
Skye’s Story
October 18, 2024
I am a proud, transgender Darug woman. My mum, grandmother and those who came before them, are Darug people. In my family, my grandmother and many other women were forced to marry white men, who were ashamed of them, so they had to denounce their heritage. This notion that to be Aboriginal was somehow a bad thing, that was shameful, was passed down through the generations to my mum.
I’ve looked deeply into my family history in recent years, and when I look at the photographs we have I see all these Aboriginal women who look just like me, and yet you can also see the pain on their faces because they were forced against their will to do these things. I want to make it right, I don’t want their heritage and my heritage to disappear, like society wanted to in the 50s and 60s, when you weren’t allowed to talk about or be proud of being Indigenous.
My therapy journey started about three years ago. I had a lot of bad experiences with therapists so I put it off for a long time. When I finally found a good one I decided that it was time for me to transition into who I wanted to be my whole life. I did it very quickly. Quicker than I think a lot of people do from what I’ve been told by other people who have been through a similar experience. I just jumped in and went for it.
In therapy I was able to start talking about things that I had never revealed to people before. Things that I was scared to talk about like childhood sexual abuse. I had been telling myself that these things either didn’t happen or that they were the reason I am who I am. I think I had been using it as an excuse and a reason to keep myself hidden.
I had cut all ties to the abuser in my life, and through therapy and hormone therapy I finally became who I am. I was loving myself and loving life. Until I wasn’t. Over the course of one weekend, I had a mental breakdown and began having panic attacks about everything I had been through. It was as if it was happening, all over again.
I was completely freaked out, continually calling crisis lines and I felt as though I couldn’t stand living this way anymore. I couldn’t stand living. I couldn’t understand where this had all come from. Everything had started flooding back to me and it was completely overwhelming. That’s when my therapist recommended South Pacific Private. I knew I needed to go. Not only for my sake, but also for my families. Because I didn’t have health insurance at the time I had to wait, which was incredibly difficult. Over those two months of waiting it was as if I were on a rollercoaster. One day I’d think ‘I don’t need to go’, the next I’d think ‘I really need to go’ and the next I’d think ‘I wish I was in there now’.
The day before my admission I was feeling good – I was at the top of that roller coaster. But I told myself I needed to go because I know that the panic attacks come on so suddenly. Upon check in, I was so terrified, not because of where I was, but because everyone seemed so happy. I couldn’t understand why all the clients were so happy. They were in rehab! For me, it was the worst moment of my life. I suppose I just wasn’t expecting it to be so warm and open. I assumed everyone would be sad and broken, not happy to meet me. Looking back now, it’s kind of funny to think about.
I had never done group therapy before, and I was so scared about sharing my story. But everyone was so accepting, and so lovely. In my second week there, I got the opportunity to do Changes, which was amazing. I know it’s called Changes, but I really mean it when I say that it did change my life completely. I was incredibly sceptical when I first heard about it. What was it really going to change for me? Is it something we just go, do and then forget about? But no, Changes has been extremely helpful in so many aspects of my life every single day since completing it.
There were lessons to be learnt at every turn. Even in the seemingly small things, like finishing up with my Changes group and going back to my Primary group. The group had changed whilst I had been gone. Everyone who had been in there before had gone home. I with a new group of people that I barely knew. It was difficult, but it was a good challenge. Because one of the things I was working on was trying to stay true to my values, rather than betraying them all the time to make others happy.
I had always been chasing the approval of strangers, people I didn’t even like or know. I would try to make them like me, even if I was never likely to see them again. But then afterwards I would just feel bad about it. I noticed myself doing this at SPP within the first couple of days when I said something or agreed with something that I actually really disagree with.
But when I noticed this happen, I would seek out an EWC or someone to speak to straight away. In the real world these things happen, but you’re busy so you move on and it’s like it becomes forgotten. But being in there allowed me the time and space to notice feelings, talk to someone straight away, and figure out what was happening for me.
So then I made it my mission to say what I wanted and do what I wanted. I didn’t want to compromise on my values anymore. I was curious just to see how that felt, because I had never done that in my life. For so long, my relationships were based on the other person’s interests rather than mine. And I was kind of over it. I was over feeling like I wasn’t cared for in a relationship. Now, even if I’m in a dangerous situation I won’t compromise my values, but I also won’t get confrontational. Having that awareness of how to keep my values intact but also stay safe has been really helpful to me. It was a good challenge to stay true to myself, and not to fold, because when you leave treatment, the challenges start straight away.
