Nicole Peterson · 109 min
Nicole Peterson survived the unimaginable twice, her daughter Emma's miraculous first survival from suicide at thirteen, and then, after seventeen months of hope and healing, Emma's death by suicide at sixteen, and tells that story with unflinching honesty so others living through it know they are not alone.
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Nicole Peterson survived the unimaginable twice. Her daughter Emma, at thirteen, survived a suicide attempt after jumping from a cliff on the first day of Year 8. After seventeen months of genuine healing and hope, Emma died by suicide at sixteen. Nicole tells this story with unflinching honesty so others living through similar darkness know they are not alone.
Emma was born with vivid personality, creative from her earliest years, always in a fantasy world and changing outfits throughout the day. But as she moved through primary school and into high school, unspoken struggles accumulated: bullying, a vomiting phobia, learning difficulties that went unsupported, unwanted sexual attention online, and the weight of trying to fit in with a crowd that felt unsafe. A community death and a GP appointment where Emma disclosed suicidal thoughts set off a chain of events that led to her first attempt.
What followed was a hospital stay, physical recovery, and then a darker spiral. When Emma returned to school, peers told her she should have died, that she should kill herself properly next time. She was assaulted, sexually abused, stalked. For nearly two years there were seventeen hospital admissions, self-harm, substance use, and a family holding on by threads. Then, without warning, something shifted. Emma stopped drinking, started watching a show about faith with her parents, and for seventeen months the family experienced warmth and genuine connection again.
Ten days after Emma spoke at a fundraising event as a youth mental health ambassador, after a confrontation with boys at a kia stop triggered overwhelming shame, she did not recover from it. Nicole carries gratitude for the time they had together, and for knowing her daughter as she grew into the woman she was becoming.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses abuse & exploitation, grief & loss and suicide & self-harm prevention, 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 • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
“I just never could have fathomed how dark things could go from there. I thought at that point that I'd had this terrible experience and that we were going to go up from here.”
“Mom, I would have answered. I didn't want to do it, but at that point, I'd said that I was going to, and I didn't want them to call me a tryhard.”
“When whenever I did raise concerns at the time, most of the time those concerns were minimized, told it's nothing to worry about. It's only later when something happens that suddenly people have a different attitude.”
The hero, today
I had never questioned the move to Australia, I was actually quite pleased to have a fresh start, because I'd come out of many years of a bit of a tricky friendship at school. When Emma started high school, she was so desperate to be accepted and to be liked that she went in with a persona that wasn't actually herself, and things just became a stark difference from primary school. When the GP asked her 'Do you have a plan?' in a stern voice, I think it made her feel like she needed to have a plan, because normally when a man in his 60s says something like that, it sounds like an accusation that you haven't done something you're supposed to. You've got to get busy living or you've got to get busy dying, I've tried to be intentional about holding on to things I can be grateful for, even when I haven't felt it, because anger can just shrivel you up and destroy you. If Emma had died when she was 13, I just didn't even know her then, but we really got to know her as she grew into the woman she was becoming, and I'm so grateful for that time that we had with her.
Yes. Nicole Peterson 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.
I had never questioned the move to Australia, I was actually quite pleased to have a fresh start, because I'd come out of many years of a bit of a tricky friendship at school.
When Emma started high school, she was so desperate to be accepted and to be liked that she went in with a persona that wasn't actually herself, and things just became a stark difference from primary school.
When the GP asked her 'Do you have a plan?' in a stern voice, I think it made her feel like she needed to have a plan, because normally when a man in his 60s says something like that, it sounds like an accusation that you haven't done something you're supposed to.
John Milham (Host) · 00:02
Welcome back to Kintsugi Heroes, helping people tell the stories they need to share so you can find the stories that you need to hear. In this episode, John Milham is joined by Nicole Peterson. Nicole's journey began in South Africa, surrounded by a close family, before moving to Australia in her teens. She built a new life in Sydney, found love, and raised raised two children. Nicole faced immense challenges, including her daughter Emma's long struggle with mental health. Through faith, family support, and her own determination, Nicole found strength enough to care for Emma, support her son, and hold her family together. She shares her story with honesty, offering perspective and hope to others living through difficulty. Ladies and gentlemen, fans of Kintsugi, welcome back to another Kintsugi Heroes podcast. And this one is a Stories That Matter. And indeed today it is enormously exciting to talk to somebody who has a story that matters in so many ways. Today is a tough story. So I would just ask you to take a big breath and to welcome Nicole Pedersen. Nicole, welcome to Kintsugi Heroes.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 01:22
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
John Milham (Host) · 01:24
It's my pleasure. And of course, Nicole, You are a graphic artist, you live on a beautiful part of Sydney, you have a lovely family, you're a woman of faith and an incredible positive person, which has really had some challenges put to it. But before we sort of head into sort of recent times, can I ask you a little bit about, you know, how you see yourself and then, you know, where you originally came from? Right, to get to here?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 01:56
How I see myself? I don't know. I'll start with where I originally came from. I grew up in South Africa, in Cape Town, and I have a very loving family. So I have an older brother and older sister. My brother's still in South Africa and my sister is in Australia, and a younger brother. And yeah, when I finished high school, my whole family moved to Australia. So I got to finish high school in South Africa and came and started uni here. So moved to the Northern Beaches and immediately went to Canberra to study for 4 years, which meant I came back to the Northern Beaches every weekend for 4 years and it quickly felt like home. And yeah, so I've lived mostly on the Northern Beaches ever since 1996, so nearly 30 years with a 5-year stint.
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You've got to get busy living or you've got to get busy dying, I've tried to be intentional about holding on to things I can be grateful for, even when I haven't felt it, because anger can just shrivel you up and destroy you.
This conversation includes a girl with personality from day one, moving from south africa as a teenager, meeting chris and building a life together, emma is born, and everything changes, signs no one could see and the year leading up to the first attempt.
John Milham (Host) · 02:45
Which almost makes you a local.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 02:47
It does. Almost, almost. 5 years we spent in Hawks Nest, my husband and I, after we got married. And then we moved back to the beaches and have been here ever since.
John Milham (Host) · 02:56
That's amazing. The concept of immigration at that age, right, where that just kind of that pivotal transition point, you know, was that exciting or was that problematic?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 03:06
Yeah, I've reflected on that a bit. It's weird because if I look at my son now, who's about to finish Year 12, if we told him that we were about to move to the other side of the world, he'd be, you know, no, you can't take me away from my friends. And, you know, but I never questioned it. I was excited about the move. We'd come here on holiday only really after my parents had told us that we were going to move. I suppose I'd come out of many years of a bit of a tricky friendship at school, so I was actually quite pleased to have a fresh start. It helped that I had a boyfriend at the time and he was older and he was working at my dad's company in Cape Town, and my dad gave him a job in Sydney. He could come out for a year, so that kind of helped. And yeah, it was, it was a good— it was just exciting. I mean, in Cape Town we didn't have the freedom that you have here, you know, so So suddenly we were in a place where we could walk to a restaurant at night and catch public transport and get around by ourselves. And yeah, so it just opened up the world for us quite a lot, being a lot safer.
John Milham (Host) · 04:08
Of course, South Africa was a difficult place during that time when you were growing up. Anything that's difficult often creates strong bonds. Did you believe you sort of gained from that time, or was it just something that you were destined to become? Become Australian?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 04:25
I think certainly, you know, having grown up in a place where we were very privileged but we could see the very, you know, stark divide and see the terrible poverty and inequity, and yeah, I don't know, it gave us a different perspective growing up about how actually privileged we are. So I think a lot of Australians, particularly in the Northern Beaches, you know, don't really realize how good they've got it. And while we were ones who had it had it good, we saw, you know, how terrible it was for other people up close, up front, and that really— yeah, so I mean, it was an unpopular time for our family to leave when we did in '96. It was kind of seen a little bit like, you know, you're abandoning your country, but my dad had offices here in Sydney. He was just on a plane next to a man one day whose wife and daughter had been raped. And he just said to my dad, well, what are you waiting for? Are you going to leave before that happens to your family or after? And he was like, yep, we're going now. So yeah, we— and, you know, I'm very grateful that we did move here. And I don't think you ever lose your roots. Still took a long time, even though you think it's so similar. People moving from South Africa think, you know, it's because of the climate and a lot of the culture, but it's It's a lot of nuance, a lot of difference. Took a while to feel at home.
John Milham (Host) · 05:49
Interesting. You know, living on the Northern Beaches, did you embrace the Northern Beaches kind of culture? Like, did you take up surfing and embrace the water?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 06:00
And I love the water in the shallows, so I've never been a surfer. I tried once in Hawks Nest, not in Northern Beaches, in very shallow water, but it was Yeah, I'm a bit scared of being out deep, but I absolutely love the beaches. So I'm always walking on the headlands, running, swimming in the mornings— not proper swimming, just splashing in the ocean. And yeah, I definitely have loved the beaches. It was strange at first because of the sand being golden instead of white, but we got used to it.
John Milham (Host) · 06:35
Your family is a very tight one. It's important what was your path to family?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 06:42
Well, I met my husband Chris actually when I was 19, so really, really young. So in my end of my second year of uni, I think.
John Milham (Host) · 06:51
By that time you ditched the Saffa bloke, he was no good for you anymore.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 06:55
Yeah, he was a really lovely guy, but yeah, when I met Chris—
John Milham (Host) · 06:59
Couldn't last the change in countries, right?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 07:02
No, it was hard. He did come over for the first year and then the second year was long distance and yeah, I didn't love that. But yeah, Chris is Ozzy, and he was introduced— we didn't actually know we were being set up on a blind date through some mutual friends, but we were, and it kind of worked. We ended up getting married. I was quite young, I was 21, we just— he was 25. Yeah, it's been our 25th wedding anniversary, will be in December.
John Milham (Host) · 07:31
So was your family view traditional, like you talk about, you know, Christian faith and so on. You know, was that part of your early years, or is that something that's been more recent?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 07:43
Yeah, I grew up in a Christian family. My mum was always a Christian. My dad used to go to church with us, and then he, he stopped for a while. He thought he was a Christian, and he was trying to be a good Christian. He hadn't actually grasped the concept of grace. He ended up becoming a Christian when— after we were actually married. But yeah, we definitely always went to, I always went to church with my mom. I think for me, I had a faith. I just don't think I really understood it properly from a personal perspective until I was older, after I had some time to walk away from it and go, yeah, no, it's not for me. I want to go and do all the fun things and then realized it actually wasn't that fulfilling. And yeah, it was actually when I met Chris, he had also come from a Christian family, Christian background. He had his own faith and had kind of walked away for a little while. And he was sort of coming back, which I didn't really realize. So it was kind of one of those things where we'd, you know, gone away for a weekend and he was like, well, I'm going to church tonight, so do you want me to drop you home or do you want to come to church with me and we'll have dinner afterwards? And I was like, oh, I don't want to go to church, but I don't want to go home yet. So I went and yeah, I think like for the first time I really understood what grace was, what actually, yeah, and became a personal thing for me.
