After the success of the inaugural event last January, the Festival is returning to the Lennox Head Cultural and Community Centre. “This festival is unique because it provides an opportunity for the whole community to engage in what is happening for girls and young women,” says festival organiser Natalie Benhayon. “This year we’ve themed it ‘Respect and  Celebrate’ to reflect the full program on offer. The Respect series of workshops and events will cover issues such as body image and body confidence, cyber abuse, social media and Internet use and relationships and communication. While live music, perfume making workshops, the beauty tent and expression workshops will be a chance for the whole community to Celebrate girls and young women.”

The Girl To Woman Festival is open to the whole family, mums, dads, brothers and grandparents are welcome too. As a participant from last year commented the festival was, “a wonderful day with something for everyone. I enjoyed it just as much as my 10 year old niece.”

Tickets are available at the website girltowoman

About the Organisers    

The Girl to Woman Festival is contributed to by community members and supported by businesses across Australia.

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Says Chrysalis spokesperson and counsellor Jane McGowen: “We are presenting a photographic exhibition/community forum that addresses the pressures and consequences often experienced by young people who are engaged in social media that many of us who are not ‘in the loop’ often know little about.”

What the counsellors at Chrysalis have discovered is that one of the most challenging things about working with teens is witnessing the pressure young people are under to post sexualised images of themselves via FB, Instagram, Snapchat and the subsequent consequences of those actions to themselves, their peers and the wider social culture. They are also concerned at the increase in the sending and receiving of sexually explicit material between children below the age of 16, the consequences of which last many years, and can include bullying, self-harm, anxiety and depression, shame and humility.

Over the past few months the Chrysalis program has been taking all 90 of their girls out in groups to the local rainforests and water holes in the Northern Rivers to eat and cook food, do yoga, meditate on the rocks, engage in nature therapy, play dress ups and have fun. “They also take photos of themselves that they feel are true to who they uniquely are,” says McGowen.

Their exhibition/conference hopes to educate and inform parents, healthcare professionals, teachers, young people and all interested about the impacts of social media in a creative and open forum.

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#The Healthy Selfie is on November 24, 2015 @ 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm in the Cavanbah Room (upstairs) at the Community Centre, 69 Jonson Street, Byron Bay.  This is a free event.

For more information on Chrysalis contact:

Jane McGowen
Sexual Assault Counsellor
Indigo House, poBox 419 Lismore 2480
0266202970
0428112197

Or go to: amiedreyer

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You have to stay in shape. My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s 97 today and we don’t know where the hell she is.
 Ellen DeGeneres

Ummm. Excuse me, but how did this exactly happen? It appears I’m turning sixty next week and a third of my life is practically over. (Actually I stole that line from Woody Allen – but you do that sort of thing when you’re turning 60.)

I’ve been having all sorts of random thoughts over the past few weeks, and if I could remember them I’d tell you, but since I can’t, I’ll have to make a few up on the spot.

There is for instance, the fact that because I had my second child, my beautiful Princess Anna, at the age of 45, at the age of 60, I now have a 15-year-old, who is blossoming into beautiful young womanhood just at the same time as my body seems to be giving me warning signals on a daily basis. (I’m increasingly like one of those roads in Queensland where they have signs that say ‘the surface noise is due to the joints in the road.’)

I knew we were back in the land of the Teenager a few months ago when, as I was innocently driving along, absent-mindedly twiddling with the seat with one hand, a sharp voice said. “What are you doing?” I snapped to attention. “What do you mean?” I asked, a slight note of anxiety in my voice – what had I been doing? Talking out loud, spitting, groaning…”You’re….fiddling,” she said in a tone of deep disgust.

And that was it really, that one tiny comment, and I knew that my life was about to irrevocably change. I’ve got more used to it, this being the second time around. I know this time, that I know nothing, that I’m completely out of touch, that I mustn’t sing or dance in public (damn), or preferably talk at all. I certainly mustn’t pretend that I know or understand any teenage language at all. I’m to provide hot food, a comfortable bed, a taxi service, and the occasional cuddle when required, and on the odd occasion some motherly advice. (Actually strike that last bit, I made it up.) And that’s it.

One good thing about being 60 is you argue less. It’s not so much that you’re nicer. It’s that you can’t hear each other. Anonymous.

