Alan Stevens (R)
Alan Stevens stopped chasing connection at 50 and built the community he'd always needed by learning to facilitate others' stories instead.
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At 50, Alan Stevens stopped running. For decades, he had chased connection the way you might chase something that keeps slipping away. He raised three boys alone, built businesses, married twice, and each time something broke. He learned early to keep himself apart, to manage alone. That was the survival skill he had. But survival and living are not the same thing.
Then he met Aboriginal elders who taught him something simple and difficult: the relationship with himself mattered more than any other. For a year, every Friday and one weekend a month, Alan sat around a campfire with men and learned to listen without needing to be the smartest person in the room. He went through tribal initiation at 50. He stopped chasing connection and let it come to him instead.
What happened next surprised him. The relationships he had always needed started showing up. After four years of helping men tell their stories through the Campfire Project, he had recorded over 500 hours of conversations. People from all ages, faiths, and cultures gathered in the space he created. The space he never had as a child. When he learned his second wife had found happiness with someone else, he felt genuine warmth for her. That would never have happened, he realized, if he had not first made peace with himself.
This is a story about the one relationship that changes everything else. It is also a story about what happens when a person stops trying to prove something and starts helping others find their voice instead.
“When I stopped trying to build the relationships, they came flooding through the door. While I was chasing them, it's like chasing a fox. You chase a fox, it's gonna run. The moment you stop chasing it, it will stop to have a look. And when I stopped chasing it, the fox came back.”
“I realized that when I work with people, people give themselves titles and I look at, well, I don't heal people. I facilitate things. So I was a facilitator of healing. I wasn't the healer. I believe that when you set the situation up right for the other person, they do their own healing.”
“She turned around, she said, um, Caroline, I thought you'd like to know, she's found a new partner. She's really happy. And all of a sudden I felt so warm and so happy. And then I realized that before that, it was more lust than anything else. Now I understood what love was all about because I was so happy that she was happy.”
The hero, today
When Alan stopped trying to build relationships and started helping others tell their stories, the connections he had always wanted came to him without him chasing them. The relationship with himself turned out to be more important than any relationship with another person, and that changed how he could show up for his ex-partners and his children. Alan learned that every emotion has a place and a time to be used; anger kept him alive as a boy, but he had to understand when it was appropriate and when it was holding him back. The nine-year-old Alan who tried to take his life realized in that moment that he was trying to make people happy who were making him miserable, and that question stopped him from going further. Alan now creates environments for other people, especially men and boys, to feel safe enough to speak deeply about their emotions, something he never had growing up and spent decades searching for.
Yes. Alan Stevens (R) is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
When Alan stopped trying to build relationships and started helping others tell their stories, the connections he had always wanted came to him without him chasing them.
The relationship with himself turned out to be more important than any relationship with another person, and that changed how he could show up for his ex-partners and his children.
Alan learned that every emotion has a place and a time to be used; anger kept him alive as a boy, but he had to understand when it was appropriate and when it was holding him back.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 00:00
This limited Kintsugi Heroes podcast series was made possible through grant funding provided by the New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice Connecting Seniors Grant Program. If you'd like to find out more about Kintsugi Heroes, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au. Welcome to our Kintsugi Heroes special series, Connecting Seniors, where we share the experiences of aging Australians to create connections across our communities. In this episode of Connecting Seniors, we're revisiting a conversation from Kintsugi Heroes with a senior who is making an impact on the world or connecting with their community. This week, we hear Avalon Clark's chat with Alan Stevens.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 00:50
Alan Stevens, how are you going, Alan?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 00:53
Pretty good, thanks, Avalon. How are you?
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 00:56
I'm really well. I'm I'm so grateful that you're here with me today. I'm excited to speak with you, and thank you for coming along to help share your journey.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 01:06
Thank you very much.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 01:08
Well, let's get into this, shall we? Can you take us back, take us back to the start, where— wherever the start is, and give us a sense of what was going on, a bit about the context before, I guess, the— these things started happening, or the event? I'm keen to understand.
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The nine-year-old Alan who tried to take his life realized in that moment that he was trying to make people happy who were making him miserable, and that question stopped him from going further.
