Rosie Ricketson is a mother and award-winning creative producer passionate about maternal well-being. With a background in the arts, Rosie curates community-led experiences and projects with a vision for a more connected world.
In this episode, Rosie shares:
🌱Her Thoughts Investing in Community During Uncertain Times
🌱Creativity's Role in Building Community
🌱Modern Motherhood Challenges and Needs
🌱Balancing Parenting, Education, and Work Support
This conversation served as a tapestry woven with personal anecdotes, the wisdom of voices like Maggie Dent, and the transformative ripples that stem from intentional community engagement, reminding us how vital our bonds are for growth and survival.
Grab a cuppa, listen in, and let us know your thoughts x
Other ways we can help you:
Rosie Ricketson is a mother and award-winning creative producer passionate about maternal well-being. With a background in the arts, Rosie curates community-led experiences and projects with a vision for a more connected world.
In this episode, Rosie shares:
🌱Her Thoughts Investing in Community During Uncertain Times
🌱Creativity's Role in Building Community
🌱Modern Motherhood Challenges and Needs
🌱Balancing Parenting, Education, and Work Support
This conversation served as a tapestry woven with personal anecdotes, the wisdom of voices like Maggie Dent, and the transformative ripples that stem from intentional community engagement, reminding us how vital our bonds are for growth and survival.
Grab a cuppa, listen in, and let us know your thoughts x
Other ways we can help you:
Rose Rickerson is a mother, creative producer and a nerd for maternal well-being. With a background in the arts, rose curates community-led experiences and projects with a vision for a more connected world. She's produced award-winning film and podcast projects and writes about her life, balancing creativity and motherhood. We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we record today the Kabi, kabi and Gabi Gabi people. We recognize their continued connection to the land and waters of this beautiful place. We recognize Aboriginal people as the original custodians of this land and acknowledge that they have never ceded sovereignty. We respect all Gabi Gabi elders, ancestors and emerging elders, and all First Nations people listening today. Today we chat to Rose all about investing in community and belonging as preparation for climate uncertainty. We talk about creativity as a way to explore the constantly shifting identity of motherhood and we talk about claiming your own creative needs as mothers. It's a nice juicy, creative mattressence kind of episode today, so I hope you lean in and I hope it resonates with you like it did me.
Vicci Oliver:Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education and stepping into the wilderness, however that looks with your family.
Nicki Farrell:Each week, we'll be interviewing experts that truly inspire us to answer your parenting and education questions. We'll also be sharing stories from some incredible families that took the leap and are taking the road less travelled.
Vicci Oliver:Wear your hosts, Vicki and Nikki from Wildlings Forest School Popping your headphones. Settle in and join us on this next adventure.
Nicki Farrell:Welcome to the show. Rose, I am really excited to have you on today because I've been following you. I don't even know how I got onto your account, but I've been following you on Instagram for a long time and feel like you're a kindred spirit around motherhood and creativity and community. It's really nice to meet you and I can't wait to speak about these things. How are you going today?
Rosie Ricketson:Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honour to be on this podcast that I've been listening to for so many years. I'm good today. My kids are happily playing around in the garden and I can see them out the corner of the window, and it's so nice to be sitting here chatting with you about all things community, motherhood, creativity my favourite topics.
Nicki Farrell:Same same same. So let's let's get into it. I think one of the reasons there's many reasons I've got you on, but community is a big one for me because I have loved watching you go from. I can't remember when I started following you I think you had your first child, but maybe not your second and I could see that you were actively building community. Could you tell me what prompted you to do that? How hard or easy has it been, and what does that look like for you?
Rosie Ricketson:Look, I think I'm the kind of person who loves a lot of relationships in my life. I always have been. I grew up with a lot of older siblings and cousins and family and neighbours around. We had a very open door kind of house growing up and I would ride my bike around the village and felt very much connected to my community growing up. So I think it was always a part of my instinct to recreate that and that instinct really came online in a hard way after having kids.
Rosie Ricketson:I started studying postnatal well-being through the innate traditions group when I was about two years postpartum with my first child and learnt that the impulse to create community is actually kind of wired into us as postpartum women. Our nervous system requires social regulation and requires a network especially of women and other children around us to feel a sense of safety and belonging that is required in order to raise the next generation collectively. So I really loved finding that out. I loved finding out that that's part of the human story. I loved that resonated so much with me. And look on the ground. It's not always simple because not everyone feels this way. Some people are very private and that's okay. I've had to learn that people not everyone's like me. I've had to learn that people are also triggered by it. People are triggered by community makers, I think as well. So I think it's a delicate process making community. There's always going to be people who have conflict that comes up. I feel like I've been good at avoiding that to a certain extent. So, yeah, I guess there's the community for me that's come online. That has been such a source of belonging and creativity for me, really connecting with an online community and writing about motherhood, writing about this fright of passage and finding so many like-minded women online and learning so much from each other. Then there's the physical community that I live in.
Rosie Ricketson:So I grew up in a pretty small suburb of Sydney by the sea and now I live in a town of around 2,000 people in the southern tablelands, west east of Canberra. So I really like a small town because I like for the familiarity of bumping into people that you might not even know their name, but they always smile at your kid or they always say good day. That brings me a real sense of comfort. There's a real because this town is quite small. There's a real sense of like. There's just a sense of belonging and this was really illuminated for me during the bushfires that we all really do belong to each other and look out for each other, even if we might not, you know, get along on the surface or we might be quite different people, but there is a commonality of all being in this together and that made me feel really inspired through the fires, even though it was such a hard time for our town, so many towns and it was so much grief, you know. It really illuminated that actually we can all look after each other and we do want to look after each other and we do want to feel connected to each other.
Rosie Ricketson:So that was really comforting for me as well, because I do feel on a macro level, I do feel and I felt this during the pandemic as well that there is very much a pandemic of loneliness going on on the planet and that's not how I want to live and that's not how I want my children to live.
