A ninety-five-year-old told Jacinta she was the last of her tribe. Jacinta asked how that small body holds something so big, and she said she has to feel the loss but not go too far into it… when it gets close, she goes outside and listens to the magpies. That is the whole human experience in one sentence.

In this episode we talk about the moment women become invisible, and how much earlier that lands than anyone admits. We talk about bodies, and about Jacinta’s fierce insistence that we stop policing each other. She tells me what chronic illness took from her in her late twenties, and about the moment in her parents’ spare room when it turned. And then she tells me about her friends in their nineties, and honestly, I want what they have.

We explore:

• The unconscious loyalties we carry, and what happens when you put one down
• What chronic illness took from Jacinta, and why she now calls it ‘the opportunity of illness’
• The bottom of the pool, and why she reckons nobody can stay there
• Her friends in their nineties, the rebels, and what they understand about time that we don’t
• Why nobody needs your solution, and the deep listening none of us were taught

About Jacinta Parsons:

Jacinta Parsons is a Melbourne-based broadcaster, author and public speaker who currently hosts the Friday Revue and Saturday Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne. She started out at community station Triple R in 2006 and joined the ABC in 2015. She has written three books, Unseen, A Question of Age and A Wisdom of Age, moving from her own experience of chronic illness into the far bigger question of what this country does to women as they age. She is an ambassador for Crohn’s and Colitis Australia, and she has just finished her PhD.

Connect with Jacinta:

• Instagram: @jacintaparsons
  
• Website: jacintaparsons.com
  
• ABC Radio Melbourne: abc.net.au/melbourne