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Behind the story: Writing ‘The Taboo Effect’ for MiNDFOOD

When I first heart that 15 Australian women are diagnosed with gynaecological cancer every day, I was shocked that I hadn’t heard more stories about it. After talking to The Australia and New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group (ANZGOG) I found out why – nobody wants to talk about. ANZGOG spokesperson Ruth Gordon explained that there is a “wall of silence” around gynaecological cancer because women have been conditioned not to talk about their genitalia. The taboo effect is the result. How can you raise money for much needed research when nobody wants to hear about the problem? How can you raise awareness when people seem programmed to  turn away? In overcoming these challenges, ANZGOG came up with the slogan ‘Save the Box’ – ‘box’ being a cheeky euphemism that would give women an extra tool to start much needed conversations. I..

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Behind the story: Writing Last Rights for The Saturday Paper

I’ve been interested in the idea of death literacy since I stumbled on a Facebook post about Death Midwifery in early 2016. At the time I was contacting in-house at the Australian Women’s Weekly and after getting the go-ahead from my editor I interviewed several experts in the ‘business’ of death including Kerrie Noonan from the Groundswell Institute/Dying to Know Day. Kerrie was fascinating and inspiring – she made me think a lot more about end of life plans and why, as a society we’re not ‘doing’ death as well as we could. Kerrie put me in touch with Sue Langfeild who was in the process of arranging a home death for her mother, Tarpie Watts. Due to shifting priorities at The Weekly, I was only able to write one piece on the subject of end of life plans, but..

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Last Rights
The Saturday Paper July 2017