Six years ago, in the wee small hours of the morning, I had a massive stroke. It left me unable to walk or use my right arm and slumped the right side of my face. It was devastating. It changed my life and cost me everything.
The ensuing six years haven’t been a lot of fun. I was beset with vexatious litigants and faced hostile and conflicted judges, all adding to the enormous stress that I was under. Stress that was calculated by some of the protagonists and designed to get me to quit doing what I love, or die doing it. I’m pretty sure a few of them actually wanted me dead.
Let’s recap the years that led up to my stroke. I started blogging in 2005 and by 2014 had become feared in political circles across the spectrum. I was very effective at doing what I was doing. I was in the media and in the news, both for making and breaking it...I was, so I thought, indestructible.
And then along came the ultimate dirty politics player, Nicky Hager, who wrote a book entirely about me, in an attempt to sway an election. He never called me for comment and yet people still call him a responsible journalist. He got plenty wrong, especially about my motivations. Poor deluded Hager: he thought there was some vast conspiracy that had me at the centre of a convoluted web. That was almost entirely wrong in every regard. But that didn’t matter because Nicky’s mission was to destroy my influence by fair means or foul. Nicky doesn’t do fair – only foul, dirty and devious.
And he failed.
I have plenty to thank Hager for. His book, drawn on false assumptions and jumping to erroneous conclusions, catapulted me to new heights. He made me even more relevant when he should have ignored me. He built me up into something I never was until he wrote his book. So, thank you Nicky for doing that for me.
The left and their handmaidens have spent the last ten years since Dirty Politics trying to demonise and destroy me via boycotts, attacking my advertisers, shunning me and trying studiously to ignore me.
Even in the immediate years after my stroke, this site outperformed the sum of all the efforts of every other organisation that does what I do. Despite continued lawfare and demonisation, I have soldiered on and this site in all its various guises never lost a beat and to this day it still has more traffic than when Dirty Politics hit.
We’ve built something amazing here. We built something the left can only dream of: a community that is loyal as hell and fights like hell. It is something I am immensely proud of.
But I also learned some valuable lessons in the past ten years, some to my detriment, but in the long term I believe that this search for my true self will pay off.
I took two years off after my stroke to single-handedly prove to myself and my detractors that a severe stroke couldn’t hold me down.
Some may describe my mission as selfish and in many regards it was. I was at my lowest in the immediate aftermath of my stroke. I had lost so much, some things by inches and others in catastrophic failures. But I learned...and it took me some time to come to conclusions.
The first conclusion was that I wanted to live...I made that decision lying in hospital with my life in tatters before me. I started to rebuild myself.
I discovered on that journey that I didn’t like myself and I had probably lost the ability to love and be loved. There is nothing so humbling as realising this as you sit alone in a hospital bed with no one visiting you. Slowly you find out who cares about you and who does not. Those that care visit, those that don’t, don’t. Those that do care are small in number.
So, I chose to live and in order to live I fought. I fought my demons and I fought my physical limitations. I was single minded: I was determined.
I started removing the hurt from my life: removing the negative and surrounding myself with positivity. And as time went on after three years I discovered how to love again and be loved. But it was totally unexpected...and caused more problems than it solved.
I still live with the spectre of (and statistics support the belief in medicine and in my own mind) that for the first five years after my stroke I had a 75 per cent chance of dying in another stroke. It scared the crap out of me...and still does.
But four years in to my recovery, I was still missing something. I was happier for sure, but still not there. Then I rediscovered my Christian faith and things started falling in to place. It was then I realised that the last 15 years of my life, dogged by depression and constantly being in conflict had given me a kind of PTSD, one where I built walls and hid my feelings from almost everyone, because I kept finding that if I let people behind my walls they’d betray me, disappoint me or let me down in some way. I blamed them, when it was actually me.
The walls needed to come down and nearly two years ago they did: utterly destroyed. It upended my life, again. I lost and lost and lost and finally I lost everything. I had lost my marriage, lost my family, lost my career, lost court cases, lost love, found it again and lost that too, only to find it again and lose it again.
I have realised that I am truly alone, the walls are destroyed but I am alone in my thoughts, alone in a room full of people... I am alone in everything I do. Perhaps I have impossible standards, but at least I have them.
