Help your hair

twenty voIces of 2o2o

As a creative living on the edge of the Mornington Peninsula, I seem to thrive on having a ‘project’ on the go - a renovation, an exhibition, and now a book. My passion is people. Nature, words, music and painting are my escapes. I live by simple values; be kind, be authentic, be bold. Tenacity is both my strength and my weakness. I’m proud of my Dutch heritage and the strongwomen that surround me - my oma, my mum and my three daughters.

My university sweetheart Michael and I moved down to Frankston South from St Kilda around 14 years ago. I love being a stone’s throw from the beach and the bushlands of Sweetwater Creek. This was what kept me sane during the second lockdown, pounding the pavement discovering new streets and reserves within my 5km radius. I wasn’t able to pick up my paint brushes due to limited space as we’d embarked on a major renovation. Normally my work is city-based, four to five days a week. I’ve been working from home for nearly a year now and counting. For the first time in 15 years, I have discovered the true meaning of work-life balance 2020 was always going to look different for our family, with a major renovation that had been on our ‘wishlist’ for several years, finally kicking off late 2019. What we didn’t know as we greeted 2020, was that we would all soon be grappling with a global pandemic that would grip the world and change life as we knew it. Planes were grounded, hospitality and retail needed to pivot quickly as restaurants, bars and shops closed. Toilet paper became a commodity, people stockpiled food and goods, and petrol prices plummeted by up to 40 per cent. The emptiness of the streets was unfamiliar and for many of us, oddly calming. School gates shut and students moved to online learning. Working from home became our ‘new normal’. We experienced our first virtual funeral, sat indoors watching the AFL Grand Final being played for the first time on Queensland soil and witnessed many crowdless public events including the Melbourne Cup. We learnt new words and phrases – like social distancing, physical distancing, ‘rona’, 1.5, ‘keeping us apart keeps us together’, ‘unbutton for Sutton’ and ‘double donuts’. Words like ‘cases’, ‘tested’ and ‘positive’ brought on new meanings. We learnt to adapt, we learnt to live without, and we dug deep to find new strengths. Some were impacted more than others, and we all have our story. Most years are full for my family, but 2020 was particularly challenging. This was a time when my profession as a Change Manager took on personal significance. It’s my job to help people navigate through significant change, to remove uncertainty and to prepare them for what’s ahead. These skills became invaluable as I sought to guide our three children along the uncertain road before us as best I could. My number one goal was to stay calm, to quell signs of panic, so that the girls could keep learning and stay healthy minded. I remember 2020 as a year which required extreme patience and self-determination. It was a time when I was needing to motivate myself daily to keep moving and to keep positive. But it was also a time when I was needing to motivate my family to eat well, to exercise and to keep going. In 2020 we were under extraordinary pressure as a family with a renovation, and yet this was overshone by the need to adapt to living, working and schooling in the face of COVID-19.

I often found myself stepping back and analysing our varying capacities to adapt. It was fascinating to observe how one’s individual outlook on life could play such a significant role in this; the growth mindset versus the closed, the empowered approach versus the disempowered. I witnessed extroverts struggling during lockdown whilst introverts revelled. At an organisational level, I saw cracks and strengths being pushed to the surface; with some businesses proving nimble enough to adjust to a new way of operating while others weren’t. This time also shone a light on people in leadership. There were those who focused

on the ‘loss’ and ended up running out of time to adapt, and there were those who accepted the situation and moved quickly to respond in order to survive.

We were asking big things of people during this period; to shift to new ways of working, schooling and living...and to do it quickly. It was a time when we were being forced to make decisions about how we were going to react, and how we were going to handle what was now in front of us. I remember the feeling of sheer terror when we started to discover more, and then more, about the virus. I was undeniably worried about the unknown. My husband and I decided to work from home earlier than most as we weren’t comfortable with continuing to do the one-hour commute on public transport from the Mornington Peninsula to the city. Little did we know that we would not go back to the office in 2020. At the time of starting this story, we were coming out of our second wave of COVID-19 in Victoria, having endured a state-wide lockdown that will stay with us forever. The emotions were raw and I found myself wanting to capture my children’s experience before the passage of time swept the depth and breadth of their recollections away. The story has evolved as I have collected more voices, timeboxing 2020 from many more and many different perspectives of people in my community, but in their words – the travel agent, the hairdresser, the nine-year-old school girl, the pilot, the school principal, the sergeant, the doctor who lives up the road.

I am one ordinary person that lived through this extraordinary time, along with 7.6 billion others. This story is a collection of 20 voices from people within my orbit – my hairdresser, my pilates teacher, my husband, my friend, the principal of our daughters’ school, my motherin-law who couldn’t see her grandchildren, the doctor who lives up the road.

Their stories are a small, yet significant, part of the broader 2020 experience. Like a thread, they weave through our differences and commonalities, ultimately stitching together upon a fabric that is so much greater than ourselves alone. courage in sharing their personal and private experiences, particularly given that behind the doors of lockdown, emotional, psychological and physical challenges were present and became a part of each story told. These 20 stories are united by strength, and the wholeness of the human experience as it constantly shifts from the ordinary day-to-day to the profound.

They are also united by connection - the connection to self, the connection to family and community through the building of both stronger and new relationships, and even more broadly, the connection to those far beyond as they too navigated the impact of COVID-19. I hope you enjoy reading my collective of short stories as much as I enjoyed listening to them. It has been hard to know when to stop being a gatherer of these experiences - are 20 voices enough? It is harder still as the story of COVID-19 continues...

This is an edited extract from Twenty Voices of 2020 by Jo Fuller. Jo takes us to one small corner of the world to see the human impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, sharing some of the stories from people in her community. Grab your keepsake book via www.twentyvoices.com.au or follow the thread of @20_Voices on Instagram

Some were impacted more than others, and we all have our story.