Teaching.

When I was a little girl, I used to line my stuffed toys and dolls along my bed and hand out worksheets to each of them to complete. I copied each sheet out by hand and then had to find a way of subtly filling in the answers myself before having each toy or doll hand their work in so that I could mark each sheet with a big red pen.

I loved primary school. I mean apart from Maths which I hated and never ever got my head around. From an early age I remember being encouraged to always ask for help if I found something difficult. In Maths, I did that but after a while I got self-conscious about raising my arm for help when I looked around to see everyone seemingly working through things without a struggle. I could also start to sense the teacher’s annoyance at my questions, so I just stopped asking and like the others pretended all was well. Even whilst studying for my HSC exams I put off going over Maths as much as I could. One of the happiest days of my life was walking out of my final HSC Maths exam knowing that I would never have to sit in a Maths class ever again.

Put me in front of a class though and I lapped it up. Whether it was singing, spelling tests or reading one of my stories out loud to the whole class. Hell, I’d even enjoy doing my times tables out the front of class. But even then, and with my toy and doll home school, I still wasn’t keen on a future in teaching. I was determined to become a journalist just like Jana Wendt, Chris Bath or even Liz Hayes. Every Sunday we’d watch “60 Minutes” together as a family and in the break between the last journalist announcing themselves and saying it was “60 Minutes” I would insert my name “and Peta Woods”. It became a family running joke and remains one to this day.

I don’t really know what in high school made me think about becoming a high school teacher. I knew in my senior years I enjoyed sitting in the staffroom and listening to the teacher tea goss. Once I volunteered to take a year 7 English class and the teacher nearly let me. It was a different time then. I still remember not being overly convinced about teaching though. I’d lost the motivation to become a journalist in Year 10 and Year 11 when I’d had my own experiences of the media having been on The Today Show and Healthy, Wealthy and Wise promoting the youth camps that I was volunteering at. So, teaching seemed inevitable, but I still didn’t commit to applying for a Bachelor of Teaching, instead I applied for a Bachelor of Arts reassured that I could chuck teaching on at the end of it. I’ll never forget my English and History teacher My Reynolds telling me that a Bachelor of Arts wouldn’t mean a fart without something at the end of it. So. Very. Profound.

So I did that Arts Degree, then an Honours year and then I worked. Then I got very down and attempted suicide. Then I went to Brisbane and got a Degree in Teaching.

I think I have the right to say that I was a good high school teacher. Most of the time. There were good days and bad days as with any job. Kids would be kids after all. And their parents, would be, well parents. But the worst part of the job was for sure the other teachers. Sometimes the worst bit was the women in the office, at other times it would be the Principal or the Deputy or both. It was always teachers tearing other teachers down. Often setting up other teachers to fail. It was unbelievably toxic. There were of course the teachers who were there for the right reasons like me and they were decent people but ultimately it is so easy to become institutionalised by the system.

As a casual or a temp teacher, I had the luxury usually of avoiding the politics and just got to jump in and out of staffrooms. But as the years went on and I was at schools for longer contracts or at the same school more frequently I created friendships and inevitably became part of staffrooms, the culture and the system. Or so I thought.

The first school that broke my heart was after 3 years of teaching mostly at the same school. I ended up getting bullied and harassed by their narcissistic and terrifying Drama teacher. Once I even resorted to hiding in the head of admin teacher’s office with her as she would just unravel and seek out anyone for a tryst. When I put my foot down and said enough was enough the principal calmly informed me that “I was just a casual”. I never set foot in that school ever again.  

So, I went to the UK and taught briefly there. Mostly in primary schools as in the UK you don’t need a teaching degree to provide cover in high schools. My first few days were in a nursery, and I nearly died, literally when a baby sneezed a huge amount of snot directly into my mouth and I’ve never had such a fever since. After that I graduated to the lower years of primary where I couldn’t get my head around how nice the kids were to teachers, but it still wasn’t my cup of tea. Then I had the chance to work with the Upper years and I fell back into love with teaching.

I came back to Australia resentful, depressed and longing to return to the UK. Instead of teaching I trained up as a travel agent which is the second worst job that I’ve ever worked in. I stuck it out for 7 months and managed to meet my future husband in that time, so the suffering ended up being beneficial. He was the one who talked me into returning to teaching since he could see how miserable I was in that job. So, I went back into the teaching fray for 4 or so more years off and on.

And again, it was the other teachers, not the kids, who broke my heart. Same tearing down and politics just different schools and staffrooms. But this time I made what I thought were real friendships. I went to people’s weddings, hosted their hens’ parties and held their hands through big feelings. And, just like before it bit me hard and the love for teaching withered and I had to leave again. This time it was more about leaving those failed friendships behind and putting a line through that for my future self to take note of.