This conversation includes the loner who had to lead, three sons, no marriage, no business, the lunch that changed everything, massage tables and terminal patients, the snake signs and the boy with the injured hip.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 01:27
Well, it was one major event in my life, but there were a number of things that sort of flowed along leading up to it. And it was a complete change in my, uh, journey around about the age of 50. But before that, when I was 23 years old, I was, um, I used to live in Sydney and I worked in Sydney, did all my training down there, came to Newcastle and was put in charge of a group of men who were all older than me. So I was 23, my second in charge was 38, and the rest of the team were older as well. So that was the beginning of, you know, having grown up pretty much as a loner with my father died when I was 3. I lived with my mother and sister and spent most of my time in my own company. So now I'm in charge of people. I had to get them on side. So that was a big steering of my beginnings and the direction I started with. Then as I moved along, I joined the surf club. In my early 30s and was talked into being a patrol captain. And the reason they wanted me was because nobody in the— there was a whole bunch of people within the group that nobody wanted. So they gave them to me as a patrol and I managed to turn that into Patrol of the Year. So it went from being, you know, the youngest in employment and trying to get people onside and having that challenge, always been a loner before that. And now at the age in my early 30s, being in charge of a group of men. Who again, same age as me at this point, but now all saying that I didn't have the experience. But because I turned that patrol into the Patrol of the Year, the committee talked me into becoming the club captain and then Zone Supervisor of Three Beaches. So, I'd had a second challenge. My whole life has been about building relationships and the challenges that go with that. Then my first wife decided to leave and I had 3 boys to raise on my own. They were 4, 11, and 12. And so that was another challenge. So from being the youngest in employment to being the least experienced to being, well, the only way to put it, right out of my depth, raising 3 sons on my own, having taken redundancy from Telecom at the same time, starting my own business as well. And in that year, a lot of challenges. My mother passed away. I had 2 friends, one who had committed suicide and one who died of cancer. So it was a pretty rough time and the business didn't really survive either. We also went to the wall with that. So, uh, that was the beginning of the, uh, the challenges. But then I sort of sat back, became a, what do you call it, a, um, mortgage broker and was working with people there. And that seemed to be a, a normal natural type of, uh, job to be in. But as I got to about 48, I'd met another, uh, woman, got married. That was where things really turned upside down because I was about 12 years older than her and I thought, you know, all my Christmas had come at once. I had this beautiful wife, great relationships, everything was going perfectly. And then one day she wanted to catch up for lunch. Now you can imagine the situation. We're in one of the busiest sections in Hamilton, in Newcastle, in Beaumont Street where all the eateries are. She wanted to meet at a cafe, the Northern Star. It's a nice little Greek, uh, café, very nicely laid out, pictures on the wall, tiles on the table. You can imagine the color and everything else. The place is fairly quiet. There's a lot of people in there waiting for their food, and I got there early to make sure I got a table because it usually gets packed. And, uh, yeah, by this stage, the whole place is full, people lined up at the door. She came in, she sat down, and the first words to me were, Alan, I want a divorce. And so that completely floored me. Now, I knew that things were a bit tough between us. There was a difference in age, and I'd also grown up with boys don't cry, suck it up, keep it to yourself. So I didn't have the skills to communicate. And so I wasn't telling her what I was feeling. I don't think she was, uh, uh, had a crystal ball, so she didn't know what was going on in my head either. At the same time, she wasn't talking to me. And so everything turned upside down. So at that point, that was when I withdrew again. I thought, right, time to spend some time on my own, except a friend of mine talked me into sharing a place with him. And we moved into the premises there because after all of that, I thought, there's nothing much more, you know, this is what my life is. Now my boys are grown up and moved back with their mother. Well, they've moved out first of all, and then youngest one moved back with his mother. And, uh, so I'm now on my own, whereas with the first time that my first wife left, I had the saving grace of having 3 sons to raise. I had a business that I just started. Now I was in a, you know, just running in a career at the same time. I didn't have my boys around me and all I was doing was sharing a flat or a house with a friend of mine and really knowing nowhere, having no idea where I was going. But through some chance meetings, a friend— well, first of all, some friends talked me back into getting back into massage therapy because my second wife had talked me into being a massage therapist. She used to teach aromatherapy. When we split, I put that on hold. And of course, I didn't want to do that anymore, but a couple of mates talked me into giving them a massage and then talked me into opening my doors up again and had people coming in. And I started getting terminally ill patients coming to me. Now, when some of them started reversing their conditions, I had no understanding what was going on. For me, that was totally bizarre. So through some chance meetings, met an Aboriginal group who invited me out bush, and over a period of a year learning culture, going out every weekend, they invited me through initiation. So I went through tribal initiation for boyhood and manhood. So this is where my life started to change direction.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 07:22
And how old were you then? Sorry.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 07:24
At that point I was, uh, just turned, uh, 50.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 07:28
Wow.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 07:28
Okay. So the, uh, from the marriage to all of this happening was about 4 years and it was quite a, you know, uh, things happening in a lot of different directions. I didn't know whether I was coming or going at times, but one of the things I realized that where I thought I was making plans in my life, I wasn't. We're controlled by our environment. And that's what I realized, that, uh, whatever happens around us, we make choices based on those things and we think we're in control, but really we are at the mercy of our environment and how we let those things, uh, affect us. I realized that, um, if I kept wanting other things to change, blaming other people for the situations that were happening, I wasn't gonna move anywhere. So that's when I started looking, going, okay, How can I look at the things that I'm doing? How can I improve things? How can I take responsibility for everything? Working with the Aboriginals, it was all about, uh, love, humility, and respect were the three pillars. And that's where my journey started to change in a big way.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 08:25
