MULTI-award winning Bickley author, film director, screenwriter and actor Isabella Jacqueline last month launched her latest offering entitled Shattered.
Shattered is a memoir of poems centred around her personal experiences surviving grooming, sexual assault, abuse, loss, heartbreak - and the isolating aftermath.
With this book, she hopes to create a space for those going through violence, violation and loss to articulate and validate their darkest feelings.
And for those who haven’t experienced such traumas to sit with the weight of them and perhaps begin to comprehend and build empathy; a fundamental step towards a more understanding, equal world.
She hopes that someone can feel less alone than she did.
Her love for literature was birthed as early as eleven years old, when she began penning short stories as a way of passing time on her parents’ hobby farm in the picturesque Perth Hills.
However, as she matured into a teenager and her exposure to the outside world grew, Isabella’s writing fast evolved into a means of articulating various traumas she could never bring herself to speak of.
Now, amidst the rapidly rising statistics of men’s violence against women, she has decided to share the poems that documented the darkest period of her life.
“When I was small, I wrote extensively regarding what I observed - wildlife, livestock, bushland. I think when you’re sitting in a field you have more time to process, to think, to wonder, and - ultimately - to create,” she said.
“By the time I began writing the poems that make up Shattered I suppose there was a certain safety to do so in my own little isolated slice of the world - far away from all the darkness that had begun to seep into my teenage and young adult life.
“I have hundreds of memories of sitting under a mulberry tree in our little orchard, watching the chickens foraging and sometimes - for a moment - feeling as though I was writing about another girl’s experiences, not my own.
“Perhaps that dissociation helped at times, as it allowed me to read back on the poems as though in third person and ultimately realise that the girl in those poems deserved better. That it wasn’t her fault,” Ms Jacqueline said.
The recent black-tie launch was
attended by more than 200 survivors, allies and activists including feminist Tiktoker Jordan Tan, domestic violence advocates Arial Bombara and Sheree Schonian, and representatives from varied survivor centric services and organisations, such as the Sexual Assault Legal Service.
The evening featured a keynote address by Centre for Women’s Safety and Wellbeing chief executive officer Alison Evans, and saw Ms Jacqueline take to the stage to speak out for the first time regarding her experiences, read select poems from Shattered and engage in an unfiltered, open-mic Q&A session.
It was an evening filled with tears, support and poignant conversations, with many guests expressing that they felt empowered .
“My story isn’t unique, but for so long I thought it was. The world is a dark place for women, but it’s as I said at the book launch; it is the vocal minority who will see change if the majority remains silent. So, let’s keep being vocal,” Ms Jacqueline said.
Shattered is available at Booktopia, Amazon, Dymocks and select local bookstores.
