What is the role of a mother? And how does the relationship between a mother and her child shape that child’s life and actions? What makes some children grow up to be like their mothers, while others are motivated to turn away and do something completely different? The new book Things My Mother Taught Me…
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Anjelica Huston was not a name I recognised before I started reading her memoir A Story Lately Told, although maybe I should have, given her fame and high profile career as a model and actress. To be fair, the highlights of her career took place before I was born, and more than anything I was…
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At eight years old, my idol was the girl who lived next door. Her name was Sam. She was twelve and she had red hair that she always tied up in a ponytail and tucked underneath a baseball cap. She had TWO horses, so she was instantly my favourite person. She let me ride one…
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For the whole of my long childhood, I had a nanny. Someone to pick me up after school, drive me to clarinet, make sure I had a nutritious afternoon snack, and entertain me until Mum and Dad traipsed home.When I was young I thought everyone was like me. Everyone had two working parents – and…
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Ali Cobby Eckermann was too afraid to cry, and I was too afraid to put down her memoir till I had come to the end and knew that she was going to be okay. This is the extraordinary true story of Eckermann’s upbringing as a child of the stolen generation—taken from her Indigenous family at…
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Someone asked me a curious question last year: if my parents were parents from a television show or movie, which ones would they most resemble? After thinking about it for a while, my reply was the Penderghasts from the film Easy A. Like them, my parents have always been supportive, honest, playful, and attentive. They’ve…
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Why is Christmas so disappointing for adults? Ever since I was a kid, Christmas was the best thing in the year, the thing I most looked forward to. But as many others will probably agree, as you get older, that magic lessens and especially in my case, is replaced by a pessimism and cynicism I…
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