What, um, you've mentioned a few things on the, on the path to, to this point of meeting the Aboriginals. What were the biggest challenges that you had? Obviously there were the relationship challenges. With both the wives, you know, obviously at two distinct points of your son's lives. Um, yeah, what, what were the key kind of themes or the challenges that you experienced that made those things particularly difficult?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 08:54
Well, growing up, I was always told, um, by one of my uncles I'd never amount to anything. I was told when I left school, don't use your brains, Alan, you haven't got them. Use your hands, you're good with your— as a carpenter. And that's where I started my first career as a carpenter.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 09:09
So you listened to that, to those words, you took the advice.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 09:12
You listen to the people. This is the problem as youngsters in that we trust the people around us. If they're bigger than us, they're older than us, they must be right. And so you take that on and we program ourselves. I was deeply programmed. That's one of the reasons I kept to myself all the time because I thought if I'm around other people, I'm always going to be found to be wrong. And I needed to feel good about myself, and that meant being on my own. And therefore, relationships weren't a key issue in my life.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 09:41
So you didn't trust people, uh, people in a relationship to make you feel good?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 09:46
That's it, because, you know, when you've got people around you, you're comfortable with the, you know, and happy with the people that are there when things are going well. But when they're not, we want to withdraw from it and pull away. But what you don't have is the thing that you yearn. And I didn't have relationships. And so I've yearned for those all my life. And I thought by being in a relationship that everything was fine. But what I've learned over time, the relationship that was most important to me out of every other relationship was the one with myself. And that's the later lessons I learned along the way.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 10:20
So when you, when you met the Aboriginals, tell me a bit about the meeting with the I guess, the person that invited you in, and what was it that captured your attention enough and your interest to want to spend more time with them?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 10:35
Well, how it came about in the first place, a mate of mine was working for the Daryl at the time, and he said, there's an opening at the moment. We're going to go over to one of the islands and we're planting trees. It's an Aboriginal opening day. Just come along and get your hands dirty. You're spending too much time in your head. So I went there and we started planting trees and I spoke to one of the elders and he invited me to go and have a talk to him later on. So I told him what was happening with the massage therapy and these terminal patients. Anyway, the day I went and saw him, he said, I'll have to ring one of our healers. He said, I'll get the women to ring. And I looked at him, he recognized that I, you know, it's a white, do they have to ring? And he said, oh, she runs a women's refuge. And the moment she hears a man's voice, she'll hang up. If she doesn't recognize it, and the chances is she won't recognize mine. And so they set the call up, he put me on the phone, and, uh, she said to me, well, what are you doing tomorrow? I said, well, what can I, you know, what do you want me to do? She said, I'll come here. So next day, this is where she wouldn't answer the phone at the refuge. I'm invited to the refuge because I told her what was happening in the work I was doing. She said, oh, you got to come and see me. When I sat down and spoke to her, she said, Well, what you're talking about is older than I know. I can't help you. And I said, well, what do I do? He said, I've got some other elders I need to connect you to. About 3 days later, I got a phone call from one of the elders. He said, what are you doing Friday night? I said, well, you tell me. He said, you come and camp it. So I went out and one of the things is about 10 men sitting around the campfire and there's a young fellow, 14 years old, who walked up. Who was dragging his leg, and the guys asked him what was wrong, and he talked about how he'd injured his hip. And they talked about the pain. I watched their expressions because I was looking to see what their reactions were going to be. And not one man was disrespectful to him or teased him or anything else. They just had compassion. And Uncle John, who was a senior elder, just pointed to me and he said, 'Oh, he's a healer. He'll fix you.' And I went, 'How do I fix him when I've got no massage table, no oils, and we're standing in the middle of the forest?' Did you, did you feel that you were a healer?
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 12:46
Like when they, when he said you're a healer, did you, did you align with that description, that label?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 12:53
It was one thing that when I looked at it and I realized that when I work with people, people give themselves titles and I look at, well, I don't heal people. I facilitate things. So I was a facilitator of healing. I wasn't the healer.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 13:07
Mm-hmm.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 13:07
I believe that the, when you set the situation up right for the other person, they do their own healing. Because what I was actually doing was not only massaging and using aromatherapy oils, but I was using color, I was using sound, but I was mainly using, um, NLP as well. I'd sit and talk to somebody, find out all about them, what they were going through, and that would give me more information about how to treat the physical ailment they had. And that's when they were, uh, telling me that in some cases I was having out-of-body experiences and things like that. And that added to the whole, uh, mystique of the whole thing. But then when some of them were coming back and saying that they'd been retested for their cancers. And, uh, one guy who was on the transplant list for new kidneys and came off the list. I thought, what in the world's going on? I'm a technical person. So all of this was quite strange to me, but I was open to learn. It's one of the things I've learned through my life. The most important thing I'll ever learn is the next thing I learn after I think I know everything. And so with that, I decided to keep an open mind. I thought, Nobody else has got any answers. They're the oldest living culture on the planet. If they haven't got the answers, what am I going to do? So give it a try. Well, took the young fella aside when I was told this, manipulated his leg, spoke to him for a little while, and 10 minutes later he's kicking a football with the other young guys. And I'm sitting at the campfire. So on the outside, yes, I'm looking, you know, so yes, I do this all day, every day sort of thing. On the inside, I'm going, what the world?
