I really see myself as a recovered Catholic.”Īnd yet Brierley’s own belief in herself as a mother was challenged by difficulties she faced with her second adopted son, Mantosh. I saw that kind of manipulation and pressure in my own life, in my Catholic faith, in my mother’s Catholic faith, in her mother’s. “It creates a glorified image of being the best and only way. “There’s this sense of failure – you’re less than,” she says. But there’s a huge variety in the way women mother.”īrierley says that adulation of birth mothers – born from the worship of the Virgin Mary as the ideal mother figure – has proved destructive for women, particularly those who can’t conceive. In particular, our enduring infatuation with the “mother myth”: “We have got an obsession about birth mothers being the only true mothers. Society, too, fails parents, Brierley believes. Her childhood left Brierley certain of two things: that she wanted to marry a loving, gentle man (a goal she fulfilled thanks to her husband John) and that she wanted to adopt children, both to give them a new chance in life and because she regards parenting as a privilege, not a right.īrierley and her family meet the actors who play them in the feature film, Lion. “And I do think to be called Mum and Dad should be an honour: it should be earned and it should be deserved.” That term ‘Dad’ just wasn’t true,” she tells Guardian Australia. “I never really thought about why I was doing that. It also informed her views about parenting: in Lioness, while she refers to her mother as “Mum”, her father is called “Joe”. The trauma left Brierley a meek, withdrawn child. At home, she often bore witness to her father’s brutal beatings of her mother. She was put to labour from a young age, “cranking a stiff handle to separate the cream from the milk and then winding the heavy handle of the churn to make butter … a thankless and repetitive task”. Struggling to make ends meet following her father’s often mad dash plans to make cash, they lived off produce from their vegetable garden, eggs from their chickens, and milk and butter from their two Jersey cows.Ĭhildren were, as Brierley writes, “incidental – they just happened along and their purpose was to work hard and support the family”. Written in straightforward, unembellished prose, which mirrors the way that Brierley – a sensible, kind, no-nonsense type – speaks, I could not put it down.īrierley, 66, grew up in 1950s and 60s Australia with a downtrodden Catholic mother and a violent, unpredictable father. That big picture – a deep dive into families, domestic abuse, adoption, the “mother myth” and much more – is, in many ways, more fascinating than the oft-covered glitz and glamour of Hollywood. GradeSaver, 23 November 2022 Web.Brierley’s parents were European refugees, who struggled to establish their life in Australia with Sue (baby, right) and her two sisters. Next Section A Long Way Home Summary How To Cite in MLA Format Barbour, Polly, et al. Will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback. ![]() ![]() You can help us out by revising, improving and updatingĪfter you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. Lion premiered at the 2016 International Film Festival and starred Nicole Kidman, Dev Patel and Rooney Mara, earning Patel an Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category.īrierly announced in 2019 that he was searching for his birth father, a man of unknown whereabouts, who had left the family when he was an infant. In 2016, Garth Davis directed the big screen adaptation of the book. He begins his search by finding his hometown on Google Earth.Īs well as being an autobiographical work, the book also touches on subjects such as Third World poverty, survival and the struggle to find one's true identity. Twenty five years later, he begins to search for his Indian family, wanting to find out once and for all who he really was and where it was that he had come from. Have you ever been a child lost in a department store, looking for your mother, panicking and wondering how you are ever going to get home again? This feeling of rising fear inside a child who does not know where they are but finds themselves horribly and interminably alone is magnified one hundred fold in Saroo Brierly's autobiography, A Long Way Home it tells the story of a five year old Brerly lost in rural India, wondering where he was, and where he was going to end up, before he was adopted by a wealthy Australian family. Written by Polly Barbour and other people who wish to remain anonymous We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. ![]() These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.
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