There’s nothing like turning a decade to cause a bit of soul-searching, and for me I’ve found this last decade a tad mystifying I have to say. Just for instance – I managed to walk away from a successful career, a marriage, real-estate ownership and an income all at once and to replace those things with a never-ending supply of rescue horses, bills, and anxiety. Trying to come up with a good reason as to why anybody would do this to themselves, I came up with the fairly surprising answer that it was to learn emotional lessons. I think, or hope, that in the past ten years I’ve learned to be much more compassionate, empathetic and non-judgmental. I’ve also learned, because I’ve had to, to live in the present moment, to take comfort from the tiny moments of life – the sunrises and sunsets, my animals, and the life, love and laughter which I must say  fills my life on a daily basis. I have also been blessed to receive a depth of love and support from my partner, family and friends  that is simply – and often – beyond comprehension. It makes me think that perhaps I’m not too bad after all.

Life can be – and is – full of surprises. Last year my beautiful son introduced me to his wonderful partner, Brendon, who quickly became a part of our family. They moved back home recently along with Brendon’s two part-time children, two rabbits, a guinea-pig and 20 budgerigars to join our menagerie of four humans, horses, two dogs and a cat. At an age when most people are turning toward Grey Nomading as a lifestyle, I’m kept firmly ‘en place’ by Dance Mom schedules, animal care, and no cash. Oh well, I never really wanted to travel anyway.

God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

I had to get new glasses the other day. It was a mixed experience. The optometrist told me that my skin looked: ‘good…for your age’. She also told me that if I’d been contemplating laser surgery for my eyes (I hadn’t) it was too late now, due to: ‘your age’. She also said I had some mild infection on the eyelids, which is quite common: ‘in people of your age’, that I had developed, as well as my short-sight and long-sight, slight astigmatism: ‘not uncommon in people of your age’, and suggested that I make sure my vision didn’t get blurry because that could be a sign of cataracts, which are apparently – yes, you guessed it, one of the dangers of being ‘your age’.

One starts to get young at the age of sixty and then it is too late. Pablo Picasso

One thing I know – well at least a little bit – is who I am, and curiously, or perhaps rather stupidly it’s taken me 50 years to work out that I still love exactly the same things I loved as a ten-year old: Family, horses, dogs, nature, photography, books, writing and art. I still have so many creative ambitions it’s a bit scary, but at least it’s better than wanting to retire, a concept with which I am completely unfamiliar, since I truly can’t imagine not producing words and images in some form or other. (Which is a good thing given the state of my bank balance.)

For a day, just for one day,

Talk about that which disturbs no one

And bring some peace into your

Beautiful eyes.” Hafiz

Love. Now there’s a thing I’ve discovered over the past ten years – the extraordinary capacity of the heart to love, even the infinite capacity of the heart to love, or as Woody Allen also said, ‘the heart is a resilient little muscle’. It can ache, it can break, but it can mend – and perhaps, as I head towards Mother’s Day and turning 60, and all the richness of a life in all its ups and downs, that is the thing I carry forward most strongly, the knowledge love is truly, all there is.

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 The thing about a journey, they tell you in creative writing courses, is that they must have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the end can be particularly important writes Candida Baker.

So to put this column in context, how it began was with me coming up with what I thought was a wonderful idea – to take my 14-year-old daughter, often referred to (at least by me) as The Princess, on a holiday which would encompass a few days staying with her cousins on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, three nights in the Snowy Mountains, and a few nights back with her aunt and uncle in the inner city before heading back home.

“What do you mean?” she asked me in anguished tones, when I first mooted the idea. “Ten days away? From my friends. TEN days! MUM.”

It wasn’t quite the response I was expecting – I thought I might get the one where they throw their arms around you and say Mum, you’re simply the best, thank you so much… which is rare as hen’s teeth of course. But still I went with the flow and insisted that well, you know she might actually have a good time.

All went surprisingly well – Sydney had its most beautiful summer colours on, the cousins took us for a day trip to Palm Beach, a day’s shopping at Warringah Mall, and several mornings at the beach, so it was pretty much teenage girl heaven, so much so that she informed that she didn’t want to leave. “You NEVER give me enough time here,” she told me crossly. “Three nights just isn’t enough.”