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 14:35
Yeah.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 14:37
And, uh, all the other, uh, men around the campfire are looking at me. Then I found out there was a GP, 2 physiotherapists, and a chiropractor in the group. And he pointed to me, I'm the massage therapist. So at the end of the evening, there was a whole lot of other men. There was about 60 men. And as we were talking, uh, the, um, Uncle John said to everybody, we'd like to know why all you guys come back out here again, or why you're here for the first time. I went to speak and he said, 'Alan,' and his words were, 'Alan, you can shut up for a moment. I'll get to you in a minute.' And I went, 'Okay.' The thing with the young fella was a test, and this was another test. I recognized that straight away. He asked some of the other men. One man said, 'I was here a year ago, and this is my second time out here, and I wanted to give back to the Aboriginals.' And I watched their eyes roll. I thought, 'Whoops, you know, here's somebody who's going to come out and fix their problems.' I don't think so. Anyway, went through everybody else, he got back to me and he said, okay, Alan, can you tell everybody what it is? You know, why are you here? Tell everybody the same way you told me the other day. And I went, okay, of all this stuff happening in my life, I've got no answers. And I believe that you guys have got the answers, got nothing but questions coming from me, but I'm hoping that you've got the answers for them. And what I did add to the end of it was, and by the way, I'm not here to fix your problems. I'm here for me. And I just watched the smiles. And that was when Uncle John turned around and said, 'Righty-o, what are you doing next month?' And so I thought, 'You told me.' He said, 'You coming camping again?' And some of the other men said, 'Why is he being invited back so soon?' He said, 'He does what you don't do.' He said, 'He listens.' And so I actually had to get out there. I had to pick up one of the elders on the way. So when I'm driving him back, He said, look, I don't have a car. He said, I want to get out here every week. So how about you come out every Friday? We come out here, we camp. And then that one Friday a month, you'll be with all the other men. And after a year, they just said to me one day, what are you doing next week? I went, same as last week, you know, so what I've been doing for the last year. And they said, no, you know, get in the vehicle, you're coming with us. And I said, where? And they said, well, we'll just, you know, you'll come out and we'll tell you when we get there. What it's about. And that was when I went through initiation. So that was the tribal journey. And that's when I really started to appreciate the support of having the right people around you, the finding the right people, but that love, humility, and respect, getting rid of the ego. Because I think the, uh, the ego was something I was up against with a lot of people, but also had my own. If you feel insecure, I guarantee your ego's going to come out. The most noisy and, uh, blustful pe— people are usually the most insecure. So I realized to be able to sit in my quietness and just take things in.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 17:27
So with that, the, the year of going out to camp every weekend, did you talk about your fears, your past? Did, did it come up in conversation or were you really there to learn from them?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 17:41
There, there was always plenty of questions from them. I had the questions around my healing. They had questions around who I was as a person. And so if they asked me questions about it, I would talk to them, be totally open with them. But, uh, as I said, I was there mainly to learn for myself, to get the answers that I needed. And as I've always believed, I've got two eyes, two ears, and one mouth, and I use them in that proportion. And when I am using the mouth, I ask questions. I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I don't want to be the dummy. But at the same time, I don't want to be the smartest because if I am, I'm not learning from anybody. You need to be open to always learning. As I said, my attitude is I'll always be learning until the day I die. I'm a part-time teacher, but a full-time learner.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 18:29
So during that year, did you find yourself coming out of your little shell more and more?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 18:34
A lot more. I was able to find that I could just have conversations with people. I wasn't looking for that relationship. I was mainly looking at understanding myself to be able to connect with other people. I realized I needed to understand me. Now, understanding me, I then knew how to, uh, speak to other people. And so that, um, led on to, you know, changing the approach where before I was chasing other people to have a relationship. Now I was looking at letting the relationships come to me. Yeah, complete turnaround in the way I was doing things. And that's led on to a lot of things since then. You know, the camp that, uh, sitting around the campfire with the men led on to the Campfire Project that I also run and the Business of Smiles. Uh, looking back over the years, not having relationships around me and now the number of relationships I've got, uh, it's definitely chalk and cheese.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 19:27
I just wanna really highlight that because I think you just summed it up right then. You know, you didn't have relationships. In the past, and now you do. You've learned, and, and you, by the sound of it, you learned through figuring out how to have a relationship with yourself. If looking back to your childhood and your upbringing, can you see where that was, was, I guess, initially created, that the sense of needing to just not have relationships? Did you not feel safe? Not feel loved, you know, in, in that family environment?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 20:03
I didn't get on with the kids at school. I got bullied a lot. And, uh, I was actually— I would— for a lot of people, it would probably be a major, uh, situation. But I look back over all of my life, it's really just one of the, the many events that happened. At the age of 9, I didn't feel that I belonged in the house with my mother and sister. My sister and I never really spoke. My mother was just busy getting on with, you know, looking after the house and, uh, and, uh, keep me out of trouble. And, uh, the end result was at the age of 9 with all the bullying and everything else, I actually tried to commit suicide. I climbed into my mother's, um, pill cupboard and started taking as many pills as I could. And the fear I had was that I didn't just jump, jump into one bottle. I was taking selected pills from different bottles so I didn't get into trouble. And I'm thinking, I'm trying to take my life. This is stupid. At the same time, while I'm doing it, I'm thinking to myself, oh, everyone's going to be happy now when I'm gone. And all of a sudden I just had this feeling. Why in the world was I trying to make everybody who was making me miserable happy? So I stopped taking the, uh, the pills and I thought, and my mother never knew that I even did it.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 21:17
Were you sick? Did you get sick and have some?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 21:21