John Milham (Host) · 09:08
Yeah, what did you want to do with your world? You know, like, you come from South Africa, you're in a new country, you're building a relationship with that, you're studying at uni, you've got, you know, a career ahead of you, you're building a concept of that, and then you meet a man and, you know, you build a family in that. Like, you've got a lot of development to do. What did you want to do with all of that? What was your driver? Forward?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 09:33
I suppose my dad, because he was a very successful businessman. For a period of time there, I thought, you know, yeah, I want to be this career woman and be successful and, you know, be important and do, you know, I don't know. I finished uni, ended up— Chris and I got married pretty much after I graduated, and I started working in design, just freelancing for like Girlfriend magazine. And it's not quite what I It was pink, the pink and orange phase. And yeah, I kind of, I was, you know, it was okay, but it wasn't, you know, we then actually decided to move to Hawkes Nest. Chris was a builder at the time. We were trying to see if we could afford a house in the Northern Beaches, which we just couldn't quite get something with the double garage, which is what he needed for his building. And his family had always had a holiday house in Hawkes Nest and we'd We loved it up there, so we thought, well, let's, let's move up there and we can afford a house. And turned out that my dad followed us up there. There was a hotel for sale and he was having a midlife crisis, clearly. He'd sold his publishing company and I kind of dropped the design stuff for a while. We all hands on deck running Faulty Towers, as we called it. Aye, Tim. Oh yeah, we had a lot of funny stories and it nearly tore the family apart. And then actually Chris and I ended up with my dad's help starting a cafe when we were up there. So we completely went off the rails of both of our careers and ran an art gallery and cafe for a number of years, which is then when we first had our daughter Emma and decided it was time to move back to Sydney. And that's— yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 11:10
So you end up with 2 children and Emma came along first. What's the difference in ages?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 11:15
2 and a quarter years.
John Milham (Host) · 11:17
Yeah, it's a busy time really.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 11:19
It was very busy, like the first 5 years of our marriage because we didn't have kids until then was actually full of adventure. So we kind of, you know, the café thing was a great adventure. Eventually we realized we didn't want to run a café for the rest of our lives. And even the hotel things, it was just nice experiences. We weren't particularly pursuing any, you know, goal. We were just kind of rolling with whatever life was throwing at us and enjoying it. And then we decided to have our first child because some friends of ours were having theirs and we just thought we'll copy them. So, and then, uh, yeah, it was pretty when we had Emma, we were still living in Hawkes Nest, and I realised actually I'd like to go back to Sydney where there are a few more people. It was just a very— a lot more people live there now, but it was a very small town at the time, and I just felt a bit isolated. So Sam, our second child, our son, was born when we were back in Sydney. Right.
John Milham (Host) · 12:17
So what was being a mother like?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 12:19
Yeah, it was— I mean, I absolutely just loved her from the, you know, from the first moment. I'm not one of these people who's, you know, baby mad. I've never been someone who's, you know, desperately wanted to hold everyone's baby, but I didn't have any fear that I wouldn't love my own child. And I did know that I wanted my own children. I'm just, you know, my sister and her daughter, I mean, they'll hunt people, strangers down and ask to, you know, squeeze their babies. I've never been like that. So, you know, I was very excited when we found out that I was pregnant. And, you know, did all the normal planning for, you know, something that you can't plan. And as it turned out, the birth was, you know, none of all those essential oils and smelly candles and things were, you know, ever unpacked. It was a really terrible birth actually, which ended up in a very traumatic experience, which is, you know, interesting. So I didn't start out feeling very well equipped to look after a baby, but I absolutely fell in love with her the moment I saw her. And yeah, it's just an instant. I remember feeling terrified, just looking at this little, this beautiful little baby, just thinking I just had never felt that kind of love before. And all of a sudden, the vulnerability of that, of feeling like, you know, I felt like my heart would always be outside of my body and actually, you know, I was now the most vulnerable to being hurt that I'd ever been in my life before.
John Milham (Host) · 13:59
After, you know, Emma's 3, you've got a baby Sam, was everything going along swimmingly?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 14:05
Yeah, I think, you know, after the traumatic birth that Emma had, everything else was great. You know, the kids were healthy, Sam's birth was easy. I was definitely a bit more of an anxious mum with Emma, partly because I think the first 9 months of her life were in Hawks Nest where I just felt really alone. And, you know, we moved back to Sydney and I was around other mums more, and then I kind of, you know, it just, it felt easier. And by the time Sam came along, I was, you know, much more relaxed. I mean, you know, I didn't— no one babysat Emma for, you know, many, many months. Sam was like, day one, yeah, you can hold him. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 14:47
And how was Emma as a young baby and ending up going to school?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 14:51
Emma was such a character. You know, some kids haven't found their personalities yet. Emma was born with this personality, and she was so creative from this tiny little thing. She would— I mean, she learned to draw so early, like, you know, under, you know, 18 months. She had little characters that, you know, she would draw that you could see, you know, kind of what she was drawing. And, you know, she drew them all over our walls, and she was always, you know, she was always in some sort of fairy tale fantasy. She spent her first preschool orientation day— I went to pick her up, and I was just chatting with one of, I think, the teacher's aides, and I was watching her just playing. She was having so much fun, she didn't want to come home. The lady said to me, oh, your daughter Chloe is such a character. And I was like, no, no, that my daughter's Emma, that one. She's like, no, yeah, that, that, that's— she told me her name's Chloe. She's been the whole day as Chloe. So yeah, she's just, she was, she's messy and, you know, she always, she would, you know, change her outfit probably, you know, 6, 8 times a day. And her room always looked like, you know, there was an explosion or tornado had happened. And yeah, she was just full of life.
John Milham (Host) · 16:12
Some of those things I recognise would have ended up getting me in trouble. So you must have been a terrific mother.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 16:18
I know I had my fair share of losing the plot.
John Milham (Host) · 16:25
Parents, we kind of interact with our kids as they grow up and we get this sense often it's being informed by our own upbringing, right? We don't have a model of care of our own yet, right? What did you hope for Emma and Sam?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 16:40
I mean, I feel privileged that my parents never put expectations on me to be anyone other than myself, and I've never had that for my kids. I've just always wanted them to be happy and kind and caring towards other people, to, you know, be secure and know how much they're loved. We really wanted to raise them with strong boundaries so that they would know how to you know, be able to behave in this world in a way that, you know, doesn't isolate them, but in a way that they still have their freedom to express their own personalities and pursue their own dreams.
John Milham (Host) · 17:16
It sounds like a beautiful model. Emma, with all her, you know, quirky energy and so on, did you know that she was going to process the world differently?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 17:28
You know, it's so hard because She was my first child, so I was a first-time mum, and it's really hard to know what's normal. And I actually think, you know, I always knew that she was very sensitive, she was very soft-hearted. There was certainly nothing that would be seen as, you know, a big red flag or an alarm bell, nothing, you know. But she has such an incredibly soft heart and you know, could get incredibly upset by little things, an insect being hurt, or— and she had a tendency to, you know, sort of lean into the melancholy, which is not really that unusual. I mean, I used to remember sitting there watching Charlotte's Web over and over again as a child and just crying my eyes out. And, you know, she would do that, and then she would brush it off and go play and be skipping around and laughing and happy again. So there was never anything that anyone of us could see was markedly different. She battled a bit. I mean, you know, it's one of the things, you know, you've phrased this, it's been quite frustrating is, you know, when— whenever there were times when I did raise things or raise concerns at the time, most of the time those concerns were minimised, told us, you know, it's nothing to worry about, it's just part of developmental, you know, growth or whatever. It's only later when something happens that then suddenly people have a different attitude and they go, oh, they start writing notes and, you know, and then they're more interested. And it's like, well, I get it, because actually most of this stuff is, you know, just part of normal development. And actually then sometimes I suppose comes down to what experiences affect your natural tendencies as to which paths, you know, get taken. But it has been an interesting thing to reflect on.
John Milham (Host) · 19:22
Interesting that you say that. I had a conversation this morning with someone who was asking me about outcomes, and I said, well, the absolute surest way to diagnose, you know, say suicidal ideation or distress is to have it happen, because that's the only way you can often see all of the milestones clearly, are to look back. Otherwise, it's just you know, the experts can't do it, mothers and fathers can't do it, friends can't do it. It's sometimes it's just really hard to put this puzzle together. Did you ever imagine that Emma would see the world so bleakly that she would decide taking her own life was an option?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 20:09
Never in a million years. No, just never. I couldn't even contemplate something like that. I remember The first time I even heard about a young child taking their own life was— I think Emma was about 11, 11 or 12, and it was my sister telling me because this had happened at a place where she worked, one of the mum's children. And at the time, her daughter, Emma's cousin, was the same age as this child, 14, or just a bit younger. And it was just inconceivable to me, you know, I was like, but that's Rachel's age, and that's, you know, that's Emma in 2 years' time, like, or like when, you know, I just was, I was like, how, how could, what could possibly make a child do that? And, you know, I ashamedly would have had the sorts of thoughts like, I suppose you never know what happens behind closed doors. There must have been something that people couldn't see that was deficient in the family. You know, there's got to be some reason because it's, it's safer for that to be the truth than for it not to be, actually. So it was easier to believe that.