“The worst part about being strong is that no one ever asks if you’re OK. They see your strength and assume that you are invulnerable to the trials that others might falter under. They forget that strength can be a mask, a shield against the relentless tide of inner turmoil. In truth, the strongest people often bear the greatest burdens in silence, concealing their wounds behind a façade of resilience.”
– The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
I’ve also learned to not give a shit anymore. I don’t feel the need to be right or the need to win a debate at any cost. It’s OK to let other people think they are winning. I simply no longer care.
I want people to see my true self: someone who is actually kind, helpful, generous and caring. Sadly there are many people out there who won’t wait to discover that for themselves, instead preferring to drag up the past and paint a picture of me using paint provided by others or to write stories about me using the words of others. Go right ahead, just do it away from me.
So, I’m just going to be me and anything or anyone who creates negativity in my life can leave or be pushed away out of my life. For those people who can’t accept me for who I am, you aren’t hurting me and, if you are hurting me, like hell are you going to see that.
I am trying very hard to live a life of honesty, integrity and respect. Since rediscovering my faith, this is vitally important to my wellbeing and future aspirations. Will I falter? Will I fall occasionally? Hell yes, of course I will, but it doesn’t mean the goal of living with honesty, integrity and respect isn’t still the goal. It most certainly is.
I haven’t spoken about my decision to leave Reality Check Radio but that decision lies in what I have shared, where I felt that I was not respected but treated with a high-handed disdain for what I was trying to achieve. I could not get onboard with constant and illogical changes to strategy and my show. There was only one path open to me, in line with my guiding principles of honesty, respect and integrity, and that was to leave. It was sad, but the day I made the decision I was at peace: it was the right decision.
I have suffered depression my entire life, added in with depersonalisation and imposter syndrome – it’s quite a burden to carry, but it’s my burden to carry. It will never leave me, but it does not define me.
I chose to live, and live I shall. I still have some more pain to go through. I’m expecting more of that to be delivered on Saturday, delivered through silence, but delivered nonetheless.
No matter, I’ll box on. I have God on my side and the solace of my faith. Eventually I’ll find that I’m not alone: that there are people who actually do enjoy my company, my world and my life, and I’ll discover the joy of dreaming and sharing things together with someone who cares as much as I do.
I love my life now, despite the challenges, the pitfalls and, yes, the pain. I am living without walls even if it hurts to do that. It is truly living and I’m embracing that.
I’ve shared my journey with you all and I am grateful to this community for your undying support. Not once have you wavered, even as I was beset with attacks and personal tragedies. I’ve been alone, but I’ve never felt alone with all of you.
I am in a rebuilding phase. Sometimes there has to be a bit of destruction in the rebuilding, but it will all be better in the future. I feel like for the first time in decades that I actually do have a future. To make a mark. To leave this country better for me being here.
Since moving to this new platform I can finally feel the community growing again. The increased memberships show it. We abandoned advertising in the move, not entirely though. It does leave us short, but we are reaching a tipping point where we have to make a decision on whether or not we reinstate advertising.
That comes down to you guys. Those who are already members are the ones keeping the site going and for that I thank you. But what we really need are another 250 members, then we can forever dispense with advertising and be a completely membership-driven site.
So, I’ve poured my heart out to you and talked about my failings, my challenges and my dreams of a future. Will those of you who aren’t yet members please consider becoming a paid member? Help us hit the membership goal. Help us build a sustainable future that is important for the political discourse of this nation.
You come here every day for a reason. Do you value that reason at all? Is that worth less than the cost of a cup of coffee a month? If yes, then please join us on our mission. It’s an important one.
Its been a tough few decades, but you’ve all been here for that journey and all its travails. Some were fleeting passengers on this journey, that’s their loss; others, the vast majority, have been onboard for nearly 20 years and you are the treasures that I fondly and greatly appreciate.
Let’s keep this journey going. I’ve only just begun.
I cannot thank the more than 40 people assisting behind the scenes enough. You guys epitomise loyalty and that is something the left of the media fail to understand: loyalty. Thank you all for helping me on this journey.
