Courage and warrior spirit with Shantelle Thompson

Written By Ian Bishop

Sir John Kirwan hosts Shantelle Thompson for a chat about her wellbeing journey. Find out what they talked about and where you can listen.

Download | Stream | Transcript | Full Video

Growing up as an Aboriginal in Australia meant grappling with intergenerational challenges for Shantelle.

In Episode 2 of Open Minded, JK talks to Shantelle Thompson. She is an Australian 3x Jiu-jitsu world champion, known as the Barkindji Warrior. She gets raw and real about her experiences with mental health. Shantelle opens up about digging deep to find courage and strength to take responsibility to help herself first. She also reveals what she has learnt that helped her to get through those times and what she does on a daily basis to stay well. Shantelle shares insights on how we can make meaningful changes in the workplace and our own lives around inclusion, diversity and wellbeing. This chat is confrontational, moving and absolutely inspiring. 

TRIGGER WARNING: This podcast touches on themes of violence, sexual abuse, suicide and mental distress - listener discretion is advised. If you or someone you know is in need of support, please contact Beyond Blue in Australia on 1800 512 348 and for New Zealand, you can free call or text 1737 to talk. These support lines are free, and available 24/7.

Watch the full video interview:

Lets peel back the layers

Despite the adversity she has faced in her life, Shantelle refused to give up power to her circumstances. She has a warrior spirit so she fought hard to push through those challenges. 

One of her key philosophies is taking responsibility and understanding what role you are playing in your own story, saying “It doesn’t matter what’s happened to me, what’s more important is how I respond to that and the story I create from that event.” 

Shantelle recognises she has had moments, especially in her early days where she has “fallen victim to [her] own victimhood.” Retrospectively and through working with younger people, she now has advice for that feeling saying, “You’re allowed to hurt, you’re allowed to feel angry… but what you’re not allowed to do is use that hurt to hurt yourself or to hurt other people.”

To get her through the tough times, she says she always had a purpose. Shantelle attributes Jiu-jitsu and martial arts to helping her find a way to use her emotion. To find out more, listen to the full episode!

COVID has flipped everything on it’s head causing her to make adjustments to her usual routine. To stay well on a daily basis, Shantelle does have a solid routine that she makes an effort to uphold. If your interest is piqued, listen to what she has to say in the full episode.

Finally, on improving your education around diversity and inclusion, she suggests “looking at what is within your reach to change.” Shantelle had some great suggestions on books and movies which you can find linked below.

Read:

Watch:

Shantelle’s Journey with Post-Natal Depression

Here’s where you can listen to Open Minded and Episode 2:

Also live on Stitcher and Acast, and more podcast platforms soon.

See the full transcript of the interview below

00:00:04

John Kirwan: Hi, everyone is John Kirwan here, and I'm really excited as this is my podcast called Open Minded. This podcast is interviewing inspirational people from all walks of life. From leaders, from people who are making decisions, from normal people. You know, I want to give you the real stuff that's happening every day in the minds of these leaders. How they stay well in high-pressure roles, how they build resilience in themselves, how they look after their people, and how can you invest in yourself and your people to do mental wellbeing well. So, this is JK and this is Open Minded. So, let's go.

00:00:40

John Kirwan: In this episode, I sit down with Shantelle Thompson, an absolutely inspirational woman. She's an Australian three times Jiu-jitsu World Champion. Man, what a rollercoaster ride for me. I think I cried, I was shocked, she made me open up about some of the things that I'm going through. But for me, just an incredible, open minded, open hearted discussion. So, look. Buckle yourself in, enjoy the ride. I certainly did.

00:01:14

John Kirwan: People just a heads up in this podcast episode, it does touch on themes of violence, sexual abuse, suicide and mental distress. So listener discretion is advised.

00:01:30

John Kirwan: I am incredibly excited today because I have Shantelle Thompson with me and I've spoken to her a few times before, and every time I speak to her, I leave inspired and in awe. So, I'll just tell you a little bit about Shantelle. She's an amazing woman. She has been the NAIDOC Sports Person of the Year in Australia in 2009. That's only been given, I think, to eight women in the history. She is a Jiu-jitsu Champion, so do not mess with Shantelle. She has an amazing background that we're going to dig into, but she's a mother, she's a business owner, she's an abuse, bullying and depression survivor. She's a role model, she's an advocate for equality and human rights. And she has an absolutely incredible story. So, sit down, buckle up, because this is going to be fun. It's going to be inspiring. And I just want to jump straight into this Shantelle because I'm from New Zealand. So, anyone coming from outside New Zealand or Australia, you know, for me in New Zealand, we understand way better because of the great work that you know, our indigenous people have been doing our Māori people have been doing. But we understand we iwi, we understand tribes, we understand a lot of our history and our background. But I'm intrigued about especially the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background. I mean, not until recently I didn't really understand Torres Strait Islanders as Aboriginal, I didn't really know the difference. So quickly, give us a little bit of your background from an indigenous point of view and maybe and a little background for people who don't understand our indigenous background.

