TEDX St Kilda Talk: Challenging The Myth Of The Happy Ending

A TEDx St Kilda talk delivered in Oct 2016

Sometimes a life event happens that forces you to change your life, and sometimes that change is so dramatic that all the things you thought mattered so much are collapsed into the gratitude that you simply are - still alive.

In 2011 I was a movie producer, a mother of two children rebuilding my personal life after divorce and although I was pretty stressed, for the most part, I was on a winning streak of life.

As an immigrant from South Africa, I left Australia and embarked on a movie-making adventures around the globe for 12 years and only returned to Melbourne after, and because of, the birth of my second child. I was familiar with uncertainty, a bit of life chaos, working hard, carrying a seemingly unlimited supply of optimism. I did not seem to need to know. Instead, I believed. I believed we would make it; it would all work out; the dream was in the making.

My new boyfriend was concerned by my intensity -- 'honey, it is like everything for you is do-or-die', he'd say. I reasoned that in our industry (screen) that's just kind of how it is. If what I do fails, then what and how will I be sustained? It's a tough gig being an Indi producer. There is such insecure income, insane risk, requiring of a ridiculous range of skills, tenacity, grit and perseverance, the likes of which in the corporate world would be worth a multiple six figure salary. Instead -- you put your life on the line and may never see a cent if this project does not get up (be green-lit; be financed; get made).

Yes, I was intense, determined and stressed.

But I literally NEVER expected I could be putting myself at risk, my actual life.

I never ever even conceived that anything really drastic could happen to me. Strange, in hindsight, because so many dramatic things had already happened to me:

At age11 I fell out of a a massive mulberry tree in our garden in Johannesburg. I was building a treehouse with my brothers and a branch broke. I landed on my head. My skull cracked and landed me in hospital in a potentially life-threatening subarachnoid haemorrhage. Basically I was bleeding into my brain.

And also ... Like … being woken at 4.00 am by L.A’s massive 1994 earth quake while on a Los Angeles location shoot for the family wildlife adventure with Brooke Shields and Martin Sheen, Born Wild;

Experiencing an emergency landing  with chants over the intercom of ,'Brace for landing! Brace for landing! Brace for landing!' as we literally dived into a U.S air base when our flight from Tennessee to L.A looked like it would crash; arriving on the runway to camera crews, ambulances, fire engines and terrified onlookers.

Driving the deserted freeways of L.A on our way to Mulholland drive to witness the city burning during the Rodney King riots;

Joining the massive crowds in Johannesburg to celebrate the release of Nelson Mandela and joyfully lining up to vote for the A.N.C, then later having dinner with Mr. Mandela at Londolozi Game Reserve;

Experiencing the political coup in the Philippines while location scouting for Double-o-Kid, only to have the 1990 earthquake and volcanic eruption postpone production and leave us back in Melbourne to write and produce a little ini thriller Deadly Chase, initially with only $10,000; 

Finding myself in hospital with cerebral malaria contracted on location in Africa days before my Melbourne wedding;

Operating lights from the roof of a Landrover while chasing lions across the Botswana savannah, then quickly changing film magazines as they bounced towards lions and hyena scrapping over a carcass, only to be unwittingly captured and threatened at gun point by Botswana soldiers who subscribe to “shoot poachers on sight”.

Returning to Melbourne with two babies and optimism for a happy new start, which, unexpectedly manifested as spending 3 years facilitating my husband-of-13-years’ transition to become a woman.

This is a blog-in-progress. I will return to it as I can, in between getting on with building my beautiful coaching business and serving my inspiring clients. What a journey our lives are!