Stories Behind the Story with Better Reading

Stories Behind the Story: Julia Lawrinson on The Unconventional Relationships and Identity Exploration

Julia Lawrinson talks to Cheryl about mental health, identity exploration, and unconventional relationships. Her memoir, How to Avoid a Happy Life, is out now.

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Duration:: 32m
Broadcast on:: 07 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

This is the Better Reading Podcast platform with stories behind the story, Jane's Be Better podcast, my book chat with Caroline Overington, and more. Looking for a particular podcast? Remember, you can always skip to it. Welcome to the Better Reading Podcast, stories behind the story, brought to you by Belinda Audio. Listen to Belinda audio books, anywhere, everywhere. Hi, this is Cheryl Arkel from the Better Reading Podcast, stories behind the story. We talk to authors about how they came to tell us their story. Julia Lawrenson, welcome to Better Reading. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, it's such a pleasure. Wow, what an interesting book. How to avoid a happy life. Now, Julia was a high school dropout on a psych ward to card-carrying lesbian on a motorbike. I don't even know what that means, from enduring a controlling relationship with her ex-lover's brother to be chased by a media scrum outside of a Perth court. The life of beloved children's author, and I want to know how a children's author becomes a children's author after that, is her life is stranger than fiction. And so Julia is here, she's got a memoir. As I said, it's called How to Avoid a Happy Life, and she draws on all her power as a storyteller to turn a life of intense headlines into a wild, marvellous tale. You know, some people's lives as, I mean, I feel as though mine's been relatively small, I think. I mean, I've had some ups and downs, but yours has been a roller coaster indeed. It really has, and I think that's why I felt the need to write the memoir, because I've had lots of things that have happened to me and that have happened to other people, but I've also had like a series of things that are just a bit weird. And so I felt some need to try and put them in like some kind of container into a form, in part because I wanted to communicate with other people, or what it's like to live through some difficult stuff, but also because everybody alive is going to be having some of that weird stuff, hopefully not all of it, but they're going to be experiencing some of it in their lives, and to just kind of say, you know what, you can get through it, it'll be okay, you can survive it, I survive this, you can survive whatever it is you're going through. Okay, start with your childhood. I want to know firstly how you got to writing children's fiction. I started writing kids books, so one of the things that has been a true line for me in my life, so my life started off relatively normal, I guess, until my parents divorced when I was nine, and my mother just went a bit nuts, in that she started partying and drinking and bringing home lots of men and suggesting we moved to California with an American sailor, and so my life went from being reasonably ordered to absolutely chaotic in the blink of an eye. So I guess because of that, and from that point on we moved every six months, so my life was very, very unsettled, and I think because of that I remember those early years really, really well, and the one thing that I kept doing during that time was to write, so I started keeping a diary when I was like eight, and writing and the arts were really important anchors for me during that time of chaos. So when it came time that I was wanting to write longer things, so novels and stories, it was natural for me to go back to those years where I could still remember viscerally what it felt like to be nine or 13 or 16. Were you reading a lot too at that age? Because I feel that reading is such an escapism when your life is chaotic as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, books were my security blankets, so I read the same books over and over again, because I came from a very working class background, so I didn't have very many new books, so I went through everything that was in the library, and I had my favorites, like Little House on the Prairie. I loved that! So I reread those books over and over again. I wonder if Little House on the Prairie spoke to you, Julia, because they were so settled, like they didn't live, you know, there was a family that was almost idyllic in a way. I loved them. Yes, yeah, they had the family life that I could only dream of. Yeah, yeah, it just was so, so normal and therefore so different, so I loved that. And then I went on to Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and, you know, then into Sylvia Plath in my teen years and George Orwell. But really, I just hovered everything that was put in front of me, and I think that was really an important way, because I could just light hide on my bed and read. Yeah, and I think too. I've spoken to a lot of writers who have had some kind of adversity, and not as much as