Grit Diaries
Cecilia McKenzie · 44 min
A proud Wiradjuri woman who survived childhood sexual assault, her mother's attempted suicide, and coercive control goes on to become a nationally recognised First Nations advocate — proving that healing is hard work, but it is possible.
Cecilia McKenzie is a Wiradjuri woman and advocate who has turned profound childhood trauma into purposeful work for change. At ten years old, she was sexually assaulted by a stranger in a park. A year later, she discovered her mother in crisis after a suicide attempt. She was forced to testify against her perpetrator in court at eleven, and her parents' marriage fell apart. Yet within this darkness, certain people showed up. A sexual assault counselor helped her reframe what happened. At boarding school, a music teacher stopped the choir mid-song and told her to keep singing, recognising a gift she didn't yet know she had. Cecilia trained as a classical singer, but it was blues, gospel, and soul that let her sing trauma out of her body. Later, an unhealed wound of abandonment led her into a relationship shaped by coercive control, another painful chapter born from seeking to be saved.
Healing, Cecilia learned, is not someone else's job. It is hers. It means sitting with wounds instead of walking around them, processing pain until the wisdom surfaces, building grit with each hard thing endured. She has done this work while raising daughters, while her mother remained distant due to stroke and hospitalisation. Forgiveness came not with her mother, but through becoming a mother herself, moving from child and parent into two women together. Now Cecilia works as a counselor and advocate, advising government on coercive control policy and supporting survivors. She speaks of songlines, the ancient Aboriginal roadmaps kept safe through story and song, and sees her own testimony as a roadmap for other women navigating their own fracture and rebuilding. She believes her responsibility is to find her gifts and her purpose is to give them away.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses domestic & family violence, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • 1800RESPECT (family, domestic & sexual violence): 1800 737 732 · 1800respect.org.au
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