I was in the process of, of taking, you know, you know, I, I put, I didn't even know it was in some of the bottles. I know that some of them have been there for a long time. They actually, they were the old tablets that are crystallized. You know, the cupboard was just full of pills at different times. So, you know, I didn't fall pregnant from it, so I don't know if the pill was in amongst it. Uh, antibiotics, I don't know what was in there, but, um, it was getting to that point where that, that message came through to me. Why was I making everybody else happy? Mm-hmm. That, uh, it was probably the timing of that. If that had been a bit slower in thinking of that, might've been a different situation. I, uh, lived on anger, but as I was getting older, everybody said, oh, you gotta get rid of your anger. Well, the anger was what kept me alive. But then as I went along, I also learned that, um, every emotion, we have every emotion in us. Every emotion has a place. If somebody attacks your family, yeah, get angry, you have a right to, you know, it's part of the protection of your family. But to get angry because of other reasons, no. So every emotion has its place. It's how we apply it and when we apply it as to whether it's appropriate or not. Sorry for the interruption. This is Ian Westmoreland, the founder of Kintsugi Heroes, and thank you for listening to this story from one of our amazing heroes. Our mission is for these stories to provide hope and inspiration to people experiencing life challenges and to also educate the broader community on how best to provide support. If you would like to help us to continue to produce more hero stories and cover more adversity themes, we would welcome all donations. These can be made via our website kitsukiheroes.com.au.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 23:02
Kintsugiheroes.com.au.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 23:03
The donate function is at the bottom of the home page. We'd also welcome any feedback. You can email me direct using ian@kintsugiheroes.com.au. Now let's get back to the story.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 23:21
Can you take me back to, I guess, out bush with the Aboriginals? And talk to me about the initiation. So when they invited you to do this, what was your first thought and feeling?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 23:34
Well, I thought, who, you know, when they first mentioned, I thought, wow, this is a great honor. But as it was leading up to it, the only thought that went through my mind was, who am I? You know, I'm, I'm a white guy. Both my parents were English going through initiation, just ego and everything else. Now, when I first moved into the house with, uh, the mate a couple of years earlier, it was down near the beach, um, 4-bedroom, uh, place. And he was bringing his 2 younger daughters over on a regular basis to stay there. And I said, right, well, I then get to— sharing everything 50/50, I get the choice to pick my bedroom. And when I walked to the different rooms and walked out on the balcony on the first floor, I was looking around and I felt this room felt really right. And as I looked down, there's a diamond python, a snake in the gutter right next to my feet, just laying there looking at me. I called, uh, Mark, the flatmate up. He came up, this, then the snake reared up as soon as he walked up. As soon as he walked back, it laid itself down again.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 24:38
Wow.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 24:38
Because I just before then I'd been saying, you know, God, give me a sign. Let me know whether this, I'm doing the right thing moving in with Mark and sharing a place and everything else, or I should be off on my own, or what should I do? Well, just before I went out, bush. Now that snake, we managed to catch it because it was gonna go down the drain pipe and we thought down the guttering and that, what are we, you know, will it survive? So we managed to catch it and put it in a, a box and I took it to one of the reserves, which was right away from our place instead of just taking a couple of streets away because it was bushland back behind us. But, um, so I know it wasn't the same snake. But the week before I was about to go out, here I am at the front door again, just saying, yeah, come on, God, give me another sign. Am I doing the right thing? Should I be going out? Well, I'm in the kitchen and, uh, one of the friends came up. He usually just walks straight into the front door, goes straight to the fridge and feeds himself. He's standing out on the steps and not coming in. I looked out the window and I said, what's wrong? What are you standing there for? He's pointing at the, the, um, top of the stairs. So I went to the door and had a look, another diamond python, and it's just sitting there reared up. I said to him, you know, just step back, it'll go. And as it's going towards the gutter— oh, sorry, to the garden on the other side— I don't know why I said, I said, oh, that's right, old fella, keep going. And it turned around and came back and came to the front door. I had to close the flyscreen door because it was going to come in the house. And I went down the side of the house, this long crack at the end on the top of the veranda and next to the house, it's laying in that. So I walked out, I just stroked it, and it then went down under the house and disappeared. Yeah. So I had all this stuff going through my mind, you know, because my background was technical, as I said, but all this stuff that I would've classed as new age or esoteric and all that was now, you know, really filling into my life. I was thinking when I went out, this is really great. Um, it's, uh, but as far as what we go through out there, cannot talk about that. Because, you know, if I'm there with the other men who have been through, we look at each other, we know what we've been through, and it's just smiles all around. To boys, we're not going to say anything to them because they— it's an opportunity we're going to steal from them of what they're going to learn when they go out. And it's one of the reasons why the Aboriginal women, when the boys in ancient times were taken away from them, would cry, because they weren't worried about the, uh, the son's, uh, health. They knew the men would look after them. But what they realized was that a boy went away, but a boy doesn't come back, a man comes back. They've still got a son, but he's a different relationship from that point on. So there is a feeling of, to the women, of a loss. But to the boy, there's a, it's a, it's a rebirth. And that's firstly what I went through, funny enough, because that boy that I mentioned before that I massaged was 14. What I didn't know was he'd already been through his rite of passage, so he was classed as a man.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 27:34
Okay.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 27:34
I'm 48 going on 50, around that area, and, uh, he's, um, uh, I'm classed as a boy because I haven't been through it. And the, the, the humility that goes with it is as well, is once you go through that process, they call you a man, but it's like having an empty ledger and a, um, a pen you start writing your story from there. So you're always in that process of becoming a better man, not trying to be the man.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 27:59
Did they take many Caucasians, you know, white fellas out there?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 28:03
