‘‘We all suffer in silence, but stuff suffering silence.’’
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Maria Hutchison has shaved red hair, she smiles easily, moves with confidence and she tells it like it is.
She also wears her scars lightly.
From the age of four, she was sexually abused by her grandfather who was an elder of her family’s New Zealand church community.
When she was 13, her fisherman father drowned when his boat capsized off Westport harbour. She was left to deal with her mother’s grief, her younger siblings’ confusion and her own terrible secret.
The pain of these events led Maria down a dark path, and she took more than 30 years to find a light.
As an 18-year-old student she began a lifestyle of repeated sexual encounters with men.
‘‘I constantly sought out men to have sex with to stop the voice inside my head that was telling me I was too fat and ugly for anyone to love me. However, once I had sex with them I felt ashamed of what I had done and believed that if they really knew me they wouldn’t love me anyway,’’ she says in her book.
Her casual sexual encounters led to a pregnancy and single-motherhood.
At 22, she was admitted to a rehabilitation facility for her sex addiction.
But her addictive behaviour continued.
By 35, her weight had ballooned to more than 120kg and she underwent gastric banding.
But even after losing 30kg in 12 months she still didn’t feel right.
‘‘Looking in the mirror I did not see the new revised slimmer me. I saw the old me with all my insecurities and insufficiencies,’’ she writes in facing maria.
Maria also struggled to control her spending.
As a single mother, she was drinking, buying expensive clothes to impress friends and borrowing to keep up her lifestyle.
In 2004 she declared bankruptcy, owing about $100000 — the majority of it mortgaged against her mother’s home.
‘‘I was so deep in shame that I could not acknowledge to myself how far into debt I had gotten myself,’’ she writes.
Maria eventually found herself homeless with a failed marriage, and two children to look after including a one-year-old daughter.
After moving to Australia, she started again and began a successful job as a sales person.
Eight years later she was married again, with a third child and earning $200000 a year in a job which took her across Australia.
But something still wasn’t right.
‘‘I had made it financially, was earning more than many of my associates ... and yet I was not happy,’’ she writes.
When she hit 40, Maria had what she calls her ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ moment when she stopped work and took 90 days to find exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She spent her time doing yoga, life-coaching, Reiki and thinking about her book.
She said she had no regrets about revealing her struggle with addictions to the world in her book.
‘‘There’s nothing in there that I’ve not owned. You can’t call me out on it,’’ she said.
She said she hoped her book would help people with their own addiction battles.
‘‘There will be people who have had far more horrific lives than mine — but by telling my story, I hope it gives them permission to tell their own story,’’ she said.
Today, she is a Kyneton-based rehabilitation services manager who counsels addicts and their families to help turn their lives around.
She said her life lessons had been hard-won, but authentic.
‘‘When I was in rehab, I got accepted into a psychology degree. But I realised that while everyone was researching the impact of sexual abuse I was living it. But I do have qualifications now,’’ she said.
Her work has put her in touch with Shepparton’s rehabilitation facility The Cottage, which, she said, provided a valuable space for people battling addiction.
‘‘The Cottage holds a space for people to come together out of the dark and connect.
‘‘Addiction is about secrets, and the secret I’ve kept the longest is not mine — it’s my grandfather’s. Don’t hold other people’s secrets,’’ she said.
She quotes Swiss-English journalist and Ted Talk-er Johann Hari who said: ‘‘The opposite of addiction is not sobriety — it’s connection’’.
Maria Hutchison’s book facing maria will be launched tonight at a community discussion on connectedness and addiction held, appropriately, at The Connection between Shepparton and Mooroopna from 6pm.
Copies will be available to buy for $12.95 or from www.mariahutchison.com.au
●If this article has triggered negative feelings or memories: GV CASA provides free and confidential counselling, information, advocacy and support to all people who have been affected by sexual assault.
The services are provided across the Greater Shepparton, and Moira, Mitchell, Murrindindi and Strathbogie shires.
Phone 1800112343 for more information.
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