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Running like China - Sophie Hardcastle speaks candidly about mental illness (interview, The Wire)

15/9/2015

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Image by Hachette Australia, publisher of Running like China
The odds are not in your favour if you’re hoping to cruise through life, avoiding the crushing weight of mental illness. At the very least, someone you love has probably spent too many days feeling stripped of their identity.

Maybe that someone is you?

A staggering one-in-five Australians find themselves trapped inside the belly of the beast and cannot see a way out. Tragically, many go on to take their lives, with suicide being the biggest killer of young people across the nation.

For a scourge that’s so widespread, there’s so much we don’t know, or are not willing to talk about.

Just ask Sophie Hardcastle, author of Running like China, a brave memoir about her battle with bipolar and her stubbornness to thrive, in spite of it. “We don’t have enough education, even in schools when I was growing up…not knowing is what scares people the most,” she tells me, as we meet to discuss her book.



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My review of The Prophet film

15/9/2015

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 My cousin, an expert on family trees, swears that we’re distantly related to the late, renowned Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran.

Rumour has it the grandmother of my grandmother’s cousin was the sister of Kahlil Gibran’s mother. Or something like that.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking; this is too good to be true – an ancestry that every wide-eyed romantic of Lebanese heritage would jump through hoops to claim. But please humour my inner dreamer anyway, as I pretend to share a smidgeon of Gibran’s DNA – if only to feel a little braver and wiser.

After all, his best-selling book The Prophet has been my dog-eared companion for years, as bright eyes took in his words on all matters ranging from passion and love, to freedom and pain, committing them to memory. Ideas that pressed on my mind as I sat with Ron Senkowski, the lead producer of The Prophet‘s film adaptation, before watching the movie at the Lebanese Film Festival in Sydney.

To read more, check out my interview and review for Sajjeling magazine.


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Swim with wild dolphins, if you dare...

24/6/2015

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Port Stephens: where the desert meets the sea. I have no pictures from the actual Cruise, the water was too choppy to bring out the camera!
I glance at the time on my phone again and sigh. Morning approaches, but I’m still restless.

“Guys,” I whisper urgently. “We need to wake up in four hours."

Someone throws a pillow at my face.

“Be quiet Mel, we’re trying to sleep,” the culprit mumbles from their bunk bed.

I’m being a pest, but what can I do? I’ve wanted to swim with dolphins since I was a child pretending to be a mermaid, so the anticipation keeps me awake.

This revelation does little to soften the scowls my friends give me, as we shuffle onto the boat the next morning, yawning like a row of dominos under the fading moon.


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Ditch Shoes, Retreat to Sea

6/5/2015

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I roll down my window and stare at the feet of the guy standing next to his wrecked car. He smiles and turns his thumbs down as steam rises from the bonnet. Why isn’t he wearing shoes? The sun is hot and my feet ache as I wonder how his haven't burnt. “It’s practically the uniform here,” John, our driver, laughs.

The fumes hit us as the lights turn green and we drive to the airport, home bound. I’m chilled out but tired, like my shoeless buddy on the road, whose Zen attitude sums up my week at Cabarita Ocean Health Retreat in northern New South Wales.
                                                               
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How Big Are Your Balls? Tackling foil waste ...

6/5/2015

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Image found on Refoil website
 It may seem no price is too high for the woman flaunting her freshly styled hair. She's worth it, all-too-familiar commercials tell us, and naturally, so are you.

Australians have flocked to hair salons, highlighting their locks, for around thirty years. Foiling has become popular thanks to the simplicity it offers.

But while aluminium foil gives with one hand, it takes with the other, stripping the earth of precious resources. Processing foil costs us massive amounts of energy and water. 
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Every day, more blood...

3/5/2015

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Image by DVIDSHUB at flickr.com
People are killed so frequently in Iraq that I hardly react when I see that more than 300 Yazidi prisoners were slaughtered by IS militants this week. I’ve almost developed immunity to this news, which saddens me. I don’t want to take for granted the alarming amount of blood that's being shed, it should always shock.

Seven Iraqi women have faced this reality for too long and share so much of themselves in the documentary Ten Years of My Life. I reviewed this film last year at the Arab Film Festival for Sajjeling magazine. You can
read it here.

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The Road to Everywhere

20/7/2014

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My grandfather worked as a Shepherd when he was a young man growing up in Lebanon.

The father of my own would spend his days roaming the mountains and valleys of a country you can drive around in a day, guiding the goats that relied on him for protection.

This was no easy job. Sometimes it was dangerous. My grandfather would weave his way through cedar-flecked villages, withstanding the elements and doing his best to keep out of trouble. For this, he needed good sense, and even better navigation skills. Luckily for him, he had both.

So you would think he’d pass this inner compass down to his oldest grandchild?                                                                     
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A Reef Worth Saving

10/1/2014

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Great Barrier Reef by Eulinky @ flickr.com
As a child I always imagined that I would someday be a marine biologist. My days were spent dreaming of a future swimming with dolphins and prodding squishy things with strange contraptions, my hair full of sand.

That’s pretty much all that I expected marine biology to be, so you can see why I never went down that path.

Even so, I’ve always been enchanted by the ocean.

One happy day I travelled to Queensland with my dad and brother to visit the Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven natural wonders that Australia proudly claims.                                                            
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The Adventures of a Star Gazer

26/8/2013

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Images by Marcus J, taken at Orange
Some years ago my friend and I were watching the movie Star Dust, laughing our butts off while sitting there, captivated, by a film meant for children.

We joked that maybe we were too old to learn about the romantic adventures of a fallen Star, masquerading as a woman, but it seems we were about to be outdone. Two elderly women sought us out after the film, saying they hoped we each had a star watching over us, blessing us with their words.

My friend and I looked at each other, secretly chuffed to have stumbled upon ourselves, fifty years in the future – two silver-haired women, seeking magic everywhere and never growing up.
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Addicted to the written wor(l)d

28/7/2013

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Image by anantns at flickr.com
A reading light could be the most useful treasure for a young Book Worm set upon exploring the written world, instead of sleeping. A torch, even, for the more rebellious.

When I was a child, I would sometimes read until dawn broke across the sky, too enchanted to feel tired. My mum soon grew weary of turning off my light and took to confiscating my books, so I could fall asleep.

This, of course, wouldn’t do. I was a rebel with a cause, I had to find ways to be sneaky, and find them I did.
                      
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