Making Way

Never Too Late

• Melissa Park / Eva Chapman • Season 4 • Episode 59

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Are you prepared to embark on an extraordinary journey of resilience, survival, and self-discovery? Strap in as we navigate the life tapestry of Eva Chapman, a woman born in Prague who escaped Czechoslovakia with her Ukrainian mother in 1950. Her life story is a vibrant mix of deep-seated trauma interwoven with joy. Eva’s tale is an inspiring testament to the power of perseverance and the transformative nature of storytelling.

Eva opens up about her family's experiences as refugees from war-torn Europe and the lasting impact of the Ukrainian conflict on her psyche. Her stories, while heart-wrenching, are also a profound testament to the strength of the human spirit. She speaks candidly about her struggle to forgive her stepfather after 33 years, showing us the true essence of resilience. We delve into her healing journey, including how writing became both a source of comfort and a means to share her family's legacy.

Finally, Eva reflects on the ebbs and flows of life, offering her unique perspective on aging and spiritual bypassing. She emphasizes the importance of self-acceptance and the joy she finds in the simple pleasures of life, such as her granddaughter's laughter. Through her eyes, we explore the importance of embracing our past and using it as a stepping stone to a more fulfilling future. So, are you ready to be inspired, moved, and perhaps even enlightened? Listen in to Eva's remarkable journey and discover the healing power of resilience and storytelling.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Making Way Podcast, a podcast about finding your own path in life. We're sharing stories to encourage you to live your life how you want to live it and not how you're supposed to. Part of finding our path in life is finding ourselves. Ourself can be marred by the hurts and trauma we've experienced. Trauma is a word we hear a lot these days. Well, what is trauma? According to Gabramate, a physician and world renowned trauma expert, explains, trauma is from the Greek word for wound. It's not what happens to you, it is what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you. It's not the blow on the head, but the concussion I get As we get older. It may feel like it's too late to change.

Speaker 1:

In this powerful episode, we have the privilege of hearing the incredible story of Eva Chapman. Eva's life is a tapestry woven with rich experiences, from deep trauma to the joys she has found along the way. Her journey serves as a testament to resilience and a powerful reminder that it's never too late to find healing and fulfillment. Born in Prague, Eva escaped Czechoslovakia with her Ukrainian mother, Olga, and made a new home in Australia in 1950. Throughout her life, Eva has pursued a variety of careers, including teaching and psychotherapy, and eventually earning a PhD in 1986. In 2006, Eva published her first book, Sasha and Olga. She has since published books such as Butterflies and Demons, From Russia to Love and her latest publication, Sexy at 70. In this episode, Eva shares her remarkable journey, highlighting the importance of resilience, self-discovery and finding healing, From overcoming trauma to pursuing a fulfilling career as an author. Eva's story serves as a beacon of hope and possibility. I hope you enjoy this episode. Start off at the beginning. Which is where are you from?

Speaker 2:

I was born in Prague in Czechoslovakia, where the Czech Republic was called then. My mother was a Ukrainian refugee from Stalin and from Germany because she'd been forced to be a prisoner of war for the Germans. After the war she wanted to go back to her homeland in the Ukraine, but everybody at the border said go back, go back. Stalin would just send you to a labour camp because you were in the West, you were with the Germans, so you are not a good person to have here. She escaped and went down into Czechoslovakia and ended up working in my real father's house as a maid.

Speaker 2:

My real father's family were quite wealthy and they hated her and they hated the Communists and they hated the fact that she was there and they didn't like her at all. But she got pregnant with me and that made it even worse. So eventually I had the baby in hospital and then my mother had a post-natal depression and went into hospital somewhere. I think my father's parents looked after me, but I don't know. But I remember I was nine months old when I saw this woman in the street and I thought God, she looks familiar. It was my mother coming out of the hospital. I told her about this later in life and she said well, you were only nine months old. I'm amazed you remember that It's been difficult to reconnect with me.

Speaker 1:

How is that possible at such a young age? I?

Speaker 2:

know That's one of my earliest memories. I think it's because it's so dramatic. I remember the boat trip to Australia when I was three, very dramatic. I remember escaping across the Czechoslovakian border into Austria with motorbike patrols, russian troops on motorbikes searching through the forest. I remember all that very vividly. My poor mother had a terrible time and then my father's parents wanted to keep me and tell her to go away. Eventually she ran away with me to the south of Czechoslovakia and went across the border, escaped that and we went into Austria. Then we pretty well walked to Italy where there were ships. She wanted to go to America but they wouldn't take a single woman with a child, so we went to Australia. So that's how I get to Australia. It's quite a dramatic story.

Speaker 1:

What were you like as a kid?

Speaker 2:

There was a lot of prejudice against me. Australians were very British. I went to Adelaide, which was like a small Britain really. They didn't want refugees, they didn't want migrants. They looked down upon us. I had a funny name. Nobody could ever pronounce it, so I had a pretty hard time growing up with that sort of prejudice against me. But then I went to school and I went to high school and then I went to university. I left when I was 24, when my daughter was five weeks old. We went to Paris.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

It's an English teacher.

Speaker 1:

So did you go to university while you were in Australia?

Speaker 2:

Yes, i did. I went to Adelaide University, i did English and history and I was a teacher.

Speaker 1:

At that point, when you're at university? why did you choose to study English? What were you hoping? Did you think of having a career going to university at?

Speaker 2:

that point. When I was a child, one of the things that I was very good at was learning English really fast and learning how to spell, how to read all that sort of stuff, and my teacher would be always saying this little girl's not even Australian or English and she writes and speaks much better than you. I don't know if that was a good thing, so I used to get praise from my teachers for being so good at English, and I think that's why I wanted to be an English teacher and history I loved history as well.