00:03:18

Shantelle Thompson: No JK, thank you for having me and thank you to everyone that's taking the time to listen to this story today. I would first like to begin by acknowledging and paying my respects to the traditional custodians of the land on which I am on at the moment, which is Latjilatji and Barkindji, which is in regional Victoria, Australia. And I pay my respects to our elders, both past and present, who without their work, they sacrifice their dedication, someone like me would not be able to sit here today and proudly call themselves a First Nations woman. And I also pay my respects to indigenous people around the world and to people who are listening today. I'm a Barkindji Nenapu woman. And for me, that means pre-colonisation, Australia had over 500 different nations and within those nations, they had clans or tribes. So, they were over two and a half thousand different dialects within the 500 clans and that's just within Australia.

00:04:18

Shantelle Thompson: And then you also have the Torres Strait Islanders, who are a group of islands at the top of Australia, and they had their own culture, their own people, but they're a part of the Australian First Nations group. And that's why we call ourselves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. That's one label that we've been given, and some people choose to identify with that. But I often describe to people who don't understand our cultures and our landscape is, we're one big landmass with many different countries. The same is what Europe would be. You would not enter into Germany or England without a passport and Aboriginal Australia was exactly the same. We had our territories, we had our boundaries and our borders, and we had a very complex kinship system of how we related to ourselves and how we related to tribes that were where neighbours of ours. So, it's an amazing history. It's the oldest living culture in the world where we're an oral history and we lived in partnership with the land. If people are interested in knowing more, there's an amazing book called Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, which is a book that challenges the Australian colonial history of that we were just simple hunters and gatherers. We weren't. We were farmers. We were agriculturalist. And we're astrologists and scientists. We had the world's oldest first oven... bread baking oven. We had fields of farms. So, we have a very complex and dynamic history and culture that's still evolving today.

00:06:00

John Kirwan: The interesting thing about your story is, you know, I say mental health is not prejudiced. One of the hardest things that I had to deal with was I had no excuse for my mental health. I had a fantastic upbringing, great parents, middle class, white. I was an All Black. But that actually made me worse, because I had no excuse, nothing. And as I started investigating this a bit more, I found that there were people that had every excuse to be unwell mentally. And when I looked at your story, I think, wow, how did you not become a victim for your whole life? You have some pretty frightening stuff in your background. Yet you've come through it. So, as a young Aboriginal girl growing up in Dareton, is that how I say it?

00:06:57

Shantelle Thompson: Dareton

00:06:59

John Kirwan: Yeah Dareton. you had 17 siblings, you had abuse in your background. So how did... what are you doing here? How did you do that?

00:07:08

Shantelle Thompson: Look, I think there are definitely moments where I have fallen victim to my own victimhood, to my own sense of entitlement, that because I've already been through so much, the world owes me something. But I think I often have asked myself the same question. How did I get out compared to other people who had similar stories or experiences, and yet they have fallen to drugs and alcohol, to domestic violence and to so many other issues that complaint people. I think I even went on so far as to do academic studies of indigenous trauma and recovery to try and understand the history of it. But also, how did I get out? And behaviour is communication. So, whether you're a newborn child or a 90-year-old person, your behaviour is communicating what you're experiencing at any given moment. And I think looking back on my history, despite what I have gone through, the thing that got me through is that I was gifted a warrior heart and a warrior spirit from the get-go. I think that's my gift from my ancestors. I had an elder speak recently about the concept of an ancestral mandate, which in a Western context, might be your purpose or your calling. And for us, it's not just about what does the ego want. It's what are you being called to do from your elders? And I think the life experiences that I've been through have been put there for a reason so that I can learn from them and then go on to help others. But to answer your original question of how am I still here, it's because I always had someone else to be concerned about other than myself. I'm the third oldest of eighteen siblings, something I only just confirmed last year through my older brother. So, I always had other people to be concerned about. Whenever the focus was purely on myself and I was in survival mode, I would shy away from things I would hide, I would run. But as soon as I saw that someone else was in deeper trouble or a greater need than myself, I would feel this energy coming from within me, but from somewhere else that was greater than me, that would allow me to have the courage to stand up and protect this other person or face this situation. But I always had someone to love me, like I always had my grandmother there, or I was always fortunate enough that at the right time someone would come through, whether it would be a teacher, a guide, or just an interaction that might not have meant anything at the time, but would come back to me later and offer me the wisdom or the support that I needed to just to be able to take that next step out of whatever situation was holding me down.

00:09:50

John Kirwan: When did you know that inner strength was a warrior and you could put that energy into something positive rather than something negative?

