Leaving on a jet plane
I was in London for a long time, I got there when I was 19. My move to London was really brought on by the death of both of my parents at a young age. I would never have left Australia had my Mum been alive. She was a very sweet, very beautiful person. I would never have left her. After I lost Mum, and after being brought up in Adelaide in a very safe environment, I just hopped on a QANTAS plane and left.
I didn’t know anyone in London, and it was a great big adventure. I used to look back on this as an act of courage, but really, it was that the unknown was more exciting. And it was the best thing I ever could have done. I remember not long after I arrived, standing on Westminster Bridge, I was living tough, with no money, I looked out over the bridge and said clearly: “London: you will be the breaking and making of me!”
Cool Britannia
It was like I entered into a maternal agreement with London and I felt at that moment that things changed.
I went into the field of architecture and design and thought, “this is where I’m meant to be”. I just slotted into this scene and didn’t think anything of it at all. I just worked, and worked, and worked… I was completely in it.
I’m not just invincible, I’m immune.
I always felt safe and part of a community that looks after each other. I remember often reading the paper and seeing the faces of victims of many terrible events from around the world, thinking: “oh gosh, that’s sad, but that would never happen to me.”
It felt like the whole country was young, optimistic and shaping the world. I felt so privileged to be in the arts, at the dawn of political change that was called “Cool Britannia” at the time.
Every touch point with the world I used to have was through the arts. Though I used to be totally heartbroken by things like homelessness, all of those things eventually started to blur into the environment.
But my heart started to change when I started working with the government. At the time they said they wanted design to lead the conversation, and I was so excited to take it on as the next extension of my work in art and design… but in reality, it was just lots of report writing.
The night before the bombing, I remember texting my colleague saying: “I’m done… this is soul destroying, I’m out.”
The Tube Routine
People could always rely on me being in the office between 7:30am-8:30pm. And it is still maddening to me that only on that day, I was running late. These vivid moments are still with me because they were so extraordinary. The funny thing about London is that it’s not really a place where you just randomly talk to people, unless you are absolutely part of that community. There was a special choreography that you just had to go with.
Every morning going to the Tube, I would play this game with the newspaper stall and the Tube staff, where I would pretend I was Danni Minogue undercover, trying not to be recognised. It all started as a spur-of-the-moment bit of fun, until more and more people became involved the more we did it.
This was my life for a whole year. And that morning that game wasn’t played. Everything was wrong. Nothing was in its right normal flow. In fact, the very last thing I was thinking was how much I wanted those doors to close so we could just go.
The explosion
And then the world just went black. It was a blackness I’ve never been fully able to describe to people.
“I’ve died of a heart attack… I must be dead” was the very next thing I thought. It was only hearing the other people screaming that I realised I wasn’t dead. And more importantly, I wasn’t alone. It almost gave it a sanity point. Up until that point, what was important to me was what I did. Doing that really well. And being recognised for that in any way – whether it was being a board member for something, a business card, the next job.
But in having the experience of what I can only call death, which was under 30 minutes, what was important were those moments I wasn’t getting enough of. I will never forget suddenly seeing myself back on the local beach back where I was brought up, completely carefree, running in the sand. I remember feeling exactly what that Australian sun felt like on my Scottish skin.
I’m being shown my highlight reel and I wasn’t at my work. I was not at a desk. This highlight reel was about all of these powerful and incredible moments of feeling. To feel is to be alive. And these memories absolutely came in to save me when I needed to draw upon them to survive.
A light in the darkness
Inside the event itself, humanity was absolutely there. We helped each other survive without seeing each other. No bias. Just first names. Holding hands. Doing what we can. There absolutely was a sense of a shared instinct to make a surreal hell to be as serene and loving as possible, and if nothing else, to give people the dignity they needed in their final moments.
From the moment I opened my eyes in that blackness, two voices visited me: there was the feminine, soft voice that sounded like “death” and the masculine, almost angry voice of “life.” I first became aware I had lost my legs in the carriage but I had no idea what happened. I had no idea whether London had been obliterated or not. Whether anyone would even come for us.
Death was the one who told me: “you have lost both of your legs.” I loved fashion and I had an amazing shoe collection. I remember putting my hands down and I felt nothing… no pain, absolutely nothing. What the hell could have happened? But once “death” finished, “life” came in and said: “if you want to keep going, sign up here… it is a whole new contract.” On top of all of the other things that were unusual about that day was the fact that I was wearing a scarf. I never wore a scarf. But that day I was. After accepting this new contract for what was essentially a “second life” I used that same scarf to tourniquet the tops of my legs.
Then help finally came for us.
Waking up to a new reality
I was filled with urgency the moment my eyes opened in the hospital. At this stage, I wasn’t even sure it was a suicide bomber who had orchestrated the event. That realisation only came a few weeks afterwards.
As I was recovering in hospital, I had still lost all of my voice, half my eardrum, and half of a lung. All I could do was motion to ask what happened. For a while, people were very reluctant to say anything, until someone brought me a newspaper.
“I’d been in a terrorist attack? What? They must have it wrong!” When I looked at the image, I was expecting to see a monster – but it was just this guy. He was 19 and the image was clearly his school photo. I saw a kid.
My immediate reaction to seeing that was, “that’s what I’m meant to do… I don’t know how, but he is who I have to talk to before he becomes him.” My police liaison thought it was just a reaction to shock. What happened that day wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it was certainly a different phase in the UK.
But after meeting my rescuers, especially knowing that there was a device targeting them too, how the hell do I move through this and form who I want to be and the life I want to have?
Who do I want to mirror, and what do I find is the most incredible example of humanity? It was the ones who were right in front of me, who humbly go about their day-to-day.
A purpose driven life
What was extraordinary prior to the bombing was the amount of people going to protest about the British going into the Iraq War. All of society was represented.
For people to listen to those suicide videos and to believe them when they use the Iraq War as the justification of their violence – it’s maddening. You’ve got the majority of the public on side. Don’t attack the people who are with you. My life now is very purpose driven, and it is very life and death in its need. Life is no longer attached to just aesthetics. But life now is also increasingly lonely because it’s hard to feel free of this purpose.
When you’re in the sense of “I’m here to do a job” like I am, it is hard to shake that and give yourself a holiday. Every incident that happens in the world that plays back the leading up to, and the destruction of, what has happened with me. In fact, each new event brings with it its own sense of both failure and need. There is this incredible need, so I must keep going.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how difficult this road would be, this road of trying to build a sustainable peace. Things like having to have the comments section of my TEDx talk disabled, because it was so vile, I wasn’t ready for that.
I know that we are so much better than this. I know that because I am alive because of our brilliance. I am alive because we answered the call to life for each other. I am living proof of latching on to a granular idea and living with that.
Knowing the capacity for human brilliance we are all capable of meant that I wasn’t so prepared for hatred. I get exhausted by it.
The continuing functioning as a body and as a purpose-driven soul: this has been the greatest challenge of my second life. But I am replenished by seeing moments of optimism and thinking to myself “yes!”
I am replenished by my art, which is completely different now. I’ve been given the gift of this, I’ve got to do this. When I had my daughter, I asked myself, “am I allowed to be a Mum? Is it part of my contract?”
I am never free of that sense of purpose.