Started to take more around then, um, because it came down to the fact that it's a part of their culture that was stopped due to white man and civilized, you know, the, um, civilization and the reservations that they created as well, the homesteads. And the end result was that if we look at today's society, it's one of the biggest things that we missed. The boys don't have a rite of passage. Girls do to a certain degree because they had that time with their mothers and with their aunties and other women, whereas boys were, you know, used to go out hunting with their father. Fathers are shocked, they're working now, so they don't take their boys to work. And they're not talking to the boys because they're out there bringing in as much reserve resources as they possibly can for the family. And so we've got another problem with the men. They show their love to the family by being absent to get the resources and bring them home, and then being told that they're physically and emotionally absent. It's a no-win situation for the men. And because we've been told to, as we grew up, to suck it up, toughen up, keep it to yourself, boys don't cry, and everything goes. That we push so much problems down into our, uh, the male psyche that when it does erupt, it erupts in the wrong way. We've lost those skills of communication.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 29:26
And obviously you're speaking from experience through all the years prior and also your marriages.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 29:33
Yeah, see, I can't talk about other people. I can talk about my experience and what I went through. So when I talk about any of this stuff, it's Well, it's definitely a reflection of me, of what I went through. Um, as far as, uh, other people speaking, that's their, their place to do that, not my place. And my job is, you know, it's a, yeah, another human being. If somebody needs to speak is to facilitate that space where they can do just that, hold their space, no judgment, no criticizing, and no direction from me at all, but listen to them and in a way in which they can find the answers that they're looking for. As I say, they, they become their own healer.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 30:11
Mm-hmm. Well, you obviously learned that through this time with the Aboriginals, and it sounds like it was, uh, it took time because there was a year of you doing the campouts before you did the initiation.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 30:24
And then it's been an ongoing side of that because I've, I've, uh, been involved with all sorts of, uh, groups in the past, even bike gangs and others. All of my experience has been, um, uh, school of life. Uh, there's been a lot of, uh, formal education, but everything that I've done always came with experience as well. So it was the difference between having, uh, uh, just knowledge. And I hope that, uh, that is with all my experiences turned into a bit of wisdom as well along the way.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 30:54
Hmm.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 30:54
That's for other people to, uh, tell me whether they see that as that or not. Not my place to say it.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 30:59
After the initiation, was that kind of the start of the new phase of your life?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 31:04
It started— it brought together from being just in the material world to understanding there was more to life. There's a spiritual side of things as well, and it's like two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other, like you can't have an inside without an outside type thing. And so things go hand in hand. But, you know, we spend most of our life— and I did in my first part— It was chasing the material world. It wasn't, uh, and it was always the world outside of me. It was never the world inside of me, and it was never more of a spiritual approach to things. Since then, I've had connection to a lot of different societies, including the Buddhist communities, and a lot of great friends that have come through all of that as well. And it's only because I've stepped back and allowed myself to, um, uh, listen and learn from everyone. Whereas before I was trying to, uh, just learn and tell everybody else what they should be doing. I just turned that around.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 32:01
Through the journey, Alan, from, and I guess the transition from you having, you know, the first part of your life where largely you've like, you retreated, you dealt with everything on your own, you didn't communicate extremely well or very effectively from what you've said, and then getting through a whole lot of years of learning and changing and being able to then have a, start a better relationship with yourself. What, what was the thing that took you through? If there was something, was it a deeper faith, a belief, a knowing, something that actually pulls you through from where you were to this completely new, I guess, life?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 32:44
It was when I, in my earlier years, it would have been that, um, desire to have a relationship that kept on moving me forward, thinking that other people got relationships, you know, sooner or later I'm going to get one. If I keep doing something new, I'll get a different result. But then I looked at in the later years, it was not so much that anymore. It was realizing that to have patience and if I focus on other people helping them, that's, it's a bit of the old sort of saying of give as gain. The more people you help, the more that No, they'll help you. It's like having a bank account. You can't, can't take money out of it until you put money into it. And so I realized that, and I started talking to a lot of people, especially out bush, they started talking about their backgrounds and everything else. And when they talk about where they've come from and what they've been through, I started to realize that everybody's got a story and everybody's story is different and therefore everybody's story is valuable. And that led me, uh, through those years to keep wanting to know more about other people. I'd learnt not only, um, I had my NLP masters that I picked up. I'd worked with color therapies and sound therapies that I'd, uh, taken into places like the Singapore Hospital for the kids with ADHD. I'd moved into, um, looking at other, uh, races and religions and, uh, understanding, uh, what they went through. Sitting around a campfire and just letting somebody talk and not saying anything, uh, in return, just letting them, uh, take the conversation where it needed to go. I've done that for many years, and it was about 4 years ago I thought, right, how do I make this a little bit more formal or a bit more, uh, realistic? Instead of just doing this, how could it be a bigger impact? And that was when I decided to, uh, create the Campfire Project. Because as I, as I said, worked through with the Aboriginal side. After I came out of there, I was a Freemason for a while, and Freemasonry was about brotherly love, relief, and truth. It was about helping men to become better men.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 34:50
Mm-hmm.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 34:51
