52 for 52. Instalment 5.

This last 48 hours I have had to stare down a truth that has been hiding in plain sight for the last 7, almost 8 years.? It’s a truth that I have hidden in battle scars and remnants of a narrative of who I needed to become.? It’s a truth I started to speak into at a recent F^k Up Nights event and blew the roof of.? A truth I went deeper into in the recording of a Podcast to be released in the United States in the coming months which blew the Host’s mind.? It’s a truth I’ve been trying to find a safe place to allow it to seep out without causing the same blast the events it is buried in created across every single aspect of my life.?

It's the truth about what happened that resulted in Reese Witherspoon, one of the worlds most powerful, and loved, A-Listers, seeking and getting a ‘California Gag Order’ – yes they do exist, yes I have one – placed on me in a legal process that was swift, without representation from me, and wrought the sort of havoc one might expect settling into one of her blockbuster film and television events.

The kind of havoc that doesn’t happen to you.?

It’s a result of a failed business idea, a massive project that ignited global attention like a gathering freight train, one that for every person who loved the project, three people would stand in front of them to try to tear me down.

Except they didn’t need to.? Reese Witherspoon frustrated contract, I refused to pay the next instalment of her fee until the contract was remedied, and instead of honouring an agreement made on a Sunday morning her team moved swiftly in the background to secure a gag order which completely silenced me.

That gag order arrived in my agent’s office in Sydney Tuesday 14 June 2016.?

On Wednesday 15 June 2016 my insurance broker called to tell me they couldn’t compel Team Witherspoon to confirm frustration of contract due to the gag order being in place.? They were pointing to non-payment and fiduciary failure on my side of the contract.?

On Thursday 16 June 2016 believing what I had been told about the insurance not triggering I appointed Receivers and asked them to hold the filing with ASIC because it was my eldest son’s birthday and I did not want it forever linked to that date.

On Friday 17 June 2016 the receivership was filed with ASIC and my entire world exploded; the media turned into a feeding frenzy with my agent taking hundreds of calls in the first hours after the event.? I watched google grow to 73 pages speaking about my failure, sensationalistic headlines that tore at every fibre of me.? I shut down my socials and email and STILL took more than 1,100 trolling messages on the worst day.?

I had thought I understood the risk that came with this project.? But the one thing I did not understand was the soul destroying impact of losing your voice amongst a world gone mad.? Because when you place a company in receivership you sign an agreement with the Federal Government that you will never again comment on the affairs of that company.? Between the receivership and the gag order I completely lost my voice and control of the narrative.?

And whilst I have wanted to rage at the world and to tell my story and to create an explosive revelation of just what went down, that is not the truth – the truth of what happened – that I have had to stare down in this last 48 hours.? Instead I have discovered the truth that has been grabbing at me, whispering to me, scratching in the smallest parts of my mind.?

And that truth?? Is that I did not fight. Not at all.? I didn’t fight legally.? I didn’t fight in the media.? I didn’t direct the insurance broker to fight for me.? I didn’t engage any legal representation to fight for me – even when a Lawyer asked me to pay him $1 so he could take the fight on for me.?

I did not fight.?

I simply accepted that this my fate.? I allowed my voice to be silenced and my narrative to be taken.?

Because it was familiar to me. Unconsciously, dangerously familiar.? ?I had been conditioned through other significant events in my life to silence.? I had both times – and now three – lost my voice to others more powerful than me.? Had ceded control of my narrative to those noisier and, publicly, more credible than me.?

Starting to speak into what I thought was the truth of everything that unfolded in 2016 has revealed this deeper truth.? It has started with the understanding at a deeply honest level that I did not fight. That not once did I come out swinging.? That not once did I try to regain control of my own narrative.? I just kept trying to recreate the narrative, hoping one of them would hold. Hoping one of them would heal.? Hoping one of them would reveal that I wasn’t the woman in the headlines.? Hoping to gather enough people in my corner who would fight for me in rooms I wasn’t in. Hoping to be heard without having to find my own voice again, lest it be taken from me once more.?

And beyond owning that I did not fight for it, I am also having to own the extreme cost it has extracted.? Because when you are in mess, you attract mess.? When you are in mess, you make messy – and increasingly messier - decisions.? When you are in mess you allow others to continually increase that mess.? When you are in mess, when you have lost control of the narrative, when you don’t believe the truth matters as much as it should, when you allow others to behave badly and get away with it because they simply point to the headlines to divert attention, then you inadvertently create a world that loses colour; it loses joy; it loses connection.

When you make the narrative fit instead of fighting to regain control of it, the world you create is one worth living in.?

But it turns out not one worth fighting for.? ??The one worth fighting for? ??It’s hidden in the lost narrative that has never quite let me go.? The one hidden in the whispers of my soul, the quiet spaces in my mind, the attention of my heart, the conversations in safe spaces that have started to bubble in these last weeks.?

That world worth fighting for is revealing itself, like clouds of colour which are settling around me, wrapping me up in the courage it will take to walk back the mess so that I can step confidently into speaking, into truth telling, and to reclaiming the narrative.

Perhaps, for the first time in my life.?

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This year I turned 52, making a deeply personal commitment to write each week in a blog series called '52 For 52'.?Not SEO enriched, not to hold a call to action, simply to express where my lived experiences take and, often, push me, to explore the thinking that bubbles in shower moments and long walks and in the midst of great books.?Soon these will all be published via a dedicated blog site, but for now, I am sharing them with you here each Monday, as I build the rhythm and the cadence that will edge me ever closer to realising my deepest dreams.

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