Rosie Ricketson:And when I look at nature, that's not how nature lives. And to live in harmony with the planet, which is something I think we're going to have to really figure out how to do. Moving forward, following a more interdependent system of relating to each other and relating to the planet is going to really help us survive. So that's really a value set for me that informs the way I raise my kids and the way I work in community. Turning those values into a business or a lifestyle is like for many of us. It's a challenge, because having a value and a language around it is one thing, but having business now and skills to sell and create a business around a local business or a business around this stuff isn't as easy. So that's been where my creativity has been really pushed and stretched as well.
Nicki Farrell:I'd love to talk about a couple of your creative pursuits because, again, they're so intertwined with either community and or motherhood. So firstly, would you like to speak about the podcast series that you worked on for the bushfires, and then I'd love to talk to about care club too.
Rosie Ricketson:Yeah, so after the bushfires there was a little community hub bushfire hub set up where people would come and find resources and there were council workers in there and, to be clear, our area got seriously smashed by fires. All the roads were closed over summer. Many people lost their homes. There were fires coming at us from every direction. As soon as one went out, another would start. It was a very hard and dry and scary time for us. We were showering in a bucket and then putting the water on the garden. Every drop of water was so sacred and it's interesting to remember that going into another hot summer at the moment.
Rosie Ricketson:We were going into the bushfire hub and we were realising that we were hearing a lot of people wanting to tell their stories. And when I say we, this is my collaborator and I, claire Young, who's a documentary filmmaker, and a lot of the council workers were saying look everyone, there's a lot of people here with incredible stories and they need to be recorded. So we proposed the idea of a podcast. We got some local funding to do it. We did one and it was an amazing story. It's called the Good People of Narraga. It's about how the community sheltered in the pub. So Narraga is a town which really just has a pub and a little museum, and the family that owned the pub that still own it sheltered the whole community in there, and there were babies and kids and the grandmothers in the back room with all the babies and there were, you know, everyone mucking in together, sheltering under this firestorm that came through, and it's an incredible story.
Rosie Ricketson:We ended up sharing that story for the first time with that community in a little hall a few months later and it was a very, very moving event because I think everyone had an opportunity to have cry together and feel the reality of it together, and a lot of people who were there were, you know, some stoic old Aussie pharma types who may not have ever cried in public I don't know but I felt like it was a real cultural moment. We ended up winning an award for that event the Citizen Community event awards on Australia Day because it was a really beautiful moment to acknowledge what we'd all been through and especially that. So there were beautiful speeches and music and a lot of artists and musicians writing songs about that experience and about the grief and yeah. So then we got funded to do five more episodes, which we took another two years to do because there were. Claire did up to over 170 interviews.
Nicki Farrell:Wow.
Rosie Ricketson:Long interviews with people about their bushfire experiences, and these are people from all walks of life. So the yes, there was trauma and grief in those stories, of course, but there was also a real sense of camaraderie and hope and working together and collaboration and looking after each other. That you know. One of the main reasons we wanted to do this podcast was to make sure that we didn't forget that, as a community how that felt and forget that we can put things aside to look after each other.
Rosie Ricketson:That, yeah, that's something that I hope can resonate through communities now and we don't forget it, because we are in the face of an uncertain future and we need constant reminder. It can work together.
Nicki Farrell:We're going to need to.
Rosie Ricketson:That's right. That's right. So reminders that we're actually in this together, I think, is really positive cultural step moving forward. And it's tough in small times because, you know, we fall back into step of the way things have always been. I remember a friend who'd been in the Bosnian wars and she was saying, all of a sudden, you know these towns where there was so much history and so much, so many grudges, this person didn't talk to that person and that person and all of a sudden, as soon as the war hit, everything was forgotten and people were in it together and I realized, you know, this is a tragic part of the human condition that we only remember to look out for each other when times are tough. So I guess this is why we really wanted to try and capture that moment for us as a community and a nation that you know we can look out, look out for each other and we know how to do it. And because we're going to need to do it again.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, that's what I was just going to say that investment. What you're doing is actively investing in community, Because we are facing an uncertain future with the climate war. Who knows what's coming? So what can that look like in communities?
Rosie Ricketson:I think it's focusing on solutions together. There's a lot of energy in small towns, I mean. Certainly a lot of us are so busy these days. It's a time thing People have less time for volunteering. We set up a group called Sustainable Braidwood. We have some funding and some great ideas and some wonderful community initiatives, but finding the time as a committee to get together and drive things we're all parents juggling a lot. Yes, it's about time and capacity. I think the more we are all hustling and working as hard as we can for the cost of living, the less time naturally we have for community making, which is tragic. I noticed that a lot in postpartum because I really wanted to be able to help and make food for the woman down the road who's having a baby. I'm also just only holding it together with my own family because I'm working and I'm trying to cook meals for my own family. How do I find time to bake an extra batch of cookies for her? I'm proud of the women who figure out how to do that.
Nicki Farrell:I think you're still in that hard season, though Maybe you might not realise that it's still so hard this season that you're in. I mean, mine are nine and 11 now. I look at parents and mothers, at the children that your children age are at. That was the funnest time and the hardest time and I was so stretched. Mothers, my age well, not my age, but you know, children, my age it's our season to give now. I don't think it's your season still. I think your season is to still be accepting and it's my season now to be giving, because I have that capacity now and I didn't when I was where you are now. You're still in the boondocks.
Rosie Ricketson:I am. Thank you for reminding me. Yeah, I'm learning better boundaries on how much energy I can give because I don't want to cross my own boundaries with this and I've had to learn that the hard way. I think a lot of new mums who want to become dolers and community workers and really give a shit and care about women in their community and also only just hold into their own household and their own health and well-being it's really hard. And then often I find when mums are out of community so as soon as their kids are old enough to go to school, the mums are way less active in community because they're back at work and they're busy. So most mums with kids your age are busy with work and commitments so they're not really around cooking meals for the new mums anymore. That's something I've really noticed and so that's hard.
