 Hi Brenda, I'm really pleased that we can actually sort of do this discussion. I mean it's such an important discussion at this point in time in terms of what we've learned, you know, from our work with individuals and communities with disasters and with drought. As you know, I'm the president of the National Association for Lost and Grief and I've been working mainly in the disaster area in terms of looking at fire and floods and cyclones and some work in the terrorism area. And I'm just really interested to talk to you about I guess the lessons learned that you have had in terms of disasters in terms of drought. And so you've been working as the drought worker for National Association for Lost and Grief just recently, but you've also had other experience, even personal experiences, that's right, isn't it, in terms of drought and fire and disaster. Yeah, thanks Julie. Look, it's really exciting I think to have this discussion, particularly with you. I'm, you know, certainly I've been someone that's been affected by disaster. We were involved in the Wambalong fires here in the Warren Bungal Shire in 2013. And then, you know, I'm a farmer as well. So the drought has impacted us quite heavily this time round. So working with NALAG and the as a drought support coordinator rolling out events across this western area is certainly quite personal for me. I'm wanting to make, I guess an impact. How do we connect with people and do this well? It's been an interesting journey. I started in last November and yeah, it's been a great opportunity to connect with people. But I'm really keen to also, I guess, pull some information from your experience and research over many years of what you've seen and what the research suggests and how what we're doing in this space here and now is that in the same light, yeah. Yeah, I think also, you know, as you know, I'm a psychologist, but there are so many other sort of support workers out there, you know, who are working in emotional social health. There's lots of NGOs. There's, you know, lots of people who I think over time have really sort of said to me, what are the lessons learned, you know, because there's lots of different models that have gone out there, you know, and people flying in and flying out, you know, to try to assist people in these circumstances. One of the lessons learned, I think, for me was that a lot of people really don't understand the impact of disasters and they certainly don't understand the real impact of drought. And starting to look at a wider implication of, you know, when you're actually sort of looking at the secondary losses and the primary losses and the impact, I guess, on whole communities, often, you know, I'm told that when somebody puts their hand up and they say that this is really starting to impact on them, that they often will go to a generalist councillor of some description and, you know, what they've said is they really feel inadequate sometimes and they really have a lot of concerns about stigmatising, you know, the fact that they need assistance. And sometimes it's about that they actually don't see themselves as needing anything else. I mean, have you seen that in the drought area? Yeah, I think so. And I think one of the things is that people are often portrayed in the media as especially farmers as this stoic community and that can be quite damaging for our rural communities because often it prevents people from actually seeking help when somehow the media has an input into how farming communities connect or identify. And so I guess one of the things we've been looking at is actually how the media has quite a big impact on the message that is given to, I guess, the community being the city community about farmers and farmers. I guess last year we really looked at the way that media was being presented and how it potentially was an hindrance to people coping, managing and recovering because it sort of gave the impression that farmers weren't coping. They presented the farmer in a way that was lacking hope, resilience, quite negative imaging all the time which we felt as a rural community was not that helpful to people seeking help. And so that's what you were talking about, how do we help people seek help? Yeah, I think it really is that engagement, isn't it? How we can actually allow for that at an easier level. And also so many times people are saying to me, I am not mentally ill and there is this approach of more of a medical model of engagement with people rather than being able to have those conversations and being able to allow people to feel safe and trust the people who are around them that they are also going to be able to see their strengths. But also to be able to identify and have the suffering and the pain acknowledged. And there's so much about I guess the hierarchy of grief that often will happen in these situations and certainly in disasters. And we've seen this impact that people outside of the disaster often will do things like they will say, oh well, there was no loss of life in that particular event. Or they will say, okay, you have only lost one house or you and they don't actually understand the impact of some of these disasters on their livelihood, on the community's livelihood of people coming in from outside and telling them what they need. And that really I think paralyzes some people and it also sometimes makes people really angry. And that anger can also be a hindrance, I guess, to how you're going to work as a community. And I think it's interesting because I think that medical model or that help-seeking model of often we've gone into these communities and said, this is what you need, we're going to do this for you. And it's nearly like a sympathy that people come in saying, oh, you poor thing. And I've had this personally to me, good, well-meaning friends that come out and say, oh, you poor things, oh, look at your poor stock. And there's something in you that it just doesn't feel right. Whereas if someone comes with that non-judgmental attitude and says, I'm going to work alongside you today feeding your stock and they're not judgmental, but they walk with you in the journey, somehow you feel supported and encouraged. Whereas when someone comes in and sort of has this sympathy and a charity, we're going to give you this stuff because you poor things, you can't do this without us. It actually is quite, there's something within us as human beings that don't like to be the victim