During one of my darkest periods, I wrote a book

Australia’s distance from everything else, particularly those foreign cultures we align with, only reinforces the idea that we’re the same, but entirely different. What we have is precious and special, and not to be taken for granted.

At the recent election, we stood at the precipice and considered adopting aspects of a culture and policies that aren’t our own. A mere suggestion of scarcity can provoke fear, make us panic, turn us towards hate and division. But too much of that same fear, intentionally stoked by those who ought to know better, somehow inspired in us the courage to return to who we are.

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Inherently, Australia is a place where we want people to have access to things like healthcare when they need it, and where we don’t leave our countrymen behind. So when the world looked dangerous and unpredictable, we returned to our values. We chose kindness, or at least stability, over culture wars and moral panic.

Those who think Australians value individualistic ideals more than they value holding each other up and supporting one another, underestimate what it means to belong to this great nation – and what we might choose, in this instance, to exclude.

This tension between who we are and who we are not is part of what inspired me to write a book, All of It, that examines the pride, the pain, the contradictions of what it feels like to love a country that sometimes forgets how to love you back.

Since writing the book, I am not as cynical about the way the situation has unfolded, and as it continues to unfold. Nor do I attribute this situation solely to a shift towards individualism and away from being community-minded. Grace and levity were borne out of what I’ve learnt while I’ve been away, and through the process of writing it all down.

I am eternally grateful to have been lifted from that despondency, but the process has forced me to reckon with how privileged I am to be able to alchemise that suffering and turn it into hope.

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