Speaker 1:

So then, how did you then decide, like how did you decide to go to Paris?

Speaker 2:

My first husband was a historian and he was doing a thesis on the French Revolution, and so he was doing there for three years to do that, and so I got a job as an assistant in a French essay while he was doing. that Was that experience?

Speaker 1:

like.

Speaker 2:

It was difficult, being in Paris as a young mother with a small child. I mean, i knew French, i did French at university. Learning French and speaking French when everybody was speaking so fast was much more difficult, and so it was a very hard time. My husband was in this school where a lot of people were teaching English learning English, sorry and there were people from Libya and Turkey and all sorts of places. They were always to come around every night while I was breastfeeding and a lot of them started fighting with knives. It was very, very traumatic and it was a time of Arab riots in the street. It was 71 and there was a lot of problems with demonstrations and things like that.

Speaker 1:

So it was easy. At that point in your life do you have a vision or some sort of maybe not visions on the right word, but kind of like a North Star in terms of how you wanted to create your life?

Speaker 2:

By that time I knew that I wanted to leave my husband. We weren't very happy together, but I was very attached to his parents. They were wonderful. They were like my second parents, because my father wasn't speaking to me, my mother was in a mental hospital. She went in when I was about 13 and so I didn't have a proper home life. So his parents became my parents and they loved me and I loved them and I was staying because of them. It was a difficult decision to leave him because it meant leaving that family, but they never let me go. They always loved me until they died and they fell in love with my husband, who you just met, because I was married a second time as well, to a man that they didn't like. But then I married my third husband and I said, oh, at last you have found your prince. They loved him very much as well, so it all ended up alright. So my vision I just knew that I had to leave my husband and I didn't know how I was going to do that, and it all came up in 72, 73 when I started to do encounter groups.

Speaker 2:

I did encounter groups of these people from America. What's an encounter group? Well, it was a 48 hour marathon that's what it used to be called. The group started at midnight and went to midnight Sunday, with five hours sleep. An encounter group is where you confront people, you get angry, you shout, you scream, all that sort of stuff. What is the purpose of this? The purpose of this is to get rid of your emotions, is to deal with your emotions and confront what's going on in your life. It was very good, but it was quite brutal, and eventually I got into running other kinds of groups and I ended up running what's called an enlightenment intensive, which is a very different group to an encounter group, where you don't confront people at all. They have to find out for themselves, which suited me a lot better, however, running experience.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, did those groups help you?

Speaker 2:

They did. They did because I was very shy, I was very screwed up about my mother And so there was a lot of crying about her and dealing with that. It's really hard with a mother who's schizophrenic and a father who's rejected you and who's sisters who you never see because your father doesn't, my father doesn't want me to see them. Yeah, it was tough, So I had to do with all that. In therapy I did a lot of therapy and lots of looking at myself and trying to heal my past.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, i mean, how did you reconcile those feelings about your mom and your father and kind of feeling the pain you're feeling Like how did you then work through those?

Speaker 2:

Well, the biggest reconciliation came when I was in my 40s and I thought and I was very happily married now to Jake And I thought, well, i have to heal my family, i just have to find out what's going on. My mother was dead by now. She died when I was about 30. And so I wrote to my father and said I wanted to write a book about my mother, which actually wasn't through because I wasn't a writer, but it was a way in. So I went to see him and he was already in hospital with quite bad cancer And we reconciled. We reconciled. It was a beautiful reconciliation and his big tragedy in life was just having a mentally ill mother and then two mentally ill daughters Both my sisters were mentally ill as well All asleep. Somehow Now I escaped because I really worked hard on myself. I really worked hard on dealing with all the demons, because there were a lot of demons, a lot of demons, and that's what I was dealing with, and so I faced all that.

Speaker 1:

What do you think? Why do you think that sets you apart from your sisters? Like, how come you? do you ever think about, like, why you were able to deal with your demons while your sisters struggled to do?

Speaker 2:

that I think I had more of my mother's love, even though she was already, and they both had postnatal depression really severely. They both had children and postnatal depression, which just was bad for them. I didn't have it. All I had was being in a strange country, in Paris, and not being able to speak the language with a baby, but I survived that And I never had. I had two children. I never had postnatal depression.

Speaker 2:

So why that happened to me I don't know. So that was partly why I was going back and trying to find things out and trying to talk about it to my father And he was great. He was really really great. And Jake, my husband, really helped me because I was so angry and despairing about my father I mean he cheated me, he kicked me no, he didn't kick me out, i ran away. I mean it was pretty bad And so Jake would often role play with my father And it was really really good So I could work a lot of stuff with him And he supported me in going to Australia a lot to help me as he was dying. And that's when my father told me his sad story And so I wrote that sad story and my mother's sad story and my story all in my first book, sushranil, which came out in about 2006.

Speaker 2:

And so I'll say to anybody you're never too late to start writing. Writing has been a wonderful thing for me. To put it all down, to actually put the history down. I found it difficult writing the story of my mother because I felt I don't want to betray her, i don't want to say bad things about her, but she was very cruel to me And I had to face that and I had to say it, and I think I found a way of saying it which, with compassion And that is really the secret is compassion. You have to forgive her for all those things because she couldn't help it. Well, i don't know, i have a difficulty with that. I don't know if people who've got schizophrenic can help it or not.

Speaker 2:

So it's really really difficult.

Speaker 1:

Well, i wonder. I mean hearing the sad stories of your parents, because I feel like something that does happen hopefully this happens for people as they get older is that you can start to detach your parents from just being mom and dad and kind of see them as separate people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a really good thing about getting older. Yeah, people and they suffer. And one of the best things I've done in my life is to heal my relationship a 33 year old split with my stepfather, and it was very, very beautiful And I'm glad I did it. So, but it was hard. I had to do a lot of work on myself. I had to, you know, face all my demons And I feel at least I did that.