Rosie Ricketson:It's like well, if it's not me, who's the one kind of hanging out at the park seeing the mums that are maybe struggling with a new baby? Then who is it who else is going to do that? So I've had to really soften on my expectations of myself to tend to other mothers in this season of my life, which has been hard, because we need it, we really need it. I know how much it's needed because I've needed it so badly too. So, yeah, I think doing what we can collaboratively in community, even if it's just an hour or a week, an hour of fortnight, working on a collaborative project that can affect culture, change in a community around education, around nature immersion, around perspective shift.
Rosie Ricketson:So we just got funding to do a series of five conversations, live conversations with change, sustainability, change makers and really interested in breaking the box on what that could be. It doesn't necessarily need to be someone doing regenerative farming. It could be someone like yourself setting up alternative systems for schooling and raising kids. Sustainability looks different for everyone. It's got a big scope of what it is. It's about developing, step by step, slowly, together, developing the adaptability that we need for the future and weaving that into culture.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, so true. It's the adapting, isn't it? And resilient communities need to know that they've got each other's backs. I think, and I think motherhood, that matrescence, is a community and it is needing to adapt as well. Can you talk to me about creativity as a way to explore, because this is what I've loved about your musings they feel so authentic and so you just nail it. Everything you've posted I mean, oh God, I was there. I know that feeling. I've had that thought before of that shifting identity as a mother from one maiden to mother and then mother of one to mother of more, to trying to be a partner in that as well, but using creativity, like with the Bushfire podcast, as a way of therapy and community and belonging. Can you tell me how you're currently exploring that with Care Club and any other projects you're working on?
Rosie Ricketson:Yeah, so I guess I'm lucky enough to live in a town that has a lot of creative people in it and one of my key collaborators, claire Young. She and I made a film seven years ago, for example. We were both living in Bradewood and she was like, do you want to make a film with me? And we made that film between Canberra and Sydney with a little bit of funding and slowly Claire worked on it over years of having babies and checking in with each other and doing another edit and honing it and honing it and last year it got accepted into the Venice Biennale of film, of cinema. So I jumped on a plane with my eight month old baby and five other women and we all went to Italy together, which was amazing for a little film that we made from a backyard studio in Bradewood. That felt very inspiring for what's possible when we come together and work collaboratively together on projects we believe in.
Rosie Ricketson:Yeah, so Claire and I obviously we developed that podcast together, which was an offering for the community and a really complex project because there's grief and trauma kind of wrapped up in that. But we felt, going back to that quickly, I was reading Maggie Dent and she was I think she was on a podcast saying some of the communities that bounced back the best after the bushfires were the ones that had the strongest relationships and, echoing what you were just saying, that resilient communities are about the strength of relationships, and what an opportunity for women and mothers in community to take a lead in that as well. I think we've always been leaders in that and I see that as definitely something that should be valued very highly. Moving forward it's not just a given. Relationship building, community building is not just a given that something women will do just because they're women. It's something we all now need to learn how to do well and value.
Rosie Ricketson:Moving forward, because it's going to mean resilience and survival as a human race, and I find that a really inspiring, inspiring challenge. Like what a wonderful challenge for us as humans to figure out the art of relating to each other again and how many ways that can manifest itself in communities. I find that it gives me a lot of hope, like I do believe that we can do it. Even off the back of this referendum and there's a lot of division in the air, I still there is a naive and big heartedness to me that believes we can do it.
Nicki Farrell:And it starts in our backyards, right Like. I can't tell you how many of the people in my community don't know their neighbours. And we have in our local, our street, in our neighbourhood have actively. We have street parties only twice a year but somebody has to put their hand up and host that. We have a community Facebook page where it's like I've got spare eggs, I've got this, I've got that and part of that. You know there is a privilege to that, absolutely.
Nicki Farrell:But I have, same as you, just actively gone after that because I want to walk down my street and wave hello and know that if there's a bushfire, we've got each other's backs or if there's, you know, there's an emergency, I can run over to the neighbour's house and look after their kids and their children will know me and feel safe in my care, while you know the adults are dealing with that. So I think if we, I don't think we think enough about the what ifs and who will be there, because a lot of us are isolated from not isolated, but geographically isolated from our families now. So if we don't have our families to run to in an emergency, this is it. You know, the people in our direct 1K radius are who we're going to be relying on, so we really need to actively make time to forge those relationships, and that takes time.
Rosie Ricketson:It does take time, it takes practice and it takes visibility, because there are people in crisis in our communities now, like they are alone, you know, isolated, in postpartum, with a new baby and struggling, and they are invisible.
Rosie Ricketson:Or they are elderly and they are disabled, or they are disabled, or you know it's all well and good to reach out to each other in times of serious crisis, but what about the gentle crisis that's happening in people's lives all the time? So I think it's weaving cultural models in place that make sure that those people, instead of being pushed outside the circle, are brought to the inside of the circle of the community. For example, our community doesn't have a community centre. We don't have spaces for people like that to actually gather and go. We don't have a town square. Our town was set up for commerce and for access and for travel and for you know, it's a capitalist design. It doesn't have a town square where people would gather to be visible, people who are feeling invisible, and I think so that's been hard. I think, when you look at just simply the way places have been designed and put together, how do we create spaces where everyone feels welcome to come and show their vulnerability so others can respond?
Nicki Farrell:That's such an important point you make. Yeah, about the architecture of cities to enable community and gathering. You're so right in a lot of those rural towns, now that they're past threes, you know, stop, get your food. Do you go the post office off? Your go again, but don't stop.
