The Pink Book of Apologies

On being a snot-dribbling, hot mess

My holiday to Italy was meant to revive me. It failed and I want a refund (joke, sort of).

In a whirlwind of a 2025, after much advocacy, the Victorian Parliament announced an inquiry into cults and fringe groups.

Inconveniently, I’d just booked a once-in-a-decade holiday to Italy. What’s the chances?

Everyone said it was a good opportunity for me to turn off from the cult survivor advocacy, have a rest. In theory I agreed but do you every really turn off when your inbox has a plethora of sad, distressing and overwhelming notes from cult members and survivors? No, you don’t.

I came back from Italy more exhausted than I’d left. It was my own fault really for thinking it was possible to drive across the country with 16 stopovers and a 7-year-old who gets car sick. All while, processing that an inquiry into cults was underway in my absence.

I came back to the news I was to be speaking to the parliamentary committee on 13th October.

It filled me with immense pride and honour to speak on behalf of 2x2 survivors in Victoria (and Australia). It also left me an emotional wreak.

Anyone who watched the hearing will know I cried the whole way though my opening statement, had snot running down my face for most of it. To top it off my bra strap went rogue at the 13-minute mark, just for giggles.

My friends who watched said it was ‘authentic’ ‘heartfelt’.

I guess that’s a nice way to say, ‘you were a snot-dribbling, hot mess’.

Really and truly, it was an honour, with all my snot and wayward bra straps, to share 2x2 survivor stories with the Victorian parliamentary committee. It was also deeply satisfying to name the Victorian and Australian 2x2 overseers on public record.

I walked out of that hearing utterly exhausted. Emotionally spent. Maybe I’m just really tired and the last half of this essay is just because…I’m tired? You be the judge.

I’m also juggling a really difficult situation with surveillance. I returned from Italy to discover that I was being surveilled.

I live with chronic pain, and an insurance company is meant to cover some of the cost of managing that pain. They’ve decided that I in fact don’t have chronic pain and they thought it a good idea to authorise surveillance on me, in an attempt to disprove my pain.

You won’t need to be Einstein to work out the impact that surveillance has had on me. A cult survivor who grew up in a controlling, surveillance-led culture. For several weeks I barely left home or opened the blinds because I felt like I was being watched (I probably was) everywhere I went.

Please - if you work for an insurance company and you know someone is a cult survivors DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT authorise surveillance on them. I look forward to the day when cult survivor experiences are taken seriously - when organisations, governments and agencies can make cult-survivor-informed decisions and not harm us further with things like surveillance.

The insurance saga continues, via a lawyer/solicitor - because guess what? My chronic pain is still there. My hip didn’t get the memo. How inconvenient.

In all this: I’ve also realised I no longer believe myself to be able to write.

My self-confidence has plummeted. I’ve lost my usual self-belief, lost my typically unending positivity and belief that I can get my stories of surviving the 2x2 cult published in a trauma informed and sensitive way.

I wanted to get my stories of 2x2 childhood and of 2x2 abuse published in a mainstream publishing house. Its been my goal for near a decade. I’ve lost my belief that it can happen.

I started the Truth 2x2 Cult Kids Podcast because I was determined to find a way to tell our stories and determined to show editors and agents that an audience exists. It does exist. Deep down I know this.

If anyone has magic tablets or magic words to use to help me regain my pitching and writing confidence - send it my way. I’m all out of enthusiasm pills.

In the meantime, in the airport in Rome I bought (another) pink, leatherbound notebook.

On the flight home I started another piece of writing which is bringing me some closure and some kind of bizarre sense of peace.

I started writing all the apologies that I need to hear.

There has been a lot of harm, abuse, rejection and sadness, and lately I’ve recently felt a deep grief for the lack of acknowledgement of the harms.

Every time I think about the people who’ve harmed me, silenced me, walked away and rejected me when I raised their harm – I feel overwhelming sadness. I come from a very dysfunctional family and community, and I have rarely had acknowledgement of the harms done, let alone frank conversations or apologies.

Every time I think of something which has occurred, that no one has acknowledged, apologised for – I have begun the process of documenting the apology I wish I got in the little pink book.

‘I’m sorry that I allowed you to be groomed and harmed in that cult, and that I still l cant examine my role in that’

‘I’m sorry I allowed you to be caught in the crosshairs of my dysfunctional relationships, and my inability to get help left you responsible for the little kids’

‘I’m sorry I never told you that you’re clever, that I said your sister was the smart one’

‘I’m sorry it’s my instinct to be critical and cruel to my children. I’ve found the world critical and cruel, so I replicate it’

‘I’m sorry I can’t treat you with the love, tenderness, kindness and generosity that you deserve. It’s a reflection of me not being able to learn and be curious about your life, its not a reflection of you’

‘I’m sorry I sexualised your queer identity and saw you as a promiscuous problem, instead of the bold, brave and generous person you are’

Somehow the little pink book of apologies is healing parts of me. Somehow, it’s a validation, acknowledgement of the pain, moral injury, abuse, permissiveness, lack of closure.

When you come from a community like mine – filled with people who will never acknowledge the harm they inflicted (and some still do inflict), the cover ups they participated in, the narrative control, the sexuality and gender shaming… they’ll never own what they’ve done.

I suspect the only apologies I’ll ever get, is the apologies I’ve written to myself.

This little pink book, rather fast becoming filled with pages of apologies, has shown me how much narcissism exists in my family and community.

Writing those apologies is confronting reading.

When you put it all on paper like that – it’s clear that something isn’t right.

If my child or a member of my community, came to me with a book like that, with lists things I’d enabled, covered up, dismissed, refused to acknowledge – I would be mortified. Instead, my family and community are convinced that it’s me who is the problem.

If only I’d stay quiet, if only I wouldn’t talk about what happened. If only I’d live like them, have relationships that looked like theirs, be a bit ‘less’ than I am.

Something is broken, and I don’t think its me.

The little pink book suggests the problem might lie outside of me. What if I could convince myself that I’m not the broken one?

Do I need to buy another notebook, start all over again? Or do I just need another holiday?