Kathy Parker | Writer
Kathy Parker
Reviews
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25.01.2022 I’m consumed with the sound of my name upon your tongue. The way it drips from awnings of desire and spills over me;... how the persuasion of you seeps into sullen pores; a tsunami of wanting, shaking every corner of this broken-down house. In your hands, all you have reached for. All you have lost. We hold each other to the light, appraise what is left beyond the damage. Ask how many ways we are willing to break for another. How unyielding, this allure of hope we hold inside our lungs.
22.01.2022 I want to talk about men. There continues to be an onslaught of social media posts hating on men, and I get it. Right now, we have very little reason to hold men in high regard. Just when we think it can’t get worse, each day we are presented with more evidence of how abhorrent men in our country have acted; proceed to act. I could go into details, but we all know them. I could recite statistics of women who have been victims of abuse, violence and rape but we know these too....Continue reading
21.01.2022 In the humidity of this awakening the ocean rests at my feet and I am found somewhere between the diving and the drowning. I have always been one to swim too fast toward the horizon; to lose myself in the place where I can no longer define where sky and water meet. Where I end and you begin. Caught in a knot of blurred lines; tangled limbs and shifting tides. Undercurrents of unpredictability nip at my ankles, the push-pull of this shoreline holding me ever out of reach. The ...language of silence hangs heavy in our eyes; beads of disquiet gathered like sweat inside creases of skin. If I had words they would sound like this: I am afraid of the pulling under. I am afraid I will not surface. I am afraid to lose everything I have fought so hard for. Today the clouds are a weighted blanket upon my flight-risk heart. You tell me you do not want me to leave. I do not tell you I am not afraid of ending up alone. #confessionsofher Photo Saksham Gangwar/Unsplash
21.01.2022 3. Being fiercely independent. I do not need a hero. I do not need a saviour. I just need you to get the f*ck out of my way and let me do it myself. In the name of radical acceptance, here’s 8 things I’m done apologising for.... Editor’s pick over at Elephant Journal today x
18.01.2022 I’m up this week! So excited to be back behind the mic. Have a mixed bag of new pieces to perform. Have much real life shenanigans to catch up on. This Thursday. Broadcast Bar. See you then. https://fb.me/e/4fWDPTTb5
18.01.2022 To be honest, I didn’t much feel like celebrating Christmas. This year has taken so much. I’m tired in a way I’ve never been tired. More than exhaustion. More than burnout. Existential, perhaps. I don’t know. I just know it has been a year of very few highs, many excruciating lows. Even more losses. Fear, uncertainty, grief. A year we will all remember, but for reasons we wish we could forget. It’s been difficult to find joy, and today was no exception. But as I soak up the l...ate afternoon sunshine, the sea breeze rustles the leaves and the birds call their melodies to one another and the sound of my children’s laughter rises from somewhere below me and for a fleeting moment I grasp hold of something inside me. Maybe not quite joy, yet. But hope. A knowing that there is strength to rise above circumstance. A knowing that joy may falter but still exists within us. A knowing that in the stillness we can find our way back to peace. A knowing that all will be well. A knowing that love wins. Always. For those struggling this year know you are not alone. You are seen and loved. May hope find its way into your heart today. Merry Christmas x
17.01.2022 I’ll always be found off the beaten track, forever reaching for lonely places with outstretched hands. A girl not made for the commotion of this world, I long to uncover hidden paths where others have not gone before. To greedily gather the warmth of afternoon light into my arms. Taste wattle-stained air upon my wanting tongue. Leave imprint upon damp earth where there has been none. I know I am not the first to leave imprint upon you, yet I desire to blaze trails into places... not yet ventured; to forage my hands into the dark night of your soul where even the stars have not dared to shine their light. The lonely places call and I am drawn to the haunting of their song; still trying to find my true north in a world which leaves me homesick for something I cannot see. All I ask is you find me where the bridal creeper twists its way around forest branches; tangle your limbs around mine, wild and languid. Collide with me under these fathomless skies; let us sit beneath each other’s gaze and unravel the mystery of our forgotten hearts. See more
16.01.2022 From a new spoken word piece I’m working on, Lessons From Autumn Lovers
16.01.2022 For everyone triggered by the news today, I’m sorry. For every survivor of sexual violence who was not believed, I’m sorry. For every survivor of sexual violence who has felt too afraid to tell their story and has only had this fear reinforced, I’m sorry.... I stand in solidarity with you. You are not to blame. It was not your fault. It is not your shame to carry. You are seen. You are heard. You are believed. More importantly, you are not alone. There is a collective of voices rising who will no longer remain silent. Whose courage will empower change. Who will bring reckoning to the injustice that survivors have been at the mercy of for too long now. This is our time. Stay strong. Please reach out if you need x (Link to full spoken word piece here - https://youtu.be/vZJxayArytg)