Speaker 1:

I mean, you don't have to give us the details, but you know so many of us are, you know, have our own struggles and maybe some things that feels like we can't overcome. Can you just kind of maybe give us, like I don't know what, a little bit of insight of what it looks like to heal yourself A?

Speaker 2:

lot of crying, a lot of facing blame A lot of blaming wanting to blame her or wanting to blame him and facing that and seeing where that comes from. Dealing with those emotions, going through a lot of the traumas. I did a lot of screaming, a lot of crying. It's not easy And not many people want to do it, but I would say, yes, just do it. And in countergroups we're a really good way to do this stuff, because that's why people came, and especially in England, in yeah, in England people really do repress their emotions, and so there was a good place for people to come to. And I had a double thing with emotions because my mother was always screaming. She was screaming in the street, she was screaming in the shops, she was just screaming And I thought screaming is bad. So it took me a long time to think it was all right to scream, but every time I came home from school the house would be full of broken dishes because, she would go into a rage and just chuck things everywhere you know.

Speaker 2:

So it was pretty heavy. So it's like really difficult. And one of the upshots of writing Sashran Olga is I wanted to go to the Ukraine and find my family And to find out is there anybody else? Had schizophrenia, what else was going on? and all that sort of stuff. And by a huge series of coincidences I found them.

Speaker 2:

I went to Ukraine as an energy efficiency advisor because that was my job at the time. My husband and I were running an energy efficiency business to help people with insulation to keep all the heat in the house rather than letting it into the atmosphere. And so I went to Ukraine as an energy efficiency advisor. But also I thought, oh, i'd really like to find my family And I knew they came from Poltava. So I went to Poltava and talked to the mayor there And it was a very boring meeting about energy efficiency, blah, blah, blah. And then I said I'm looking for my mother. They all burst into tears, all of them, the mayor and all his buddies. They burst into tears and they hugged me and said ah, is there myyakak? which means country woman, welcome home. So they put the story in the paper And about four months later I got a letter saying a distant cousin of mine recognised the photo and they knew all about my mother and they invited me to come there.

Speaker 2:

And so that was a big trip that I did, going to meet my relatives, and it was very, very sad because they were all the last time they had seen Olga, my mother was when she was being shoved into a cattle truck by the Nazis and being sent off. She was 17 years old and being sent off to Germany to work as a slave for the right, and so they were very, very happy to see me and it was very, very emotional. There was no schizophrenia in the family And they said to me look, she was on her own. You know she's been traumatised by the war. She wanted to come back home to be with her mother and everybody and she couldn't.

Speaker 1:

So no wonder she went mad.

Speaker 2:

You know that was their image, so it was a very useful, lovely thing to see. I mean they're all being bombed now in various parts of Ukraine. I mean it's terrible And I have been helping a bit because I've been helping this bloke who has a truck and he goes and takes all the wounded soldiers off the front lines and take them to hospital and his truck broke down So I helped raise some money for this truck. So that's why I'm trying to move to Ukraine, but it's just really, really sad.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, i mean, what was that experience like for you to meet your mother's family, like, do you remember? like what was going through your mind when you found them?

Speaker 2:

It was beautiful going to the village that she was born in and to see where, because she's to tell me stories you know about her and her five brothers and sisters all sleeping on top of the bread oven because it was so cold and only having one pair of boots to go to the outside toilet and coming back So I could see all that you know. And the person whose house I was in was my mother's aunt and she was amazing. I mean, she escaped the Germans twice. She was taken away to walk back to Ukraine and then I was taken away again and walked back. Extraordinary, they're just all extraordinary, extraordinary people. They were just so happy to see me. It was lovely.

Speaker 1:

Gosh that's. Just listening to that right now it's just so heartbreaking because you know that's it's not that long ago to think about it And I just can't believe that people you know live through things like that and that people treat each other like I mean they still do to this day.

Speaker 2:

Well, the trouble is that it's long lasting these traumas. When I told you, i told you that I wrote a book called Sashron El which was published in Australia, and so many of the people who read it were people like me whose parents had escaped from war-torn Europe. There were 60 million refugees, you know, 1948 or whatever. A lot of them went to Australia and a lot of them became mentally ill. I just had a letter last week from a woman who just found my book in Cambridge. She said this is the story of my mother and my grandmother. I want them to read it, but my mother's got macular degeneration and she only wants a podcast, she only wants a story audio. So I'm thinking of doing it with an audio. So I said to her why don't you go and read it to her? And she said no, my relationship with my mother's broken down. I can't heal it. And so I asked her you don't have to tell me, but would you like to tell me a bit about it? I haven't heard from her since. It's really sad, so that's why it lasts.

Speaker 2:

That was World War II And it's still. The repercussions in the family are still going on. There's still divisions, there's still hatred, there's still misery. It's awful And I can see now in Ukraine it's another 100 years of pain and misery that is happening.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, i mean. so after you went back to Ukraine and you found your family, and I guess what happened after that experience.

Speaker 2:

I went back a few times because I made really close friends with a woman called Laina She was another energy efficiency advisor who I met in Kalka. It was hilarious because we totally connected straight away even though we had all the operatives and stuff like that, and just loved each other And these energy efficiency stuff was all just not important. And she invited me to her dacha And so I went and I just fell in love with her family and they fell in love with me And we went back several times. They were bombed terribly in Kalka just last year really bad And they managed to escape to near Poland. We invited them over. We said, like, come with us, we'll get your visas and all that sort of stuff And can't leave our parents, the old mother and the old father.