yours, of course, but even things like, you know, I grew up on a farm, and I was an only child, so, you know, books became my second things like that, you know, and I can see how that would happen. And especially if you're moving every six months, I mean, you're not forming great friendships, are you? Well, I was lucky in that I didn't move schools or that. I did change houses, however, so I was hanging around with different people after school. But I was very lucky, and I only changed school like four times during my school years. So I was able to maintain friendships, which were also hugely important to me. So I think if I'd actually had to move schools, I would probably be in much worse psychological shape than I ended up being. Yeah. So how did you come to write children's books? I started, so when I was at uni, it was before they had creative writing degrees. And I had, as you say, because I was kind of kicked out of school when I was 15, it took me a while to literally when I left school, I did not know that an arts degree meant studying literature. I thought it meant painting. You know, so my friend said, I'm doing an arts degree. I said, I didn't know you were artistic. So I was accepted actually into a psych nursing program when I was 19. And then I had a fit of, oh my God, what if they send me back to the psych hospital? I was in the teenager. So I changed to nursing. Very quickly discovered that that wasn't my thing. So it took me a long time to get to uni. When I did get there, I started off doing politics, philosophy, and sociology before finally getting to the arts. I don't know why. I think, again, coming from a working class background, we've got the very strong impression that if you did an arts degree, then you would be unemployed for the rest of your life. And some people still feel like that. Some people still think that. Yeah. I mean, look at the conservative government. I think they think that. I want to go back to you being 15 and being expelled. Tell me about that. Look, I wasn't, I was a really good student in the things that interested me, which was English and drama. And most other things, I went and hid in the toilet, you know, during maths. And so I was, you know, I was, I loved the school musical. I loved all the artsy stuff. And everything else, I had no time for. But my psychologist yesterday said to me, do you think that you had ADHD? And I was like, so, and maybe I did because I just couldn't concentrate on anything that didn't completely hold my attention. So I was a fairly bad truant. I used to get my auntie to write me notes to say that I wasn't at school until the education department came knocking one day and said, Oh, what's going on here? So I already wasn't a great student in terms of attendance. My grades were good just because I liked reading, I think. And so I got to the beginning of year 11, and I had a friend who was an apprentice hairdresser. And he came over one weekend and said, Oh, can I have a go on your hair? And he had much more enthusiasm than skill. And I ended up with a haircut resembling any lenses. And even though I went to a public school that where there was fights on the oval every lunchtime, they had a very strict uniform policy which extended to your hair. And so the deputy principal actually said to me, you are suspended until your hair grows back. And I just went, Oh, I don't want to be at school. Anyway, but you know, it was the final straw for them. Because of course, I didn't want to weigh school on my own. So I encouraged other people to come with me. Yes, of course, of course, needed to be social. I want to make a comment about I've seen around me like I was very lucky. My mother, I'm one of six. And even though my parents split up, yeah, even though my parents split up, my mother just fostered an amazing family culture. And it was strict. And it was, but you know, we had boundaries and there were expectations. We had chores. We had all sorts of things. And we were very poor when we were young. But what I notice now, you know, as you get older and you meet new people and you know, whatever's around you, family life can be so different. You know, like when I'm growing up, I'm thinking everybody's living like me. I honestly thought everyone had as much money or as little money as I did. Like, I didn't even understand the disparity of wealth as a child. You know, I just thought, oh, well, that's everybody. But you know, sometimes now you see people or you speak to people that really brought up themselves or they were the adult in the family. Like they were really managing the parent. Yes. Yeah, that was definitely me at least for periods. I mean, Mum was interesting in that she was wild, but she was also incredibly disciplined. So she had these two sides of herself. So she actually put herself through year 11 and 12 and then went and became an accountant, you know, which was at a complete counterpoint to the way that she was conducting life. And again, possibly because she did have those periods of having to sit down and study, that kind of held the seams together more than then might otherwise have been the case. But