So I thought, what a natural blend. Bring boys into manhood and then help them become better men. I realized that when I was helping other people, I was learning so much. So if I wanted to find more answers about where I needed to be and what I wanted to understand about myself, I did it faster when I was helping others. Yeah. And so with the Campfire Project, invited men in to tell their stories, you know, without judgment, without counseling, without criticism. And in those conversations, I learned a lot from them. I realized what they'd been through. And I look back at my stuff, you know, like I mentioned, trying to commit suicide at the age of 9 was nothing compared to what some of these men have been through. And I started putting things in perspective a little bit more. So it was less focus on me again. Then when I brought them into panel discussions and realized that the wisdom that those men had when they felt safe to be able to share their stories and then, you know, step into those. But, um, I'd had women in the group from day one, not because of any other reason than the fact that I didn't want it to be a men's group. I wanted men to feel safe to be able to tell their stories, but I also wanted the women to hear how they could speak. When they felt safe to do so. You might say I was trying to help all these other men to achieve something that I'd never had the opportunity to achieve myself, and that was to have, uh, women listen to me. You know, two divorces, a lot of broken relationships. I wasn't batting, you know, real well in that game. And so if I could help other men— and in that, that was when the women started sending me personal messages going, but heard these men's stories. We love the fact that they can talk so deeply about their emotions, and at the same time, we're fascinated that they talk with such wisdom about how to improve communities. Can we get involved? Which was my plan from the beginning, waiting for the men to step up first, and then when they were ready, then get the women to come in as well. And in 4 years now, we've had over 500 hours of conversations one-on-ones and panel discussions. We've, uh, got all genders, all religions, all cultures. We've got all ages. The oldest person I've interviewed, 99 years old. The youngest one to actually conduct an interview where he interviewed his father with his own questions and held the interview for about an hour was 9 years old. You know, as I said, all genders, all religions, all cultures, no bigotry, no sexism, no racism. And not once in all of those conversations anybody being disrespectful to anybody else. So I created the environment that I never had as a kid that I was always searching for.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 37:32
Yeah.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 37:33
And because of that, now I'm backing away because I also realized that a leader's job is to make themselves redundant by raising others up so that they can do what, uh, you were doing beforehand and hopefully do it better than you did it. And that's what we've got in the Campfire Project. So we've got both men and women who are doing one-on-ones, like conducting them, running panel discussions, bringing people together, which allows me to step back and do a little bit more in other areas. And at the same time, we've now got the Business of Smiles. It's now a charity that's come out of the group, of which I'm one of the 3 directors on that. So my 68th birthday, they pulled a surprise on me. And there were people from all over the world coming to that birthday party on Zoom. It was right in the middle of COVID and on my 70th birthday, they had a big Zoom meeting and I thought, well, they couldn't beat the previous year. They did. They had video after video of people from all over the world, you know, thanking me for what the campfire meant to them and what the relationship meant to them. So when I stopped trying to build the relationships, they came flooding through the door. While I was chasing them, it's like, well, I suppose like chasing a fox. You chase a fox, it's gonna run. The moment you stop chasing it, it will stop to have a look and we'll see what's going on. And when I stopped chasing it, the fox came back.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 38:55
How rewarding was that? Hey, it's, um, it's so beautiful, Alan, hearing all of that. And I love how curiosity and a genuine desire, like you said, just took you through and you always wanted to learn about other people and understand them because obviously that was the thing that was missing from you as an early age. And so you needed to understand how humans operated and connected and what, how emotions played into it and how we could get along. And you've created this beautiful, diverse group of humans who can share in, in a most loving way. That's just gold. Mm-hmm.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 39:34
So, and you know, that need to be able to build relationship, that led to me becoming a profiler and learning different skills to be able to read people the way I do. So now I can look at a child and recognize if something's going on pretty quickly, and then through conversations and getting the right people around them, we can then, uh, work around the issues that are affecting that child. So again, I'm now able to do for a lot of, uh, uh, other people what I could never do for myself. And that was also a lesson to me as well, is that quite often we spend so much time trying to do things for ourselves when If we stopped and we trusted the people around us, got the right people to come together, we would have their support and life would be so much easier. And doing it together with others, which is why I created the hashtag #WeTogether, the Campfire Project, because together we solve the problems, not separately.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 40:30
So true, Alan. Um, it's almost like something that we've forgotten as a society. You know, the importance of connection and sharing and learning to trust and be open so that we can help each other rather than being these little isolated people trying to solve everything ourselves and do everything ourselves. Doesn't work that way. It doesn't serve us.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 40:56
If you take the, just the example of the, you know, um, being a man or the man, you know, when you're trying to be, uh, the man, the same thing goes for women who are trying to be the woman. They're out there competing with everybody else. They've gotta be in front and it's a lonely place when you're in that position. You've got no real friends. You're always looking over your shoulder to see who's coming up to pass you. But if you're trying to be a man or a woman, you're trying to be the best version of yourself. And it's what you desire is to have other people like you around you. So one goes into very lonely competitive place and the other is a community. It's where there's a lot more joy. And when you bring people around you like that, yes, you've then got to learn how to trust people. But when you bring the right people around you like that, it's so much easier to trust.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 41:47
Couldn't agree more. There's a lot to take from that, Alan. And I'm sure that anyone listening to this can resonate and hopefully see how, you know, how you've demonstrated the, the solution that many of us really need because we're not born having the, the, all the skill set of human relationships. You know, it doesn't come naturally to all of us. So I want to thank you for sharing your wisdom and the journey that you've been on. Absolutely fascinating. I've absolutely loved it.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 42:22
