Behind every woman is a story that needs to be told. We all experience triumphs and tragedies in our lives but unless we tell our stories our connections with others remain trivial and superficial. Lesley has taken a bold step in telling her truth.
I am a writer of children’s stories, which is a new career I have just launched after twenty five years as a financial planner and forty years full time in the workforce.
I live in Perth and am a world traveller.
I am 67 years old – according to the calendar. My head tells me I am about forty and my heart says I am still twelve years old.
I was born in Geraldton, Western Australia and both my parents have a long family history in Australia.
My father is 93 and his own grandmother, Grandma Ridley, was raised in the Murchison. On my mother’s side, my grandmother came from England with a well-to-do husband and two small children, only to have him die of typhoid a few months after arriving. She later married James Beaton, who was my Grandfather. Both families had ten or twelve children and their lives, especially for the women, were very difficult indeed.
I am the elder of two children, with one brother. Growing up in the goldfields of WA in the late 40s and 50s, meant that life for children was very different from today. There was no helicopter or tiger parenting and respect for those in authority was unquestioned.
Policemen, school teachers and ministers were deferred to and the lady next door or the dad down the road was equally entitled to give us a bit of a slap around the ears if we were out of line, as were our own parents.
The Headmaster was known to give the "cuts" to girls as well as boys and on more than one occasion I found myself standing outside his office, frantically rubbing my hands with leaves from the peppermint tree in fearful anticipation of the punishment that never came. I would have preferred a couple of quick hits with the cane to what usually transpired: writing out 500 lines "I will not talk in class". It didn’t work.
Our education was soundly based on learning the three "R's" of reading, writing and 'rithmatic – with a high degree of competitiveness to be top of the class in mental arithmetic or spelling. Even at such an early age, however, I was introduced to the "tall poppy" syndrome that still permeates Australian culture.
A driving desire for knowledge, coupled with a high degree of skill in written and verbal expression, saw me being beheaded on many an occasion. It was something that caused me great stress as a child – when those who could run or jump were idolized while those with good academic skills were berated and jeered as "show offs" and being a "smarty pants".
Being made to stand at the front of the class, to be jeered for my lack of athletic ability – I was in Grade 3 – did nothing to endear the pursuit of sports to me. Since part of my crime was to correct the teacher when she had made a very obvious (to me) error about a factual matter did nothing to endear me to her, either. It was a crime I was to commit on more than one occasion, because to me, teachers were there to teach and they had a responsibility to be accurate. It is a lifelong belief that has never left me nor is it of any less important to me, as a writer.
As the first child and with my brother being three years younger than me, I had learned to ride a bike, swim, read and write and develop fine motor skills almost before he was able to talk or walk. This creates a differential between siblings that is almost impossible to overcome – especially when the elder one of you is a girl, because we do tend to mature earlier.
In writing this, I am cognizant, probably for the first time, of some of the reasons that made it very hard for my brother and I to be close friends. He developed an eye infection when he was only a toddler that left his sight impaired and that made it even more difficult for us to become close.
By the time I was seven or eight, I could keep score in a cricket book – a skill of which I am still justifiably proud – when my brother was struggling to start school and learn to read and write. Conversely, my own two sons are only fifteen months apart in age and they are extremely close, notwithstanding the fact that one lives permanently overseas.
We later lived in the Snowy Mountains, where my father worked a couple a times, and I was a prodigious writer of stories and poetry, even sending submissions to the Australian Women’s Weekly in my early teens.
I read all sorts of books and magazines that were probably not considered suitable for my tender age, including Man Magazine. Truly, I only read it for the stories!
Living at the time in the Snowy Mountains, I still remember reading a moving story about a trout that returned to the stream of his birth to join in the year’s spawning and then to die. I still can see his body, gently bumping against the side of the creek bed where it was caught against a fallen tree and he, hidden beneath a ledge, was left to slowly rot away and return to the water.
I remember reading about the great age of our artesian water basins and the need to beware of mining water – and this, in the early 50s.
I can tell you that it does nothing to elevate your reputation amongst your peers when the teacher sets your writing as the topic for an English assignment or for the whole class to mark their maths tests against your answers.
Calling out to the same teacher (in front of the class) when he accepted as correct an answer that "AD" means after the death of Christ and suggesting that, if that was true, there would be 33 and a half years of history with no dates is not recommended.