in this. And so often people want to do something for us instead of being with us. And that's a lot of the events that we've been organising is how do we help communities? How do I walk alongside the community without feeling like they think I'm seeing them as the poor victims and we're doing this, you know, pat you on the back and patronise you, you know. That's been a bit of a journey. Yeah. And I guess with a lot of the bushfire areas, when I was working with a lot of the bereaved people or those who are impacted, not all of them lived in that community, but the bereaved sometimes interstate. And there is that component of really actually understanding, you know, the difference between when you're there in that area and when you're away. And they've got different issues and different concerns about that side of things. But I guess that sometimes there is a fear that if they start to acknowledge their pain, if they start to acknowledge, you know, the losses, then they're going to fall apart. And I've seen that so often to how do we enable a safe place to do what you need to do when you're ready. And, you know, part of that is that initially, I really believe, initially, all, you know, that certainly professionals working in the mental health space and in the support space, really, it's about psychological first aid. It's basically allowing people to feel safe, to enable connections to be made, to really be able to, at that present time, give them the general comfort needs, you know, that are there and how to point them in the right direction and how to actually enable them to do the things that they need to do to continue. And where is that going to be when you've lost your house, when you've lost your business? And particularly, again, you know, if there is also been a significant, you know, bereavement in that. But one of the interesting things that has come up is about the loss of stock, the loss of animals. You know, a lot of people say that they are not, that doesn't count for all these people outside, but to have a really true understanding of identity and a true understanding of the pain of losing that which is important to you. Are you able to comment on, you know, that I've heard said, you know, about with the drought, that sometimes the final straw for people is literally how they have to put their animals down? Yes, yeah. And actually, it's interesting because I think sometimes farmers are perceived as not caring for their animals, and that's actually one of the the grief hurt parts for farmers is when people perceive that they don't care for their animals and for their well-being or for their land. And personally, for me, I had an experience where my husband, we're on the land and we have stock and my husband had to go away for contracting work so that we could continue feeding our stock. But in the, in his absence, I had stock that weren't well and we did have to put stock down. But the interesting thing to me was there was a community gathering, it was in support of farmers and I didn't want to go. And I just thought, no, I don't really want to go there because people are going to be talking how well they're doing with their stock and I'm obviously such a bad farmer and I shouldn't be, you know, I didn't feel legitimate to be in a place where other people were talking about drought. And so I had to really grab hold of what was going on inside me and what I was doing with withdrawing from the community and realising, not realising that really if I'd attended that event, which I did attend the next event and was able to discuss what was going on with people and people were said, you know, that happened to me too. And that all I needed to hear was, because sometimes we don't discuss our business between farmers, but having an event that allowed this opportunity for me to just say, oh, really? You know, I thought it might just be the way we do farming. Maybe we're not doing a really good job here. So sometimes an event like that can just allow, there was no interventions there needed. There was no counselling needed. It was just a one-on-one discussion with a neighbouring farmer that was able to say, look, yeah, that happened to me too. That allowed me to pick myself up and say, oh, okay, well, how did you, what did you do to go forward from here? You know, and it was, it was, it was great lesson for me going into this role about not underestimating the value of connecting fellow farmers or people that are suffering the same thing together in the same room because their stories matter. Yeah. And I guess that wisdom, actually starting to understand the wisdom of community, you know, so, so important. I guess when that avoidance happens that you were talking about, one of the things has been how do we actually therefore engage with people who have been on high alert for so long. They're not sleeping. They're starting to, you know, and with all of that, you get irritable. Anybody does. And then when that sense of hope goes. So I guess, you know, for a lot of the clinicians and councillors who are out there, I guess what people have been saying is when you first engage with us, let us tell you the meaning of the loss. Let us tell you our story. And let us tell you what we think. I guess we've been doing already, you know, to try to contribute to recovery. So that again, then as a councillor, a support worker, what you can do is you can have those conversations, not tell them what to do, but also sometimes point them in another direction to sort of say, what would you think about this? You know, what would assist with those conversations? And so many people say to me, I really feel as though after the first few months, people get compassion fatigue. And therefore, you're not on the front page of the news anymore. And so people just think, all right, get on with it. And I'm not really understanding the huge changes that are there. I mean, the financial hardship is certainly there. But as you've discussed before, you know, tell me again about, you know, the people who were offered, you know, some funding assistance, but didn't do it. Why was that? Yeah, I think it's interesting people. Some people see the government as offering something like financial or incentives. And then them sort of thinking, well, I can't take that. Because if I take that, it's like I'm admitting that I have a problem. And I'm not a bad farmer or I'm not, I'm not doing it tough as the next door neighbour. So