a school student, I never thought I would be a politician.
My dream was to be a tennis player. Every weekend was spent on the court and at one stage I even wanted to leave school and compete on the tennis circuit full time.
Thank goodness my parents said ‘no way’ and encouraged me to finish school! It was the best decision I could have made. In the end, after finishing school, I did get my chance to play tennis full time for a year, after which I was ready for university and a career path that has led to Parliament.
Looking back on my journey, my advice to you is to enjoy every day and work hard at everything you do – because you tend to be good at what you work hard at and enjoy what you are good at.
Studying may sometimes seem a little boring but in the end it’s very worthwhile. It’s a stepping stone for opportunities later in life. But not everything revolves around school and the marks you may get. The key is to follow your passion and always dare to dream. You never know what is around the corner, but it is often an opportunity to do what you hope.
My other message is ‘never give up’. In my own life experience, not everything has gone my own way. I remember running for school captain and losing the race. As I have said, I dreamed of being a professional tennis player but after a year on the circuit I knew I was probably not good enough to do it for the rest of my life. The first time I ran for Parliament I failed to win the Liberal Party selection. It hurt at the time but I learnt from the loss. I would not be defeated and the next time I put my name forward I won. The message is that persistence pays off and more often than not you will succeed on the second, third or fourth attempt – it doesn’t matter.
To quote the Latin phrase carpe diem, seize the day!
Best wishes and good luck,
The Hon Josh Frydenberg
Judith Lucy, born and raised in Perth, is a comedian best known for her stand-up work. She’s also the bestselling author of two books and created two AB
C series: Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey and Judith Lucy Is All Woman. Judith is also the 2015 winner of the Helpmann Award for Best Comedy Performer.
I know at the moment that things are pretty grim.
Your parents fight all the time, you’re still trying to work out what the hell sex is, you know nothing about boys, and your best friend is horrible. To add to this, a girl called Mandy, who is a year older, has started bullying you. Generally she just hassles you about having curly hair but you’re convinced that she wants to do some damage to you with a Bunsen burner. Every time you see her in the corridor you’re terrified. Lastly, you love performing, but everyone (especially your parents) tells you that while that might be a lovely hobby, you’ll never make a living out of it. Your father is very keen for you to be an accountant.
One of the worst things about being thirteen is that you’re so close to being an adult, you can almost taste it … but you’re not and sometimes it’s hard to imagine even making it to eighteen.
The good news is that I’m writing you this letter at forty-seven, so you survive it all. In fact, you’re pretty happy with yourself. The bad news is that you do a lot of stupid things before you get here. I would tell you more about that but I don’t want to take the fun out of being so drunk on a flight once that you and your best friend had no memory of getting off the plane apart from the fact that you knew it involved security guards and wheelchairs. Anyway … that’s all ahead of you and, like most people, you survive your twenties.
Let’s take your problems one at a time. Unfortunately, your parents will keep arguing, but, and I know this currently seems about as likely as a Kardashian becoming a philosopher, they ultimately make peace with each other and wind up being closer than you’ve ever seen them. They even go away on holidays together. (Which admittedly you and your brother resent because they never took you anywhere apart from the one time you all went away and never got out of the car. I mean NEVER. It was like the family was on a plane – that’s okay too, though, because this resentment actually leads you to write a few pretty good jokes about them.)
I’m not going to sugar-coat the next bit; it takes you years to work out sex and boys. You even wind up going home with a man who thinks that you’re a transvestite (yes, you most certainly do write a routine about this … have you guessed what you wind up doing for a living yet?) but you wind up with some very nice boyfriends and the one you have now is a real keeper.
You’re very close to finding a new best friend, Michelle, which is really good news. You’re still friends with her and her whole family thirty years later and some of your best memories from this time involve her. You have a bad patch in your twenties when one of her Communist friends urinates on your carpet, but the friendship endures.
As for Mandy, you bump into her years later in a mall and she acts like the two of you were always best friends … you feel sorry for her, especially because she still has blonde streaks and hair the size of a Shetland pony.
One of the most deeply, deeply irritating things about life is that clichés really are clichés because they’re true. You do learn from failure and time really does seem to heal a lot of wounds. Even more annoyingly, hard work does generally pay off. I wish I could tell you that you will learn everything you need to know and have every emotional scar patched up by watching Friday Night Lights (you haven’t seen this show about high school gridiron players yet but you will LOVE it) and that your dreams will come true if you just sit on the couch and eat a lot of sausage rolls, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.
What I’m trying to say is that you get over the anger that you have for your parents and wind up loving and understanding them so much more as you get older, you let go of the resentments you have about people treating you badly because you get better at treating yourself well and come to understand that the Mandys of this world can’t be having a very nice time either … and that it’s worse for them because they are stuck inside their own heads. And by working very hard at performing (and failing a lot – why do you go on stage wearing nothing but a garbage bag and pointy rubber ears one night?) you wind up becoming a professional comedian and making even Ann and Tony Lucy proud.