I worked full time from the age of barely sixteen until I married at the age of nineteen-and-a-half and had three children in quick succession. In those days, girls did not leave home until they married unless they were Uni students and "allowed" to spend a year or so travelling overseas as a break from their studies.
By the time I was twenty five, my marriage was over; my children lived with their father and his partner of the time and I embarked on a single life that I had never previously experienced: living alone.
It was a great challenge to learn to be totally self reliant financially when I had little experience of having to pay for my own accommodation and lifestyle from my own earnings, even though I had always had to pay board at home.
When I was married, my husband took the view that I did not need to know how much he earned, that my job was to keep house (i.e. food shopping and children’s expenses) from the allowance he paid me and he 'took care' of everything else. There was an inquisition if I ever did an "Oliver Twist" and needed more!
That experience stayed with me and when I became a financial planner, I made sure that every wife who was a client of mine had a personal bank account into which money was paid regularly and the spending of which was entirely her own affair. While he may well have thought he was doing me a favour, it was a mistake and did little to help me learn about the true cost of running a home.
I stayed on in the house that we had been renting, while I went looking for work.
After having been married for five years, potential employers seemed to think my brain had rotted during that time and getting back into the workforce was very difficult.
In the end, the employment agency said "We will get you a job in Boans and once you have a job, it will be easy to get you a better one." My cousin was living down the road from me, by sheer chance, and she told me years later that she dreaded the sound of my footsteps coming down the hill at the end of a day of fruitless job searching – until the evening she heard me tripping along – clearly having been successful.
About a week or so later, the owner of the house evicted me because he did not want a single woman living alone in his property. He said it wasn’t right!
No idea why it was wrong, but he wanted me out and I found a little semi-furnished flat to move into.
Within six weeks of working on a paperwork production line at Boans, I approached the floor accountant and outlined to him how a change in procedures could improve efficiency and reduce staff requirements by at least one. His response was that, since it was a Union store and the "last on, first off" rule would have to be applied, the job that would go would be mine.
Having been raised in a Union household, it was something with which I was familiar and I said that it was more important for the workplace to be more efficient. I knew I could soon find another job and I resigned ahead of being "let go". Clearly, my childhood convictions for truth, personal integrity and honesty were never wavered.
At one stage, I was secretary to the State Manager of a large multi-national firm, and I was dismissed for "not fitting the company image for the position" – which was a euphemism for saying "you are sacked because you will not sleep with the boss from the Eastern States nor will you go to Rottnest for the weekend with one of our larger clients."
I still remember coming home in a state of shock – because liaisons between managers and staff were fairly common but I had never considered refusal to be a sacking offence. Oh, Mr. David Jones – where were you then?
After about three years, my ex-husband turned up unexpectedly and told me to go and collect the children, because he was leaving his partner and I had to take them back. At the time, I had created the first Australian mobile bookkeeping service – PPTOS (Permanent, Part Time Office Services) and had an offer from a client to expand the business and hire other women to work for me.
Suddenly, I had a new business, a new car and a calculator on lease in the one hand and three children age seven-and-a-half and down in the other. So, the business was abandoned, the car sold and the calculator taken into my next job in the car industry.
In fairly short order after getting the children back, my parents evicted me from the house I was renting from them, because they would not condone my living there with the children while I continued a relationship of three years standing with the man who later became my husband.
That was followed by a hilarious week of frantic activity. I could not get a State Housing Commission flat because I did not have legal custody of the children. So I was told on the Monday.
By Tuesday, I had a hearing for custody listed in the courts (without a lawyer), to be heard on Thursday. The children’s father was instructed to turn up, was served with his summons as he entered the court and I left the court on Thursday afternoon with my custody order granted, typed and ready to present.
When I arrived at the SHC office on the Friday morning, they were somewhat astonished that I had achieved my objective in such a short space of time and the next morning (Saturday) a telegram arrived to say that I had been granted accommodation with my children.
I borrowed the bond and first fortnight’s rent from my Aunt – who, in the circumstances, considered it poetic justice, since it was money my Dad had lent to one of her sons and she was holding it to repay to the lender. We called that using the same money twice. I went straight into Perth and collected the keys to the flat.
To this day, nearly forty years later, I still remember the feeling of gratitude and relief I experienced, knowing I had a safe place to take my three children – who were all suffering varying degrees of personal emotional trauma from the dramatic changes in their very short lives and over which they had no control.
With two sons and a daughter to support, there was no option but to work full time and I have had a fabulous career, so far, although the hours have always been long.