John Milham (Host) · 21:23
Absolutely. And similar to you, I heard of a 12-year-old boy who was the son of a, of a football friend of mine. And like, I had to— yeah, made that very same, you know, so embarrassingly now when I think back to what I know now. When I think back to then, just, you know, the judgment I made about, you know, the tragedy that he was going through, thinking, wow, he, you know, he doesn't look like someone who's, who would, you know, contribute to that. And of course, that's nothing like it. So do you mind if I share with the listeners the circumstance originally? So you have Emma was 13, she just started high school, and that was her first attempt Just for the sake— I hope I'm not causing distress, but I really want to share. You've got so many insights. The idea that somebody, you know, people will say, oh well, I'll be able to see that, or there'll be some sign or something. What was the circumstance leading up to that first time?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 22:26
I'll go back just a little bit earlier than that, if that's okay. When Emma started school, primary school, we were living in a different area, so she started She did kindy, Year 1 and Year 2, and preschool actually. She started off with 2 little friends who were at preschool and followed her to the school, and then they formed part of a wider group of friends that just, you know, I know it's a bit of a place and time thing because I've spoken to the mum of one of the girls who's had younger siblings, you know, that didn't have that experience, but they were just this incredible group of friends that just were so supportive and didn't— weren't bitchy, you know. They had their little tiffs and their fights, but they'd work it out and, you know, and it'll be fine. And we ended up quite abruptly moving during the school holidays between Year 2 and Year 3 for Emma. And actually, when she was at that other school, one of the teachers that she'd had in Year 2 had highlighted that she had some, you know, have some learning difficulties. They were giving her multi-lit support and they'd done some psych assessments and seen that she had some very, you know, low processing speed. So she was having some issues and they were really getting on board to help her and manage that, which was fantastic. And then, so we didn't know we were leaving the school at the end of Year 2 and during the holidays we moved to a new suburb where, which was too far away for her to continue at her old school and it was literally, we were across the road from the new school so it was a no-brainer. And she just never quite found her feet like where she'd started. So, you know, you can't go into the what-ifs, it drives you mad, but I sometimes wonder, what if we hadn't moved? You know, she, at the new school, it didn't seem like the psych assessment report was ever really taken seriously. Year after year I'd take it to the teachers and nothing would be done about it. They didn't have multi-lit, they didn't offer her any extra support. And so, so later, you know, she was diagnosed with ADHD. So, but, you know, in girls it's quite different. So she was just, she was a, you know, a good girl, a people pleaser. She wanted to, to be good, so she was just trying so hard and not getting the results. But I didn't care about that. I would always say, I look at your effort score, you know, you're always up there, you're getting 5 for effort, and that's all I care about. So she never quite got the easy friendships. She started in about Year 4 experiencing some really, you know, horrible bullying that escalated to, you know, a point where we had to go to the school. And they did actually deal with it really well, and it seemed to sort of resolve, and things got a bit better. And by Year 6, she was, you know, getting more confident and She'd developed a bit of a phobia. Clearly there were some anxious tendencies that she had, and she'd developed this phobia around vomiting, not herself vomiting, but if other people vomited. So we had started seeing a psychologist to help her because, you know, she would— she'd be terrified to get on a bus in case someone vomits, and she didn't want to go on school camps because someone might vomit on school camp, and she didn't want to go on excursions. And so it was kind of limiting her life. And unfortunately she was taking that out mostly on her little brother Sam at home. It was kind of, you know, she was behaving herself so well around people at school that she unleashed on him. So it was kind of getting a little bit out of control. She'd be watching what he would eat in case he vomited. And she had started building these little neural pathways where when she got really bad with it, she would escalate and say things like, 'If someone vomits, if he vomits, I'm going to jump out of the bus and kill myself.' You know, when I was like, this is not normal for a child to be saying this, it was, you know, minimised in— and I don't blame the professionals, how do you know?
John Milham (Host) · 26:35
But, you know, you can imagine someone awfully saying, oh, it's an attention-seeking, acting out kind of behaviour.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 26:42
Yeah. And, you know, it was kind of like a threat in the heat of the moment and then it went down. So she kept building these, you know, grooving these pearls in her brain. That this was a legitimate outcome if things were getting too hard. And then she, you know, she started to do amazing work with a psychologist. And it so happened that at the time, both my husband and myself were made redundant at the same time. So we had this nice big payout. And we ended up, you know, we'd used all our 10 sessions, and we ended up trying, you know, going and getting a whole nother 10 with a different psychologist who was doing hypnotherapy that we wanted to try. And he was really into exposure. Therapy. So, you know, he brought in a little jar of vomit for her that she had to take home and hold and watch all these movies with, you know. And it really worked. So by the end of Year 6, she was, you know, she had a fantastic time in Year 6 camp and she'd grown in confidence. She was excited about taking the bus to high school. And I think, you know, she'd kind of, she'd become, realized that she was actually quite funny, you know, getting her confidence up a bit. And she'd become a little bit of the class clown in Year So I think when she started high school, she was so desperate to be accepted and to be liked and to be accepted by the popular group. She kind of went into high school with a persona that wasn't actually herself. And she, she was also, I mean, I would say, you know, she, she was a girl who developed physically really early, which she wasn't happy about at all. In, you know, Year 6, she, I remember having to buy her, you know, bigger, bigger shirts, even like in Term 4, which was like like, you know, ridiculous. But, you know, she was wanting to hide that. And then things just— once she hit high school, it's just such a stark difference between primary and high school these days, and it's such a sexualized environment. You know, she was accepted into the popular group to start with and quickly realized that it wasn't a safe place for her to be. You know, after a little while, she just she said to me, you know, 'Mum, they're just— they're so bitchy to each other, to everyone.' And she got sucked into that herself, you know, a little bit. And from day dot, it seemed like everything, you know, like they're trying to prove themselves by being open to all the sexual stuff that— actually, Emma was only 12 at the time, you know. She was— she only turned 13 towards the end of year 7. Extricating yourself from the popular group is not a safe thing to do either. So she was ostracized for a while and was very, you know, very unhappy and had become a lot more anxious. And then eventually about in the middle of the year, she found a better group of friends and, you know, there were some really nice girls and she just kind of, she settled down a little bit. You know, up until that point, nothing had happened ever that was anything for us to feel like she'd be at risk of anything major happening. She wasn't rebellious. She was a little bit cheeky. She was cheeky in high school, you know, we got a couple of— not a lot, but, you know, a couple of calls home from teachers exasperated, you know, because she, you know, was talking in class, or one time she superglued her fingers together or something, and, you know, yeah, mucking up, doing stuff.
John Milham (Host) · 30:12
Yeah, with ADHD diagnosis, did she have that by then?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 30:16
No, only hindsight. Yeah. She did shift even while she found better friends. She wasn't quite her happy self when she hit high school as she used to be. She would definitely come home, well, towards the end of the year. So we didn't know then at this point what was happening. We found out later that, you know, she was getting a lot of unwanted explicit things sent to her on her phone from people that she didn't even know. We were very tech cautious. We didn't let her have social media. We didn't let her have— she couldn't download apps on her phone without giving permission from our phones. And she didn't have cellular data, so only Wi-Fi. But, you know, it turned out later to be a problem because we couldn't track her, but we fixed that later. But, you know, kids get around all this stuff, so, you know, she'd use her friends to start an Instagram account, you know, on their phone. And all of those things are designed to hide things from parents, you know, disappearing messages and, and all of that. So she was starting to get attention that she didn't want, didn't know how to, how to handle. She was not coping very well at school. She was really drowning with the work, so feeling like she was stupid. She was put into, you know, this dumb class for maths, as she called it, and feeling like she was failing in everything. She had a boyfriend, like this boy asked her out when she was 12, and immediately it just— something wasn't quite right, and she wouldn't talk about it. They broke up the very next day, but later found out that, you know, her first kiss was non-consensual and scary, and he started stalking her. And so it got to a point where even, you know, though she'd been flagged as a child who would need extra, you know, orientation time at the school, and they said, you know, they're all very much into, you know, mental health care, and they had a therapy dog. She would go to the office to see the therapy dog in tears, and she'd be told, "Go away, that's for people with real anxiety." And something started unfolding that we didn't realize towards— so she finished Year 7, before I go there, and towards the end of Year 7, she was really not herself. And I actually said, why don't we go back and see the counsellor that she had seen before for the vomit phobia, because she really liked her, and talk to her about, you know, what's going on. Because she wasn't really talking to me, she wouldn't really open up about what was going on. She'd just come home and burst into tears. And so I made contact, and unfortunately she was on maternity leave, but she gave us the name of someone else to see who she thought Emma would like. You know, all of a sudden the year ended and we hadn't actioned it, and it was school holidays. So we thought, well, we'll pick it up next year. So that was— she finished Year 7, and then it was the school holidays between Year 7 and 8. And in those holidays, she got more and more withdrawn. We had a very busy time with family staying with us. So when everyone actually left and we had the last sort of 2 weeks of holidays, you know, I just thought also everyone's exhausted, and so it was normal for her to want to be in her room and be away from everyone. But she was just listening to headphones all the time. She had this boyfriend who kind of kept— they kept texting a lot, but he kept breaking dates, and she was just, you know, not herself. And then I didn't realize, but, you know, later it came out that, you know, she was— there was a situation unfolding there that a very young girl doesn't know how to cope with, and it was— she was in over her head. And then tragedy struck our little community, and, you know, on the Australia Day long weekend, someone that she, she knew that we had— we knew at a, you know, arm's length distance the family tragically died. And it was one of those cases that was all over the news because he was reported missing first. You know, Emma found out through the grapevine before any of us found out, and she was devastated, and we all were. It was another one of those scenarios where we couldn't believe this tragedy had hit so close to home. You know, we canceled our plans on the weekend, and we just grieved. And what I didn't realize was the sadness overwhelmed Emma, and I just thought it was sadness. But what was actually also happening was that she was starting to formulate that this could be a way for her to get out of the situation that was overwhelming her, and it gave her means. I think she'd been thinking it, but she didn't know how to do it. And, you know, And one week later she did.