00:10:01

Shantelle Thompson: I think it's always been unconsciously there, and it's always been a driver, but to consciously know what that energy is and to be able to use that energy more constructively has been probably in my 30s. Because for a lot of indigenous women in our teens and in our 20s, we're often either, A. raising our own families, because we have a history of having children quite young, or we're raising our extended family. So, it's only often in our late 20s and early 30s that we really have the chance to start to question who we are. How did we become this way and what do we want that to mean for our future and for me that... my energy hasn't always been constructive in many ways, it's often been destructive. In my late teens and my early 20s, I was going out nightclubbing. I would always swing first and ask questions later because I physically knew how to defend myself before I knew how to intellectually or verbally defend myself. My first coping skills was to learn how to fight because if you didn't fight, you got trodden on. So, from I think... I threw my first punch when I was about seven or eight years old and it was within my own community. So, when you've never been enough for your community or your family and you're not enough for the... either worlds that you come from, you learn to go, well, I don't want to fit in. It's not safe. I'm going to find my own path through. But it's only been probably in the last 10 years that I've really started investigating. I have a big heart and I love people and I'm a very gentle, genuine person, but when that is taken for granted or it's pushed, that's when that warrior spirit comes out and I take no victims.

00:11:49

John Kirwan: So, tell me I understand that rage, I understand the physical lash out, but how do you make peace with yourself or with what's happened to you? For example, child abuse, bullying in your background... at some stage, how do you get rid of that anger and how do you get rid of that manifesting itself physically?

00:12:11

Shantelle Thompson: I call it my shadow work. I've had to find a way to forgive myself more than anyone else for I guess... I know my own potential and I often look back at my past and I tend to punish myself quite severely for the things that I didn't do or, the work that I didn't do, or I'm like I could have done this differently or I could have done that better. But in terms of the people that have hurt me or the situations that have hurt me, I've made peace with them because without those situations, I wouldn't be the woman that I am today. And I've had to understand that it's more a comment on what they're dealing with and I was just the vehicle with which they lashed out on. Now, I was six years old when I was sexually abused by a family member, and it wasn't actually the abuse that did the most damage. It was my family's response and management of the abuse. My mum's extended family decided to cover up the abuse and pretend that it didn't happen. And it was actually my father who's non-indigenous, that took me into his care and helped nurture me through that so that it wouldn't become something that defined me or controlled me. So, for me, I don't know how I instinctively got through it through my early years. But looking back, I think it's because I've always had a purpose. I've always gone, I want better than this. I don't want to be defined by my circumstances. I've always had something to fight for, whether it was someone or something. And I like I said, I've always had someone to love me. So, I think that those protective buffers helped balance out the damage that was being done. But now that I'm older, first of all, finding martial arts really helped me find a way to use that emotion and realise it's not bad.

00:14:00

Shantelle Thompson: Emotions are not bad, but often in a Western context we're not taught how to feel our emotions, whereas you lose someone significant, and here in Australia, you're expected to take three days of personal leave, go and attend to your business and bury your loved one and then be back at work like nothing's happened. But in indigenous cultures, it's not like that. You're meant to take the time to grieve. You're meant to take the time to allow the wound to heal, but not hide the scar. And I think the more I start to understand the natural connection I have to my indigenous heritage and the learnings and the wisdom from that, that's how I've been able to learn to understand that this is my responsibility. It's not... it doesn't matter what's happened to me. What is more important is how I respond to that and the story I create from that event. And now that's what I know. It's not the event. It doesn't matter how bad the sexual abuse was. It's the story and the emotion that I attached to the event that determines how I live my life beyond that event.

00:15:01

John Kirwan: So, from what I hear from that... amazing... make peace, make peace with yourself. But also, the interesting thing you said to me was, you know, Jiu-jitsu was important. You've become a three-time World Champion. So, was that also you grasping at something positive through this time and going, wow, you know...

00:15:23

Shantelle Thompson: I think it's a key thing to do when you're in a dark place. So, for me, my trauma had accumulated over many years. And now, there's studies being done around intergenerational trauma and a thing called epigenetics, where you inherit the experiences of your parents. Their experiences actually imprint on your physiological DNA. And for me, understanding that my parents lived experience had impacted on their ability to show up for me but also impacted on my ability to show up for myself. I realised that I had to find a way to help myself because no one could help me until I was ready to help myself. And what was the tipping point was that after the birth of my twins, my... one of my twins is a girl, and she was the tipping point for my sexual abuse. Like she completely triggered me back into that six-year-old state.

00:16:17

Shantelle Thompson: And I got so... we have a history of child removal in the indigenous culture here in Australia. It started with the Stolen Generation, which was a government policy that intentionally removed children of Aboriginal heritage to try and make them white, so they were easily assimilated into the white heritage in Australia. So, that was one of the key reasons why I didn't seek help when I first started to get sick and I realised something wasn't right. And it got so... I got so sick that I got to the point where one night I actually hurt my daughter and I was capable of killing her or myself.

00:16:50

Shantelle Thompson: But it was also...

00:16:52

John Kirwan: Shantelle, this was post-natal depression, right?