You actually start to work some of this stuff out around about now and, even though it might be hard to imagine, you’ll look back at this time fondly … at the very least, you’ll look back and laugh.
Julian McMahon is a Melbourne barrister who has been the lawyer for Van Tuong Nguyen and members of the Bali Nine. Julian has been named Victorian Australian of the Year for his work as a barrister and advocate for human rights.
Dear Julian,
Two months ago, I was asked to write this letter of advice to you, trying to use my own experience as something positive. That has turned out to be harder than it sounds because life at your age was messy. On the surface, you functioned well enough, but the usually dramatic and confused life happening inside you seemed so different from what was happening around you.
You were feeling hemmed in, jammed, that life was all pretty messy and confusing. You were feeling that it’s so hard to have intense feelings such as love, hate, fear, and dreams of adventures which you can’t really discuss or share, that it’s so hard to want something entirely different in your day but knowing it’s just not going to happen. So, what can I say that is useful?
My first main point: whatever is happening now, it passes. From all these years later, I see now that good days and bad, worries, passions, disappointments, rages, excitements, they all pass. Of course, everything that happens in our lives shapes us, but that is a different discussion.
Life changes a lot, no matter what you do. Each phase of life brings a whole new range of things which are significant. Think back to when you were seven and what mattered then. So if life at 13 is mostly hard not easy, don’t fret. That’s a very good reason to stop being harsh on yourself, by the way. If you’ve made bad mistakes, don’t repeat them, learn and move on.
Let me offer another point to consider: hope is central to life. Spend time on it – it can be liberating and guiding. As a small example, you’ll begin to plan some travel adventures, and then by the time you’re leaving school, you’ll begin to do them. You get to an age and state of freedom where you can sometimes actually plan and do things. That can be a lot of fun.
Have I got any advice? Yes. It is to try to think long-term. If you can really get a sense of a bigger world, a far-off horizon, then start planning for it – what you read, watch, dream, discuss. If you have to do much of it alone, so be it. Planning, hoping, seeing the present for what it is – to be lived well, knowing it is passing. These things help you through the ugly stuff, and help you shape where you are going, what you do, what sort of life you lead, how you affect the world, how you let the world affect you. Please repeat those last seven words.
I have found it hard to confine this letter to how to deal with a tough few months at 13. I find myself thinking about your whole life, not just at 13. Maybe the two ideas can hardly be separated. How do you have the happiest life possible, real and profound happiness, whatever age you are?
I’m pretty sure that a lot of the happiness in life is about finding a balance between at least these three things: being as generous as possible, realising your plans and dreams (courage), and taking the time to learn things well (hard work). Maybe the balance or weight shifts between these if you are burdened with illness or frailty. So be it. Somewhere in that combination is also freedom – your choices, not someone else’s choices for you. Your choices will be right for you, make more sense, if you are having courage, being generous etc.
I can’t say for sure why being generous is so important – and I most certainly don’t think anyone should be a doormat – but I can say for sure that I don’t know any happy people who are not generous. Also, I don’t know anyone who is not generous but who is happy. But for some, life is hard and I do know some people who are generous but fate won’t let them find much happiness. At your age,
being generous probably means looking after family, other kids (who are maybe pretty messy like I was!) lonely neighbours, needy people. Whatever it takes, do it. Be generous in the little things.
As I have tried to write this letter, so many issues have come to mind. Should I try to talk to you about how to make friends, how to deal with dishonesty, cruelty, bullying, how to manage selfish people who can make this time of your life miserable? Or about relationships, about the confusion you might feel with so much that is happening around you, about feeling clueless concerning the future, about the sense of missing out on things, be it friendship, love, cool clothes, whatever? All of those ideas could make a chapter.
But I can’t write about all those things here and now. What I can say is that the world you are now in will soon be different and other worlds will come your way. And with that in mind, you can approach all these issues with the three ideas I put above.
I have to tell you – one thing you learn as you get older is that life is usually messy, no matter your age. It’s not like you get to a point where all is well and clear, and then you start living. Rather, we just live in and out of different kinds of mess and do our best to make it worthwhile, no matter how simple or complicated our life and work are. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes hard. And while we do it, we try to be happy, make others happy, make the world a better place. That is a life worth doing. For most of us, in all that mess you can find some truly great happiness. In my opinion, this is true whether you are at work, school, home, travelling, whatever. In a sense, every part of life has permanence. It has happened and won’t be undone. But change is always happening too.
Letter to My Teenage Self Page 5