maybe if I don't take that money, then I'm doing okay. And that's sort of proving it to themselves rather than having that conversation with people and being able to say, look, this is on offer. And it's not going to cure everything, but it might help with the community. Like, maybe you could spend this money that the government's giving you in your local community to support your community. And it's amazing. Often people will go, oh, I hadn't thought of that way, that this is something that can help someone else. And they then are actually much more likely to accept support when they can see that this drought is actually not just affecting the farming community, but it's affecting the community, businesses in the community as well. And how do we help them? And people are much more likely to engage with you when you're helping them to help others. It seems that's my anecdotal, you know, when they feel like they're helping the next door neighbour or the person down the street. With the fire and the floods, the same sort of thing, and the cyclone, you know, so many people would say, okay, we've survived this, but now we haven't got the tourists coming in. Now we haven't got, you know, people are actually moving away. So it really needs a much more of a community consultation sort of approach, but true consultation. So not just doing focus groups and into that sort of thing is actually looking to the leaders in the community and encouraging other people who have got so much to offer to do the problem solving. I mean, one of the issues is that we've seen and after Hurricane Katrina, you know, looking at what's happened in Queensland, people have said back that in the beginning, they feel incredibly resilient. In the beginning, they really feel because they're getting great support, social support and everything else, and a little bit of government support that it's all okay, that they're then wearing down of their resources. I mean, one of the huge, if you're going to rebuild, you know, that takes forever with insurance companies. There's so much financial strain. You've got families who have to take their kids out of their schools if they've been sending them to, you know, private schools or whatever. They can't afford the fees anymore. There's all of this fragmentation when particularly when neighbors move out, you know, on the farms, you know, sometimes people just go, that's enough, you know, and I'm moving. So again, you know, if people seek sort of counselling support and that side of things, I guess we need to start exploring that wider impact and the distress that, you know, so much of that actually causes. And one of the things that has really helped is getting actual people sometimes to do writing, sometimes to do creative activities to actually tell their story. Sometimes simply, you know, the fact that they're going to take part in discussions with, as you did, you know, some other neighbor or somebody else so that they don't feel, you know, so alone. I think it's happening. Yes. And it's setting up those, I guess it's setting up those opportunities to allow those things to happen in the way that works for them. It's allowing people to talk about what's happened and what's happening. And what I've noticed with, well, for drought particularly is that the smaller those, so instead of doing it in a regional centre, like you can get, you know, people to come to a day out in a regional centre, but A, not a lot of people will make that trip. If we can do that in their place that they connect with and they belong to, be it the local community hall. And we find that, A, we get a lot more people coming to those events than if I held it in a bigger centre. But they also have much more meaning and purpose because people know each other well, so they don't have to go through this standing around uncomfortably. They already have people they connect well with. And so they, I guess, normalise what's going on, you know, for them in their place. And I think often people get out of the habit of connecting, especially when drought is so long and pervasive, that the people are busy all the time. They're feeding, feeding, feeding. So they lose, they can't remember the last time they got off the farm because they can't. But we allow these opportunities to be, and I think you called it before, Julie, a bit of a circuit breaker in how do we engage them, get them off the farm just for a couple of hours and it allows them to go, oh, I haven't done this for so long. I don't know why we don't do this. So then we involve them in other activities or suggest other things. And it seems like it's a bit of a habit and it allows people then to say, yep, okay, I could do that. I could go off farm for a couple of hours. And you're not doing the avoidance stuff. And you're actually connecting to the people. But also the work that you've been doing is really showing that we've got an amazing response from the events that you've been organizing because there's been consultation with the other NGOs and with other people working in the area and people themselves about what would be a fun thing to do, what would be a good learning experience, you know, as well. And that they're not coming to, again, a counselling group. So many of them, you know, before, you know, have said, I'm not going there. Well, I'm going to go there and sit around in the circle and, you know, open up with that. But normal conversation in the process of doing something that is enjoyable. And it's the accidental counsellor really stuff, you know. Exactly. And that's what we've, you know, I was very fortunate to come into the role when there was already our rural support networks with the other NGOs and government organisations. And I said, so you've been in this drought space before. What do you think did or didn't work? And the main crux of it was, please don't do stuff for the communities. Do stuff for the communities. Do stuff with the communities. Ask them what they want and how they want it. And that was something I took on board very strongly from the very beginning. And there has been a couple of organisations come in to do amazing, like the content of what they have around the mental health space is amazing. Like they've got some really good content, but no one comes to that. And that's a very gross generalisation, I know. But it's a hard sell. You know, we could have the best content and the best speaker, but how do I get people at that