Rosie Ricketson:That's so important yeah and even for community, our own community passing through, you know, going to the supermarket, there's nowhere to gather other than a cafe or a park and you don't want to take a gaggle of wild kids to a cafe. You don't want to always go to the park in a town that can be really cold most of the year. So it means people are pushed back into their homes and I think you know in my own postpartum we all gathered a lot in people's homes around the fires with babies and that sadly dissolves when your kids get older. But I wonder how we can do better on a national level, on a global level, to make space and make room for the vulnerable people in our communities to be more visible. And I think that's where creativity and the arts can really come in, because through story, that's where those invisible stories can be made visible and they can be delivered to a community, not in a way of like oh, look at those poor people over there. It's more like hey, this has been my lived experience and maybe some of it resonates with you. Maybe we can talk about it in a playful way, maybe we can talk about it in really creative ways.
Rosie Ricketson:You know to explore some of these harder topics as humans through creativity, through stories, through theater, through film, and get to the heart of things, and I think that's the power of art, really, isn't it? It gets to the heart of people and the heart of things. So I see that art and story is the path towards change. Very much so. Even in our sustainable Bredwood collective, we're all writers, designers, filmmakers, publishers that we're all creatives and we feel like sustainability and the future. I think creative people and creative thinking and creative skill sets are really going to be so valuable as we learn to adapt creatives to how things are changing. We're going to need real kind of innovative, creative responses to the way things are changing. So it's exciting for me that creatives can be on the front line and story and in order for us to adapt to a changing world.
Nicki Farrell:It's so, so important and I think that's what I love about your care club concept is I think that's what I might have been looking for as a new mum. Was that? Because you know, when you've got a new baby and they're not, you know, barely even crawling? I needed connection as a mother. But it's something like sitting around the fire, right? There's something about being creative where you can put your head down and you can just scroll, you're in circle and it's just the talking and the communication and the venting and the therapy happens naturally and it's such a therapeutic outlet as well.
Nicki Farrell:And you want their toddlers, the children. You know they're off running and that's much harder to do. But I love this nurturing idea of bringing mothers together in creativity and babies are accepted. Why I just? I get so frustrated that we are still in a society where children are not accepted in the workplace. It just cuts out half of the population. Whoever the care is in the home. It makes things so difficult and I've loved seeing you travel with your children for work and whatnot and showing the nuance of that. You know it's not easy and the glaring, the glaring way that it is discriminating us about being back in the workforce when we're ready to be.
Rosie Ricketson:Yeah, and I think that's why we need creativity to create a new workforce.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, I agree.
Rosie Ricketson:We're going to need a new workforce in the face of change and and why not weave children into that? And I see a lot of women doing that online, trying to figure out ways to bring kids along with them and have at home businesses or businesses designed around community. And I think it's a beautiful, beautiful thing that we're not financially trapped in our own homes with our children, because that's dangerous for women.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah.
Rosie Ricketson:But we are financially and creatively and intellectually engaged in the world and we feel a sense of purpose and belonging. But we don't have to sacrifice our mothering in order to do it.
Nicki Farrell:Hmm, that's, I think that's it it's. I love your points about feminism and how family and motherhood You're allowed to be a feminist and want to be a mother and want to work or not want to work. You know we're talk. Can you talk to us about that, because I've loved your musings on that as well.
Rosie Ricketson:Yes, so I guess I was a bit shocked to find like there's a view from contemporary kind of crunchy alternative moms that feminism took women away from their children, and I see that too, and that's definitely what happened. I think it was a vital step, though, because it was us taking up space in the workforce and it was merely saying we want other things as well. That's right, and it was merely a step on the long road of feminism that we still absolutely require, which now says right, we've proven that we are absolutely capable in the workforce. Now we want to also be valued in the home, and let's have both. Let's be valued to be the mothers we want to be and contribute to the world like we deserve to be able to contribute. And I guess it comes back to this whole like having it all thing. Yes, and I do believe. I do believe that we can have it all if the systems are set up to support it. Currently, we're trying to have it all in a system that does not support it.
Rosie Ricketson:I don't know personally many mothers in my life who aren't on the edge of burnout pretty much all the time. Yeah, this is the norm now. I mean, you listen to podcasts. I listened to one recently on mother kind podcast and she was interviewing a psychotherapist who was saying modern motherhood is, you know, akin to living in a war zone on the nervous system. It's a constant adrenaline. It's a constant state of fight or fly just to get everything done that needs to be done. And I myself absolutely fall into that too. I'm just like I've got so much to do I'm going to have to have another coffee.
Rosie Ricketson:But then I remember, you know, still setting up the systems in my own life that can support a slower lifestyle, and there's a lot of people that just don't want that as well, because moving fast and earning more is really encouraged and really supported. So I just worry that the children get left behind there because, like I love the work of the parents, work collective yes for women, you know what are both in the home and workforce, because that's that's the future of feminism. So that's why we still need feminism and, like we were saying before, I think that the traditional wife, traditional mom you know more Christian influenced dialogue around homeschooling or mothering these days says we don't need feminism anymore. You know, we can be women who love being in the home and it's okay. And of course it's okay. I mean still, statistically, you know, the not the safest place for many moms to be.
Nicki Farrell:That's right.
Rosie Ricketson:So we still need financial freedom, we still need our own job security, we still need our own relationships in the world, because otherwise it's dangerous, like statistically that's dangerous. We're too vulnerable to being kind of manipulated. I think in that In those situations and I know that in my own family, like I've seen that in my own family, so that I think we need to be constantly aware of that that not every mother is supported by a husband who deeply values her care work Like that is a. I think that is that's it.
Rosie Ricketson:Not very common. No, and that's why I think men do need to be at the front line of valuing care work and their own care work. Seeing themselves as carers and valuing that in themselves will change systems, and so I want to see more front men on the front line of that. I want to see men campaigning for fatherhood. Yeah taking time off the fatherhood centering their families needs, and that's not a feminine thing at all.