Fast forward to 2016 and I’m staring into a camera lens. The teacher in me, despite the humidity, my newborn gurgling off camera and my husband awkwardly holding the lighting lets me focus and pool my scrambled eggs of thought into a somewhat clear and concise message. In the days, weeks and months that follow when I need to communicate big feelings, the teacher in me breaks the pain down into digestible chunks of narrative. When I present at my first conference that same year, the teacher in me leans in and pulls people in to really listen.

That ol’ saying – “you can take a teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of a teacher” is so very true. I last taught in a high school back in 2015 but those years of teaching experience stay with my each and every day. I can still call on my teacher voice and stare when needed (have you taught adults who won’t get off their phone?) and I so enjoy still breaking down bits of mental health and suicide prevention learnings into digestible bits for people to chew on.

While I no longer teach high school kids for a living, I would never be where I am today without that teaching degree and experience. When I was still vulnerable and fragile, my teaching degree gave me the opportunity to find something that I was good at – communicating information to others. And while that little girl all the way back then might feel sad at times that there were so many worksheets that never got filled in I am thankful to her knowing what she could do. She could make people come to understand things. Not just the Black Death, Shakespeare or how to write an essay but also how to see the world differently through others’ eyes and voices. So don’t fret little Peta, the teaching continues.

Meanjin:

It makes sense to start my journey through these 20 Reasons Why where I sit now at my computer in South Meanjin/Brisbane. Will, Bowie and I moved to Brisbane from Newcastle in March 2018. Immediately upon crossing the border I felt a sense of relief and happiness wash over me, along with the humidity. Though the air was thicker I felt lighter than I had in years. We were going to build a new life in Brisbane.

My life lessons in Brisbane started way back before 2018 though. Like many other families in Australia, my mum, dad and I made the trek up to Brisbane from Lake Macquarie in NSW back in 1988 to attend the World Expo in the part of the city which is now the Southbank Parklands. As a five-year-old I remember the bright colours, the huge crowds and the monorail. A section of the World Expo remains in the Parklands today – the Nepal Peace Pagoda located in a rainforest grove which briefly takes you out of the Brisbane city and back into the past. Much like how when I walk through South Bank today that it still reconnects me with my own past of that 88 trip.

At the start of 2005, my bestie Al and I took ourselves on a girl’s trip to the Gold Coast and Brisbane celebrate me finishing my honours thesis and her finishing her primary education degree. On the Gold Coast we stayed at the YHA near the airport listening to the planes fly over us. In Brisbane we treated ourselves to a luxurious hotel on the Brisbane River. We shopped, we drank, and we ate. My honours supervisor had lived in Brisbane for a time and had written me a list of places to visit in West End. So, we jumped on the ferry and got off at the West End stop to end up at a park where we could see none of these shops, cafes or bars that were the apparent must dos. In complete naivety I walked up to a large family group enjoying a BBQ picnic and asked them for help. And of course, the dad offered to drive us up to the main street which I gleefully accepted while Al threw me eye daggers. Nevertheless, we arrived un-murdered, dropped off in the middle of West End and its “eclectricity” drew me in immediately. Al not so much, but we’ve always found that to be the case throughout our whole friendship really. Years later we’d be back in West End together watching Will’s band for the first time perform at a random bar in 2011 and in 2022 we huddled all together at a West End café trying to enjoy a brunch in the pounding rain at the start of that year’s floods. So, it still brings us back there like a bookmark in our thick friendship book.

Following my suicide attempt in September 2005, I knew that I had to leave Newcastle, if only temporarily. Its landscape and people held too many painful memories for me. It felt like a relationship break up, not that I really knew what that truly felt like at the time. Every time I went to a certain café, walked near the beach or even caught up with friends the lighting and sound was dull. A filter of blandness and apprehension had taken over. Maybe a bit of it was that Al was no longer in Newy – by that time she had moved out west to take on a teaching job and had just met her now husband. And while I still had friends in Newy, it no longer felt like where I wanted to be.

So, I applied to Griffith University in Brisbane to undertake a Diploma of Secondary Education only a few weeks after my attempt. In early December mum, dad and I travelled up to Coolangatta for our annual Gold Coast pilgrimage and I found out while I was there that I’d been accepted into the degree. We drove from Coolangatta to Brisbane together and visited the campus and noted down this student accommodation nearby that was under construction, ironically called “Genesis”. I remember excitedly messaging Al and our other close friend from school in a group chat that it was all really happening. Al replied so happy for me, the other friend (let’s just call her K) was not so happy. At the time I didn’t realise, but I now do. We were all leaving her. I was the third in fact to leave from our close friendship group. But more about that friendship in another future reason why…

The end of February 2006 came fast. In that whirlwind of a Summer I’d met and started to get to know my best friend’s boyfriend, my time at the DVD store I’d worked at (where we actually JUST sold DVDs) had drawn to a close and I’d experienced my first (and only sadly) Big Day Out music festival with Al. Sarah Blasko and the Magic Numbers were now on repeat on my iPod as I flew to Brisbane on my own to embark on my big adventure. Now, I’m playing the Magic Numbers on Spotify on my iPhone in Brisbane as I type. How things have changed so much and not changed so much at the same time.

