Mm.

And I thought that I could continue to sweep it under the carpet just for a little bit longer.

I was pregnant with my second child, was looking after a toddler.

I was reading the news at the ABC.

We were renovating our house, and so we rented a house next door to us, and I just thought, I'm just, you know, "I'm gonna be able to make it work," and I was very optimistic about it.

And then of course my mum's symptoms started interfering with just everything, um, every aspect of our lives, and she was having episodes, and she was hearing voices, and she was locking herself in her room, and she was threatening, um, self-harm, and it was really confronting for the first time in my life not to have Paw Paw and Granddad there to cushion that.

And, um, so I was so lucky, again, so lucky throughout because I actually, through my interviews with the ABC, the serious interviews that I, um, got to do, I had met this incredible person called Professor Alan Fels, which many people may be familiar with, and he was, um, not only the parent of a daughter who, um, lives with schizophrenia, and so he was very well-versed in mental health and what comes with it.

How have you been able to come through all of this fiery drama, especially with your father, and be at peace with your family?

Mm.

And I guess that's just, of course that's probably a normal feeling that I had, being, you know, biracial and, um, Eurasian.

And that feeling of never belonging just stayed with me no matter where I was.

However, in Hong Kong, I was cocooned by my beautiful auntie, and, uh, and I'll make that plural because the- I had multiple aunties there, but Auntie Teresa was a very key figure.

She was the one who became the first, um, Chinese air hostess for BOAC back in the day, now British Airways.

And Auntie Teresa had a shop at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and for anybody that knows Hong Kong, the Mandarin Oriental was, um, after the Peninsula Hotel, was the, the second only hotel in Hong Kong.

Very established, very elite, very luxurious and fancy, and my auntie had the first shop at that hotel because she resurrected Swatow Lace, which had been the family business in silk.

What were you like as a teenager, and how were you managing at high school, Mimi?

Yeah.

Although that was very exciting, it was a bit of an Alice in Wonderland experience, my family life was quite dysfunctional.

And when I wanted to find sanctuary, we had had, when I was quite little, we had had this, um, huge sunflower patch.

I mean, I can't even describe.

It must have been 2,000 square meters of just sunflowers, and I would go and hide in the sunflowers like a little tiger cub and just seek the protection of the sunflowers when I was feeling vulnerable and at risk.

I was thinking about this recently 'cause I've had a bit of a bumpity bump with my mom, and it's b- learning setting boundaries again and-

and-Um, holding those boundaries instead of, like, giving in.

If there's a good turn, you think, "Oh, put those boundaries down, it's okay now." Yeah.