Andrea,

before I read my chapter, I just want to say thank you.

Thank you for creating this community and thank you for inviting all of us to share our stories.

When I saw the opportunity to contribute to When Love Is Not Enough, something in me immediately knew I wanted to say yes.

Not because it was easy.

It definitely was not.

But because I realized I didn't just want to tell my story.

No, I'm redoing

Sure

... and 1997, I was, I had just made the first violin section of the Rockford Symphony Orchestra, and my friend was the concert master, and I was gonna sit next to her.

And she was like, "Oh, you know, how, why would you ruin your career like this?" You know, "How are you...

You're giving up?" You know.

Sure

...

this story.

The, um, there was a teacher.

the neuro kind of like, how does it all fit together? Like, and I know it sounds like a dumb question, but I'm kind of like, how do we unpack, like, what is actually physiologically happening between, like, your brain and your body in these moments of crazy emotions and grief and stress?

Um, well, I'm not a neuroscientist, but everything is connected.

So you know, we know now that our gut affects our brain, our brain affects our nervous system.

So one of my biggest pet peeves is when you sit in a yoga class or meditation class and say, "Let's work on the body-mind connection." Well, they're already connected.

So once you're stressed, you've got all different hormones running around in your body.

You've got cortisol, you've, you know, which every- everyone's biggest topic of the moment.

But chronic stress, which is ongoing, relentless stress without recovery, is causing wear and tear on your body, so and that's called allostatic load.

[laughs]

okay yeah they

took 10 about 10 kids yep and they said um you know we'd like you to teach them i said okay yeah that's fine sure and so um they came in and they were like They had all kinds of reasons why, you know, they came with the sob story that, you know, I have no mom, I have no dad, I have no future, I have no, I was like, oh, okay, how about we play the violin? So they chose to finish it, it's okay.

So they used to come back, I said, did you practice? They said, oh, no, I didn't practice because, and they started on that long story again.

I said, okay, okay, let me tell you how it works for music.

Music is not a respecter of persons.

Hmm.

Right.

I And I

Good for him, okay.

Yeah, and then he ran into some other problems.

Is there any way that AC, I'm cold? Sure, we can turn it off.

He ran into some other problems in that, okay, so in this particular school.

Yep.

You have a runner called Shelly Ann Frazier.

Yes.

know, how long can I sit here? Right.

Yeah, who influenced you to become kind, caring, these strong leaders that you are?

Yeah.

So for me, my mum was a nurse and yeah, so I'm actually a qualified accountant, CPA or FCPA actually these days.

And so, you know, nursing wasn't my first choice, but I'd always realised that I'd been around that kind of caring culture.

And, you know, on my pupil free days when I was in high school, she was a school nurse at one of a disability school here in Canberra.

I'd go and hang out and paint and put on productions with the kids and that kind of stuff.

And, you know, I guess one of the, you know, society tells you, you need a corporate career, you need a degree, you need to be married with two children with a house and a massive mortgage in the suburbs and all the things.

We fight a lot of the noise for them so they don't have to wear that.