Rosie Ricketson:That is a truly masculine thing to stand up family, to stick up for your family. Like we need that leadership from men at the moment and my husband, like, is absolutely on board with this. We talk a lot about it and he doesn't find nurturing and fathering as a feminine thing at all. He finds care work to be a deeply masculine thing, you know, because it's protective and it's accountability and it's responsibility and it's leaning into your own shadow work and it's leaning into discomfort and it's taking the kind of maturity to sit in that and be parent.
Rosie Ricketson:So I want to see more leadership from fathers in that space, because currently it's the mums. It's the mums that are saying you know, we want to be more visible, and I don't personally feel like much is going to change until the men stick up for fatherhood too.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, and I think that's it, isn't it. It's not the devaluing or the little value in care work. And we see that with all the early use services that we work in, with their low pay rates and that they tolerate. They have to tolerate things like abuse from parents and even children, because there's nowhere for these children to go If they're not with their parents and they're not in an early early use service. People can't work mothers or fathers and yet they're still fairly above minimum wage and they're doing the hardest work and care.
Nicki Farrell:It's care, work and care, I think, is actually the number one. If you look at all the cycle, all the studies on attachment theory and and whatnot, that is the most important work and the most important work in child abuse. Child abuse is our biggest social health problem and yet we're not paying these people anywhere near what they're worth for the work that they're doing and preventing child abuse and, in that, forming those attachments to these children so their parents can work. So again, until fathers stand up and say, oh, my God, it's amazing, thank you for caring for my child, not just educating them. You know it's, it's care, and I think we're prioritizing education over care and it really needs to be the other way around, because children can't learn without a secure attachment. So I've got an absolute tangent here.
Rosie Ricketson:That's right. No, no, no. And father's sticking up for their own care work, to like saying I want to be with, I want to be with my children like I want to be. I want to be riding around town with them on a Tuesday, like you know, yeah, and that's okay. That's not unmanly of me, it's actually very manly of me.
Rosie Ricketson:So I think it's redefining roles there and we have a lot of work to do. We'll have a lot of work to do in that it's breaking up the current nine to five absolutely, and I think that needs to be read by men too. And also, you know if, if two income households now, if both parents need to work so hard to maintain such high cost of living, who's in community with the kids, like who's at home with the children, is nobody worried about that? I mean, I heard on the radio. You know we need more support, childcare support and their school refusal going on. And and then, on the other hand, there's also the highest rates of teen anxiety at the moment and I think, is anyone thinking about who's in community with the kids? I mean, and that's not an anti feminist thing to say, like I don't believe in a in a world at work.
Nicki Farrell:No, no, that sounds awful.
Rosie Ricketson:So I think we do need to overthrow capitalism. Really creative, really creative ways to gather conversations like this doing our work in communities, amplifying the work of others who are doing care work, amplifying the causes and the, the programs like parents work, collective, you know, and and and believing in that we can change, believing in change. And so care club came out of a belief. So I used to work for a wonderful organization called big heart and and big arts and arts and social change company that essentially the premises that they work with community to make invisible stories visible so that's usually marginalized communities and making wonderful arts based projects with them that can sometimes to Australia or two of the world films and theater and incredible projects really led by by communities. So I really cut my teeth with that company as well, learning a lot about that process.
Rosie Ricketson:And yeah, one of the premises of that company was visit in the human rights, in the international human rights charter. This was a human right of access to culture and that's that everyone gets to have access to culture making and cultural life and cultural dialogue at all times. And if you're locked out from that, if you're not included in it, then that's a violation of human rights. So if that elderly person or if that child isn't included in in the cultural life of their community, then that's a violation, because they need to be not only engaged in in cultural life but also their. Their contribution is valuable. I really saw it through that lens of thinking. I really saw that postpartum mothers and an early parenthood was really pushed to the edges of society. Like you go and you get this done and then when you're feeling strong and better you can come back in. You know we don't want to deal with you.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, we don't want to hear about it. Keep it quiet. You know, motherhoods are glorious, wonderful thing. Yeah, and it is. It's also f and hard.
Rosie Ricketson:Yeah, and social isolation in postpartum is huge in our country and can lead to a lot of disorders that a lot of mums feel like is their own fault and really it's the consequence of being so isolated from each other and isolated from community. I really feel that obviously not all mood disorders. It's a complex conversation. So that's why I set up Care Club, because I thought you know, for me personally, my right of passage into motherhood gave me insights into humanity and human life. That was incredible and I was like, wow, this is what life is about, this is what humans are about, this is what love and connection and intimacy means. This I had so many wonderful insights and reflections on human life and is there honestly anything more insightful into the human experience than birth? I mean, it's something that unites us all. It's such a wonderful portal and a wonderful symbol for being human, the intimacy and the animal nature of it and the. You know. So in my postpartum, my first postpartum, I was just felt so my mind was blown and my heart was blown and I wanted to sit down and make meaning of this and have conversations about it and I wanted to be part of culture making and I wanted to my voice to be heard and I wanted to hear what other women were, how they were making sense of it, and there was just nowhere to go. So I designed Care Club to use creativity and use kind of dialogue and discourse to come together as intelligent, modern mums and make sense of what motherhood means, because it's obviously such a complex thing and what's coming up for them.
Rosie Ricketson:So Care Club we have a mother's circle to start with and then I've programmed like a workshop or a. For example, we had a wonderful dancer, alison Pleedy, who runs the Australian Dance Company here in Canberra. She came with her daughter, cora, who was around six months old, and performed a dance piece dance artwork together, and all the other mums and babies watched and then we reflected on that and then made a dance piece. Everyone made a dance piece with their baby and then wrote about what came up and you know the relationship between the mother body and the baby body and we looked at that. We also had a classical cellist come and play in the room, which was really soothing, and some of the babies, just you know, fell asleep to the music. And so I wanted to create these spaces that weren't like pink and baby friendly and super feminine motherly spaces, but actually like spaces for real conversation and dialogue and intellectual and creative engagement with these big themes that come up.