00:16:55

Shantelle Thompson: Post-natal depression.

00:16:56

Shantelle Thompson: Okay.

00:16:57

Shantelle Thompson: Yup and it hadn't been spoken about, I hadn't been warned about the... I guess the risks of it all, the signs of it. But I also hadn't been told that because of my heritage and my life experiences, that I was at a higher risk category of developing this illness. And because I'd always been the caretaker for everyone else, I didn't know how to ask for help. And I was... I think I was twenty-seven and I was in a really deep and dark place. But after that incident and if anyone's interested in hearing more about that particular part, there are a few videos on YouTube that share more of that story. But it was at that point that I realised if I didn't do something to help myself, I may not be here, and I may not... my children may not be here. So, I didn't want to take medication because my family had a history of addiction. So, I had to do something. And for me, that was my partner suggested Jiu-Jitsu, and that's why I started training. I didn't start to be a world champion. I didn't even seek to be good at it. I was seeking to do something that could get me out of my head and back into my body. And my head was the dangerous place. But once I was out of my head and back into my heart, I could find breathing spaces slowly by showing up twice a week and giving myself time to do that. Even when I didn't want to go, I forced myself to go because I knew that my children's lives depended on it. I knew that they needed... they would inherit whatever life experience I decided to give them. And that's what gave me the strength. It wasn't fighting for myself. I was fighting for them because they didn't choose to be born into this. They didn't choose to be born to a mum who was sick. So, if I didn't do something... so Jiu-jitsu gave me the physical, mental and emotional space, I needed to start the healing process.

00:18:41

John Kirwan: I wanted to jump out of a window one night, I think I've already told you this Shantelle, but just for the listeners and a guy lying next to me, Sir Michael Jordan, said JK, you've got a good heart. And those words saved my life. But you told me the story once about a spiritual intervention when you were in the car. Do you want to share that with me? Because that really resonated with me.

00:19:03

Shantelle Thompson: So, after the moment... so the moment where I was with my daughter was... it was early hours of the morning. I was by myself, my... she hadn't slept. I also had her twin brother and her three-year-old sister. And I was having these images in my mind of hurting my child. And it wasn't until her cries changed from discomfort to pain that I realised I'd started to act on those images in my mind. And it was at that exact point that my partner walked through the door. Now, I'll move through this really quickly. But, my... I basically grabbed the car keys and I put the baby in my partner's arms, and I took off and I went to the doctor's office. Now, that was my first port of call I had. I realized I needed help and I waited five hours to see a female GP. She was the first person I told. And her first response to me was that because I had... she noticed on my fault that I was of indigenous heritage and she thought she would call child protection to do a welfare check on my children. And that I should spend time in a mental health facility. Now, if I was not Aboriginal First Nations, she would not have made that call. She would have reacted completely differently. But because of that response, I left the doctor's office in a panic and I was driving. I had one more person that I was going to, which was my sister and her partner. I thought, maybe they can help me. But on the drive there, I got to the roundabout and I just had all these thoughts coursing through me. And I'm like if I'm really this much of a danger to my children that even a doctor thinks that they need to be taken from me, that maybe I'm better off not being here. And there was a big red truck coming. And I remember pressing my foot down on the accelerator, the physical sensation of pressing my foot down on that accelerator to move the car in front of the truck and the car didn't move. And to this day, I believe that it's my mum who I lost before I became a mother, and our culture and our ancestors that were saying, it's not your time to go and I literally took that second chance and I've tried to make the most of it and use it to help myself because I know that by helping myself, I can then help others.

00:21:13

John Kirwan: I'll just take a little breath there... that that is absolutely inspirational. So, let's talk about... you've come through this and you're back on the Jiu-jitsu mat. How do you do that? You're coming out of all these issues. You're being an incredible mum. You know, you're trying to find this peace within yourself and you're bashing the hell out of someone else. How does that work?