John Milham (Host) · 34:40
That's just a really terrible sort of scenario that Emma's, you know, in that space at that time with those things going on in her life contextually. And one week later she's acted, but of course she didn't die. That story is tragic. I hope you're okay to share it. It's just that the level of harm that she suffered Right, just, it's incredible to contemplate.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 35:08
Yeah, no, I don't mind sharing at all. It was unfathomable. So I'll take a, you know, a couple of steps back. And as I said before, the what-ifs will drive you mad. And, you know, there's so many, there's so many. I mean, honestly, for me, I feel like if that day hadn't happened, the whole course of her story would have changed. And you know, that it was the first day back of school for Emma, for starting Year 8. And what I should say also is because this had affected her so badly, this death that happened on the long weekend, immediately the day, the first business day afterwards, which was I think the Tuesday, I phoned a GP that we had seen just for, you know, normal physical health stuff. And I could get in— this was before COVID so you could get appointments. Actually, the first thing I did was I phoned and made an appointment for the psychologist that had been recommended for the Wednesday. And then I went to the GP on the Tuesday to do the mental health care plan with Emma. And I just thought she needs to speak to someone about this. And, you know, at that point she had never expressed that she had suicidal thoughts of her own. There's a GP who was clearly not someone I would have chosen for a teenage girl, but this was a means, a necessary thing that we had to do, and he was clearly out of his depth and he was reading from the script. So when he said to her, you know, "And have you had suicidal thoughts?" and she said, "Yes," and, you know, I'm standing there looking at her, you know, quite shocked to hear that out loud. I hadn't asked. I hadn't done all the training before. I didn't know I needed to. And then he, in a very authoritative voice, said, 'Well, do you have a plan?' Which I had the opportunity to unpack with her later, made her feel like she needed to have a plan. Because when a man in his 60s, in a stern voice, says to a 13-year-old girl, 'Do you have a plan?' normally it's an accusation that you haven't done something that you're supposed to. So she clearly started formulating a plan, and the next day we went to see the psychologist. And, you know, I kick myself. She still thought we were there to talk about— yeah, and not really settling into high school. And I didn't, you know, even though this poor girl, you know, she's probably only in her, you know, mid-20s, I deferred to her process of letting Emma go speak to her first rather than saying, no, actually, I want to I'm going to have a chat with you first. This is what's happened. I didn't do that. So that only kind of got spoken about at the very end of their session where then Emma did admit that she was having suicidal thoughts. I'm sure there's application for all these things that they do as process, but you know, the doing the traffic lights, safety plan, you know, it's only going to work if someone's going to be honest. And the next day, you know, so we would— I was told, you know, green, she's safe. Amber, you know, she's not feeling great, but she's, she's okay. Red is when, you know, we need wari and black is, you know, I don't know, call for help. And Emma went through this and the psychologist, you know, said it's very important that Emma still has, you know, freedom and she doesn't want to be treated differently. And this is all said in front of her, of course. So the very next day, which was Emma's first day of Year 8, and I wish I had never sent her to school because we were actually supposed to be going that night up to Hawke's Nest for a family, my mum's 70th birthday. So it felt like, you know, she wasn't even going to school on the Friday, why bother one day? But, you know, she— 6 weeks of holidays, man, I was happy to get the kids out of the house.
John Milham (Host) · 38:52
That's parenting. Parenting, send kids to school, right?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 38:57
Exactly. She needed to go and work out her timetable. And of course she went to school and was confronted with the grief of the boy who had died, who was at the school. And, you know, she's in the same year group as his younger brother and friendship group as his younger brother, and the school's reeling and grieving. And the boy who had stalked her and had the, you know, very confronting first kiss had left the school, but he was suddenly back and sitting in the dumb maths class—in inverted commas for those listening—you know, giving her death stares as she walked in. It was all too much. And the boyfriend who had I'd, you know, been very happy on text but not in person, wasn't talking to her or something. And so it was just all too much. And so she came home and it was a 36-degree day, so it would be normal that she was hot and bothered. And she was— I said, "How was your first day?" And, you know, she wasn't very happy about her timetable. She wasn't in any classes with any of her friends. And, you know, I asked about the situation, you know, with the grieving, and she didn't want to talk about it. And so then I was just waiting for my husband to come home. From work so we could get on the road, and he was quite delayed. So I was packing up, getting ready to go, packing the cheeses and champagne and pâté and choosing what dresses I should pack for the party. And I kept saying to Emma, you know, come on, pack your bag, pack your bag. You know, she kept going back into her room and playing on her phone, and go on, you know, pack, we're going soon. And she came out and she said, when's Dad coming home? I said, well, he hasn't left the city yet. So she said, well, can I go to Coles? I was like, why do you want to go to Coles? I just, I just want to go for a walk. I just, I just want to go for a walk. And I looked at her and I said, where are you on this traffic light? And she's like, oh, I'm, I'm Amber. I'm, I'm feeling, I'm fine, I'm safe, and I just need to go get some fresh air. You know, psychologist said you need to give me my freedom. Yep, she used those words against me.
John Milham (Host) · 41:06
They're so clever. So clever.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 41:08
And I said, okay, you've got 30 minutes. You just go to Coles and you come straight back. 30 minutes and then we're going. And so she left. And I realized then when I was, you know, rushing around the house packing that it had been more than 30 minutes. And at that point, Chris was phoning me saying, oh, where should we get dinner now that it's late, you know? And I said, I need to go. I don't know where Emma is. And I started calling her. And it just rang out. And that was not like her. She's not a child who would ignore my calls. I rang and I rang and I rang, and I think I got 18 missed calls. And then I started ringing her friends and texting her friends and, "Have you seen her?" I just knew something was desperately wrong. And my poor little boy Sam was only 10 at the time, and I said to him— we were living in a security apartment block and I, you know, it was still daytime. I said, you call me immediately if Emma comes home. And I didn't even take my water bottle. I just took my phone, put my running shoes on, and I just left and started running down, speaking to her friends. None of them had seen her. And going to Coles, showing her picture, and, you know, the lady said, oh, don't worry, Mum, she's a teenager. And at this point, I can start hearing the sirens and the weather's picking up. I think they'd probably started a little bit before, but, you know, I'm just— I was still on my mission, and the wind is now, you know, whipping up into a frenzy, and I can hear a helicopter, and there's just police car after police car and ambulances and just going down the main road. And I ran out of coals, and I nearly jumped in front of, you know, 3 lanes of traffic before I realized I had to wait for the traffic lights, and I phoned police station and I said, I need to know what's happening, this is the situation. And they said, oh no. And then I specifically said, you know, where I was worried about, and they said, okay, well, we can report that a girl has fallen. And I was immediately, oh, you know, what does she look like, is she blonde? And they said, she's, you know, she's broken her legs, and they weren't going to give me any more information. And at that point I realized, you know, I just need to go. So I hung up and I just ran. And I was very fit at the time, which turned out to be good training because I ran from one suburb to the next on my— was my normal Headland running track. And later, you know, looking through my watch data going, oh my gosh, when did my heart rate ever peak to 205? And I was like, oh, that was it. That was the 31st of January between 6 and 7 PM. And I just remember like, you know, my husband calling me at some point as I was running and he was on the train from the city to Roseville. He hadn't heard from me since I said, "I've got to go, I'm worried." He hadn't even known that any of this had happened with the psychologist. He'd been away at a work function the night before. I'm home after I'd gone to bed, didn't know that Emma had expressed suicidal thoughts. We hadn't had a chance to speak. Yeah, I just, you know, I'm there panting, going, "It's Emma, it's Emma, it's Emma!" And he's like, "How do you know? How do you know?" And I said, "I gotta go." Yeah, I just ran down to the carnage at the beach, saw all the emergency vehicles, saw all these families, some faces I recognized sort of standing there with these children by the pool keeping them away. And I just yelled, "Where is she?" And they just, you know, pointed me in the right direction. And clearly the police had shined ahead to say, you know, hysterical mother's on her way. They were waiting to keep me away. So I arrived at the scene, later found out, only 30 minutes after. And, you know, they wouldn't give me any information, they wouldn't let me close. And I kept trying to describe her and asking questions, and they kept bringing me little items like her Apple Watch, which I set the password, which was very secure, 1111, but of course I couldn't even remember it at the time. And I kept saying, I'm telling you, it's her. I can see the clothes that you've cut off on the rock. Those are my shorts, she borrowed them. It's her t-shirt, that's what she left the house in. Yeah, so it just— all of, you know, one thing I've learned, I'm no good in a crisis. Either shut down or I go hysterical, and this time I just shut down. So, you know, my husband's calling me for updates, and I was, you know, almost— I couldn't even speak to him. He ended up having to speak to the policeman to get anything sort of, you know, and he's just there on the train trying to come to terms. I remember him saying to me, repeating, like, are you serious? Yes. Are you telling me our daughter did this? Yes. And like, I was getting angry with him, like, why would I make this up? Like, he's— I'm not realizing he's just trying to process this, this unfathomable thing. And, you know, he's— yeah. So, you know, obviously they were, they were working hard on her. It wasn't, it wasn't an believable miracle the way things unfolded that day. Because it was 36 degrees, there were swimming lessons that would normally happen on a Thursday afternoon, and because it was so hot after the swimming lessons, the 3 families, the mums with their kids who did the lessons, had all stayed to have a swim. And actually, some of the kids had asked if there'd be a memorial for the other boy, and so they actually had walked over to look. Unfortunately, the younger kids had turned away at the right time. The older girl saw Emma, saw it happen, and the younger kids had not seen it, but when they looked back, they saw a girl there who wasn't there before. And so, like, they, you know, one mum went to run to be with her, one mum called emergency services, the other took all the children away. There was also a doctor on the beach having a swim, a nurse separately who said she never normally swims at that beach, and a surf lifesaver who could open the lifesaving club, which was now closed, to get the oxygen, get the first aid equipment. So they were working on her before the ambulance even arrived, which undoubtedly saved her life. That's a miracle that I can only attribute to God. But she would have bled out, her lungs were punctured, she would have suffocated. Would have if she didn't have that provision right then and there, immediate provision.
John Milham (Host) · 48:05
A seeming miracle to, like, to keep that she survived. When did you know what happened? When did you work it out?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 48:14
I knew immediately what happened. There was no doubt in my mind. The police and the paramedics didn't necessarily think that at first. I know the primary school people for some reason, not by our doing, came up with some cock-and-bull story that she was laying flowers and fell. It wasn't us. We didn't— we weren't trying to hide what it was. And that actually, I think, made it worse because, yeah, I'll go into how, how she was, what the reaction was later. I knew immediately, and then because I'd been phoning all these friends she had told the boyfriend that she was going to do it, and he— it had been a very traumatic day, the way the day unfolded for him. But he had then sent a screenshot to one of the friends who showed her mum, who sent it to me. So there was unequivocal proof that I could show the policemen that this is what it was. And, you know, unfortunately, in his trying to work out what to do, he had involved some other friends saying this was going to happen. So there were a bunch of teenagers whipped into a frenzy, who then started hearing the horrific news had come true. It was devastating. You know, the further north you are up the Northern Beaches, the more like a little country town it is. It's very insular. Everyone, you know, hears about this stuff. You know, I've even since in deconstructing what happened that day over years, you know, I've realized, you know, the people who were there, you know, who know this person, who know this person, who know this person, it's just, it's amazing actually the connection you know, everyone knew very quickly what had happened, even though from that moment we were airlifted out to Westmead and didn't even come back to the beaches for weeks and weeks and weeks.