Nicki Farrell:That's, that's what I felt, like I was missing, like I was my very first birth. I was part of the you know the hospital six week postpartum. They called it the Mums Club or the Mums Circle and I don't know what I thought it was going to be. But it was also practical. You know, here's how we get babies to sleep. This is what breastfeeding looks like and it was really helpful for a first time mother. But until I saw Care Club, it was missing because we connected as friends like I'm still friends with some of those women from 10 years ago, which is amazing. So it did its job as community. But it was that. It was those bigger topics of holy moly. My mind has been blown. Who am I? Where do I fit in culture? Now? How do I express this? Because right now I'm learning baby massage and that is really wonderful and really practical. But my, these ideas, these conversations are just going nowhere. So I just love that there's this creative outlet of this contribution to culture.
Rosie Ricketson:Yeah, and because I think you know what happens in mattressence, what happens to our brains. We need to tap that. Yes, yes, it's incredible what happens to the brain and we need to gather that energy together and and make meaning of it and and infuse our lives with these values, that that really come from this change, and I think we can not let go of for myself, but allow ourselves space to transform into who we want to transform into, and that's that's the ultimate creative act as well, to say I'm going to allow my evolution here to unfold into what it needs to be, because a lot of the messaging is, you know, back to work, back in your old clothes, back to you know, back to normal. I want to give moms the opportunity to go. What if I could do that thing that I always wanted to do and open a clothes shop? Or, I don't know, you know, write that book? Or what if, instead of going back into the office I had, I could use this amazing energy and the audacity of this season to go? I'm actually do what I want to do.
Rosie Ricketson:Obviously, it's complicated, because not everyone has an empowering birth or postpartum experience, but I do, and alchemy is that that right of passage into positive growth. Positive growth for our own lives, because we are constantly evolving and changing in motherhood and that's where creativity can help us make sense of that and that's I see that, even for people who aren't super creative, engaging with poetry, engaging with ideas, engaging with creative practice can help us make sense of the constant change. I mean, I feel like I wake up a different person every week and like, right, what kind of mom? What am I being asked of this week?
Nicki Farrell:Oh God, that's the question, isn't. It's not. What am I? I?
Rosie Ricketson:love that. I love that constant change. I'm like sure I can. You know, pivot, and you know I'm not saying that everyone needs to be like me, but I think it is a creative kind of mindset. It's a dance, isn't it? It's a dance and it's a flow that Can bring a little bit more into our lives. In motherhood, I think you know some of those structures that we may have relied upon before having kids. We can allow them to fall away a little bit, yeah, and like we can fall into line with the way children live, which is spontaneous and very creative and very needs-based and very Present intuitive and very present, and so what a gift to allow more of that into our lives.
Nicki Farrell:I was about to ask you how you've navigated being a mother with business, the starting business and creative projects, but I think you just answered it. But was there anything else you'd like to add to that? Like how? What have been the hardest parts? And then, how have you navigated those parts to and what have you had to let go? What expectations of yourself or of motherhood or of work have you had to let go to find this? I'm not going to say balance, because I don't believe in balance. I believe in rollercoasters and spirals and circles and journeys.
Rosie Ricketson:To be honest, I'm moving through constantly the ancestral inheritance of self-doubt as a woman in the workforce and as a mother taking up space, and I think a lot of us are doing that.
Rosie Ricketson:I don't think it's just an easy thing to say I'm going to put myself out there, I'm going to write that book or tell my story, or I'm going to bring my kid, start that business or bring my kid.
Rosie Ricketson:I think the confidence that it takes we're all slowly learning that because we've been raised by potentially a generation of moms who really weren't encouraged to do that, and then the generation before them and the generation before them.
Rosie Ricketson:I think we're walking a new path and it can often feel lonely and it can often feel isolating. So thank God for podcasts, thank God for Instagram, and I also, each year, I'll do a mentorship or a join, an online circle that goes for a good year or so to have that camaraderie on this journey, because the more I do that, the more I realize that so many women and mothers are learning how to do this, learning the confidence, learning the identity, learning that we can actually ask for the life that we want to ask for. I think a lot of us have watched our moms kind of. Instead of carving the lives they may have wanted, they felt the weight of expectation, and I feel grief about that for many, many, many women in the world now and in previous generations who may have had burning dreams inside of them that got squashed by the duty of waifdom and motherhood.
Rosie Ricketson:And I don't want that in the world anymore. I'm quite fierce about that, me too. I don't want that. For motherhood to be servitude, and for motherhood to get in the way Dreams that women are dreaming up, yeah you can do both.
Nicki Farrell:You can be a mother and dream, and you can have needs and you can ask them. You can demand that those needs are met or you can meet those needs yourself and take up that space, and it's more than OK. The world needs that. The world needs your ideas and your art and your businesses and your creative ways of working and changing this system that has not served us and not served our children and not served men. It's not working. So be Be bros. It is brave, but it's taking up space, isn't it? It's shedding that good girl that be quiet, that servitude, and it is serving community. You're not even just serving yourself. You're serving community by stepping out.
Rosie Ricketson:Yeah, and I think it's scary to do alone, which is why Finding other women in our lives who are doing it is really, really helpful to find community to do that, to go oh, she found a way to do that. Maybe I can give that a go, maybe I'll reach out to her and ask how she made that work. You know, like really reaching out and saying, hey, we're all in this together, we're all learning together how to make this work. And especially because so much of the running your own business stuff was was tied up for a long time with a kind of corporate girl boss feminism, yes, so it had to be like put on your office suit and chuck the kids in childcare for five days a week and get out there in the yeah Um, you know finding other ways of doing it that run. We can be a savvy businesswoman who works an hour a day. You know bedroom while the kids play. You know like we can still.
Nicki Farrell:At night between this meeting. I know I'm not encouraging that, but I'm also aware of seasons of if you've got that burning desire and that's what works for you, do it if it's not going to burn you out.