00:21:40

Shantelle Thompson: I'll say I was also getting the bashed the hell out of. And I think it was the fact that my partner was behind me. He was with me every step of the way. And I think that's it. That's a key component of it, is that I had my family behind me, my partner behind me, and they were willing to look after the kids so that I could go and train. And even though sometimes they didn't understand, I really stood my ground saying, I need this. And I would go into the gym, I was one of only two females, but I didn't give a sh*t whether the guys wanted me there or not. I knew that I had to be there. And I'm not good at Jiu-jitsu, even though the fact I'm a three-time World Champion, I'm not a technical person, I'm not a graceful person. Like I'm as clumsy as a bull in a china shop. But I love Jiu-jitsu and it loves me. And I think giving myself permission to feel that energy. And for the first time in my life, I had the permission to be angry, to be aggressive, to be whatever I wanted. But I soon learnt very quickly that being angry and unchained emotion did not serve me in martial arts because it allowed my opponent to get the better of me. So, I had to learn that if I could learn to channel that emotion, I could still feel it, but not be controlled by it, I could use it to my advantage. And when I see something I want and I give myself permission to just go after it, I don't even need to know why I want it. And I just follow that feeling in my heart, in both in life and in Jiu-jitsu on the mats. And I just slowly started to be able to create space between what I was feeling and how I chose to respond rather than reacting to life or to the emotions. And there was a moment when I really knew that I was starting to get better. It was probably about two or three months into training. And my twins were about eight months, eight or ten months old and they were sitting on the floor. I've always loved my children, but, western culture gives you this Hollywood version of motherhood that you're supposed to be intrinsically in love with your children from the moment they're born. That's not the case. I was not in love with my twins. I love them. But I was so traumatised and trying to find myself that... and then I felt this guilt and all these things kept piling on. But after training for a few months and like eating right and the other things that kind of helped is that I went back to work and I started to focus on what I wanted to create for the future and who I wanted to be as a woman and as a mum. That... It was like someone took off a pair of glasses and I could see my twins for the first time. And that was the first moment that I fell in love with them. And that was the moment that I really knew that I was starting to find my way back to myself and I was starting to find a level of health and wellness again.

00:24:31

John Kirwan: With saying you loved your kids, but you weren't in love with them. I mean, did you also go through that battle? Or you're just so accepting now of all of those things? I mean, it's you know, we don't choose our parents and you don't choose your kids. I think that came straight into mind when you said that. You're so open about those emotions that you've nearly made me cry three times. But those goggles were about your self-love. Did that help you fall in love with your kids?

00:24:59

Shantelle Thompson: I think I've had to learn... I have such a big heart JK and I care what people think, but I've had to learn that what I think about myself matters more if I'm to survive this world. Having my own self-respect and having my back matters more than having anyone else. And if I'm... like I said, my kids might have chosen me for their mum spiritually. But it was up to me to be able to be the best mum that I could be. And I had to make those choices. I had to do the work. It was the... the story of postnatal depression was easy to share for me from early stages, but I didn't share the story of hurting my daughter until probably two or three years after it because I did fear judgment. But then I realised that this story has to be told because I'm strong enough to tell it. I'm strong enough to sit there when someone chooses to attack me because of my own story, I can quite eloquently tell them where to shove their opinions. Because this isn't about me. This isn't about their response to my story. This is about me sharing a story that needs to be told because there might be someone out there that doesn't have my heart or my supports or my strength that needs to hear this and they need to hear that it's OK. But they also need to see that it's possible to overcome this. So, I think, again, for me, knowing that I'm helping someone else by owning this and by sharing the story, I've slowly been able to accept it because my children of... my twins are now 11 and my eldest daughter is thirteen. My youngest daughter, she made the connection between that story and herself recently. And she goes, Mum, were you really capable of killing me or yourself? And I had to turn around and say yes. And they've asked me questions about my sexual abuse because they've been in the room when I've shared my story, or my twins like to go and Google me and show people who their mum is when people don't believe them. And that's probably been more challenging than the strangers' approach to it because when I share my story, it's not just my story. I'm sharing the story of my children as well.

00:27:10

John Kirwan: I had a similar situation where I was sharing my mental health story outside the door and not sharing it inside the door until a psychiatrist said to me once... JK, the best way to parent mental health in the home was to show vulnerability. And the day I started sharing it more internally, it just became part of the dinner conversation. So, it became a norm rather than a dark thing. So, I get that. What would you tell yourself for the same person in your situation who's living this right now with the experience that you've had of retrospect?

00:27:48

Shantelle Thompson: To be kind to yourself. But also, to have the courage to take responsibility, to understand what role are you playing in your own story and your own life experience that you're living right now. And I think there's a real difference between using our mental health as another thing to beat ourselves up. I think that's just another form of victimhood versus deep responsibility to go... This is what I need to do to help myself, but I don't have to do it alone because you see, I work with a lot of young people and you can't help someone who is not willing to help themselves. And a lot of young people that I work with, they go, I've had a bad experience, so the worlds against me. And I said you're allowed to hurt. You're allowed to feel angry. But what you're not allowed to do is use that hurt to hurt yourself or to hurt other people. And I don't think they've ever been spoken to like that. And I think once you get past a certain point, you haven't... We all have a choice. And you asked me, like, how did I get out? I had to make a choice to take responsibility for the life that I was going to create, or I could give the power to my circumstances and what had happened to me and allowed that to dictate the type of person I would be, but also the type of life that my kids would live but inherit. What legacy was I going to leave? What story was I telling myself? But I only could do this when I had the courage to look at myself in the mirror and sit with myself and really look into my own eyes for a long time and go... Shan, what are you doing to help yourself and what are you doing to create the situation that you find yourself now in?