event? Sometimes you have to sort of take the lesser content and the ability to actually, knowing that actually just getting people out and connecting has a benefit. Yeah. And I think the storytelling that has happened in a few of these events, where you've got local people who have been able to talk about some of their experience. I mean, sometimes that's tricky because, again, you don't know who that person is in the community. But most times, because it's the low-key thing, and people trust certain people that they're going to sort of trust in that process. I guess one of the other issues has been that a lot of people won't go to one-to-one until it's really severe in terms of what their response is. And one of the things that when we discuss this with people who were at their last tether and what would have helped with that. And part of it was they said meeting some of the people who they're going to meet with one-to-one ahead of time and then they can choose. But the other thing is, for so many, they need to do it online. They either do it through Skype or they do it through telephone. And that, again, it is much more about listening and doing problem-solving, I guess, as that process, but acknowledging their pain. And that it is not called a mental health line. That's been very, very clear. So, you know, we find a way of people feeling safe. They do want to know that the person on the other end of the phone is safe and knows their stuff. One of the things that we've really hooked into, I think, because we've had such a great network, is so when we do events, A, I usually connect with other organisations to do those events. But my main reason for having that event is exactly what you just said, is to introduce them to the drought peer support workers. So that they can see up front, this is their drought support worker for this area. Look, if you'd like to contact them, this is their number. They have a picture of them right up front. And then over the morning, for the lunch or whatever, they're having accidental conversations with the peer worker because the peer workers, A, from their local area, usually has an adverse experience either with mental health or drought or some other thing that's been in their life. So they have a very good understanding. And so I will be doing these events in really tiny, little communities and going to these little places and taking our bit of a team with us. You know, someone from department of primary industries, someone from health, and just introducing them. And so then giving them information, so if they want to contact, they're actually contacting a person, not an organisation, I guess. And I guess from what you've said before, that that has really worked. And certainly it worked when I was working in the terrorism area of supporting victims of terrorism, that so many, for example, from the Bali bombings, what they said, they would never have put their hand up. They never would have run to make a time, but they had either heard me or one of my colleagues speak, they put a face to the name. And what would often happen is that some of that group would come and then they would report to other people. And often they would bring other people, you know, to a session because it's a big ask. And people are just quite terrified at times about putting their putting their hands up or, you know, going to see someone because they they often will say, well, it's not going to bring the person back or it's not going to bring my my farm or my house back, you know, what can you do until they they actually start to look at, well, what has changed within me, you know, since this has happened and, you know, how how can I, you know, start to make some some choices or learn some other strategies. And I think it's that strategy building that seems to be so important. And that can be on a group level. It can be on a community level. And it certainly still can be on a one to one level. Yeah. And I think one of the things, Julie, that is really important. And what I hear farmers saying all the time, and one of the things that happened with the issue around the media portraying farmers in a certain way was that farmers, like anyone, would say, well, when you've met one farmer, you've met one farmer, please don't put us in a box and categorizing as all is needing this or needing that. We have our own individual and unique stories often multi generation. They they live in complex communications from different generations, often all the time. And so that's really important when we're talking to farmers that we don't come in with assumptions around what they they are like. And you've said it before, listen to their story. What do you think about them? And after disaster, the same thing, you know, when I did the home visits, you know, you would have multi generational, you know, situations where they're all different, you know, and the completeness of blended families and, you know, all that that that side of things that presents itself. And I guess, yeah, that that is the message that that we incorporate community, but we also don't lose side of context and and individual needs, you know, with all this. Yeah, I look, um, that was great talking with you. I'm hoping to continue this, this conversation. And, you know, I think I think the the gathering of the at the coal faced information, you know, I would really encourage, you know, other people who are working in this area to start getting together and and learn from, you know, those those stories, your own stories to, you know, about supporting communities and individuals. Absolutely. And I think for for us at the at the coal face of in those communities and in a circumstance, it's great to hear the research that's being done and that it actually does reflect what we're seeing on the ground as well. I think that's a really encouraging and one of the things that I love to do is to collaborate. And in rural communities, often that's what we have to do because there's not enough resources often. So I love the collaborative feel and I keep saying to people when I'm out, sometimes it's really tough to partner to do the multidisciplinary, get all people at the table. But I believe it is the best strategy forward if we all come to the table with, I guess, an open heart of generosity and wanting to support people right where they are. And that's that's my feeling. Okay. Thanks, Brenda. Thanks very much, Julie. Great talking to you.