Speaker 2:

They're on all the sides. They couldn't leave their parents And they just want to stay and fight the Russians. They really do. They're really fighting for their democracy, for their life And trying to help as much as they can. But they don't want to come here, they don't want to leave it, they don't want to leave the school. It's their home. Yeah, so I wrote the book at Sashinorga because I'm meeting my relatives, all that sort of healing that went on And then I realized I really liked writing. Next book I wrote was called Butterflies and Demons, which is a story about the Adelaide Aborigines.

Speaker 1:

Well, how did you start? How did you even start writing, like, why did you think to write a book?

Speaker 2:

I went when I was talking with my father and he was telling me stories, i was recording it all And I really, and he said to me, please write about my parents, because they were sent off to a concentration camp in 1942. And he went looking for them but they had died And he said I really want people to know about them. So I described them and talked about them And it was like I wanted to pass on that history to other people And because it was important, my father is important to me and important for a lot of people have read it, so you know. So I just I loved writing when I was a teenager. I did love writing.

Speaker 2:

Then I went to university and English at university put me off reading, put me off writing for about the next 25 years. It was so bad, you know, really bad. You had to do things in a prescribed way So I get out of that and just I can write. So I did and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it very much, yeah, so that's why I started writing was because I wanted to get that across about my parents.

Speaker 1:

Right, so the first book was Sasha and Olga.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then I did the research for the second book, which was a Story about my life again is about a little Russian girl who goes to Australia and is confronts all the racism and all that sort of stuff, and about a little girl in 1840s Adelaide Aboriginal girl who has to go through the whole thing of the British Empire totally snuffing them away. And and I did a lot of research I was I was a historian as well Because I did history So I went to some really good archives and found some fantastic history and conversations that these Aborigines had with some the white people And, yeah, it's a really good book. So it's like a parallel story between my life and in the 1950s and their lives in the 1840s. Yeah, so I mean, that was a very healing book for me to write. So, yeah, my book, that's. That's the thing. That's. What I found is that my story is a healing for me, right, and for people who read them, because I'm I'm talking about really really hard things and how you can get through them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what is the, what is the aspect of writing a book that's so healing for you?

Speaker 2:

I always had to confront something You know, and in this book I had to confront my racism.

Speaker 1:

I mean, what I'm hearing is really the theme is for your healing is to really confront the experiences you you had. But like, what I want to know is, like, all these years, like I don't know what, what kept you going Like, and how did you keep, i don't know, like keep pushing through or keeps looking for the goodness and things.

Speaker 2:

When I I mean you probably know, my last book that I wrote was called Sexy at Seventy And when I was in my sixties I Earth, yeah, 50s my menopause I went through a bad time. I went through a bad time. I felt, oh, i'm getting old and what's left? And so it was. It was pretty bad. And so I wrote Sexy at Seventy in order to face what I was going through, and I made it.

Speaker 2:

But after I read, finished the book in my seventies, it was really hard. I thought, oh, it's OK going up to Seventy, but you know, seventy's, you're really on the downhill stretch now. You know I'm seventy six now, and So what? what I think what keeps me going now is my husband He's amazing And my spiritual practice And my grandchildren and my children. My grandchildren are amazing And I had another hard time with them.

Speaker 2:

My first grandchild died that two days old. So that's a little more daughter. I mean, my daughter had heard the whole history of my family and postnatal depression, so she was a bit worried that then he died at two days old. She said this is a lot worse than post post. He said I'm not going to post a natal depression, i want a live baby, you know. So she went on to have two more, who are now 18 and 16. They're fantastic, and they live in Australia, they live in Sydney, oh, wow. Well, the books, yeah, a lot of things keep me going. Yeah, i mean, this is maybe kind of a heavy question, but like what do you?

Speaker 1:

what do you make of suffering and hope in life? Not a heavy question.

Speaker 2:

I think that it's something that's a really good question. You know what is suffering? I mean, in my spiritual belief I believe that, in fact, what I said to my father, i said everybody gets a dollop of suffering, the whole world suffers and everyone gets a dollar And it's up to you to work through your dollop. He found that really helpful because he was so much more really helpful because he was so bitter and so upset about what his parents were having to country, what happened to his family, and he found that he could cope with it. Yeah, ok, i can. All I have to deal with is my, my bit. I don't worry about the rest of the world, my bit. And so I think I just think everybody suffers.

Speaker 2:

You know, i don't think I was a psychotherapist. For 25 years I never met anybody who didn't suffer Ever. You know they, they all had a different Twist on the different set of circumstances, a different set of traumas. Some people didn't have any traumas. I remember one woman in a group I had who was. She was so happy but she had mouth cancer when she was like eight. So that was her trauma. She survived it and her parents got it through it. But it was everybody's got a trauma of some sort.

Speaker 1:

Right, right, I mean it's.

Speaker 2:

It's pretty awful and A sense of humour is very good. I have a sense of humour, and Especially about old age. My husband and I were just He acts out being 95. I mean, even though he's only 78, this looks so funny and We? I know I cannot ever be in a nursing home. I watched my mother in the most horrible hospital. That was terrible. And I watched my sister in really bad nursing homes in Australia because you know she was. She was already very mentally ill by the time She was in her 20s and I thought I never want to be in a nursing home.

Speaker 2:

So we are converting our barn At the front. We're converting it into a house so that we have carers who live here, because A my husband and I grow all our own vegetables and fruit. We cannot stand eating the kind of food in the north nursing home. So we want to teach a couple of people on how to grow all the vegetables, how to cook them. My husband's a very cook and We don't want to go to a nursing home and eat horrible food and sit in a corner and draw No thanks. So so we're trying to set it up that We have The best old age and the best care that we can, and we're doing it now because they're still young, now, right.