00:29:30

John Kirwan: I have two sayings... I love me. Who do you love? And I use that as a bit of a joke when I'm talking about mental health to people say ah you bloody bast**d JK. And the other one is, if it's meant to be, it's up to me. And I think, you know, me coming through my mental health, I had to make the decision that if someone has to do it, it's up to me. I can't let the antidepressants do it. I've got to really take control of this. One thing that you and I often talk about is, how we stay within the balance. So, what do you do on a daily basis to make sure that you are not stressing or getting to that anxiety level? So, what do you do in your day that keeps you so balanced now?

00:30:15

Shantelle Thompson: Look, I think I definitely had it much more together pre-covid. Covid has completely flipped everything on its head. Like usually I have my own space in my own living environment to go to. That's my space. So, I've had to find new coping mechanisms and new, I guess, habits that I've created in this new situation that I find myself in and on a daily basis, it's definitely journaling is a big one. Making... like journaling what's in my head. Movement, physical movement is a non-negotiable, whether it's just a walk around the block, whether it's literally just standing up and doing some stretches and creating some movement through my body. And the other two things that I do on a daily basis is connecting with my loved ones, but also looking at my dreams, like what are the things that are still inspiring me that I'm working towards to create? And that allows me to understand that the here and now is really important because what I do today will create my tomorrow. But how I'm feeling doesn't have to be... I can allow myself to feel that, but I don't have to be controlled by my feelings. Sometimes it's... for me, it's a very fine balance of sometimes I need to take action to change my emotional state and sometimes I need to sit with my emotions to be able to change my physical state. So, it's very much a lot of self-reflection, movement, connecting with a loved one and looking to my future and what I'm trying to create and understanding, what steps do I need to take today to make that possible?

00:31:57

John Kirwan: What's in your goody bag? A goody bag for me is something to look forward to every day, something you put in that's just for you. You know, often I tell a lot of people around me that I'm way more selfish than my wife because I do look after myself because it makes me a better person. So, my goody bag is something that I look forward to every day. Do you have a goody bag or what do you put in there just for you that's something to look forward to?

00:32:23

Shantelle Thompson: I think for me, what I would call that is for me is that every Sunday I go for a walk that's on my own, out on country and it could be an hour, it could be three hours. And I take that time on a Sunday morning unapologetically, because it's my time to connect and I always go down by the water. There's an old grandmother tree like the... we have these amazing river red gum trees that, the base is so big that you can't even wrap your arms around it. And we call them our grandparent trees. And I've got this grandmother tree that I go to and I just, I hug her, and I look at her and I'm like the stories that she could tell, the things that she has seen. So that's one thing I do. But then right now, like pre-covid, I was on track to become a Jiu-jitsu blackbelt. My dream is to have an attempt at becoming a blackbelt World Champion. So the thing that I always kind of pull out of my goody bag is that vision and that dream that I'm working towards, which is being able to have the financial stability to be able to train as a full-time athlete that people are thinking in sporting codes tend to take for granted their ability to train and to be supported, to be paid, to be an athlete. Whereas that's a dream of mine is to be able to say I'm a full-time athlete and a parent and my family's taken care of and not disadvantaged because of the dreams that I have. So the thing that's driving me at the moment is to build a business that's so strong that it can support my family and then I can unapologetically pursue that dream of trying to be a World Champion, because being a World Champion in my 40s, as a mum of three, slash soon to be four is something that kind of keeps me going. And when I doubt myself or the day gets hard, I pull that out. And I so guiltily I went and bought my own black belt, which is almost like a no-no in martial arts, but it's a ceremonial thing for me. I bought a black belt from the World Championships that I was at in 2019 and I had the Barkindji Warrior which written on it, which is a name that has been gifted to me by an elder in our community. And I have it sitting above my desk in my other house. And I look at it every day and that's my guilty pleasure to go... That's what I'm working towards. I'm creating a black belt legacy, not just in action, but for life. It's a philosophy. It's the principles. It's almost like Bruce Lee's way of living. I'm looking to create my own.

00:34:57

Shantelle Thompson: How... there is diversity, there's culture, there's indigenous culture. What would your advice be to workplaces to have genuine inclusion? I know that there is box-ticking inclusion, but what would you do to include ethnic backgrounds, diversity, LGBTQ society, all this and get it mainstream? How do we do that?

