Chapter 10: your foster dad will stick his hands down your pants, and you will feel so, so lucky
Mum Says My Memoir Is A LieShow Notes
It was hard for host Rosie Waterland and her big sister to keep up appearances when mum Lisa hadn't been home in four days. After a while, others started to cotton on - including the Department of Community Services. For a while Rosie and sister stayed with relatives here and there; and then they hit the foster home jackpot: a very-well-to-do family with a big swish house AND a place in the country. Everybody kept saying how lucky they were. Until some pretty suspect things started happening.
Rosie and her big sister's time at that house ended up with a set of events that put the two young children in some very uncomfortable and confronting situations. Rosie and Lisa now get to talk about what happened at that time, how Rosie and her sister dealt with it in the months and years afterwards, and how that time now sits with Rosie years afterwards.
This episode contains themes that some listeners may find distressing. If it does, please contact Lifeline on 131114 or at https://www.lifeline.org.au/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
More from Mum Says My Memoir Is A Lie
The final episode! Host Rosie Waterland's spent a lifetime struggling to understand why she wasn't a cool kid, constantly wondering just what she was missing. From her early days trying to hide her poo pants from her sister's friends, to later days doing drugs and pretending to enjoy sex with boys who were terrible at it, she now confesses that she was always fixated on trying to impress everyone around her.
When you're twenty-seven years old and realise that you have no clue how to post a letter, it's obvious something has gone very wrong somewhere along the line.
If Lisa thought there was ever going to be an episode from Rosie's book 'The Anti-Cool Girl' that was going to make her squirm, this is it. This one is about host Rosie Waterland's more adult escapades: the time she scared a penis back inside itself and the time Rosie went on her first and only Tinder date only for it to turn out very differently to how she thought it would. It's not very often that a mother and her grown daughter get to discuss sex, but here it is for all to listen to in all its glorious detail.
After her time in the mental institution, Rosie had never had a healthier sense of self-worth in her entire life. She was learning how to be her own saviour, how to feel comfortable being single and how to be mentally healthy. And then there was the issue of the weight gain. It began pretty much straight after leaving hospital. The disordered eating and Rosie's attitude towards food started back in drama school, and the cycle of binging and purging and starving had been going on in the entire seven years after that. Before she knew it, Rosie had gained ninety kilos, and that was the perfect excuse to never leave her room again.
Just like when Rosie was little, something about Mum calling her 'darling' calmed her down. After spending almost a month in a mental home, that's exactly what host Rosie Waterland needed. And Lisa understood that. She was the only person in Rosie's life who understood what she was going through. So with Lisa's help, Rosie jumped on a plane to Dubbo and was soon being cared for by Mum with roast chicken and cheesy potato bake. Lisa might not have always been there for Rosie in life; but this week, this one week, she was.