it definitely was as soon as she split up with my dad, I became her best friend in that she told me everything and shared all her woes with me. And I was helping her after, you know, clean up after parties and telling it that she didn't need to feel too bad when she was hung over or when she remembered that some of the things that she'd done. Yeah. So it was very much that reversal of relationships, which at the time, I just thought that was normal. Yeah, you would have been like me. You know, just so that's how people live. Yeah. I felt sometimes some judgment from some of my other friends who had more normal or stable families. I had quite a few people who came and like stayed overnight one time and, you know, mum had a wild party or something, they were never allowed back, you know. And so I understood that it probably wasn't acceptable to everybody, but it was as normal as it got, as far as I was concerned. And I knew people who had much more extreme, you know, situations in their households, because we were all in and out of each other's houses, you know. So some people, you know, were in worse shape than I was. So it was all relative as far as I was concerned. I was just talking to a friend recently because like we had a really strict bedtime. And I think when you've got six children, it's almost like, you know, it's a drill, right? You know, but yeah, that's the way it happens. And so I think it was even 730, right, that we had to be asleep both. And I really do. And then I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day, and he said that the reason why he doesn't sleep much, and he thinks his sleep pattern is as crazy as it is, is because his parents never put him to bed. Like they just fell asleep when they're fell asleep. And that, to me, if you had told me that at that age, that would have been such a shock to me, because I knew everybody went to bed at 730 or 8 o'clock. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And then how that has effect on you, you know, later on in life. I want to know, so when you dropped out of school, what were you doing? What happened? How did you end up in a psych ward? Well, I had a few psychological issues, and I want to be clear, like I didn't have a psychiatric condition. And the distinction at the time didn't really mean much to me, but it kind of does now, because I was emotionally and psychologically disturbed because of things that had happened and because of my personality and whatever. And so I had no guidance, in a sense, what's going on? No, no, no. You were growing up yourself on your own. Yeah, yeah. And so I, from the time I was a teenager, I was working out ways to cope with my uncomfortable feelings. So, you know, I had, first I had anorexia, and then I was a compulsive shoplifter. And I mean compulsive in the sense, well, I didn't care what I stole. It wasn't about the things. It was the adrenaline calmed me down. The adrenaline of shoplifting calmed me down. So I had this wardrobe pool of stuff that I didn't want or need. And then I went into more disordered eating and, you know, drinking from an early age and having sex with all sorts of boys and in very dangerous situations and hitchhiking. And so by the time I left school, I already had those behaviors in place. And actually, even though I hated school, no, let me rephrase that, I hated going to school. I loved learning, I hated going to school. But it gave me a framework. And once that was gone. So I tried all these jobs and I would just be bored to tears. So often I would last a week at a job or two weeks. And because my my issues, social network as well. Yes. Yeah. It's gone. Absolutely. Yeah. It is gone because either my friends were at school or they were working full time jobs. So, you know, those were the days where a lot of people left school at year 10. You know, like the boys, I went to school, for example, got apprenticeships or went worked in factories. So there was no one around. So I was just completely adrift. And so the way that I tried to deal with that was through having disordered, well, trying to order my disordered eating and just getting into a terrible cycle with with that. I had started seeing a psychiatrist when I was in year 10 as part of the trying to deal with the compulsive shoplifting thing. And so I had been seeing him through that year. And so I got to the end of the year where I'd been asked to leave school. And I just had enough. I was exhausted. I felt like I had no control over anything. And I was suicidal. And so the minute I expressed, of course, I didn't understand that that that was the trigger for him. But then he just put me strain hospital. I turned 16. So they didn't even tell my mother. It was just I went to see my thing. It was on a Friday. And I was in hospital on the Sunday. 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So give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. 