For me, they began even before I’d left the premises on my discharge day. I wanted my partner to pick me up and so we had organised for them to be there at 9:30. They were two hours late. I had been expecting to see my family waiting for me, but instead I just had to stand there and wait. In treatment I talked about my daughter a lot, and so a bunch of fellow clients decided to be late to the first lecture of the day so they could see my daughter. It was such an anticlimactic thing. I immediately felt uncared for and unimportant. I was put back into my core beliefs straight away as soon as I got out of the door.
When my partner finally arrived, we went down to the beach. In the three weeks I had been at SPP I had been doing the daily beach walks but not once had I stepped on the sand, because I wanted to do that with my daughter. It was a little thing that I had held onto while I was in treatment – that the first time I would walk on this beach would be when I left with my daughter.
My daughter is disabled so she communicates in her own way. She’s also not the most affectionate child. But I’m her full time carer and it was the first time I’d ever been away from her in five years. That day on the beach she cuddled me for half an hour, she just clinged on and did not want to let me go. She was so happy.
Life doesn’t stop after you do rehab. But since leaving, I never once thought I couldn’t handle anything. That was a new feeling for me. Beforehand I would have just gone off the rails or or tried to do something to numb myself. Sure, sometimes it is difficult, and I might ask myself, why can’t I just do that? But I look at the short term gain versus the long term gain. Sure, you might feel good for an hour or so, but then you’re going to feel horrible. Knowing this and being aware of it is really powerful.
Even so, my recovery was slower than I’d have liked it to be after I got out, because at that stage my partner was spiralling out of control. As a result they also ended up going into SPP and doing the program, and now it’s really good. It showed my partner how important it is to be supported when you finish treatment. When I had left rehab it was almost seen as though I had a three week holiday, but when my partner left rehab they understood. Everything is now seen in the same light for us, we understand when one another needs to prioritise staying on top of therapy or going to a meeting.
When my partner went into SPP, I said, ‘don’t be offended, but I’m kind of excited.’ It was an opportunity to work on my own recovery, but also to take advantage of that feeling you have when you get out. I had this feeling that I could tackle the whole world now. I could finally put it all into practice, and we now speak the same language.
Before SPP life was a constant up and down of panic attacks, and I didn’t want to live that way anymore. But my daughter, and the fact that I’m her carer is what drove me to get help, and is the reason I am still alive. My daughter needs me, there’s no other way to put it. Now, through recovery I’ve learned about the Higher Power. I was an incredibly atheist person before my daughter was born, but that feeling I get when I look at my daughter – I could almost cry of happiness. It’s like this unconditional love that I had never felt before for anybody. Now that I’m on my journey, I really believe that I deserve to feel that way.
Throughout this journey I have really learned the importance of nurturing your inner child. I’m always trying to find ways to do this so my inner child and my daughter have the experience of just being able to be silly and spontaneous. We’ll chase each other around with shaving foam or spray each other with water and not worry about the mess. We’ll go to the beach and jump and scream and have fun in the waves and not care about how it looks to anyone else. And I never got to feel that way as a kid. In fact, I never really got to be a kid at all. And we all deserve that.
I’ve also learned the importance of being proud of who you are. Today, we teach my daughter the Darug language and she really enjoys this, but we do it so she knows where she comes from. Because there was so much shame passed on from my mum to me about being Aboriginal. When I was a kid, if a family member would mention our Aboriginality, my Mum would shut the conversation down and deny it. I think that mum was conflicted between immense shame but also pride. When I got to primary school I was in all the Indigenous groups, so I believe mum wanted to acknowledge our heritage, she still couldn’t shake this deep sense of shame that she had been taught.
As a kid, I lost my connection to my heritage, and was taught not to be proud of it. As an adult, I am an extremely proud Darug, transgender woman. That’s me. I teach our heritage to my daughter because I want it to continue, because so much of that history has been lost in our country. Talking to others in the community who are like me, whose families buried the truth has been so amazing because there is this sense of celebration coming up in the new generation. We’re learning our history and learning the true version, not the false version.