Kintsugi Heroes
Gregory Smith · 51 min
Abandoned at ten, institutionalised, diagnosed a sociopath, and living alone in a rainforest for a decade, Gregory Smith rebuilt his life from nothing to earn a PhD and his first tenured academic position at sixty-four — proof that it is never too late to begin again.
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Gregory Smith's earliest memory is of violence. At two years old, his father threw him against a wall. By ten, his mother drove him and three siblings to what she said was an auntie's house. It was an orphanage. Over the next decade, he moved through reform schools and boys' homes, fighting preemptively because he was small, spending weeks alone in concrete cells. At seventeen, a state psychiatrist labelled him a sociopath. At nineteen, he was released with $2.25, secondhand clothes, and a warning not to come back.
Gregory spent ten years alone in a Queensland rainforest, brewing alcohol and growing herbs to numb the pain he carried. Psychosis crept in. When three strangers challenged his plan to die there, asking what his sisters would feel if he disappeared, he reconsidered. He left the forest at forty, weighing forty-two kilos, hit by a car on his way out. Months later, sitting on a park bench at forty-five with nothing but a backpack full of drugs and alcohol, he had a vision of himself wielding a sword against an invisible enemy. He realised he had been fighting himself his whole life. He walked away from that backpack and never looked back.
What followed was harder than survival. Gregory took a free computer course at TAFE and discovered he loved to learn. At forty-six, he had his first coffee with another human being. A lecturer offered him work before he finished his degree, on condition he continue to honours. He completed a PhD at sixty-four and received his first tenured university position that same year. He is now sixty-seven, a father, and a consultant to major organisations. The gold in his cracks is not what happened to him. It is what he chose to do next.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses abuse & exploitation and addiction & recovery, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Blue Knot Foundation (complex trauma): 1300 657 380 · blueknot.org.au • 1800RESPECT (family, domestic & sexual violence): 1800 737 732 · 1800respect.org.au • SMART Recovery Australia (addiction): smartrecoveryaustralia.com.au • ReachOut: au.reachout.com
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