Speaker 1:

Right, i mean through all of the, through, all that's you know experiences, your experiences of your life. I mean, you know I'm 35 now and Sometimes I just feel like gosh some things in in the darkest moments, when things are so heavy. It just feels like you know, it feels despairing. You know, at times I Mean I guess I'm I just like curious to know for you, like what was a thing that, just like Don't know what, gave you hope through all the things that were so dark? I mean your story, just sometimes even just one of those things is enough to make it very difficult for someone's life, let alone all the things you went through.

Speaker 1:

I mean, how, like, i don't know, like what, what, what kept you going? what kept you hopeful and like, positive, and still reaching for things that were, that were good, when so many things were overwhelming, overwhelmingly dark in your life?

Speaker 2:

Well, first of all, you're so young 35, very, very beautiful life ahead of you. I mean every age, I mean. I remember being 26 When I was with my husband in our flattened Paris with a baby and I remember this American girl coming around.

Speaker 2:

She was 18 and I remember going looking in the mirror thing Oh, you're so old, 18. And look at her, she's so young and so gorgeous and oh, you're so old. And Now I look on Instagram at all these women in their 40s and 50s and 60s. They're so young and they keep going on Oh yeah, age defiant, wait till you're 76. That's what I want to say.

Speaker 2:

There is that there is just the thing that age is just a number, but it's not. I mean when, when you get to my age and older, because I've watched a lot of my friends get ill, get cancer. I mean a lot of young people get cancer too. But I Can feel it in my bones. You know, like I still do weights because I have to. I still do exercise, but I can feel my body getting weaker and in order for me to stay strong, i'm gonna have to do more weights and I'm not sure what I want to, but I will do some. You know it.

Speaker 2:

There comes a point where I I Have to slow down. I mean I don't think in, see, you're only 35. You're thinking in terms of you've got the rest of your life ahead of you. I am more than twice your age and I feel I'm looking back at my life And I've had it and I've still got more life. You know, like, for our 40th wedding anniversary we're going to Prague in September and I'm so happy to take Jake Jake there and he where I was born and And have that thing that there's always stuff to look forward to. My granddaughter's coming over Shortly. I've got the most adorable two-year-old granddaughter Amazing, yeah. So I am thinking I think as you get older you get a perspective, you get a much bigger perspective of your life and I think you can only get that when you're in your 70s, i believe what's that, what's that perspective you have?

Speaker 2:

a Perspective is like a view of your life.

Speaker 1:

Well, i mean, like, what's the perspective you have of your life now that you have it at this age?

Speaker 2:

a Lot. I feel a lot more empathetic to myself a lot more empathetic I used to, really. I remember when you said earlier What was that all about in County groups, always screaming at each other and yelling at top of that, and I really put it down for a long time and the perspective on getting now that it was really good. It was a good thing that happened. It was very 70s, very much the fashion then there been and you watch fashion to come and go in therapy. You know Mindfulness there was 10 years ago. It's all sorts of. Now you get a coach, you don't have a therapist anymore and it's just like you're looking at all these different Phases and people and me I was so enthusiastic about all my phases and I watch other people being enthusiastic. But they're just phases and they're just ways of Doing stuff you know which are fashionable, and So I'm not cynical. But I sort of think that.

Speaker 2:

Have you heard of spiritual bypass? a lot of people do bypass this Spiritual bypass, apparently. There's another thing that happened about 10 years ago is that you think you're spiritual, you've overcome everything You're, but you haven't. I think you have to keep facing stuff until you die, facing stuff until you die and more and more things come up and for me, the perspective that's coming up is Hey, that was all right what I did, it wasn't bad, it was really good.

Speaker 2:

No, i'm not proud of every single thing I did, you know, in in those times, but I was doing my best at the time and I was really helping people. No, that's what I was getting perspective there, and I know why. I was helping people, because I couldn't help my mother So hard, to help her so hard, and I Tried so hard to help my sister. I went through it all again, my You know sister. Well, we had a big, big fight and I've just given up. I can't go on Doing all that. You know, i've done my best for my family and I Just have to keep going until you die.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, What do you see as I know? what do you see as being important?

Speaker 2:

What do you be important?

Speaker 1:

I think maybe that, maybe we don't give enough time to because you know, I think when you're young You know there's so many things that you're so worried about but then in the grand scheme of life, like what is what is Valuable and important to focus on?

Speaker 2:

When, when you're young, i think you're just so full of a different kind of energy and you think you're gonna live forever, and Some of the things I look back on now and have perspective on I Didn't think about when I was young and I don't see other people thinking about it. You know, i Think the biggest thing I've learned is not to be a prisoner of your past, and I see young people as just getting away from it. That's what I did in my 20s and 30s. I was getting away from my family. You know I was rebelling and I wasn't allowed to cut my hair. And when I was 20 and I ran away from home, i did a mere Faro cup. That was what I wanted to do. I wanted to escape the shackles of my life. Then I think I should get older. You have to start facing those shackles because you become a parent and you do this To your kids that your parents did to you. You know you have to face. I don't think people want to face that stuff when they're young and I don't think I might mind. No, that's not true. I mean, when I was 26, i started doing in down the groups and I found it really valuable. But Yeah, you just, you just have to Get to a point in life where you think, well, maybe I am so screwed up I better do something about it, but I don't think we're screwed up these days. Oh, it's screwed up in different ways, you know It's screwed up in different ways.

