If in the past you’d suggested to me that having your house cleaned once a fortnight could change life, I might have raised a dubious eyebrow. But for the last 10 months, since Healing and Hope began covering the costs for a cleaner to come to the home my parents now share with my brother, I have learned that it can be genuinely transformative.
It’s not easy for people of my parents’ generation to accept this sort of help. Still less for people who have always been the givers, not receivers, of support. My parents were always the sort of people who helped other people – active in our community, providing foster care to kids at risk, my mum doing values-based work, dad an elder in the church.
But that got harder over the years.
My brother was a beautiful child. My grandfather’s favorite mate, my adored little brother, always in a pack of cousins or neighbourhood kids. Extroverted, funny, clever. Until, too often, he wasn’t. Inexplicably, he began to change, and no-one could understand why, despite the many professionals my parents took him to see. Several years ago, he moved in with my parents, now in their 80s. By then, they had already raised two of his kids. The life they had imagined for themselves had long since evaporated.
When I first learned, about ten years ago, of the abuse my brother had suffered, it all made sense. And as someone who has worked for decades in community organisations, including on sexual abuse, I wished that we had known earlier. We could have done so much if we had understood what was driving my brother’s behaviour.
As it was, the process of sharing what had been done to him, and negotiating the compensation process, was harrowing. My brother had what he describes as a breakdown.
Through all this, my parents continued to love and care for my brother, and to stand in as grandparents to their four great-grandchildren. While their friends have enjoyed long retirements, they are still taking kids to school and picking them up, their financial reserves long since gone, along with their energy, and, too often, their faith in the world.
Last year, my mother had a number of falls, incapacitating her. The demands of family continued, and their home became more and more out of control. Living and working hundreds of kilometers away, I could not be there to help them. My brother continues to strive to overcome the hardships that beset him, and for this and many other reasons I continue to love him deeply, but he can rarely contribute to the order of the home. My parents could no longer keep up with housework. They were ashamed to have people over, becoming even more isolated. We tried to organise help, but in their small regional town, it was all just too hard.
Then, one day, Tanya from Healing and Hope, asked me how, really, things were going. It was one of many communications I have had with Tanya over the years. She said Healing and Hope could help with a cleaner. I couldn’t believe it. We found a wonderful cleaner, and the house was transformed. And with it, my mum. ‘It’s such a relief’, she says to me. And I know she doesn’t just mean having a home she isn’t ashamed of. It’s not just having someone coming to the house who she knows really cares about her. It’s not just that she doesn’t feel like such a failure. It’s partly because there is some part of this school that sees my family as human, as deserving of compassion, that understands how much we have tried not to be defeated.
This is what donations to Healing and Hope can do – facilitate vital practical support but so much more than this - hope and healing.
- May 2025