But then there was even more bad news. It was, I informed her a five-and-a-half hour drive from Sydney to Lake Crackenback.   Now The Princess is never at her best early in the morning – and by early I mean 9.00 am – so it was a grumpy driving companion I set off with down the Highway of Life (otherwise known as the Hume Highway). “I am going to be SO bored,” she said, as we turned the corner from her aunt’s house. “I’ve got a headache.” Another thought, much worse, suddenly occurred to her. “What about my tan? Mum? ARE YOU LISTENING? What if it’s not sunny, and I go pale. I’ve got to go back to school with a tan.”   She slumped back into her seat, and stared out of the window. I decided discretion was the better part of valour, and kept quiet. “Why aren’t you talking to me?” she whined. I started a cheerful cascade of conversation. “You’re talking too much, my head hurts.” I bit my lip.

After an hour or so we got to oh yes, folks, I’m sorry to tell you, that purveyor of caffeine and hot chips, McDonalds – and I stocked up. I reckoned I was going to need it. I also bought The Princess a hot chocolate. I’m not sure if the McDonald’s staff could see the desperation etched on my face, but I’m pretty sure they slipped her a shot of caffeine, because within minutes of finishing her drink, she was on a roll. She put her hands either side of her face and stuck her face on the side window. “I’m getting rays,” she said. “Just in case.” She face-timed her BFF and gave her a tour of the car. “This is a glovebox,” she said gleefully, “this is a gearstick, this is a steering wheel…” The BFF put up with it valiantly until finally she invented another pressing engagement, and sensibly left the conversation.

“Oh My God…Mum…look out of the window. It’s snowing!” I glanced out of the car’s side window, and in the breeze the silver undersides of the shrubs lining the road did indeed look as if they had been dusted with snow. “It’s not snowing,” I said. “It’s just the leaves look white.”

“I’m sure it’s snowing,” she said.

I suggested that perhaps in order for there to be snow freezing temperatures had to occur somewhere and that was perhaps unlikely in the height of summer. “Oh,” she said, crestfallen. There was a moment’s quiet. “Do you think I’ll be able to get a tan in the mountains?”

I couldn’t help it. “Minus 20,” I said. “Your tan is a Minus 20 World Problem….”

Fortunately for both of us, somehow the hours had passed by, somehow we’d arrived at our destination. As soon as we were there she didn’t want to leave.

“I’m spiritually connected to this place,” she told me, gazing in awe at the mountains and the lake. “Do you think we could come and live here?  Why are we only staying here three nights?”

I gazed in equal awe at her. I suddenly thought of my mother, with four girls – all of us at one point self-obsessed teenagers at exactly the same time. No wonder she turned to whisky I thought. I wondered about the teenage brain – which seems to be able to live in the past, present and future simultaneously and still keep the important issues, like tanning, top of mind as they say.

It was a journey. It had a beginning. It had a middle and thank goodness it had an end. Well, a temporary one because there was another journey to come – the drive home. But I’ll spare you all and leave it to your imagination.

(Read next week’s issue of Verandah Magazine for my travel story on the Snowy Mountains in summer.)

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Sometimes an idea is so simple, that when it appears before us we can’t imagine why it hasn’t existed before – well, this Sunday January 18 at Lennox Head, such an idea has come to fruition with the inaugural Girl to Woman Festival.

The Girll to Woman Festival celebrates the beauty and grace of girls and young women in our communities.  It’s open to everybody – dads, brothers and male friends welcome – and includes music, market stalls, workshops and presentations to support the health and wellbeing of young women and their families as they transition from girlhood to womanhood.

The day will include presentations, discussions groups and workshops from health professionals, teachers, community members, musicians, film-makers, parents, grand-parents and young people.  The Festival is deigned to support girls as they navigate their teenage years – negotiating their way through the maze of modern life and the many complex issues it throws up.

For more information go to: girltowoman

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 YOLO, suggests Robert Drewe, could easily be the acronym for You Obviously Lack Originality. Acronyms and clichés are amongst Drewe’s PP’s (Pet Peeves – we made that up LOL.)  And he’s not the only one who’s HUC (Hot Under the Collar) about our abuse of the English language.

Stephen King, who has written a truckload of highly imaginative and thrilling words and phrases in his day, has just revealed the ones that make his skin crawl, and I’m delighted to see “At this point in time” and “At the end of the day” at the top of his list.