Speaker 2:

I think both my parents and Jake's parents were really, really traumatized by World War two. They took it out on us and we had to deal with it and unfortunately it still goes on. Like I said before, but I think young people today I mean Children especially they're not beaten. It's like we used to be, you know, they're not bashed about their head and told to shut up. And you know, don't do this, that and the other, that. I think they're probably Moly coddled too much the other way, you know. But you know, like some of our kids say well, why should we look at ourselves and stuff like that? Yeah, why should they? they didn't have a bad upbringing. In fact we had dealt with a lot of our own stuff, you know, and Like, for example, my mother.

Speaker 2:

She came from Starvation childhood. Ukraine was starved by Stalin. 10 million people died. Aunts, cousins they're selling her. She was neurotic about food. She's to virtually force feed me and I wasn't allowed to leave the table until I ate it and Used to make me feel sick and I vomited a lot I could feel. So when I look back I know there was a trauma in there. There was this Starvation trauma and she did not want me to leave food. Like this, eudice, you couldn't leave food, you know. So it's my children. My daughter, i think, about the age of two and a half, didn't want to eat anything. So I thought So what do I do? do I become just like my mother, right, make, hurry or whatever? I Got a bottle, one of those, you know, baby bottles. I made a very, very big hole in the teeth and I still feed her everything through the bottle I Know, sort of from oats and scrambled up oats and eggs and nutritious things. The two years Bank out of this bloody bottle And I knew that I had to just leave it.

Speaker 2:

You know, She got through it. She's everything now and her children eat everything. Now that that to me, with the healing, i did not. And then my son all he would eat was egg and chips for two years. So Okay, and I could feel the energy inside me wanting to control them, wanting them to make the meat and not be stupid. You know that sort of stuff and And I knew, i knew it was bad and with and I could feel me wanting to hit my children. My mother used to hit me a lot all the time and that was one of the reasons that I was with men. I used to just give the character them. You know, i said I'm just gonna hit a taker.

Speaker 1:

But I mean just the just that you had to wear with all to, to stop or to be conscious of that is incredible therapy.

Speaker 2:

That's why I was doing therapy Was I was doing, you know, group therapy and Like that therapy. I was facing this stuff, you know I Was determined That I wasn't going to keep the chain going and it mama was terrible with sleep. She used to hit me if I didn't go to sleep. I mean it was just really, and I have real problems with sleep now and I was both my daughter and my granddaughter. I do have trouble with sleep, but they know, they know the history and They know just to accept it, and My, my daughter's husband has to read to her in the night, but it's a beautiful way doing it. He's really tired, but it's part of healing the trauma. Healing the trauma, the past, and not being a kid of it, because your children bring it up in you. I mean, jake, not laugh a lot at our children. What you're worried if we got four between us. What you used to do the same to us, now they're doing it to you.

Speaker 1:

I Mean for the whole. You know a trauma and healing through that that it is so much work to go through. To go through that, what is like? what's your experience of who you were before the healing and maybe after the healing, after the what? What was the healing like?

Speaker 2:

what's your what? what's your experience like as a person before the trauma and then?

Speaker 1:

after the healing of the trauma. Oh, I'm not to the trauma right now.

Speaker 2:

Well, i had a lot of very tightness in my body. I used to have terrible migraines, really, really bad migraines, and headaches and vomiting, all that sort of stuff, and so, by facing all that, i don't get migraines anymore and I still don't sleep for a while, but it's alright. You know, my husband says it doesn't matter, you can sleep all day. And so it's feeling that tightness in your body and dealing with it what it's about.

Speaker 2:

I did a lot of biometric therapy, which is the theory being that everything is stored in the body. all your traumas are stored in the body. So there's a lot of work you do where you're just letting it go in your neck, in your back, in your head, just like the other, and that's what I was dealing with. I was dealing with what is stored in there which is and there's a lot of stuff I know, you know, and it comes out in talking, in doing processes. I did a lot of gestalt therapy. I've worked on my dreams, any therapy that you can think of. in the 70s and 80s I did, and now I meditate and now you know, yeah, there's. I think my body is a lot more happy than it was before.

Speaker 1:

Did you do a lot of worrying when you were younger.

Speaker 2:

A lot of what.

Speaker 1:

Worrying.

Speaker 2:

Worrying. oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I worried a lot, I don't worry as much anymore.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I, yeah, it was actually hard being a teacher, because I was always in front of people and things like that, and I had a. Somebody told me when I was 12 years old that I had stick legs, skinny, stick legs, and that's part of the story I tell in becoming sexy at 70. I had to go through the trauma of my legs. I used to hate walking across the school yard because I thought, oh, all the girls are saying, oh, hasn't she got skinny legs standing in front of the classroom, hasn't she got skinny? And it was like short skirts in those days. You know, your legs are always on show And in my 60s, in my 50s and my 60s, i really confronted this thing about my legs. I love my legs now And if you look on Instagram, i'm always showing off my legs Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, you're gorgeous. I don't know what the hell did. I think they weren't gorgeous, it's like. And I realized that if you look down on your legs, they look thinner than if you look across your legs.

Speaker 2:

Right right, Very simple thing about that. And then my husband says oh, you've got your most gorgeous legs. He's always doing that He's very helpful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, It's. You know, it's so incredible to hear you talk because I just feel like you, just you, just never, you never give up. There's never any, like you know I gave up in my 70s.

Speaker 2:

I gave up for a couple of years. It was really bad. I crashed. We've got a Tesla. I don't know if you know what a Tesla is. Yeah, it's a beautiful, electric, gorgeous car.