John Milham (Host) · 50:07
I don't have words to describe how impossible that sounds, but you lived it. How did you get through?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 50:16
People always say to me, oh, I couldn't imagine what you're going through, I could never do I've imagined things before and gone, oh, there's no way I could cope. But it's incredible. I mean, we've seen throughout history what people can cope with. Humans have an incredible ability to cope with things that are unimaginable. For me, 100%, you know, God was with me and my faith played an enormous role. There was, you know, we didn't know if she was going to live or die. I mean, she was in critical condition. It's not like, you know, she had just broken her legs. She was broken head to toe. She was, you know, intubated at the scene. She was put in an induced coma. I remember feeling like I needed to behave like a very good girl and not be the hysterical mother because I really wanted to go in the ambulance with her. I'm in the air ambulance, the helicopter. The thought of driving all the way to Westmead, which was what the policeman was going to do, he was going to drive me. And I just remember thinking, they need to know I'm going to behave myself. And in the end, they said no, and then they said, oh, okay, let's check the weight. And so in the end, I was allowed to. And I, like, it was just surreal because you can't believe this is actually happening to you, you know. I feel like it's probably worse for the rest of my family who were finding out what was happening and the shock, because I was in the state of complete numb shock. Shut down. You know, it was— I mean, even that in itself, you have to put the headphones on in a helicopter, so I could hear what the doctor was reporting, what they were saying to each other, and it was terrifying. And, you know, the one of them standing is— yeah, the oxygen— yeah, squeezing the bag for her to breathe. And, you know, knowing that my husband's waiting at the hospital, just not knowing what's arriving, you know, is he even going to be able to see his daughter alive? Is he going to get to say goodbye? Is she going to survive? I couldn't even pray, I was so shocked and numb. But there was like a positioning of my heart of like, you know, God's in control here. Yeah, I suppose a peace of knowing that. Yeah, I think definitely what got me through that.
John Milham (Host) · 52:35
What do you now know? Because that very first time you're going through this incredible trauma that's impacting your everything that you know, right? Because like when someone's in hospital so gravely ill, that's— there's no normalcy left, right? So yeah, what did you learn from that time?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 52:57
Gosh, all the things that you think are important just get stripped away immediately. Like you just suddenly see see life with clarity of, yeah, hierarchy of what matters and what doesn't. And really, when it comes down to it, you know, all that really matters here in this world is our relationships, you know, our relationship to God, our relationships with each other. And that's what we really felt, our family, our friends, our community, just the love that was showered on us. You know, I still battle with it because I'm not someone who likes to be in debt, and I just feel like I can never pay people back for the love they showed me. And, you know, and I suppose you're stronger than you think you are. Things that you think, oh, I would crumble and I could never do that— surprise yourself what you do when you have to do it. I mean, man, I don't, I don't like gross wounds and blood and could never be a nurse. And, you know, by the end of it, here I was. I was, you know, you have to be really hands-on in hospital. I had to do some pretty gross things with all her wounds. And, you know, she ended up with an external fixator on her leg for the very badly damaged ankle. And I had to, you know, clean these pin sites of rods going through her bone. And it was disgusting. But, you know, it's amazing what you can do when you have to do it.
John Milham (Host) · 54:33
Were you sad? Were you frustrated? Did you feel like, you know, what came up for you? Did you feel like it was a mission, or did you want to run away? I cannot imagine what would you would go through, or all of those things.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 54:50
I was absolutely beside myself with gratitude that she was alive. I couldn't believe that we were in that situation. I think there was a— there was just this sense of unbelievable privilege that having grieved so weirdly for a family I didn't know so soon, days before, for everything that Mum had been going through, what I was imagining she was going through that I couldn't even put into tangible thoughts, that I was here touching my child and having the opportunity to care for her. And, you know, for the first, you know, for— it's not like we could speak to her yet, she was intubated still in intensive care, but she was opening her eyes every now and again and we could tell her we loved her and we could hold her hand and we could kiss her. And even if that's all I got, you know, that would have been— I would have been so grateful to have that opportunity. If even if, you know, it all ended in a few days, that was just a privilege that I knew every day was a privilege. Whatever the future held, you know, we were in this such privileged position. And one of the heartbreaking things was she must have been worried that we were angry. I was never angry with I just couldn't believe it. And when they first extubated her and take the breathing tube out, so the first chance she would have to talk, she was getting really agitated and she just kept wanting to say something to us. And of course she couldn't really talk yet, but she was mouthing it. And, you know, she was mouthing, you know, what she'd done, that it was intentional. And we just kissed her and we said, "We know, we know, we're not angry and we love you. We know." And she slipped back into sleep. But it was just, yeah, I could just imagine her waking up and the feelings that she was feeling, being so confused. She did not intend to survive. There was— she was terrified when she woke up. And then the feelings of, what have I done? And will I ever walk again? And is everyone angry with me? Yeah, that was heartbreaking.
John Milham (Host) · 57:14
How did she, as you supported her through an immense journey to some sort of physical rehab. How did she bear that? Is that the same, you know, resource, the same strength, the same endurance that you were calling on?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 57:34
You know, at first she, she didn't have any of that. She was devastated to be alive, actually, which was really hard. It was heartbreaking that she actually verbalised that to her little brother, which just broke him, one of the visits. And so actually in the beginning she was rude and grumpy and uncooperative because she was also in so much pain. So the only one she actually was— she was very loving towards her little brother Sam. She just kept telling him over and over again how much she loved him. But the moment she started having to participate in trying to get well or do things, yeah, she was a nightmare. And, you know, you couldn't blame her. She was literally broken from head to toe. She was, you know, on a PCA with whatever narcotics, you know, they went from fentanyl to morphine to, you know, you know, oxytocin, and, you know, she'd be pressing that thing all the time. And they were trying to get her to do really hard things. And actually, they were— they were very frustrating. She had 12 teams caring for her because it was such a complex trauma case, and none of them spoke to each other. So they were all giving us conflicting advice, and some of them were telling her things to do, things that were actually harmful for spinal injuries. And Actually got to a point where, you know, I'm not a confrontational person, but I had to throw the toys out, put my big girl pants on and say, "Why aren't you talking to each other?" Which I thought would have been a no-brainer for a place like Westmead Children's Hospital. You know, they separate conjoined twins and stuff. And apparently, you know, it became a case study and it's changed the way they handle complex trauma from now on. They actually now all get together and meet and they prioritize the needs. And, you know, which was bizarre. But the thing that changed it for Emma— so she started, I think, realising just how much everyone loved her. Not that she didn't know it before, but I think she hadn't been able to access that. So she started seeing just, you know, people had family flying in from all over Brisbane, Adelaide. People were there all the time to encourage her. And then actually she had this nurse who put her in her place, which was amazing. Nurse Nikki, who had actually been a patient at Westmead Children's when she was a child. She had had cancer as a child and she understood, you know, we were both experiencing a lot of survivor's guilt, which she understood. A lot of the people she was in there with as a child didn't make it. And she basically told her off one day and said, "Stop being so rude to us. You know, we're here to help you. And if you just have this victim mentality, you're never gonna get better. And you know, you need to, you know, get your attitude straight or something." And yeah. Yeah, totally shifted Emma's attitude. By physio that afternoon, the physio said, what happened? She's cooperative and she's trying. So yeah, and I think Emma had also realized, you know, that God had another plan for her, and so she was starting to lean into that.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:47
She was grumpy and she was lost. How did you change that? How did you get through the she needed to choose to live.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:00:58
Dutch traits. And, you know, I remember she was particularly rude to me. I was the one who bore the brunt of everything. So, you know, she couldn't move her arms, I had to scratch her nose, and, you know, she'd tell me, "Oh, you suck," you know, "You haven't done it right," or, "You're not there," or, you know. And I just used to, you know, laugh at her and go, "You can be as rude to me as you want." you can push me away as much as you want, I don't care. You know, as rude as you are, I'm more stubborn and I'll never give up on you, I'll never stop loving you. And I just wore her down eventually, I suppose. It's just the resolve that I had of, you know, yeah, you can throw whatever you got at me, I can take it, and you know, I'm still going to be here. And eventually she just, I don't know, one day she just softened and started to actually— I suppose as she started to feel a bit better physically, and you know, hospital's a really busy place, and we discovered some stuff. She wasn't that tech savvy back then, and she didn't realize that all these messages that she was deleting from her phone were actually still being uploaded to the cloud. One day by accident, Chris found that we'd— I'd had his laptop at the hospital so I could watch movies with Emma, and he had to go home and do a little bit of work. And so he pulled out her school computer and, and then remembered that he could check that. And so we discovered what had been going on in full uncomfortable detail. And, you know, we, we kind of called a moratorium on visitors over the weekend. The weekends are quieter in the hospital. Doctors aren't there. So we kind of said, you know, everyone stay away, we've got to have some tough chats. You know, we had some very long conversations. This was, you know, quite a few weeks into her recovery, so she could actually sit up in a wheelchair, a special wheelchair, and we could take her outside and have conversations a 13-year-old girl never wants to have with her parents. But what she wasn't expecting was that, you know, we just had grace and love for her and just talked through these things with her like an adult rather than, you know, 'How could you do this?' or 'How could you get involved in this?' or what, you know, we just— and I think she already started to understand, I don't know, just that she didn't need to do what she did, you know, that wasn't the way to get out of this circumstance, that actually, you know, she could have come to us and we could have helped her through this and that actually she's loved she's valued, and she was so important.
