Australian Senator tears up in powerful speech on grief

Brut America

Australian Senator Janet Rice tears up in front of Australian Parliament as she grieves her wife and all of the lives lost in the wildfires.

Transcript

00:00But maybe some of the other things I've learnt over the five months since Penny died can

00:05be useful in helping us how to work out how to deal with the losses of this summer and

00:11how to move on onto our new path.

00:14My wife Penny died in September.

00:17As well as being the love of my life, Penny was one of Australia's leading climate scientists.

00:22She worked at CSIRO for 30 years preparing regional climate projections, the science

00:28that lays out how our climate is changing across the country and that has laid out the

00:35increasing risk of longer, more intense, more damaging fire seasons.

00:42I've discovered that grief isn't compartmentalised.

00:46I'm grieving for Penny and I'm grieving for our precious planet, particularly the forests

00:50and the wildlife that we both loved so much and campaigned so hard to protect.

00:56And when I think of the people who lost loved ones in the fires, I can so easily imagine

01:02their devastating grief and loss because I've experienced the same randomness of the universe

01:08that has resulted in sudden, unexpected, unfathomable death.

01:15I'm angry that Penny's climate science and her decades of campaigning seem to have been

01:21for naught right now.

01:24Penny was so fearful of what this summer was going to deliver and I'm mortified that

01:29her fears have come to pass.

01:32There's a tiny sense of relief that at least she was spared seeing them play out in such

01:37a devastating way.

01:39But maybe some of the other things I've learnt over the five months since Penny died can

01:44be useful in helping us how to work out how to deal with the losses of this summer and

01:49how to move on onto our new path.

01:52I've learnt that expressing and acknowledging loss, bawling my eyes out and sharing the

01:57emotion with others is cathartic.

02:01And I've learnt that you can never have too many hugs and that people reaching out to

02:05me with a simple, I'm so sorry, is profound and touching and helps me know that I'm not

02:11alone.

02:12So to everyone who has lost people they love, who have lost property, had their communities

02:17turned upside down, seen the destruction of country they love.

02:22I'm so sorry.

02:25I've learnt that grief is the flip side of love.

02:29I've learnt that our relationships make up a huge part of who we are and that nurturing

02:33and cherishing those relationships is core to our wellbeing.

02:38When Penny died, I didn't just lose her, I lost a massive part of myself, that part of

02:43my identity, that was the love, the connection, the interplay between the two of us.

02:49And I realised how much the other relationships I have with friends, colleagues and acquaintances

02:54matter and are part of me too.

02:58So if expressing our grief for our losses of this summer can encourage people to reach

03:03out and to connect with and reconnect with people they love, that's a powerful step on

03:09this new path that we are now walking together.

03:13And I've realised that these relationships, these connections that are part of me, don't

03:18just stop at connections with other humans.

03:21We are part of nature.

03:23All is one and one is all.

03:25The profound grief that we are feeling about the loss of nature and the damage to precious

03:31landscapes, the billions of animals lost, is because they are part of us and we are

03:36part of them and we love them as we love ourselves.

03:39We can't just let them go, be sacrificed to the gods of greed and selfishness, the blatant

03:45willful vandals who are overheating our planet.

03:49We can but hope that as more people feel this loss deeply and powerfully, that it will motivate

03:56more of us to work to protect the rest of nature from the ravages of unbridled neoliberal

04:02capitalism.

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