I’d add to his catalogue some personal cliché peeves, like ‘It’s all good’, ‘Everything happens for a reason’, ‘Here’s the thing’, ‘It is what it is’, ‘Total annihilation’, ‘Hard-working families’, ‘chill out’, ‘No worries/problem/troubles/trubs’ and ‘Giving 110 per cent’.

And not forgetting the now-compulsory Coles and Woolies checkout farewell, ‘Have a nice day/afternoon/evening/night/weekend/life.’ And surely isn’t it time ‘passed away’ faced up to reality and became ‘died’? As for ‘he’s in a better place’, how do you know that? Maybe Grandpa would’ve thought otherwise if given the choice.

King also hates ‘Some people say’, ‘Many believe’, and ‘The consensus is’. As he says, “That kind of lazy attribution makes me want to kick something.” But what really makes him cringe in an old-fashioned way is seeing text message abbreviations and internet acronyms, like LOL, YOLO and IMHO, used in ordinary speech and writing.

Any parent of teenagers has known of these acronyms for centuries (especially OMG, WTF, TGIF and BFF). A decade ago some of us innocently and sentimentally presumed that LOL stood for ‘Lots of Love’, causing further outbursts of adolescent LOLs and the delighted correction that it really meant ‘Laughing Out Loud’. (If you were lucky, your teenager then texted BISLY (‘But I Still Love You’).

There are hundreds of these acronyms, some of them funny, astute or weird (IANAL: ‘I am not a lawyer’ and PEBCAK: ‘Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard’), and many too risqué to write in full in a family magazine, my favourite being FUBAR, derived from military slang and pronounced ‘Foobar’. The military (AWOL and SNAFU, for instance) has traditionally been a rich source. These days online games, Twitter and Facebook are others.

Newspaper columnists like Ross Campbell and Ron Saw in Sydney, and Kirwan Ward in Perth, used to mention LOLs, which was their gentle abbreviation for little old ladies of the dotty variety. Little old ladies are seldom the subject of teenage messaging, but perhaps you could guilelessly ask your adolescent whether these initials actually stand for ‘Leg of Lamb’, ‘Labor of Love’, ‘Loyal Orange Lodge’, ‘Lowest of the Low’, ‘Look Out Loser’, ‘Lots of Llamas’, ‘Loss of Life’ (insurance), or ‘Lord of Lords’ (Jesus). Or, simply, ‘Lunatic On Line’.

This parent has a particular loathing for YOLO (“You Only Live Once”) because of the risk-taking mentality it indicates and its popularity among the local high-school bad boys — and even more so for the fact that the reckless YOLO attitude is regarded as TSC (“That’s So Cool”).

Teenagers, who all suffer from FOMO ‘Fear of Missing Out’), hate this sort of stuff being mocked or even used by oldsters (PAW: ‘Parents Are Watching!’ or POS: ‘Parent Over Shoulder!’), but adults could feign ignorance and cause satisfying adolescent irritation over whether YOLO actually stands for ‘You Only Live Online’. Perhaps it means ‘Your Ocelot Looks Old’ or ‘You Only Love Owls’. Or, better still, ‘You Obviously Lack Originality’.

The acronym that most annoys is probably IMHO (standing for either ‘In My Honest Opinion’ or ‘In My Humble Opinion’), for its pomposity as much as anything. Just ask the person who uses it whether that means ‘I Might Have Ostriches’ or ‘Is My Hearing-aid On?’ Or just own up and reply with real honestly, ‘Well, IMBO…’ (‘In My Biased Opinion…’), IMNSHO (‘In My Not So Humble Opinion’) or, let’s face it, IMAO (‘In My Arrogant Opinion’).

Many of these acronyms actually require a very clear head and steady hand to get right, and might take older practitioners longer to print accurately than the phrases they’re attempting to abbreviate. Like DILLIGAF (‘Does it look like I give a ****?’), PTKFGS (‘Punch the keys for God’s sake’), TTBOMK (‘To the best of my knowledge’) or TANSTAAFL (‘There Aint No Such Thing As a Free Lunch’), for example.

Or ROTFLMAOWPIMP. By the time you’ve typed out all the initials for ‘Rolling on the floor laughing my arse off while peeing in my pants’ it might be too late.

Robert Drewe’s latest book, a collection of his columns entitled Swimming to the Moon is published by Fremantle Press: fremantlepress

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