John Milham (Host) · 1:03:40
You know, the options often you hear, you know, people who work in this space, it's not about denying, you know, the action.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:03:50
You know, Emma should have been dead. I should have come onto that scene to find that there was no chance, and she survived. You know, later we got to unpack and ask questions, which is quite a unique situation. There's not many particularly young people who do something that really wasn't supposed to be survivable. It really was not a call for help. This was meant to be, you know, the end. It was heartbreaking. I said to her one day, you know, did you miss my calls? Was I too late or were you ignoring them? I had just missed her. I think I'd missed her by— when I started calling, I'd missed her by 3 to 5 minutes. And she said, "Mum, I would have answered. I didn't want to do it, but at that point I'd said that I was going to, and I didn't want them to call me a tryhard." That's what she said. And then they called her a tryhard anyway. That was the response she got back at school. They were saying that she did it for attention, she did it to steal focus. She did it for— yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:05:00
That's a whole section of just horror to me, right, that rolls out into Emma's story in a minute. But I'm inspired and impressed and amazed at your response to the emergency that you're dealing with. But it must have been overwhelming. You have a 10-year-old son and a husband and family and so on How did the logistics go? Like, that can't have been easy.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:05:28
Actually, my 10-year-old boy was still at home, and to be perfectly honest, I completely forgot about him. You know, I apologise to him for that. And it was my husband, it was Chris. He's great in a crisis. I think I said to the policeman, "Well, my son's at home," but, you know, I didn't think through what walking through the door with the policeman And he's at home, he's heard the helicopters, he's heard the sirens, he knows something's going on. And Emma was my focus. My sister went to go be with him, didn't give him all the information, but he knew something was up. She said that Emma's had an accident, we're not going to Hawke's Nest, she's going to have a sleepover. When something like this happens, we were ushered into a little private room where we could be as a family, and we were given a social worker to look after us. It wasn't really explained that she was there to help us. I thought she was there to watch us, to see what we said, to see what kind of family we were, because what kind of family does this happen in? And so I was already immediately feeling I'm the mountain, they're watching me to see where I've gone wrong. But anyway, that's another whole point. The point is that she said when your child's in ICU at Westmead, they give the parents a room in the hostel, which is on the grounds of the hospital. It's actually just next to the orthopedic ward, which later became very convenient. And so we were given this bedroom, which was amazing. And so Emma was obviously immediately whisked into surgery after they'd done the CT scans. We did get to see her— Chris did get to see her before she went into surgery. And they sort of said to us at about, you know, 2 in the morning, well, you should go and go to your room, you try and get some sleep, which of course was impossible for me. I lay there replaying this nightmare. Chris, I could hear snoring, but that man has a gift. But yeah, she was in theatre, there was nothing we could do anyway, and they called us when she was out. So So logistically speaking, my parents came down from Hawkes Nest and they moved into our flat and they looked after Sam. After Emma was out of ICU, we asked the social worker, please, if they could plead with the hospital to let us keep the room, because we were too close to qualify for the Ronald McDonald House. But oh my gosh, I mean, driving from Newport to Westmead impossible. And I just wanted to be with Emma all the time. And so they very kindly agreed to let us stay. We paid for it, but it was something like $70 a week, nothing in the grand scheme of things. And yeah, so at the time, my husband's work was very understanding. I was a freelancer. I just basically said to my clients, I'm unavailable. So yeah, it was— we were very well provided for, and we had meals brought to us all the time. It was amazing. We had friends and church community just through my sister would— so that, you know, I can't answer everyone's texts, she coordinated everything. So every day we had healthy meals to eat in this kitchen. And, you know, the other parents that we were in there with, you know, these poor people were eating Domino's and Lean Cuisine and the most, you know, un— just, you know, we needed fuel to keep going and we were getting nourishment for that. It was such a blessing. A group called Mums for Mums, they arranged for Sam to have school lunches every day. My parents didn't have to worry about packing him lunch for school. He just went to the canteen and wrote lunch order and they paid for that out of their charity, which was an incredible provision as well.
John Milham (Host) · 1:09:27
Community, of course, you know, the extension of of that question is you're in now for a long haul. How did the family stay together? You know, was it a touch and go?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:09:39
Did it put stress on? Yeah, uh, totally. I mean, we were always a close family, but this just brought us even closer. Yeah, absolutely. Relationships deepened and strengthened, and I think, you know, it's changed all of us, you know, particularly I think the grandparents' generation, my parents and Chris's parents, where this sort of stuff is, you know, really unheard of. I know definitely my dad has become much softer, much more compassionate. Yeah, I don't know, just the world's not so black and white anymore.
John Milham (Host) · 1:10:17
As Emma fought and physically she came back over some time time, her getting her mindset back onto the task of sort of moving forward in life. You guys did an amazing effort there, and consistent and over time. But it was like there were constantly obstacles put in place by the school environment and so on. What was that about?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:10:44
Why did Emma encounter negativity I think if Emma had done this in a vacuum without the complexity of the other tragedy, I hope that the kids would have showed more compassion and not being so cruel. It was fraught with being so close together, being at the same place and having very different outcomes. When some people's worlds have fallen into an absolute pit of despair for no good reason, another family is given a second chance. I just think it was embroiled with grief that children didn't know how to cope with. They're not mature. Feeling like the wrong one survived because she's not as important to them. Obviously you love your people, you know, being incredibly immature, just, you know, not being— I mean, these kids are 13, remember? Like, you know, we already had so much survivor's guilt. It was huge, it was massive. I just remember feeling so weighed down by that, not knowing how we could ever approach this. And so a lot of excuses were made for really bad behavior Yeah, but at this point in time, when Emma was, you know, still in hospital and so unwell, she didn't know this. We protected her from that. We found out, but we kept her safely in a bubble, you know. We didn't give her her phone back until 7 months later when she had to start school. So we had to do it for safety, and we needed to be able to track her. And that's the first time she— just before was the first time she kind of got an inkling of what had been growing and brewing. And you know, I, I know that in grief you want someone to blame and it doesn't always make sense. It doesn't have to be a logical, you know, thing. It just, she was an easy person to direct anger towards.
John Milham (Host) · 1:12:54
Yeah, I struggle with that. I really do. You and I both understand that Northern Beaches is an insular place, is a village. And I always feel like there should have been people who took more notice, right?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:13:10
Yeah, I mean, that time she became so warm and so open and so loving and so excited about life again and her future. And, you know, we had this— it's like, when in life do you ever just get an opportunity to press pause and everyone says, 'Oh no, that's fine, you do that and we'll support you in that'? And, you know, we had people even, you know, giving us financial gifts and helping us, you know, obviously with the food. And, you know, we didn't have to worry about the normal day-to-day life things. We just got to focus on, on our child and our family. And, you know, it took months, and we had some really intimate connections. We got so close as a family. It was beautiful. We actually, you know, we're so grateful for for that time. It was, yeah, we felt so loved by people, and we really thought, you know, okay, we are this, you know, God saved her for this incredible reason, whatever reason. We don't know why, like, you know, not like she deserved it more than anyone else, not like we deserved it, but, you know, what next? You know, we were excited.
John Milham (Host) · 1:14:15
What, what next? Did you ever feel like things were getting back to normal?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:14:21
Yeah, I mean, obviously, when she was so physically broken and injured, it was so obvious that something massive had happened. It was actually one of the hardest things coming back to the Northern Beaches. I felt like we were in the safe bubble in Westmead. It's so different. It just felt like we were on a different planet. And actually, being in hospital for any prolonged period of time feels like you're on a different planet. And no one knew us there. Everyone there is sick or injured. I mean, she was one of the worst. People would still stare at her and make comments. But it was so confronting coming back to the beaches, pushing my child in a wheelchair with a chest brace and a cast on one leg and this great big contraption that was fascinating for people to look at, is that this thing on the outside of her leg screwed into her bones, clearly something covering her head because something's gone on there, and all these, you know, everything. And I felt like, you know, walking her down the street streets, you know, to the beach or whatever, everyone was staring at us thinking, oh, there's the mother whose child has done this. But actually they were just looking at her going, what's happened to this poor child? And Emma would get, you know, a bit cheeky with it sometimes if she was in a bad mood. I remember one time this man came up to her, old man, and he went, oh, what happened there? Pointing at her ankle with this X fix. And she was like, looked at him with this disdainful 13-year-old look. She was like, I stubbed toe. I was like, Emma, don't be rude. But yeah, apart from, you know, as all these things started to come off, you know, months and months later, and, you know, eventually that X fix came off and became just a normal cast, and then it became a boot. She became just like someone who, you know, might have twisted their ankle playing a footy game. And it did feel like life was gonna— was starting to get back to normal. She was starting a new school, and, you know, they were really were really welcoming and supportive and had a really good plan for re-entry. We didn't think she was ready to go back to school yet, by the way, but psych team kind of pushed that on us. Yeah, it felt like we were just going to, yeah, go back to normal life. Never be the same again, forever changed, but we thought things were going to go back to some semblance of normality.
John Milham (Host) · 1:16:33
You had been through an incredible experience to that. Clearly things changed. What were you hoping for now, you know, as you went forward?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:16:43
Well, we were still shell-shocked. I was hoping just for some peace, restoration, uneventful, just boring, just wanted a boring life. I just wanted us to pick up these pieces and for nothing like this to happen again and for us to, yeah, just take what we had learned together as a family and to heal and to grow. And yeah, didn't have any grand plans. I just wanted nothing, uneventful. That's what I wanted.
John Milham (Host) · 1:17:21
It was some years later, you know, when I first met you and you were looking to give back and support the community, and you were still working through the fine-tuning of her recovery and she was, you know, coming back to some sort of lightness in her life. Would that, would that be a way of describing it?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:17:41
Yes, well, that was definitely happening after the initial attempt. I just never could have fathomed how dark things could go from there. I thought at that point that I'd had this terrible experience and that we were gonna, we were gonna go up from here. And I just, yeah, it just didn't work out that way. We don't need to go into all the, the depths of that, but basically when she was exposed to her peers again, when she was let loose back at school and started to realize what had been going on and the attitudes towards her and And she didn't respond well, you know, she's at this point, you know, she was still 13, nearly 14. I think there was a time where almost, I think she almost felt invincible because of what she had survived. And there was probably a degree of feeling like she'd used her suicide attempt almost like a weapon. You can't do this because of of, I don't know, what I've been through. So it also excuses what I'm going to do, maybe, I don't know. But basically, when she was confronted with the fact that actually people thought she was the wrong one to be here— first day at school, you know, someone said, oh, oh yeah, you're the girl who did this, but, you know, didn't do it properly. And people started to tell her, kill herself properly next time. And I think something snapped in her I think she was like, you know what, I will, but there's a few things I'm going to do first. And so she just dove into wanting to experience all these things before she was going to exit for good. But I don't think she was as committed to the exit plan because she'd also had a taste for, yeah, the love. And so it was kind of like she was half in, half out, and I think the turning point was, you know, things were going downhill rapidly when she started school. And because we were obviously hypervigilant, any relationships she had with anyone, we got involved with the parents very quickly, told them the story, said, you know, we need all eyes open. And one day I got a message from a mother of the boy she was seeing to say that she'd intercepted WhatsApp conversation where Emma was, you know, intending to take her life again. And so we were just at this point, you know, we'd been told stay away from the adolescent inpatient facilities, they were harsh places for a young vulnerable girl. But we felt like we got to the end of ourselves, like, you know, seems like we got there very quickly. This was now a couple of months of things just escalating, escalating, her behaviour getting worse, and she'd started running away. I'd wake up in the night and I'd find her bedroom empty and, you know, call the police. So it was getting very scary, so we agreed to let her go to Adolescent Inpatient Mental Health Unit. And, you know, that's where you don't stick a bunch of kids together who then compete for who's the worst and teach each other all their tricks and I don't know, that's when the self-harming started in a, yeah, scary way, and things just deteriorated from there. We then just went into, you know, further suicide attempts. Her school knew she couldn't come back to mainstream school, and the principal was amazing, and he worked really hard to get her a place in a school for special purpose, which she then got a place. So the Education Department has to, you know, offer a number of places. It's supposed to be a place just to help kids with emotional or behavioral disorders get back on their feet to get back into a mainstream schooling system. But, you know, the danger with that is that there are a whole lot of kids there who've had very difficult upbringings, involved in very difficult things, and when someone's looking for trouble, then they've got means now to find it. So when she started at the Beach school, she just gravitated straight away to the trouble, and she went headlong into, you know, drugs, alcohol. We just felt her slipping away. We counted over a 24-month period, I think we had 17 hospital admissions. Some of them were, you know, 8 or 9 weeks long. Yeah, it was just torment. We just thought, actually, it wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when. I would go into her room, you know, steel myself to go in in the morning expecting to find her passed or her not there and, you know, gone somewhere else. And yeah, I've just never known such a dark time where it was really hard to hold on to hope that things could change.