Rosie Ricketson:That's right, and I think that's why working together, like the mentorship I'm doing at the moment, is so generous. All the women are like. This is the bookkeeper I use. This is the mindset that I adopt. These are the strategies that I use in my week to make sure the self doubt doesn't get in the way of my life. You know it's. We can learn so much from each other because we're all figuring it out together, and so I see that we're learning and expanding as mothers so much that our children and our daughters are going to really see what's possible and hopefully the systems will be set up better for them by the time their mothers. There's more systems of support, not only for them as mothers, but for them as serious, creative contributors to the world who have stories and gifts to share. So I'm really the moment I'm planning to launch a year long mentorship next year with creative months, because I know, after over a few years from doing these, these mentorship circles over the years, it is so valuable to be visible to each other.
Rosie Ricketson:And I just wrote a piece actually in the motherhood space book that's just come out by Gabriel Nancaro. I wrote a story in there about how a dear friend of mine locally, we kind of slowly become more and more visible to each other. So at the beginning we wouldn't really want each other to see the mess inside our houses or see each other on days where they're not coping. And slowly the vulnerability has grown and now we can totally be there for each other. In our most scruffy, most you know unkept days, we can rock up and chuck a chucker casserole in the other person's fridge and and there's no fear of judgment and this visibility between between women is is going to be what helps drive the change. So that's why I really want to set up a container, an accountability container, but also, you know, let's share how we're making this work and let's share what's inside our hearts that's burning to be born, because this is going to change. This is going to change things.
Nicki Farrell:It is and it's so important. Exactly, you can't again I think I've said this in the last three or four podcasts but you can't be what you can't see, and so these spaces are so important because of that, and they're vulnerability, but they're authenticity. But we're not alone. We're not travelling this and fumbling along because we are. I hope everybody listening here doesn't think that I've got my shit together, because I am just learning and fumbling along, trying to navigate this space too, because I didn't have people in my when I was growing up that I knew navigated work and motherhood it was either one or the other pretty clearly where I grew up. So this is all new. It's all new, but we're doing it. Doing it, rose.
Rosie Ricketson:I'm proud of you. Thank you, I'm proud of you. Yeah, I think getting over the getting to be honest for my own personal journey, in the beginning I didn't want to learn from other women. I had a resistance against that. I think I grew up in a culture that was very competitive, like we competed for the boys' attention and we learned to kind of bitch about each other to each other and it was just gross. And so when I first came into this work, I was like I had to work through that stuff. I think I did an online circle with somebody about it it was called the sister wound, healing the sister wound, and it made me front some big stuff in the past of the way I'd hurt women or the way women and hurt me and there was a lot of grief there and I feel like I'm still moving through that. Maybe it's a lifelong journey, but you know it's a beautiful journey to be on and I think a lot of us are on that journey as well.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, it's that collaboration over competition. We can't thrive as a society when we compete as women. We just, we just can't. We have too many barriers already, we have too many systems that oppress us. We need to be collaborating and giving each other a handout wherever we can, and I'm loving that change in the narrative too, and I'm seeing that in our spaces where, like you said, people are being so generous and that's. It is going to change. It's going to change culturally. For this I cannot wait to see what this next generation does. I mean, I don't want to pin a whole hope on one generation, but they, the systems, are going to be different and their vocabulary is different. They're aware of systems. I wasn't even aware of this. I didn't know what patriarchy meant as a teenager. I didn't know that it was a system. And now I've got six and seven and eight year olds in my life that are very aware of it and they know they have a voice and they know they're allowed to take up space, and that is super exciting to me.
Rosie Ricketson:So cool they're not wasting their energy chasing the boys around.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, that's it. So exciting.
Rosie Ricketson:Yeah, and so we're on a journey with our kids too, with education. We don't know what we're going to do, whether we send them to school, our little local school, or not. Obviously, school in Australia at the moment is in a bit of a pickle. Our local schools need a lot of staff. That they can't find staff, they're struggling. I've got friends who are teachers there saying, yeah, the system needs a lot of love and support put into it.
Rosie Ricketson:At the moment I don't know if it's the best time to even send kids to these schools. I feel like they're clunky, old machines, these schools that are too slow in catching up with the needs of modern children, intellectually and emotionally. So you know, we're in a position where we're simplifying our lives to the point where we could have the kids homeschooled. I have to balance that with my own ambitions as a creative woman, and my husband's also a creative, so he's a touring performer and an artist and songwriter. So you know, we don't know what it would look like and how we figure that out, and we're just taking it one step at a time.
Rosie Ricketson:At the moment, there are actually five of us families currently in the process of deeply investigating the idea of a community school. It looks like there's a lot of resources online. There's a lot of people out there wanting to do it. There's local community groups on the coast near us that have figured out how to do it. The big thing seems to be the site. But once there's a site, you know and then you can register. Yeah, so we're currently figuring out as a collective what we could do as in a community to make you know either our local schools more responsive to community need or create a little community. So we'll see where that goes. But we're currently in the process of setting up as an Incorporated Association and we're getting mentored by a few people and there's quite a lot of people in our groups that have quite a broad range of skill sets that they can contribute to this project. So we shall see. That's super exciting.
Nicki Farrell:I think there's a lot of power in small schools Sorry, a lot of power from parents in small schools, because, I mean, you're very small, so you know each other and you know the community, so you have a real voice, compared to a bigger school where your one voice might just be one out of a thousand parents. So I think you're so lucky. You know what a privilege to be able to go. We could either start one or we could really really push for more community involvement or homeschool. That's what I love about the journey it's got to suit you all, it changes and it doesn't need to be decided upon what's going to happen in 12 years time where you or your children are going to be. It's like you said let's be toddlers, let's just be present and go with the flow and see where we end up.
Rosie Ricketson:Totally, I love it. I love it. Isn't it a journey of constant learning?
