A Wiradjuri man, an adventurer, an ethicist and a prison officer turned Sister of Mary sit with what most of us are taught to look away from: grief, and the frames inherited from institutions that no longer hold us.
Gina Chick, Simon Longstaff and Sister Anayah speak of grief not as something to overcome but as something that reshapes us. David Beaumont speaks of the colonial project, and the institutions that carry or fail the people inside them.
Together they trace a single arc: systems coming apart, disconnection from each other and from nature as the wound beneath the wound, and what it asks of us to live with open eyes today.
Warning: this chapter references suicide. If you or anyone you know needs support, reach out to beyondblue.com.au or lifeline.org.au.
Hosted by Eleanor Gammell.
alivetothis.com
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Guests:
Gina Chick
Wilderness instructor · writer · winner, Alone Australia S1
Winner of the inaugural season of SBS’s Alone Australia, Chick is a wilderness instructor, rewilding facilitator and writer who has spent decades teaching primitive skills and grief work. Her 2024 memoir We Are the Stars weaves survival, motherhood and the loss of her daughter into a meditation on being fully alive.
Simon Longstaff
Executive Director, The Ethics Centre
Executive Director of The Ethics Centre in Sydney since 1991, Longstaff is one of Australia’s most-quoted public philosophers, advising boards, governments and broadcasters on questions of integrity and applied ethics. He hosts the Centre’s long-running IQ2 debates and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas.
Sister Anayah
Sister of Mary · former prison officer
A Sister of Mary who once walked the corridors of a maximum-security prison as an officer turned chaplain. Sister Anayah speaks from the place where institutions meet the people they hold. Her practice is one of presence, prayer and quiet defiance.
David Beaumont
Wiradjuri man · advocate
A Wiradjuri man whose work sits at the intersection of cultural reclamation, colonial trauma and the slow business of listening. He speaks of the institutions that carry or fail the people inside them, and of what it asks of us to live in this land with open eyes.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlivetoThis
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