 Again, in naïve Peta style, the friendly man I chatted to during my flight dropped me off at my new Brisbane home, “Genesis”. It was perched, unsteadily, as a concrete monument on the corner of Dawson and Logan in not so Upper Mount Gravatt. It was still a construction site, half built, half crumbling with gravel and mud everywhere. The absurdity of the situation brought all of us moving into that atrocity together. In the days that followed the international Genesis family was built. We bonded over our laughter and shaking heads as we dodged exposed wires and tried not to stack it on the slippery, steep steps that didn’t meet any safety regulation in the Southern Hemisphere. At the age of 22, I was a mature aged student but really anything but mature. I recall those early nights of obviation of pub crawls, Aussie themed nights and the Irish pub karaoke at Gardo Shopping Centre.

Much alcohol. Much good times at Genesis.

Only a few months ago I was delivering Mental Health First Aid training at a venue across from the Holiday Village in Eight Mile Plains that my parents stayed at when they briefly travelled up with the rest of my belongings and helped me set up home in Genesis. During our morning tea break, we walked over to the village’s café, and I took in the pool that dad and I swam in some 19 years before. It had been tacky then but was even worse now. How far those years had taken me to bring me back to stare at that same very pool. Life is so random yet so coincidental sometimes.

I can’t pinpoint when, but at some point, during that year, Brisbane became home. When I flew back to Newy for visits I was itching to get back to Brissy. When I walked off the steps of the plane onto the Brissy tarmac and felt that humidity I was home. Genesis eventually became more solid in its foundations and our Genesis family grew. A few months in my housemates in my unit had moved out together and I found myself living alone for the first time ever in my life. I absolutely loved it. Even when some rando called me on my internal Genesis unit phone line and threatened to break into my unit and murder me during the night. The others pleaded with me to sleep over at their units because no one would volunteer to stay over with me at mine funnily enough. But in defiance I stayed at mine to signal a big F you to that arsehole. Of course, the managers of the complex tracked the call to a certain resident. Was he kicked out? No of course not. But I was reassured “He’s not someone that you socialise with so don’t worry”. Phew, another dickwad I’d avoided getting to know.

Somewhere in there, I did a teaching degree or an 8 month “you better already know how to somewhat do this” course. My years of youth work, delivering workshops at youth camps and drama presentations had luckily prepared me well. I was good at it and enjoyed it. There were of course “moments” I questioned it. Like the time one of my lecturers marked me down on a unit plan because they just didn’t really like it yet I’d received highest marks for my practicum and there were other students failing their pracs and somehow scoring high on such assignments. I was only starting to see just how many teachers were out there teaching who should never have been given the certificate in the first place…but again that’s also for a future another reason why.

Looking back from the hindsight lookout of now, Brisbane was a time I came to truly like spending time with myself on my own. I’d always thought I needed to be WITH others, but only a year before I’d been so lonely with those others that I had nearly ended my life. Now, I was going to the movies on my own, eating out on my own and going to the theatre on my own. That year in Brisbane was so healing for me in that I came to know myself with myself in ways that I had never seen or experienced before.

For some reason I moved back to Newcastle at the end of 2006, degree in hand. At least now I had a defined career and purpose, right? But whenever I could I’d fly back up to Brissy to visit friends and breathe in that glorious humidity.

Fast forward to 2011 and I’m back in Brisbane with my new boyfriend. He’s up there for a gig with his band and I come along. Al is shitty with me because I’m supposed to be spending time with her too. But I’m in love. I’m in love with my new boyfriend in a place that I love. He flies home before me and as he leaves our hotel room, I cover his mouth and tell him that I love him. I then spend the rest of the day with Al stressing about wearing my heart on my sleeve and wondering if I’ve well and truly screwed it up. Sorry Al, I do really love you too.

Will and I back in those early EARLY days during our first trip to Brissy together.

13 months later Will and I are back in Brissy with my parents watching the Riverfire fireworks after having just flown in all together. We eat at our favourite Vietnamese Restaurant for the first time and chat about how nice it would be one day to live here.

A little under 3 years later Will and I (now married) are back in Brissy. This time I’m early on in my pregnancy with Bowie and we are looking around suburbs ridiculously close to where I now sit in our house wondering if we could make the move from Newy.

