There’s an unwritten rule at the chemist that you try not to overhear what the person in front of you is discussing with the pharmacist at the “scripts in” counter. This is hard because you are...
Category: Aging
Aged care: if these were children, we’d be outraged
During the months that the Aged Care Royal Commission conducted its business, we heard tragic and horrific stories of vulnerable older people who were subjected to unimaginable abuse and neglect.
The Commissioners said it is a national shame that up to 50 sexual assaults take place every week in aged care. These are just the reported cases. How many more are silently ignored?
Terrible sleep and bad sex? It’s the menopause.
More than 2.5 million Australians are approaching perimenopause or in menopause. But so many women in their 40s and 50s suffer symptoms FOR YEARS without realising these are related. Beloved author...
Carer Spotlight: Linda’s story of dementia and devotion
When my mum, Linda, began caring for my grandma, Helen, due to advancing dementia, she was unaware of the enormity of the task at hand. “I didn’t know it would be like this,” she used to say to me. ...
Carer spotlight: Alice’s story of duty, isolation, identity
70.1% of primary caregivers cite “a sense of family responsibility” as the main reason that they became a carer. But what does that actually mean? Alice (a pseudonym) cared for her mum for over 30...
Death and dying: A profound experience for prize winner
Sarah Holland-Batt’s poetry collection The Jaguar won the 2023 Stella Prize for Australian women’s and non-binary writers' work. It's an extraordinary and unexpected collection of poems, which...
Cracking ’em up: mature women in comedy
In 2018 when my son and I were trying to cram as many shows as we could into our ten days at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, I had no idea that two years later I would be on the other side of the...
Women’s breast satisfaction impacts their quality of life
A recent paper by University of Canberra researchers found women with larger breasts are less satisfied with their breasts and that this has significant implications for their quality of life and...
LateBloomerLesbians: Body through #hashtags
Some of us are married to men, some of us are dating them, and some of us are chronically single. But we all have one thing in common: we are late to the coming out game. So reads the introduction...