Speaker 2:

I crashed it twice And the first time I hit two other cars in a tree and I could have killed somebody. I was out of control. And then the second time it's just annoying crashing such a beautiful car. But my husband was amazing. He said I don't care about the car, i'll carry about you, sort of thing. It helped a lot, but I felt like my control was slipping And I felt like I'm not in control anymore. I can't drive anymore, i'm not doing this anymore. And I really suffered with that And I went into quite a deep depression And I got out of it slowly. I still haven't really been that happy about driving the Tesla. It's a big car And you know, older things like that is just more scary. They're more dangerous, you know. And so my husband said we've got a small electric car. Drive that if you're more comfortable in that.

Speaker 2:

And I forget what. The last question you asked is do I ever get really depressed? Yeah, i got really depressed for a couple of years. I got so bad at one point that I said I think I'm going to get, i think I've got dementia. So we went to the doctor and he said I'll send a dementia expert around. So they send a dementia expert around and look. After about half an hour she said you haven't got dementia. I said I still might get it. Can I go in a register? No, i'm not putting you on a register. You don't know what people have got dementia. And so it was like you forget things. I do forget a lot more than I used to, a lot more. So in a lot of ways I'm pleased I wrote all my books, because if I've forgotten something I'll go back and read it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I got very depressed about that And I only very, very, very, very. I'm just coming out of it really.

Speaker 2:

My father he told me the story when he was like a young 76 and the Nazis bombed Ukraine and then went into Ukraine and rounded up Jews, killed them. He hid inside a silo And he said it was really. He heard them all around and thought they were going to look in, they're going to catch him and all that sort of stuff. So this depression that I felt, i felt like I was in a silo with oil on the walls And there was no way I could get out. You know, i thought, oh, my father, you must have felt really, really bad to be in a silo and have to try and get out, and yeah, it's not easy. But then, you know, my granddaughter comes around. She's two, she's amazing, she really helps me a lot And she's so beautiful, she loves me, she didn't care about my wrinkles, didn't care about any of that.

Speaker 1:

There's something very special about the love of you know, like a toddler or a baby, like that. You know it's just so precious.

Speaker 2:

We're accepting. Yeah, we love dressing up, because I love dressing up. That's what one of the things I wrote about in Sex It's Seventy. Jake and I went to a lot of parties and made a lot of party costumes, and that's how I spent my sixties having great dressing up. I've still got oodles of party clothes and I have to get rid of them because I, you know, we went to festivals every summer. I'm not sure if I want to go anymore. And it's all right, it's not sad, but my granddaughter wants to dress up, and so we dress up and we dance. She's great.

Speaker 1:

Is there anything in you know? is there anything that you wish you did, that you didn't get to do?

Speaker 2:

Well, i went through. That was one of the perspective things I went through. My husband is a brilliant physicist and very, very clever and all that sort of stuff. He is really clever. And I thought, well, if I hadn't had a traumatic childhood with coming home to broken dishes every day and teenagehood where my father was repressing me, wouldn't let me go out and do anything, i think I could have studied more and made a lot more of it, my intellectual life. You know I could, i could have been much more brilliant. And then the other day I was thinking about it Hey, you were surviving. You were surviving World War II, you were surviving schizophrenia, You were surviving all that sort of stuff. And by writing this book, sashranaga, and all my books, it's a way of healing that trauma. So I think, well, you know, that's what I was doing. I wasn't becoming a brilliant, you know, whatever I was doing pretty well, but I was surviving. And I think the proof the pudding was, you know, writing my books say their books about survival and how you survive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's incredible. I mean your story is just incredible. I mean I think the the fact that you know, i think it's just a miracle that you can sit here today and you know, have so much joy and you know you've been smiling so much of this interview and to hear everything that you went through, i mean it's just, it's just no easy feat to be able to now sit on this sort of things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, smiling is very important, because the legs are even a lot better. Yeah, yeah, you're not to look like that. Yeah, so I'm very vain, i'm extremely vain, and I always regard myself as being a channel one person.

Speaker 1:

What does that mean?

Speaker 2:

Ram Das. Have you heard of Ram Das? It was a very, very great spiritual teacher who said if you're a channel one person, you're always into how you look and what you're wearing. Instagram is perfect for channel one. But channel two, you're a bit more spiritual. Channel three, you're a bit deeper, more intellectual and stuff like that. So I'm a channel one person.

Speaker 1:

Well, what about so? what about, like aging and wrinkles and all that? I feel like nowadays, like even there's even I don't know. It just feels like there's so much. Not only was there, there's always been pressure, i think, for women to look a certain way, but now we have a lot of like technology and tools to like keep us looking young, so to speak.

Speaker 2:

What's your?

Speaker 1:

what's your, what's your point of view on wrinkles and aging and skin and all that?

Speaker 2:

A lot of the people I follow on Instagram are fantastic. You know. Twinkle in your wrinkle is one of them. What's for one of them is twinkle in your wrinkle, and I love Helen Merron, who's she's older than me 77, 78, who she just lets herself be old, and it is really beautiful, and I can't remember who said it.

Speaker 2:

I read about this older woman the other day said I'm not going to have a facelift, i'm not going to get rid of these. The every wrinkle here tells the story of my life. You know why? should I erase the story of my life and look like Kim Kardashian or whoever? you know whoever? the most beautiful young thing at the moment is probably a lot more now, just, but I found it hard. I found it hard to own my wrinkles. When I was really depressed, i'd go in the mirror and I thought, well, who's going to look at you now? And so that's that's my ongoing challenge. I'd accept my face, i'd accept my wrinkles, And not I wanted to have a facelift.