00:35:24

Shantelle Thompson: JK, I think the fact that we're still talking about inclusion in twenty twenty is how far behind we are. We should be talking about belonging, inclusion's bulls**t. Like, yeah, OK. Someone can feel included and not belong. You know, someone feels like they belong... like someone like me, I can go to work and I can complain about the fact that I had to get up at 4 am to go and do a training session, to then do a work thing on my business before I even hit the office and not have someone roll their eyes and go, Oh, here, Shantelle is again trying to make other people feel bad because of how much she does or someone who is a transgender person can come to work as a physical male, but wear female makeup and not be ridiculed for it or feel un... self-conscious about it. Or, an African-American person or an African person or Indigenous person can be on a board of directors and not be the only one. Like, that's where we need to be because the people in control and in power do not want to share. Like we have a group over here and its Males Champions of Change, I believe it's called. And there's one hundred CEOs... This is how much bulls**t some of these programs can be. And I'll call it bulls**t is that there's one hundred men who are CEOs of big companies across Australia that are Champions of Change. Now, there's no diversity within those one hundred males, they're all white middle-class men. Now, what effort have those men made to do to go and make friends with other male CEOs that are Indian, African, Aboriginal CEOs and go, hey, we need you in this group because if we're to be real Male Champions of Change because even gender equality is very white in Australia. There's this subtext of layers to even to gender equality because if you're a woman of colour, you go down another one. If you're a hijab, working, wearing women, you go down another layer like these are the layers you've got to get to breakthrough just to break, even so, I think my advice to organisations would be to have the courage to take a really long, hard look at who's in your leadership teams. And because I hear a lot of organisations saying, oh, we have traineeship programs, we have entry-level programs... that's no longer okay. Like, you're just ticking a box. Like, where are the companies that are leading the way? Who can you learn from and having the courage to go well, actually, we need some help. And paying people what they're worth to give you the advice you need from the groups that you're trying to include. Like, once you do that well and people feel like they belong, then we will start to see a change in corporate Australia.

00:38:10

John Kirwan: I would like to get some advice from you because my niece is... we're cross-cultural married. I'm married to an Italian. My sister's married to a Samoan, my niece is Afakasi. And just the way that we talk as sibling sometimes, our nieces pull us up and say that we're generational racists. Right. So... and that's quite confronting... but when you look inside yourself, we are like, for example, when I was playing rugby, we might call someone a fag. Right. Which is totally unacceptable today. But my question to you is, how does the middle-class white guy educate himself, right? For something, he doesn't know. Because we're even getting a little bit scared now to maybe talk to the transgender person or, you know, what do I say to you, Shantelle? Do I say what's your ethnic background? So, there's also this wall that's being built up, because also the people that are genuine, we don't know what to do or say anymore. How do we approach that as middle-class white?

00:39:14

Shantelle Thompson: I think there's two sides to it JK. I think it's understanding that the world is also trying to find its place. All those groups are trying to assert themselves. They're trying to find acceptance and belonging and their identity in the mainstream culture. So, my advice is to middle-aged white men is don't take it personal. Like being able to look at your own actions and your own upbringing and saying, well, I don't know, and I don't know how to do this, but I think I've given advice because my experience of being indigenous is very different to someone who is dark-skinned. Because I can walk into a room and be accepted before I open my mouth if I'm wearing nice clothes and everything. But as soon as I open my mouth and I identify, then you see a subtle... you can sometimes see or feel a subtle change in the room and people's response to you. They don't know how to take that. I think having the courage to accept what you don't know. And when someone does challenge you on it, it's if they do it aggressively, it's more of a reflection on themselves and what they've experienced. I don't tend to take it as a personal attack. And look at what is in the context of your life, because the reality is, you can't learn everything, and you can't be everything to everyone. So, it's what is in your work context, what is in your family context, what should you be aware of? And then what do you have to be ready to accept and go, well, yes, I've stuffed up. It wasn't intentional. It was an unintentional racist comment or incident that happened. But you know what? I'm willing to own up to that and being willing to say to those people who may be attacking you or taking it a little bit too far in addressing that incident going, hey, instead of attacking me, why don't we sit down together so I can learn from you, but also you can learn from me because I think... the world is changing slowly but very, very rapidly at the same time. And I think for a lot of us, we need to have that tolerance and respect for other people and their experiences and where they're at. And I think that's coming from both sides. But I think the challenge for middle-class white men is that they have to hold the majority of the power. So that's where the challenge comes from because there's more expectation on yous to do better and be better. But I think understanding your own limitations. But what's within your responsibility to be doing better on.

00:41:45

John Kirwan: So, as a leader just leading into that and we've seen it before that, you know, mental health is not prejudiced. So how would you create a culture of wellbeing within a business?

00:42:01

Shantelle Thompson: I think for me, being able to understand where my people are coming from. Like, what are they bringing to the table? Not just as working professionals, but as human beings. Like what is they what is their humanity experience and what is their biggest barriers to being able to show up at work? Like, what are the biggest things that they've got going on? Because I want people to be able to feel like they can bring their whole selves to work. And if they're struggling, I don't want them to feel like that's going to be held against them or I'm going to stop them from taking on a big project because I'm going to worry about their capacity to be able to handle it, because I know they've got stuff going on at home. I think that's one thing is creating a culture in an environment where people feel safe to show up fully as themselves. I think the other thing is ensuring that we have the diversity in place. But the culture is people created. It's not created by me. It's created by our people and the people that we serve and the reason we're in business. I think that's how I would start because at the moment, I'm the only person in my business. So, I'm learning about organisational culture. And I've never worked in a corporate, I've worked at a grassroots level, but with young people, you see them thrive when they're included. They're given ownership, they've given responsibility, and there's accountability, but there's trust as well.