Bowie’s first trip to Brisbane comes in 2017 when I bring Will and him along to the National Suicide Prevention Conference. How nice to have such a depressing conference in a sunny and warm location (hint hint Canberra). We relish the opportunity to take Bowie on the ferry and to sit outside at eat dinner in the middle of Winter. We say, “we could really live here”.

2018 we move here. 2025 We are still here. Genesis still stands.

Our first weekend in Brisbane after moving here in 2018.

Brisbane means different things for me now with having a family here, but it still reminds me of my independence. I still go to the movies on my own from time to time, take myself out for meals occasionally and stroll solo along the river in South Bank. I feel free here. Free to be myself and free to like who I have become. My mental health is better here. I am a better person here.

We may not stay forever in Brisbane. There is still the dream of being by the beach on the Sunny Coast somewhere after all. But Brisbane grew my business, and it grew my career and professional development. It gave me a future when I was unsure of whether I had a future. I will always be forever grateful for the gift of a life to get excited about.  

Newcastle has my past; Brisbane is my present and whether we stay here or not Brisbane is still the reason why I have a future.

An introduction:

This year in September, it will be 20 years since I attempted to end my own life. It feels significant for so many reasons. Mostly that so much has changed in that time but also that for each of those days in those 20 years that something has reminded me about that day or the journey I went on afterwards. Those 20 years have been about healing from that trauma but also healing from all the things that made me attempt suicide in the first place.

My whole life I have utilised writing to process, grieve, reflect and celebrate. So, it only feels right to come back to my old friend to process the meaning of this time passing through writing my thoughts down.

Depression and anxiety are the beasts of my brain, yet as they’ve been there for so long, I am so used to their presence on the fringes of my periphery. I celebrate them not taking over by appreciating the crispness of a breeze, the feeling of sun on my skin and how easy it is to laugh or smile. When they make their way in uninvited, it is usually fast, brash and kicks me over. I feel like a cockroach on my back, stuck, trapped and vulnerable. Sometimes I kick my legs hard enough and manage to flip myself and my brain back over. Other times I lay there frozen and let the familiarity of utter despair take me over. I’m too tired to fight it. I’ll fall asleep and somewhere between nightmares it will leave, and I’ll wake up still feeling the draft of the door in my brain left open.

For the last 9 years I have been the most mentally healthy that I have ever been. Ironically, it has also a time of when I’ve been the most physically unwell. Endometriosis and adenomyosis has taken its toll on my body, with an oversized uterus trying to dominate my digestive system. And while I even suffered from this when I attempted suicide 20 years ago, its restrictiveness now traps my body like a vine. I feel it in my knees, hips, back and feet. I often look back at images of that 22-year-old me and jokingly ask myself “what were you so depressed about?”. How could you be so light and healthy in your body but so heavy in your heart and head at the same time?

Just because I’m more mentally healthy now doesn’t mean life doesn’t still get me down. I just think I fight back harder now than I used to before. Those beasts took so much time away from me before that my eyes are now on the clock.

8 years ago, the television series “13 Reasons Why” took over our screens. It told the story of a teenage girl who had died of suicide after experiencing multiple traumatic events. She had recorded 13 tapes to explain her reasons for ending her life. To this day I still have never watched it. I felt violated by the show. How dare they put a suicide death in a show for ratings. It showed no hope or compassion. I remember the show’s writer and creator commenting that he had made the program to depict the brutality of suicide to prevent people from doing it. We of course knew that wasn’t the case. It was suicide to shock. Shock gets ratings. High ratings also meant so many people had suicidality defined for them onscreen. In the years that followed there were suicide deaths directly attributed to the show. Same outfits, same method, same, same, same. I still think it is horrible.

So, to curb my revulsion and to turn things over in Peta style I decided to process my 20 years of post suicide attempt survival into a version of my own “20 Reasons Why I Stay”. In the weeks that follow up to September I will share these different reasons. In thinking it through I decided there needed to be a few parameters though. My reasons do not include my son Bowie, nor do they include my husband Will. Harsh, you might think. “You don’t want to live for them?” I hear you ask. But the point is that I want people to know that you need to choose to live for you, yourself. Will and Bowie are part of my life story but not my whole life story. As soon as we put the reasons for our existence purely in the hands of another, we become more of a stranger to ourselves. We hand the mirror we look into each morning to them and let them define how we see ourselves.

You can be single and want to live. You can be childless and want to live. To think otherwise is offensive and stupid frankly. I do however strongly believe that my dog sits separate to all this of course. That dog makes me live!

So, join me on the journey of 20 Reasons Why if you like. I’m sorry that it won’t be as dramatic, sensationalising or shocking as the series. When marking one of my Year 12 essays, my Drama teacher circled my use of the word “incredible” to remind me that the word can’t be used to describe insignificant daily events. But it is in those insignificant incredible moments or events that I have found my reasons why. Let’s make sense of the reasons together.