Speaker 2:

Two years ago, when I was in the press and Jake said if you have a facelift, that's the end of us, i couldn't stand looking at your face and know that you had this and that because I was thinking about having this kind of stuff you put in your neck. He said I'd be stroking your neck or kissing it and then just wire in there. You think I like that. He hates me wearing eye makeup, which I love wearing eye makeup but it does run And it just drives me nuts after a bit. And I'm actually quite pleased that my husband doesn't want me to wear makeup, you know, because it's much easier. Instagram is full of tutorials for older women. It's fantastic thing. You can hide all your wrinkles, you know, do that and the other. And then there's all these other things that you can put which plump everything out.

Speaker 1:

Right right. So none of, so that feeling just doesn't go away.

Speaker 2:

then No, not for me. I'm a channel. one person My mother-in-law, my first husband's mother, who was like my mother. she died when she was 93. She said, if I don't have time to look at my wrinkles because she's doing the very busy life and stuff like that, she thought I was mad. Yeah worrying about wrinkles, oh, you know, and so I think you're either a channel. If you're a channel, one person like I am you always be worried about your wrinkles, but I think other people who've got more depth to them don't.

Speaker 1:

Yeah well, you are a very beautiful person, So you don't need the makeup and all the the pulling and the stitching and all that stuff.

Speaker 2:

So because I was really tempted, i was really tempted.

Speaker 1:

No, you don't need it.

Speaker 2:

Don't touch it I was online and I thought oh, I could just go to Turkey and stay there, And then I had to go on like that.

Speaker 1:

That's so funny. Don't do it. It's horrible.

Speaker 2:

You don't need it Well thank you, and that's what is really needed. Cosmetic industry is huge. It's huge, the feature industry is huge And it's always coming at you on Facebook, instagram, before and after pictures.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

The after pictures. I met this bloke. I went to a party about three months ago and I met this guy from an Arab country I can't remember which one And he was telling me all about his girlfriends who'd had facelift and they were all awful And he was very positive. He said you don't need a facelift, you just see yourself. But it gets harder and harder if you're a channel one person.

Speaker 1:

Well, just to wrap things up, there are two questions I ask all my guests, And the first one being what do you do for play or for fun?

Speaker 2:

Right. At least once a week my husband and I have a party. We put on really good music, we have really fabulous food And I put on what I call my Russian bar girl clothes. That's always in our low cut, show off my legs, of course And I always do a dance for him. He loved it And it was when I was 64, i don't know how it came up. But I said he said you never danced just for me. I said, ok, i will. So I started dancing for him and I was really embarrassed And I thought, oh God, he's going to think I look awful, just something. He loved it, he loved it And he loves me dancing for him And he encourages me to be sexier and sexier And that is real fun. So we do have a lot of fun that way.

Speaker 2:

The other thing we have fun is food. We eat really good food, really nice food, really drink good wine. We think life's too short for bad wine. Yeah, we go to nice restaurants, like when we're going to Prague. We booked two Michelin Star restaurants for our 40th anniversary And we tried to Paris. We went and we had three Michelin Star restaurants. That was too much, three Michelin Star restaurants. By the third night we couldn't walk. So we have fun with good food and we have fun with our grandchildren.

Speaker 2:

I try and have fun with weeding the garden. We do love the project, so we do. And the other thing that I've started to do, because I used to hang around with a lot of people who are my children's age, 50, older than you, and they're 50, 40, something else And I've just beginning to want to have friends who are my own age, because they've got the same, they're having the same perspective as me, so we can talk about that. And they were brought up the same time as I was brought up And they're sort of very, very similar.

Speaker 2:

I was born in the 47. I was a kid in the 50s. In the 50s we had no TV, we had no phone. On the street there'd be one car every hour, so we'd play in the streets. None of the doors were locked. We rode bikes which were never locked. Nobody, ever. everybody just came in and out of house. It was such a different time to today, but I've got that perspective. So I'm really pleased I was alive in the 50s, because I know what it was like. Was that the first question? Have I?

Speaker 1:

asked you. Yes, that was the first question, So the last question is what would you tell your younger self?

Speaker 2:

What would I tell my younger self? Oh, you know, i'm pretty accepting of everything I did. I mean, when I think of my younger self trying to help my mother, my mother thought that there was a Russian who I asked her And I was shining light in the window And they're Australia and they're going to kill her And all that sort of. So I used to do all these things. I used to put little stones all around the window And I stood on show or on the phone And the next day I'd take her out and said they haven't moved. If somebody was shining lights in the window they would have kicked those phones. She thought I was part of the clock, but I did my best. I don't know what else I could have done.

Speaker 2:

You know, in those days mental illness was really, really shunned. Nobody talked about mental hospitals. Nobody talked about mental illness. There's nobody I could talk to about it. And I look back and I think I did my best. I really do think I did my best And I think my biggest thing to the young people is there's always work to do on yourself And some sort of a practice where you're looking at yourself. I think that's what I did when I was young I was 26 when I started doing therapy And I think it was really good for me. I think it helped save my children and my grandchildren And so maybe get a life coach. I don't know, i'm pretty cynical about a lot of that stuff, but anybody can be a life coach.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you so much, Eva. This was such a great conversation. I just really appreciate you taking the time to share your story And I mean, even as we're at this point, i'm still just amazed that there's such a brightness to you And I just don't take it. I guess I just don't take it for granted, just like how difficult it must have been everything you've gone through and kind of how much, how it's a miracle you're sitting here today and your life today is just an in-it-in day.

Speaker 2:

I think I've got a lot of that brightness from my mother. When she was well, she was very beautiful money And that's what I got from my relatives. They said she was so funny when she was a child. It was always funny, So I think I got that from her. And so I'm grateful to her for that.

Speaker 1:

Did you enjoy today's episode? If so, please leave us a review and let us know what you enjoyed. I say us, but it's really me. Who would you like to hear from next, Or what topic you'd like to discuss? regardless, I would love to hear from you. Until next time, bye.