45 dollars up front for three months plus taxes and fees promoting for new customers for limited time unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month. Close. Full turns at mintmobile.com. And how did you deal with that? Was it helpful in any way? It was a model of therapy, which I don't think is used very much anymore in that it was called milieu therapy. So basically they tried to recreate your family dynamics in a safer environment. Unfortunately, we had a few predators in the hospital, including the psychiatrist who put me in there, sexual predators. So it probably wasn't the safest place I could be. But I did form a very strong friendship bond with some of the girls that I was in there with. And that was incredibly helpful. It was also incredibly helpful because it got me away from the situation that I'd got myself into. So it just removed me from the destructive environment. And that in itself was helpful. And they were the days where, I mean, I was in there for, I think, nearly four months. So it wasn't like these days. You go in for three days, five days, they stabilize you and then send you back out into the world. The actual removal from the environment in itself was good for me. God, I'm really sorry, Julia. It's hard, isn't it? Well, well, I look back at it. And actually, I do look back and I think I probably never should have been in hospital. What I needed was a stable environment, really. And you needed someone to look after you. Yeah, yeah. And it did. So, when I got out of the hospital, I went back and did year 11 by correspondence. And then various other things happened. So it wasn't terrible in that it made me determined to go back to school. It gave me some time out to think about what I actually wanted from my life. And some of the staff were absolutely wonderful and very supportive. And there were a few who became like a stable source in my life for a couple of years after that. And I'll always be grateful for that. Some some adults around you. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so important. Tell me about the card-carrying lesbian on a motorcycle. So, one of the things that I was never clear on from when I was quite young was whether I was like what my sexuality was, because I always had- We had no old mum girls. No, no. Like, I looked at what my mum was doing. I was like, no, I really don't that I don't relate to that, you know. And I tried out boys, you know. I was like, I don't know. And so, when I ended up at uni, I ended up meeting a lot of very strong women. And a lot of them happened to be queer or lesbian or different. And just had a completely different approach to what a relationship should be. So, it ended all of my assumptions about what relationships were and what they had to look like. And so, I fell in love with the women's officer, you know, as you do, who was like, you know, seven or eight years older than me. And I was like, oh, my God, she's amazing. And so, just ended up in a relationship thing. Oh, I think is a thing probably the more operative word with her and had relationships with other women during that time. And I had this woman Budica, who moved in with me and my housemate, Bridget. And she was, you know, she had a 750 palasaki and, you know, had a leather motorbike. And like, just was super, super cool. Yeah. So, I began going about places with her and where we were great mates and we're still great mates. Even though I don't see her as often these days. Yeah. So, that was, yeah, heralded a period of, you know, and I really did think, I was just like, yeah, that's it. I'm a lesbian, that's that's that fit. And then a couple of years later, I met the women's officers, brother, I went, oh, he's like her, but, you know, it's different. So, I ended up in a relationship with him. And you can imagine, well, I don't know, it was a very political time, I guess. And I offended a great number of people by leaving. I think they viewed the sisterhood for a man. It wasn't, it wasn't the dumb thing in those days. So, yes. But I had a lot of fun. Had a lot of fun in those years. And so, what made you finally decide to write your story? The memoir bit came about because, I mean, from just from the brief things that we've touched on here, I think my background is relatable enough for people to go, oh, yeah, I remember that time and I know what it was like to have that experience, but also different enough to be interesting, hopefully. And then going on to have other experiences like having a husband with developing early on that dementia and then having a partner who loses it on the front page of the newspaper, you know, those things don't tend to happen, perhaps quite as much. But people have got versions of that in their own life. And for me, when my mother died, it was one of those moments, and I know losing your mother is significant, no matter what, that it really made me go back and just look at my whole life in a different way. And I was able to actually look at some of the stuff in my childhood that I hadn't looked at before or not for a very long time. And so because I'm a writer, the writing bit was the way that I reckon with things. And so it began, I actually wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. I wasn't necessarily intending to publish it. I worked with a mentor in the States, and that was really good because