John Milham (Host) · 1:22:42
That kind of darkness shades everything in your life. Where was the light then? You know, like what kept you going into her room, you know?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:22:52
Like, well, to lighten the mood slightly, I was, I was always a cat person, absolutely avidly. And Emma always wanted a dog, and we always, nope. And actually, you know, we had two cats before we had kids, and they were always told, these are your big sisters. And when Emma was in hospital with, at Westmead, the Delta Therapy Dogs would come and visit on a Wednesday, and Oh my gosh, they— I just saw her face brighten up. She was so injured she could barely even touch them, but you know, she was really upset when they called her for MRI or something and she'd missed the Wednesday therapy dogs. And so we resolved, I resolved then, we're going to get her a dog. So we were in a unit at the time, so we— the moment we, you know, she was well enough, we sold, we rented a place where even before we had the dog, we had on the lease that there would be a dog. So we're not coming if you don't approve the dog. And so this little therapy dog that we got for Emma, this Pomeranian, which was meant to be, you know, for her. And she really did. She was probably the only thing at that time because, you know, remember COVID also hit. So we were in isolation with a child who kept, you know, running away and destroying the family life. You know, my poor little boy, just his life was just chaos. We tried everything we could to keep things as normal as possible for him, but you know, she was making that very hard. And the only one thing that we could all agree on was the love for this dog. So even when she was, you know, hated us and we were ruining her freedom, and but we could bring the dog and she'd regulate her emotions enough so that she wouldn't scare there, the dog, this little Pomeranian, and she wouldn't let us hug her, but we could all hug the dog together. So it was like we were kind of hugging her vicariously through the dog. So yeah, just continue to be a light when it's very hard to tangibly have a light. You know, it's, you know, I never lost my faith in God, but it's very hard to have tangible things when actually everything's fallen apart. And actually, you can't even access the normal supports that you would have because everything's shut down, you know, you're lucky if you can go for a walk on the beach and can't sit on it though, because, you know, that first lockdown, you know, moved on by the police. That was too dangerous, right?
John Milham (Host) · 1:25:21
Yeah, yeah, my goodness.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:25:23
You know, one thing I'd say, you know, she was treated with incredible cruelty that definitely sparked this off and that continued, and she experienced terrible things in that time. She was a victim of sexual assault and physical assault and things just kept getting darker and darker and darker. And she also behaved terribly. She gave fuel to the people who were hating her. You know, they started it, but she gave them a— There's complexity. Yeah, there's complexity. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we saw that as well at home, and I just thought, "Where is this gonna end?" And, you know, tragically, as I, you know, I'm ashamed that there were even times when I wondered, if it wouldn't have been better, you know, because clearly this was no way to live. And, you know, she'd been in trouble with the police, she'd gotten into, you know, bad behavior, Rikki Baker. Got to this point where, you know, Sam had just started at a new school, because this poor kid, you know, this all happened when he was in year 6, so then he had to go to high school, and we didn't have many choices where he wouldn't just be Emma's brother, you know. So his first year of high school, he was given an incredible opportunity to go to a school a bit further out, but he didn't quite cope with that. So now he was going, starting a new school locally, and I was just thinking, you know, just give him the first day, you know, to get through this without drama. And the next thing I get, I'm hanging out the washing on the line and I get a call from the police, you know, you got to come pick Emma up, you know, she's been caught stealing from the bottle shop and she's she's drunk and you've got to come get her. And I said, well, why can't you just put her in the cells and leave her for a bit? And they were like, well, we don't tend to do that, Mrs. Petersen. And I was like, but she's on her— she's had her third caution, she's had a Youth Justice Conference. We'd already been completely hamstrung. We couldn't get her back into community healthcare because it had to be voluntary, because now she was old enough, she had to consent. And they had actually said to to us, the only way is if the courts mandate it. Well, you know, clearly this kid's pushing every boundary. Why don't you let her sweat for the afternoon? You know, many times I was that mother that I probably would have looked at before trying to wrangle a drunk kid into the car, and I would have thought, you know, gosh, that family really doesn't have boundaries, or they don't, you know, it's so humiliating. And I just took her home and I just put her in her room and I said, you don't come out. You know, your next stop is juvie. You know, you don't come into my kitchen and eat my food, and you don't watch our Netflix, and you don't have your phone that we pay for. You stay here until I bring you something to eat, and, you know, we're going to talk about this later. You know, you've lost some privileges. I don't know, something shifted in her. And literally the next day, I didn't know this, but the next day she stopped drinking. Just a few days before, another big suicide attempt. That she kind of just did on autopilot. She said, "I didn't even want to die. I don't even know why I did it." You know, she was in recess for quite a long time with that one. And, you know, nothing like the first time. But anyway, things just suddenly started to settle and become more peaceful. And I couldn't quite work out what the shift was. But, you know, she started becoming warm and engaging with us as a family. And I got some non-dog hugs. We'd been watching the show with Sam. Well, actually, no, just Chris and I had been watching this show called The Chosen, which is just this modern adaptation of the New Testament story of Jesus. And she started coming and watching with us. And, you know, it took us a little while to believe that this was real, but it started to kind of settle in and she changed. I think she just realized this was not the life God had for her, and she started wanting to to live. And we had 17 months of that, and, you know, it obviously got better and better. It was genuine. She would, you know, she apologized for what she'd put us through, and we talked through things in a way that, you know, we hadn't been able to in that dark period. You know, she was a teenager, so she'd have these, you know, outbursts of frustration, and I'd think, okay, here we go again, we're back there. And then she'd walk back up the stairs and she said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that was unfair. So it was just like this incredible gift. It was just like overnight we got her back. It was just incredible. Our family started just, yeah, it was warm, loving. We just had this real hope for this whole new future together.
John Milham (Host) · 1:29:57
You said that was 17 months. That new hope, that new future, in some ways almost cruel to offer a glimpse of what could have been different and then wickedness came back. Had she lost her wariness, or what do you think? Why was that such a dangerous period?
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:30:20
She was a very innocent little girl when she did what she first did, and then she went through so much to recover from that. And then when she went into that dark period, she started doing some really terrible things, and she lost all self-respect. You know, she said to us in reflection later when she was doing so well that, you know, when she drank she became a monster and took drugs. You know, she was deeply, deeply ashamed of things that she had done, the ways that she behaved. She was carrying so much shame, and shame is incredibly dangerous. And she also was carrying so much fear because in that time while she was running towards trouble Trouble found her first. I would say that the things that set this off was, you know, reasonably unprovoked beating where she was, you know, knocked unconscious and dragged by her hair outside the bus stop by a girl, kicked repeatedly in the ribs. You know, that was the first thing that kind of, you know, switched it. She had experiences where someone had posted on social media a picture of her on their story and said, "If you see this girl, beat her up." So she got off the B-Line at Wariwood one day, and these 3 girls in hoodies, you know, beat her up as she got off the bus. They didn't know who she was, they just responded to, you know. The sexual assault that she experienced was incredibly scary. So she was 15, and this was a man who was 46, and it was— she was terrified. It's— that was where— when she she actually, yeah, she was terrified. It was a very dangerous, scary situation. And the feeling of knowing that you're hated, you know, she had experiences even when she was doing well where she would walk down the street and a group of boys one day came out of the pub in Mona Vale and just knew who she was and started calling her disgusting names and telling her she should kill herself. And she hadn't done anything. She had literally gone to the bathrooms at the library, you know, outside the library, was about to catch a kia ride home, you know, get ready for work the next day. She felt so vulnerable. She felt like this hatred. And, you know, I think there's a cruelty about the time when she was doing so well and she was catching a real vision for her future. I will say also, before I get there, that I also feel incredibly grateful for it because I got to say things to a 16-year-old daughter than a mother never does. There's a lot of regret I have, but I don't have a regret that I never got to say this. I never got to show her how much I love her. You know, we had a relationship that none of my friends have with their teenage daughters because it's forged through the fire. You know, 10 days before, you know, she was doing so well that 10 days before, she was a youth mental health ambassador speaking at a fundraising event, the old bank in the city, the Commonwealth Bank that Macquarie group in front of a whole, you know, room full of men and women in suits. And, you know, she had them laughing and eating, you know, coming up and congratulating her afterwards. And we went out for dinner in the city afterwards that night, and we were like, you're so close, Emma, you're so close. She was like nearly 17 at that point, 16, 9 months. You're nearly out of school. She had her L's. You're nearly going to be able to drive, and you're not going to have to worry about these kids in bus stops. And who knows what your future could be? You could be telling your story and, you know, you have a gift for speaking. And walk through the city. She was like, this is so cool. And, you know, it was just— restaurants were just starting to get the buzz back a little bit. And, you know, yeah, you can do this with your friends, you know, you can come into the city and this is your life you have ahead of you. And so I think she started to catch the vision for something, you know, she had been a bit, you know, like, what am I going to do? You know, she still had physical pain from the injuries. She hadn't been able to go through normal school, mainstream school, so she was thinking like, oh, you know, what are my options? And I think, you know, when someone cuts your legs off when you're up, it's a higher drop, isn't it?