00:43:22

John Kirwan: So if I'm middle class white and it's been an amazing thing to see the Black Lives Matter across the world, but if you were me and I have 'if it's meant to be, it's up to me' as part of my philosophy in life. What would you advise me to do to change this world?

00:43:47

Shantelle Thompson: Look at what you can do that's within your reach. Like what is within your power and your capacity to change? Looking at your organisation or where you're buying from, where you're spending your time from, what you're choosing to read and engage with is first and foremost. What is within your capacity to learn, to change, to engage with? If you've got Pasifika in your family, do you go to Pasifika events and go to the islander cultural events in New Zealand. Going to the Māori events and engaging with these things that are within your world and within your responsibility. But also, especially those that are educated and having capacity, not being afraid to read books of why I'll no longer talk to white people about racism, like books on white fragility and privilege are very, very real. And each of us has a certain level of privilege, like as a parent in my household, as soon as my kids come to me with first world problems, I'm very unsympathetic and saying, is that a first world problem? And if it is, then we know it's something that can be solved. Because if you have a problem that human beings can solve and you have a roof over your head, you have food on the table and someone to love you, any problem is solvable. So, in my household, I don't allow our family to pathologies their issues or their feelings. I allow them to feel it and address it. But I don't allow them to blow it up and play the victim and go, oh, I've got so hard. I call bulls**t. I'm like, you're not living in a third world country. You're living in a family where I'm strongly working to educate you. And both their dad and I are working to bring the best of our cultures into it. But we're also acknowledging the things about our cultures that aren't going to serve our kids moving forward in a 21st century in the reality that they have to be able to live in multiple worlds and move through multiple social circles. So, I would start within your own life, like where do you have the opportunity to interact with people that are not like yourself? How can you diversify your own social experiences as well as your professional experiences?

00:45:57

John Kirwan: Awesome. I knew it would be awesome. You nearly made me cry three times. Lots of tips, lots of pointers. Lastly, I always ask my amazing guests, who would you like me to talk to next in Open Minded?

00:46:15

Shantelle Thompson: I think here in Australia, we have so many amazing people that can be spoken to, that probably... the top four people would be Joe Williams, a former rugby player and a boxer now turned mental health and suicide prevention worker. There's a woman called Karen Demmery who herself struggled with addiction and whatnot. She's now got the... she's got TLMC Academy, which is... she's a trauma and leadership expert and she's about helping people reclaim their personal power. So how they can best show up in their lives. And then you've got Nova Peris and if you can get a hold of him, you've got Adam Goodes is always an amazing person to have his story shared because of everything he's been through would be the people that I would suggest just as a tipping point.

00:47:18

John Kirwan: Give me one book I should read about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people that would help me as a middle-class white guy.

00:47:26

Shantelle Thompson: I think a book would be The First Australians or Dark Emu, which is by Bruce Pascoe. And something to watch, I think is very important is the 13th, which is a Netflix series, and it speaks about the 13th Amendment in America and how that has created modern-day slavery in terms of the high incarceration rates of African-American people in America. And you've got Adam Goodes has two documentaries, The Australian Dream and The Final Quarter would be very easy, kind of starting points to really have a look at the challenges and the complexity of the Australian experience of being Aboriginal. But we are yet to make peace with our own history like we are fighting to for our National Day of Pride, to be celebrated on a day that can be celebrated by all people. So, I say to people, be kind to yourself because this is a very complex space. I'm trying to understand my own history, my own place in Australia as an Aboriginal person. So, anyone that's actively and intentionally showing interest in this space, I say, do so with an open heart. There's so many resources out there on Instagram, there's Trading Black and so many other indigenous businesses that are trying to engage people with the real history and honest conversations.

00:49:06

John Kirwan: People that was Open Minded and I've been inspired, so Shantelle, you're beautiful, your story is amazing, inspirational, and I love talking to you. Thank you so much for your time.

00:49:17

Shantelle Thompson: No, thank you so much for the opportunity, JK. And thank you for having the courage to be open, to be willing and to have these conversations and to people that have taken the time to listen to this story. It's been raw. It's been triggering. But I think for real stories to have impact, we need to have the courage to not shy away from the hard stuff. And I think that's what we've done today.

00:49:42

John Kirwan: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Open-Minded. If you like the podcast, make sure to subscribe. This podcast is everywhere you get your podcasts, so make sure you do that. I don't need to tell you how and then you'll get my new episodes straight away. And if you can leave a review, tell everyone you know about it, it would be awesome. If you could help spread the word about the show, thanks. But also, I'd love to get your feedback. You know, I'm new to this. I want to get better and I want to know what you want to know about mental wellbeing. So please reach out to us and thanks and I'll see you all soon.

Ian Bishop
Previous

A vision to transform lives with Dr. James Muecke
Next

Leadership during a pandemic with Dr. Ashley Bloomfield