Lucy Perry - Get the Girls Out

Contents

Contents

HarperCollinsPublishers

First published in Australia in 2019

by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

harpercollins.com.au

Copyright Lucy Bloom 2019

The right of Lucy Bloom to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollinsPublishers

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale 0632, Auckland, New Zealand

A 75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom

Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower, 22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor, Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3, Canada

195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA

ISBN 978 1 4607 5146 6 (paperback)

ISBN 978 1 4607 0613 8 (ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

Cover design by HarperCollins Design Studio

Cover photography Richard Lyons

Photographs are from the collection of Lucy Bloom, except as noted.

For my girls

I was going to write a business book a career journal filled with clever learnings, sage advice and world-changing missions but I was struggling, big time. By struggling, I mean I hated every word. I spent more than two years producing bursts of word count, then rereading and deleting them.

Then I met a famous person who said, Dont write a business book, my dear. Write the stories you want to leave for the people you love. And so I did. I didnt set out to write a memoir, but thats what was spilling out when I met that famous person on a sunny Tuesday in Melbourne in June 2017. Id been at it for two years when she told me just to write my stories. And so I kept going. I wrote what I want my favourite people to read, stories that many have never heard. And while I have written it with my nearest and dearest in mind, this book is also for you.

Buckle up. Here comes my book: a big, colourful and, sometimes, downright awful word-vomit of love, fun and survival with a side order of WTF. Honestly, I cant make up the stuff that happens to me.

After the first, each big-ass chapter is arranged by a theme based on a quality I admire in the people Ive worked with, lived with, travelled with or battled alongside. I share with you the life-changing lessons Ive learned from those remarkable people and their unspoken invitation to do life in a way that is richer than anything I knew before they crossed my path.

My deepest wish is that reading this book makes you want to do cool stuff, make plans, launch that business, pack your bags, shave your head, ride that horse, date that hottie, apply for that job, chuck that party and, most of all, get your girls out, whatever that means for you.

I broke my coccyx playing ping-pong at the pub.

I had been trying to slam home a win with a killer serve, but instead I came crashing down on my arse and lost the game. This is a metaphor for my life: going out with a bang.

It was 2016. A few days after breaking my bum, high as a kite on Endone, I was booked to present a keynote speech in Canberra to a room full of women leaders. Open mic: I could speak on whatever I liked, as long as it somehow fit the conferences theme of transformation. At the time, I was the boss of a kids charity in Cambodia and often spoke at events like this. Courtney, the event manager, emailed me to ask for confirmation of my speech title. With oxycodone hydrochloride and savvy B dancing through my veins, I typed, The title of my speech shall be: How to Turn a Kick in the Vag into Flying High Like a Boss. Courtney came back to me with an apologetic email about Canberra, corporate, public servants, conservative thinkers and how she honestly thought we would not get away with such a strongly worded title. High on my next dose, I emailed her back: Cmon! Read this article by your very own master of ceremonies, Jane Caro, then get back to me.

Jane had written the article for Womens Agenda, an online feminist publication, the previous year. Its headline had caught my eye: Its nice to be nice but much more important to be brave. In it, Jane articulates how bold communication is a risk but also more likely to be heard than niceties. She discusses how toeing the line and being politically correct produces rubbish results. Nobody listens to super-cautious tiptoeing that kind of communication just gets swept away with all the other noise. Jane gives a campaign example that she worked on as a copywriter: a poster designed to encourage horse-mad girls to wear helmets. They give you helmet head and totally mess up your hair, so I get the issue. The image on the poster was a girl with long, dark brunette hair, taking her horse over a jump, looking beautiful without her helmet. The headline was just one word: BLONDE. That might offend a lot of blondes, and feminists in general. But it hits the point home like a galloping Clydesdale: if you are not wearing a helmet when you ride, you are not very smart. This is bold stuff. And Jane is blonde.

I love Janes no-bullshit boldness. After I read that article, I went on to write some of the best communication Ive ever produced. I wrote Facebook posts that were quoted in the mainstream media and reached ten times my usual audience. I wrote campaigns that hit home hard. Eventually I wrote this book. Youd better saddle up then.

Goodbye, nice. Hello, brave.

A day after I sent Janes article to Courtney, she replied: Lucy, I have fought the good fight with the powers that be... and I won. I screamed Id been sure she would say no! Go, Courtney, you trailblazing Champion of the Vag. You box fighter, you. I laughed so hard my ass hurt.

A year had passed since the biggest kick in the vag I have copped to date, so I figured it was time for me to reflect on it and talk about it with strength, forgiveness and humour. Most of all, it was time for me to take stock, really work out what Id learned from that low blow and share that with others.

A kick in the vag is just like a kick in the balls. Its the chick equivalent of a painful knockdown. A hit in the weak spot, a take-down that truly hurts. You dont see a kick in the vag coming or, if you have an inkling of it, you shrug it off as impossible because no one could be that cruel or stupid, surely. But its not always horrid humans who make life suck so terribly you cant breathe: a health crisis, the death of a loved one, a horrible accident or a monumental financial loss.

Every woman I know has suffered a shocker setback at some point in her life: an unexpected sacking, an unkind split with a partner or friend, or a brutal loss. Its a part of life we all have to endure, but a tough one to prepare for. We never really know when or just how a kick in the vag is going to take us down.

*

In April 2015, I was the chief executive officer of an international aid charity. Its founder is an elderly Australian obstetrician who created a network of childbirth-injury hospitals in Ethiopia. Dr Catherine Hamlin was her name. Id been the CEO for almost three years when I was fired by text message by a board of three volunteers.

Catherine was told I had resigned and called me in hysterics from her mudbrick home in Ethiopia. She had picked me out of the ranks of volunteers to champion her work in Australia, and together wed raised millions and put the issue of smashed-up vaginas on breakfast TV. Not to be confused with the title of this chapter childbirth injuries in Africa were pretty much the simple yet horrid business of horrific internal injuries due to lack of proper obstetric care.