16.01.2022 May we be women who do not judge the way another woman walks when we have not seen the dirt on her knees from the crawl. Who do not compete against another woman but understand there is space enough for all of us to occupy our own gifts and talents and beauty we bring to the world. Who always have the back of another woman; women who will defend, fight for and protect those whose voices are less heard and represented than ours.... Who empower other women; who remind another woman of what a goddamn warrior she is when she has forgotten herself. Who know the power of the collective woman and stand in that power to bring down the systems and structures of oppression for women all over the world. May we be these women, and may we raise them. As for my girls, I’ll raise them to think they breathe fire ~ Jessica Kirkland. Shout out to all the incredible women in my life; the mentors, the nurturers, the warriors. My strong, brave and beautiful daughters. The women who have healed me and taught me everything it means to be a woman. Happy International Women’s Day
12.01.2022 I see the path your weary hands forge into new territory. I see the struggle inside this wilderness of changethe resistance you feel as you work harder than anyone will ever know, or see, to be the catalyst for change. To be the one who liberates others from the heavy chain of dysfunction, abuse, and trauma dragged down from generation to generation. The one who places her flag upon newfounded land declaring, this ends with me. For those here to break cycles of generational trauma, this one is for you. My latest, over at Elephant Journal x
11.01.2022 "Transformation isn’t sweet and bright. It’s a dark and murky, painful pushing. An unravelling of the untruths you’ve carried in your body. A practice in facing your own demons. A complete uprooting, before becoming." ~ @victoriaericksonwriter Here’s the thing about breaking. You never heal the same.... You can never go back to the person you used to be, nor fit in the spaces you once thought you belonged. There will always be resistance. A defiance in your spirit. A sense of being out of place. A pulling back to your true north. The breaking can be a lonely time; the healing, even more so. Islands of isolation and seclusion during times you feel too vulnerable to face the world. Feeling lost and homesick; no longer the person you once were, yet not knowing which road will lead you to the person you’re still becoming. But this I have come to know: I would rather the loneliness than living a life I no longer align with. I would rather move forward on my own than force myself to fit into places that have become too small for me. I would rather exist as an island living true to my authentic self than compromise who I am becoming just so another can hold me in the spaces they desire me to stay inside of. The path back to ourselves is not an easy one. It is an unlearning of the people we have been taught to be. A falling away of the lives we have sought to live. It is a letting go. A surrender. A grieving. It is the breaking apart of all we once thought to be true, and real. But with the breaking comes the healing; eventually the transformation. And then, the becoming.
09.01.2022 I’ve been thinking lately about those of us who weren’t given the childhood or upbringing we deserved; what it is to grieve for something that never existed. I find myself recognising the stages of grief more as they happen - the perpetual cycle of denial (this hasn’t affected me), anger (all I wanted was a normal childhood), bargaining (maybe something good can still come of this), depression (I will always be fucked up and unloveable), acceptance (it is what it is and I’m d...oing okay). I keep getting stuck in anger. I see the way I still struggle with self-worth; the way it affects my relationships, my work, my belief that I am not just as capable as others, but also as DESERVING. I am always found wondering who I could’ve been if I didn’t have a childhood of trauma and abuse; if I hadn’t left home so young to escape that. If I had been nurtured and loved and protected and raised without a shred of doubt that I. AM. WORTHY. I’m reminded of my favourite quote on grief from Jamie Anderson: Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. Grief is just love with no place to go. I’m still learning to understand what it means to grieve for something I never had. How to deal with the sadness and loss and longing that overwhelms me at times. How to let go of the anger and find acceptance. But where I continue to land is here: if I choose to believe that grief is love with no place to go, then so must I build that grief a home where love is abundant; not just the love I have for others but also the love I have for myself. More importantly, so must I believe I am WORTHY to be that home; to believe I am worthy of a love that was never received, but always deserved.