John Milham (Host) · 1:34:32
So the tragedy is she made another attempt, and this time—
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:34:39
10 days after she spoke at that event, you know, a couple of days later, I look back at it. I went to a friend's 40th birthday, and some of these friends we hadn't seen, you know, since everything. And so they were asking, you know, "How's she doing? How's she doing?" The friends who faithfully prayed for us and sent us meals and all the stuff. And I remember saying— this would have been 8 days before— you know, "We don't even worry about it anymore." You know, "We're at this party tonight. She's home." She had a lovely boyfriend, just a wonderful beautiful young man, they were going out for a date. She was so excited, changing different outfits, you know, to see what she should wear. They were going to go, you know, to Sunset Diner in Avalon and have a hamburger and, you know, be there for Sam because we might be out late. And, you know, next day was my birthday and we had those Parents NSW vouchers that they gave us and you could use them at the Gold Class Cinema. So we went to go see Maverick and we hadn't paid for all the tickets. So we got, you know, nice food to eat, and she was so excited. She was like, "Oh, I feel so fancy. I feel so rich." You know, that week was the last week of second term, and, you know, her boyfriend had been around. She didn't go to school every day. She had a few free days, and, you know, they were just having fun together. And on the Friday, she was going to meet up after school, the last day of school, with one of the lovely friends that she'd known since preschool. And, you know, she was excited to hang out with her. And you know, they'd spent the day just mucking around at the mall and then they'd come back to, you know, further closer to home. And she phoned me and said, "Oh, we're having so much fun. Please can I stay out until 7?" And I thought, "Oh, okay, well, she's with this girl who's a nice kid and 7's, you know, not that late in summer." It felt late in winter because it was dark already. And I said, "Sure, you know, you can catch a kia ride at 7." And unfortunately, when she was waiting for the kia ora. This group of boys who knew her from before, the friend, you know, said she just felt the mood shift immediately. They started bringing up stuff she'd done in her past, and I'm not going to go into the part of the story in too much detail because there's no way of doing that without identifying people. Basically, they kept pushing and pushing, and at first the girls, you know, 17-year-old boys, 17, 18-year-old boys are big. They felt really intimidated, and they're just, you know, they pushed back a little bit, but they thought, okay, well, they're going to move on until they realized they were all waiting for the same kea ride, which if for people who don't know what that is, it's like a little on-demand minibus that takes you. So it's very small. And then they realized, okay, this situation is not going to de-escalate. And these boys, I think they'd had a bit to drink, they reckoned, and they thought they were being hilarious bringing up all these terrible things that she'd done. And she was just getting more and more agitated. And then once they were actually in the van, I think the one just kept pushing to the point where she lashed out and said something that she really regretted. And then she realized what she said and she apologized, and they didn't respond. And then the ride dropped her at home, and she just— she burst through the door in tears. For her, it was the shame. And what we didn't realize, that she'd had a little bit to drink that day, she'd broken her sobriety. She'd been sober for, you know, a good year, 16 months, and she hadn't had a lot to drink, but she wanted to be like a normal teenager on the last day of school, you know, normal in inverted commas. And so for her, it was these, I drank, and when I drink, I become a monster. And I drank and I said something I regret, so I became a monster. So the shame overwhelmed her, and then the fear. This boy was friends with a lot of the others who had hated her and told her she should die and she shouldn't have been the one to live. And so the campaign of hate was going to start again. She was only just starting to feel like she could be free from that, and so she wrote a very heartfelt apology that she sent, which was ignored. We knew this was bad, but we didn't think it was this bad. What she had gone through before was terrible, and, you know, we were very much, you know, oh yes, that was a terrible thing to say, Emma, you shouldn't have said that, you should apologize, but you were being pushed. So we were giving her, you know, yeah, accountability, you know, it was mitigating circumstances, and, you know, I'm sure he'll, you know, accept your apology. And I was like, I know the mum, I will fight for you if this starts again, I'm going to explain it. Nothing's simple, so there's compounding events, and, you know, the next day she still wasn't herself. A friend had spent the night, and Emma spent the night in tears. The next day, unfortunately, we were going to say goodbye to Chris's grandmother, who was— we knew she was going to pass soon, she was 102. And that was very confronting, and Emma found that really confronting. And, you know, with hindsight, I look at it and I think the conversations we were having— 'Yes, she'll be out of pain soon,' you know— was Emma thinking, 'I can be out of pain soon.' And then the next day was Sunday. So, well, we actually had a friend around for dinner the night before. So, you know, you think all this time that, you know, we weren't even—
John Milham (Host) · 1:40:02
you were enjoying the sunlight that had come into your world. World, right? Yeah, the normality.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:40:07
Yeah. And she seemed to, you know, kind of be feeling a little bit better on the Sunday. She came to church with us and she was still flat, but, you know, she was. And then she, you know, I suggested, why don't we watch a movie together? Chris was working on a weekend. He was trying to do this HubSpot migration, and he was like, it's— if I do it over the weekend, it'll be, you know, all done by Monday. And I was doing a little bit of work, and I thought, well, I can do this on Monday. So I said, why don't we go watch a movie? And we watched a movie in my bed, and, you know, we were giggling and laughing, and she started to— she seemed like she was feeling better. And she was then, you know, said, oh, I need to go, you know, call my boyfriend. And it just felt like the storm was passing, and we said goodnight that night, and it's the last time we saw her alive.
John Milham (Host) · 1:40:59
You told us who attended that you were grateful for the time that you had with her. Is that where you are now? Like, it seems such an incredible feat of strength for you to be in a place where you were grateful for her time, for the extra time.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:41:17
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's— we've just had the 3-year anniversary of her death and I can say it's been a roller coaster. Gosh, I mean, I've had such incredibly low periods, and it's, you know, grieving is not a linear thing. It's up and down and back to front and inside out, as you know. I mean, one thing that I've been intentional about from the beginning that I've tried to keep, even when, you know, the worst things came true, and our worst fears, and everything we'd prayed for and hoped for and believed we were having, and the whole future that we thought we had was just ripped from us in a moment. This is a problematic quote because if we're talking about suicide and we're talking about someone, you know, who did act on this, but one of my favorite movies is Shawshank Redemption, and there's a line in there where Andy Dufresne says to Morgan Freeman's character, you know, you've got to get busy living or you've got to get busy dying. If you're just existing, you're kind of just waiting for death. And what I've tried to be intentional about is holding on to things I can be grateful for. And I have had to do that as a discipline, even when I haven't felt it, because I've been so angry. I've been so angry that this is how our story ended. I've been so angry with people who hurt my child. I've been so angry with everyone who failed, I've been so angry with myself for the things I said that I shouldn't have said and the things I missed and the things I did wrong. But that doesn't get you anywhere. It can just shrivel you up and destroy you and then you really are just waiting until you get to go. And it's not necessarily true, right?
John Milham (Host) · 1:43:14
What you feel. But, you know, from an observation's point of view, it's not the story. Yeah, but that doesn't make it easier to walk away from.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:43:24
No. And, you know, I've spent a long time not wanting to really engage with life or with gratitude and feeling very sorry for myself and feeling very resentful that, you know, it sucks being the person in the room who usually has the worst story. Something that really shifted for me was one day we've ended up, you know, getting into a new house, which had its own blessings getting out of the house that had such terrible memories, but also been a very strange thing being somewhere where there's been no memories of Emma. Yeah, I can't picture her walking into the room asking for dinner, or, you know, there's no visual representation of her here. And one day I sat down to read this book called The School of Restoration, a story of Alice Atchim and her experience in Uganda growing up in terrible wars. And, you know, I was just reading this account after account after account of, you know, families losing this child and then losing this child and then losing this person, and they just have to keep moving on, and they don't even get a chance to grieve. And then the next loss happens, and the family, you know, they experience another thing. And I just, I was I was just struck that, oh my gosh, what I've experienced is heartbreaking, but I'm so privileged to be able to indulge in my grief. No one's sitting there saying, come on, move on, move on. You know, people have loved me and wrapped me and not expected things from me, and I've been able to have my own pity party, and I've been able to, you know, yeah, and other people don't get that. And it just doesn't take away from what I've experienced, but it just made me shift the way I was, my attitude towards it. And I really started to focus more on concentrating on what I was grateful for. So that time that we had with Emma, I'm so grateful for I'm just— if she'd died when she was 13, yeah, I just— that would have— I didn't even know her then, you know. She was a kid. She was just growing into the woman that we got to know. And, you know, she was incredible. She was so talented. And, you know, we really got to know her. And our relationship with our son, with Sam, like, we have a relationship with him that's unlike anyone else and their teenage son. And I'm so grateful for that too. I wish he'd had a normal childhood. You know, he's an incredible young man, and people tell us all the time, you know, what an incredible young man he is and how sometimes they wish their child would behave like, you know. And I'm like, careful what you wish for, because, you know, that's born of deep suffering, that maturity that he has.
John Milham (Host) · 1:46:19
You share of Emma is beautiful. I feel like from the story and from the memories you have so generously and so courageously shared with us. I feel like, you know, she would be someone to know, someone impressive, and her, you know, the season of her life is— it was important, you know. I wish, you know, things had been easier, but also, you know, the specialness of what you've done should be part of the story as well.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:46:52
Thank you. It is nice to hear. And the people who got to know Emma's heart, the people who really got to know her, absolutely loved her. She had a beautiful boss who gave her a chance at his hairdressing salon at a time when, you know, no one would give her a chance. They'd take one look at her and they wouldn't. And he was a man who'd experienced his own suffering, and he got to know her. He adored her. And when she was doing Transformed, you know, her school, the Beach School, became such a fantastic place for her to be because if you're not engaging in the trouble, it was just an incredibly nurturing environment where they just, gosh, just helped kids feel valued and feel like they could succeed at things. So she was their success story. She was going to be school captain or something, and she was on the leadership, you know, pathway for the next year. And, you know, they just all adored her and And everyone who really got to know her just had a special place in their heart for her.
John Milham (Host) · 1:47:53
I have kept you telling your story for so long. I am incredibly grateful for the effort and the, as I said, courage you've shown and demonstrated to all of us and inspired me with today. Thank you is way too small to express what you've done here for us today, but I know It's important. I feel like Emma's story has a place, you know, it needs to be told. And I think you will have also a place to share and make a difference in the world.
Nicole Peterson (Guest) · 1:48:27
Thank you for having me. Thank you for letting me share her story because I'm so grateful to have the opportunity so that she's never forgotten.
John Milham (Host) · 1:48:35
Yeah, I won't be able to forget, and I look forward to hearing, you know, other ripples not just the tragic ones. Many, many thanks on behalf of Kintsugi Heroes. Thanks, John. Thank you for listening to this episode of Kintsugi Heroes. 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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