he, I mean, apart from being a wonderful mentor, he didn't know anything about me or my background. And so he was very good at asking the important questions and broadening me to explore things that had I been left to my own devices, I don't think I would have. I think about this often. I don't think I was a naive child. I mean, you know, it was a fairly strict family, but we grew up in a city, Sydney, so we were seeing things. But I really, for a very long time, I thought when you grow up, then you've sold all of your problems. I really did think that. I didn't know when it was. I think I was still thinking that in my 20s, that, yeah, once you get old for me, which was maybe above 40, that that was all well. You'd have your shit together. You'd be able to be. Absolutely. I fully, in fact, I think until last week, no, until even having the memoir come out, I really thought, okay, it's tidied up. I've got a bow on it. It's fine. And no, no, those shoes are still there. But I think we were fed that, right? I think we were fed that adults knew what they were doing. And once we were older, we would understand and it would be fine. I think you're dead, right? I hadn't thought about that, Julia, but I think you're right. I think we were fed that. Then when I looked back as an adult on my mother's life, she had had a hard life. And that went on for a very long time for her. But I didn't recognize that as a child. I just thought, well, she's got to do what she's got to do. Yeah. I mean, that's the blessing of getting older, I think, is that you look back. And I've had a lot of struggles with my relationship with my mother as probably comes through in the memoir. But I also appreciate that she came from a really hard place, herself, and going back the generations. That's why the first chapter is called Be Born into Intergenerational Binsery because those things just get handed down. It's just, and people do it in the only way that they know being in this. I mean, it's almost a cliche now, but if you want to get a dog from a dog rescue place, you've got to be tested, you've got to fill out patients. It's really hard, but you might even be rejected that you're not a good carer for a dog. And yet, when it comes to parenting, you're on your own kid. You don't get a lot of support. You don't get... No. And that's... Oh, yeah. It's crazy. It's overwhelming. And it's a shock that comes to most women, you know, and then how they deal with it. And a lot of it is dependent on support and community and growing up in a village. And yeah, it's really... Yeah, absolutely. And not all of us get that childhood that we think we deserve. It's not the little house on the prairie. No, really not. Yeah, yeah, really not. And actually, I mean, I do reflect in the memoir that my reading didn't always serve me very well because, like, really legit. Some... I think I got a view about what life should be like that mine was in no way ever going to meet. And I always felt like it should, like, somehow it should feel better or less chaotic or whatever. And I don't think that really helped. And also because you didn't have the control to make that change. You didn't have the memoir. No. Just before we go, because we were almost out of time, how did you feel about people reading your memoir? A friend of mine was sending it. I mean, people you know. Yeah, well, because initially I just thought, "Oh, I'll try and get it published overseas." That was really my head. So the idea of actually people I know reading it didn't really occur to me until it was nearly coming out. And I was like, "Oh, my God." And a friend of mine sent me an email saying, "I'm just reading your book." And I just wanted to ask you, is it okay for friends to read this? Because I feel like I'm going through your undidraw. And it does feel a little bit like that. But you're putting it out then. You're putting it out there. Yeah. I mean, my approach, because of the life that I've had and living in Perth, let me tell you, you can't get away with anything here. People know you. People are three other people and they'll find out someone that you went to school with. And so as far as I'm concerned, there's no secrets anyway. And that's always been the way that I've lived my life. I have to say it was a little bit mentally pushing having a memoir come out. But also, I think that's what Brené Brown says about shame. Once you air it, air, whatever it is, it doesn't have a hold over you anymore. So that part is kind of liberating. It's like, "Well, this is it. And the people who care about me still care about me. And the people who don't know me, it doesn't matter." Do you know? So the people that don't know you couldn't learn something or be moved or be find something familiar or not. It's really so lovely and candid. Julia, we're out of time. The book is called How to Avoid a Happy Life. Loved it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Cheryl. If you'd like more information about better reading, follow us on Facebook or visit betterreading.com.au This podcast is proudly sponsored by Belinda Audio. 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