Thank you very much.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 42:23
It's, it's just a joy to hear. You've given me a lot of perspective, you know, and insights and learnings, which is just wonderful. I'm wondering if you were to look back on the journey and even before, you know, the pivotal working with the Aboriginals, what's been a silver lining for you?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 42:47
Well, I think the silver lining, when you look at all the things that have happened to me in the past, which I've only just touched on a few of them today, The fact that I've survived is silver lining, you might say. But, um, I, I think the desire for something better is the one thing that kept me going. Otherwise I would've given up a long time ago. But, um, one of the things I did realize that changing the way I looked at things, like I was devastated when my second wife left. Mm-hmm. And it was, that was, you know, at the turn of the century. That's about 20 years ago now when she actually left. And it was about 6 years ago, there was an opening of a, um, health, uh, outlet here in Newcastle, massage therapists and others. And I went along for the opening day, and one of her ex, um, flatmates from many years ago when I first met her came up and stood beside me. And, uh, she turned around, she said, oh, she said, um, Caroline, I thought you'd like to know, she's found a new partner. She's really happy. Now, I know that I had the feeling that she was trying to have a dig, but all of a sudden I felt so warm and so happy. And then I realized that before that, losing her and the relationship we had and everything else, it was more lust than anything else. Now I understood what love was all about because I was so happy that she was happy. She found somebody that was really important to her. And I realized that that would never have happened if I hadn't had the relationship with myself first.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 44:19
Mm.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 44:20
If I'd been looking for relationship with others, I'd be like so many others who break up from their partners. I would've been, uh, unhappy that she was happy. And that's not love. So if I, uh, could ever say that I loved her at that moment, I did.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 44:35
Oh, wow.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 44:35
It's, um, and I think that's one of the things to realize that so many people break up from their, uh, partners. They're angry at them.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 44:42
Mm-hmm.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 44:42
If they got children, They've got to be careful about what they say because they're telling their children that, um, half of them is no good if they're whinging about their ex.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 44:51
Yeah.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 44:52
At the same time, if they're not careful, they're the ones that will lose that relationship with that child because the child will resent the fact that you keep telling them that half of them is no good. It may not be conscious, but it'll sink through unconsciously over time.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 45:06
Yeah.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 45:07
So realizing that if we really do care about somebody, then we're happy to let them go. And that's made, that really cemented my relationship with myself.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 45:18
What a wonderful, I guess, realization and, and moment to, to understand and see that and feel it too.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 45:26
That's it. My first wife, when she left, I could be very angry. She told me that I wasn't good enough to be a husband and left the boys. Um, over the years, she came to me about 6 years ago. This is well after my second divorce. And she needed somewhere to stay for 3 months. And she said to me, Alan, you've got a spare room, could I be a lodger? Just, you know, separate lives, as long as it's separate lives and it's 3 months. Anyway, she moved out 3 and a half years later. And people went, how in the world could you allow that to happen? Yeah, why do you even bring her in the first place? Well, I've got 3 sons who I love and respect, and the way that I treated her is a reflection on the way they will treat women in their lives. So Yeah, I did it for that the first time around when I made sure the boys respected her when they moved back out of my place and moved back with her. But also to make sure that, um, uh, in that process it was all about me letting go of my stuff as well. And it was easy for me to change my decision on I was angry at her to the fact that if we hadn't been together, I wouldn't have those, uh, 3 sons that I love and respect, and I wouldn't have my 6 grandkids. That I have now. And so therefore I could love her for that and not need to be in love with her, and therefore no need to be angry with her either. And that was why I was able to cohabitate for 3 and a half years.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 46:41
I love hearing that.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 46:42
It's all decisions we make.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 46:44
It is, really is.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 46:45
Things don't happen to us. It's what we, um, decisions we make that happen to us, not what other people do.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 46:52
Alan, you've shared so many things today. If there's someone listening to this who has gone through anything, any similar challenge to you, and I suspect that most of us go through relationship challenges as well. So I'm sure any, everyone listening to this can relate to something that you've said today. Is there any piece of advice that you'd like to leave them if they are going through that at the moment?
Aveline Clark (Host) · 47:15
Yeah, well, no matter what situation we have in our life, if we change the way we're looking at it, everything that feels negative ask yourself what the positive side of it is, because you can't have one side without the other. Look at that and then go, okay, if that's what the situation is, how can I look at this differently? What can I take out of this? Always look for where it's taking you tomorrow. When you get caught up on what's happened in the past, that's when people feel lost, and that's when they're likely to take their lives. But the other thing is find the right community as well. As I keep saying to people, what we do for ourselves dies with us, but what we do for others and for the community is and always will be eternal. And when you do that, you're part of that community. So what you do for the community, you're doing for yourself as well.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 48:06
Wow, what a beautiful piece of advice to finish on. Yeah, that's really, really strong and heartfelt. So thank you so much, Alan.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 48:16
My pleasure.
Alan Stevens (R) (Guest) · 48:19
Thank you for listening to this episode of Connecting Seniors, a Consider Heroes special series.
Aveline Clark (Host) · 48:26
Thank you to Colin Lilly for permission to use Broken as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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