I was Australia’s first car saleswoman after being the first woman stock controller in a GMH Dealership. I negotiated the payment of commissions for fleet sales on delivery, rather than when the customer paid the Dealership and introduced the concept of fixed costing for supply and fitting of accessories for new car sales.
I invented the note that your Avon lady leaves in your meter box with the latest catalogue, saying when she will be back to collect your order or, today, asking you to lodge your order by email.
I qualified for Million Dollar Round Table membership in my first year as a life insurance agent, was the third in Australia to be granted the accreditation of Certified Financial Planner and in 1986 I was briefed by the Challenge Bank (then the Perth Building Society) to create, implement and manage the financial planning service – only the second in the country after Westpac. I established Financial Wisdom in Perth, for Prudential.
I later created a unique analysis programme for measuring and comparing the performance of managed funds and sold that research to other financial planners. That business, Upper Quartile, was a runner up as Business of the Year in the Swan Chamber of Commerce Business Awards – being outshone by The Midland Railway Company and in another year, in a different category, I was judged second to Sandalford Wines. I was awarded Business Person of the Year by the same Chamber and have been a finalist in a number of other business award events.
I have been around the world three times and my hobby is flying IN helicopters. I do it every time I get a chance: Up the Grand Canyon, over volcanoes, landing on glaciers, over rugged mountains, through the Bungle Bungles and across the skyline of Perth. I love helicopters.
The death of my beautiful daughter, Annette, when she completed an act of suicide in 2001 and the loss of my fabulous husband, Robbie, only eight months later have been very significant events in our lives – for me, my sons and our extended families. Robbie was an invalid with emphysema for eleven years before he died and my business was our sole financial support during that time.
It is no surprise to me that I have finally commenced my full time career as a writer, after arranging to sell my financial planning business, when my last trip was cut short by having to come home in a wheelchair from Toronto.
On ANZAC Day in 2011, I set off on a six week tour of the USA and Canada, by myself, showcasing my new business Stories My Nana Tells after giving it a global launch at a Women’s Expo in Los Angeles.
I lost my confidence when I endured a massive cyber bullying attack on Twitter last year, which led me to finally change my Twitter name. The "tall poppy" syndrome was unleashed on me, by a highly vocal group who regard themselves as the "twitterati" of Perth and who seem to think they have the right to determine how Twitter should be used.
Their attack evidenced itself after I was unexpectedly quoted in the press as having a high degree of influence within Twitter during the last Federal election campaign. Their hate campaign was very personal and led to a number of well known users of Twitter in Perth having to come to my public defence, particularly after I was interviewed by Kerri-Anne Kennerley with my website logo clearly displayed on TV. It was something that shook me to the core, because it was the most overt and public act of jealousy I have ever suffered.
I have overcome a loss of confidence by the support of good friends, online and in my networks, who have helped reassure me that my reputation is well regarded and my skills highly respected. I am also aware that, in some ways Australian culture has not progressed much in the past sixty years, so personal success and achievement that is not derived through sport is still not highly regarded by many. "Tall Poppies" can be an easy target for bullies and those whose own sense of self-esteem is not high.
What has helped me build my confidence is making sure that I network widely offline to continue to build my relationships and share the experiences of my friends on LinkedIn and Twitter.
My eBook, "Networking To A Plan", continues to be downloaded from its own domain several times a week and is very popular internationally.
Transforming myself from a lady who couldn’t stand on a chair to change a light globe, such was my fear of heights, to someone who does treetops walks through the jungles of Sabah or bungy jumps in New Zealand was a personal journey of creating self confidence in my own ability – aided by the wonderful tape "Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway". Written by Susan Mitchell, who also wrote "Be Bold and Discover The Power of Praise". It marked a critical time when I learned that self-confidence can be taught. She also wrote "Tall Poppies" – a wonderful book about uppity women and why they should be celebrated
I stay confident by seeking out those who are supportive and encouraging and who will always give you a helping hand, because paying it forward is a great philosophy by which to live.
Visit Lesley's website "Stories My Nana Tells" here: http://storiesmynanatells.com
You can download her eBook (which is free) here: http://networkingtoaplan.com
P.S. From Confident Woman's Editor: Would you like to have the confidence, like Lesley, to be assertive and deal with difficulties at work? Gain more confidence at work by listening to our 2CD set "Confidence for women at work".
]]>
Some women lose confidence as they get older and think they are past it or it is too late to change direction. Not so Lyn Lucas.