Nicki Farrell:and trust, I think as well Trust in. Yeah, it's exciting. All right, rose, I've taken up a lot of your time, so I'm going to get into our rapid fire questions, if that's OK. Yeah, so what's your favorite book of all time or podcast, and why, or what are you currently reading?
Rosie Ricketson:to be very relevant to this conversation. I'm currently reading a book called Dissolve by Nikki Gemmell. Oh, it is a memoir. It is about self-belief as a woman and a mother, giving her self-permission for creativity and the full expression of herself, and not letting motherhood or wife would become a kind of service. It gets in the way of her creative potential. I highly recommend that book. I'm actually going down to the Headland Writers Festival at the end of the month to facilitate a panel discussion with her about this book and a number of other creative moms and about creative motherhood. So I'm reading that for research at the moment in order to have confidence on this panel about her work. And also it's deeply moving for me. I find myself moved to tears quite a lot reading it because it's you know, it touches on a grief that I think a lot of us carry about silencing ourselves for the needs of others, and there's grief that needs to be felt around that in order to move forward.
Nicki Farrell:Oh, so good she was, I think my early 20s. She was a real game changer for me as a young woman forging my way into the world. She worked really important culturally for us. So how exciting to be in conversation.
Rosie Ricketson:No, I'm a little bit starstruck.
Nicki Farrell:I can understand that, all right. Where do you go or what do you do to reset after a rough day?
Rosie Ricketson:Oh, you know, probably to the river. We've got a beautiful river spot here in nature. Is is always good on the floor in a cuddle, puddle. Yeah, probably in nature or on the floor. Cooking and food is always a good one. Sometimes, you know, instead of cooking up on the bench, I'll just get the kids and we'll cook something on the floor, like we'll do all the clean the floor and we'll prepare a meal together on the floor. And I feel like the sensory process of peeling carrots and mashing potatoes kind of on the floor together feels really grounding and yeah that's great.
Rosie Ricketson:I love that yeah that's a more late attack and I remember being in India and they have little, their kitchens on the floor and they all squat around the little stove on the floor and in our Western culture it's kind of like you know, isn't that dirty, but you can do it in a totally hygienic and playful way.
Nicki Farrell:Absolutely. I remember baking biscuits, you know, mixing biscuits on the floor and thinking why didn't I do this all the time? I just had to sweep. This is genius All the way. So good, all right. This one's our loaded question. If you had to choose just one thing to change about the education system, what would it be?
Rosie Ricketson:Center relationships.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, which I think is hard to do in giant and normal schools. I get why we do it Resourceing budgets, funding, you know, community resources but it is hard to do in a really big school.
Rosie Ricketson:I think as mothers we can say parents of children a lot of us can see that if we were running a country, a healthy economy and a healthy country could totally be achieved by investing in the well-being of children.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah.
Rosie Ricketson:Like it's just like a no brainer.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, but there's a saying or that mean going around that you can tell the helpful priorities of a country by how they treat their children. And I look at you know the incarceration of our young people and First Nations people, and I just think we've got a long way to go, australia, but we shall do it, we shall keep working and fighting the good fight. And last of all, where can we find out more about your work or someone would like to join your mentorship next year or care club or any of your beautiful creative projects? Where can we find you?
Rosie Ricketson:Mostly on Instagram. You know, it's been interesting as a mum on Instagram. It's been blurry. The public private life thing. I'm like how much do I share? I used to share very vulnerable on there and I feel like I'm pulling back a little bit more now that my kids are older. It's a tricky space. Right, it's really a tricky space. Yeah, the public private thing. But yeah, so Instagram is definitely the place. And then, yeah, I will link to my upcoming mentorship. I'm putting out a wait list in the next month and currently working on kind of the container and what that's going to look like and I'll share all about that on my Instagram. If people are interested in care club as well, there's a link on my Instagram. It is in Canberra for a monthly on a Tuesday. Currently I'm creating a bit of a different, more regular care club program for 2024. All of that will be up online as well as soon as it's released. Yeah, but still send it around. Community and creativity.
Nicki Farrell:I just love all of the things that you do, rose, and I can't wait to see where your wiggly, squiggly, spirally toddler like journey takes you as a family and community. And thank you for continually being someone I regularly go to for like I seek you out on Instagram because what you say to me is inspiring and authentic and creative and those musings just really hit home. But it's followed by action. So thank you for for putting action behind your words, because I think in a space that's you know can be so beautiful and just a highlight real, you're very authentic. When things are frustrating or the world is. You know the injustices of the world, are you feeling those injustices? And I really appreciate that and your voice behind those as well. So thank you for being a wonderful voice to turn to, Thank you so much and thanks for having me today.
Rosie Ricketson:It's been such a pleasure.
Nicki Farrell:Amazing, so we'll link all of our show notes and everything. If you'd like to work with Rose in a show notes and till next week, stay wild. I love when these interviews become more conversations. They feel more authentic and they feel more accessible and vulnerable as well. I really love watching Rose and the way she really invests her time in community and belonging and how her slant on it is also being aware that we are going to need our community with the way our climate is going.
Nicki Farrell:It's a very, very hot and dry summer this season in Australia and we may need to lean on our neighbors. If you take nothing else from this episode, I hope that you can go and knock on the door of your neighbor and make connection. I love watching her find and balance and spiral her way through motherhood and creativity and how she's helping others in our community for that time to contribute to culture and hear the voices of women in this really important time of their lives. And I love how she speaks about how prioritizing family and motherhood isn't letting down the feminist cause, that we are free to change and move and grow and to really lean into this season or lean into work and creativity in this season.
Nicki Farrell:Or do both. That feminism is all about letting the individual choose the path that they want. So, years to community, years to matressants, years to creativity. May you find your village, may you work to find your village, and may you work to carve out space for your creative needs. And, until next week, stay wild.