08.01.2022 I recognised the ways I have clawed and grasped at the last of my 30s, fraught with the idea that if I am not young, thin, fit, and beautiful then I am invisible. That my power as a woman does not lie in my capacity to reshape the culture and institutions of which these very oppressions are formed upon, but on being - in a word - hot. We understand and accept the pressure young girls are under to live up to the standards of a hyper-sexualised, image-based culture obsessed wit...h being thin and sexy. Yet less is said about the way this pressure pervades women in their 30s, or 40s, and beyond. How, in our society, a woman’s value is tied to her youth, beauty, and sexuality. How we fear what happens to our identity when we are considered no longer young, beautiful, and f*ckable. And yet, I believe this fear goes deeper than aesthetics or vanity. It isn’t even about being f*ckable, or not. It’s about fearing irrelevancy as much as invisibility. It’s about fearing the loss of approval, acceptance, and being in control of our own lives. It’s about fearing our ageing will lead to powerlessness, and the frantic grasping at our youth, beauty, and sexuality that we may somehow sidestep getting older, and therefore remain visible and relevant. I wrote an article over at Elephant Journal based on this quote from Dr Gail Dines: Women are told in our society they have two choices. They are either f*ckable or invisible. Full article below x
08.01.2022 I haven’t been sleeping again lately. This is the hardest part of living with Complex-PTSD. That the body remembers. That for most of my childhood, throughout so many years of trauma and abuse, my nervous system existed in fight-or-flight. That even now, whenever I feel stressed or overwhelmed or not in control, my nervous system is conditioned to respond with that same fight-or-flight and cannot switch off, so remains in a state of hypervigilance for days; weeks on end. Slee...p deprived in a way that no amount of yoga or meditation or exercise or nature or rest or the 3,694 different sleeping supplements I have tried seems to be able to overcome. No matter how much healing I have done this is still the one thing I cannot seem to defeat. It’s cruel and unfair; that those of us who suffered in childhood have already had so much taken from us yet decades later continue to suffer in ways most people will never see, or understand. This kind of exhaustion is debilitating and affects so much of my life. It makes me unable to feel I can manage anything in my life. It makes me want to hide from the world. It makes me want to cancel plans. It makes me unable to work, or be creative in any way. It makes me irrational and anxious. It makes me feel incapable of finding the beauty and joy in each day. It makes me want to give up. Instead, today I got dressed. I put makeup on. I worked for the amount of time I felt capable of. I video called a friend. I walked on the beach. I kept an appointment. I went to yoga. I did the things because I’ve learned NOT doing the things leaves me feeling in complete despair. It wasn’t all easy, and there were moments of tears. But I did the things. It isn’t about pushing through to the detriment of my physical and mental health. It’s about showing up for myself. It’s about making the decision to not be defeated. It’s about doing the best I can with what I have to give, no matter how minimal. It’s about acceptance; letting go of the anger and grief and sadness over the life that has been taken from me and instead choosing to honour the life given to me each day. It’s still beautiful, even when it’s hard. It’s still mine x
05.01.2022 Hey people! I’ll be performing on March 11th at The Broadcast Bar as part of Paroxysm Press’s The Middle Finger Gigs. Haven’t been behind a mic in forever so who knows if I’ll even remember how to do this spoken word thing but have been busy working on new stuff for my set where I actually even use humour while still covering all things relationships, mental health, and the general dismantling of the system. Would love to see you there, that’s if you haven’t already booked y...our tickets for the opening night of Caroline Reid’s show (which you should totally see). Otherwise book hers for the following night and I’ll see you on March 11th, details below x * * * * * Spoke 'N Slurred F*cks the Fr*nge We're hitting it hard & fast again this year with 4 spokenslurreds across 4 Thursdays of the Fringe season (6pm start). All the usual madness, talent, mad talent, featured talent & raffle prizes. (Tho possibly less obscenity as Kerryn takes over the mic duties.) Free Entry Open Mic Cheap Drinks Featured Artists: Thurs 25th Piers Diprose (acoustic) Thurs 4th Tracy Coogs McNally Thurs 11th Kathy Parker Thurs 18th Themba Shumba
04.01.2022 My favourite part of performing will always be finding the couch once it’s done. Thanks to everyone who came out on a Thursday night to be there, and thanks to Paroxysm Press for having me, and for a stellar night of poetry. There’s one more Spoke N Slurred left in this series next week, make sure you get on it Adelaide people x
01.01.2022 I recently received a handwritten letter from a woman in the States who is in her seventh year of a 28 year prison sentence. I do not know what she’s in there for. I do not know what she has done, or what has been done to her. What I do know is she was given a copy of my book and wrote to tell me how much it meant to her. To read words that helped her understand her own pain. To feel seen and understood. To know she is not alone in what she has suffered. To know the life and ...beauty breathed into us when we read poetry. The way it changes us. The way it softens us. The way it heals us. She also wrote to ask my help in creating a proposal for a book club/recovery program for the other women in her facility whose lives have been impacted by abuse; many of them still in abusive relationships, because of the impact my book has had on her life and recovery. I have no idea how a book I wrote four years ago ended up in a prison across the other side of the world. And it’s funny, because I rarely talk about, or promote, or market my book anymore. I’m so much further along in my journey than when I wrote it that I struggle to reconcile who I am now with the words in that book; both on a personal and professional level. But the thing is, it was still a part of my healing journey, written to help other women on their healing journey. When the book was first published and I talked about the why of writing it, I talked about how I had lived most of my life silent and ashamed of the abuse I had suffered. I said I wrote the book for those who still lived in the silence; to give them a voice. I’m so incredibly grateful and humbled that four years on, women are still finding their voice through mine. Our stories are powerful and important. Our stories will reach people beyond what we could ever know, or imagine. Our stories are the very thing that will heal this broken world, if we have but the courage to speak x
