Our learning support and mentoring programs in 90 Australian communities directly help children in need achieve their goals through education.
View all programs Wendy Harmer - Why I Sponsor a child
17 May 2021
Wendy Harmer explains how a traumatic event in her childhood has spurred her to sponsor a child’s education through The Smith Family
Warning: This story contains material that some readers may find distressing.
I survived a fractured childhood and - as so many of us who’ve come to be successful adults do - always defer those who were worse off than we were.
Even as children, we all knew kids who had it harder than us.
That's the remarkable thing about children... their unending capacity to filter the good from the bad and find hope, even in the most barren of circumstances.
So, with this in mind, it’s difficult for me to claim extreme privation as so many experience it, but I do remember the day the Big Men in the Big Truck came to take our furniture away.
Some we knew from school. Some we saw on TV. Some we knew of from bedtime stories. Some were the unnamed, untold millions of children living in poverty in places we couldn’t even find on a map. “Eat your dinner, there are children starving in India,” we were told. And we did.
Every tale reminded us to be grateful for what we had. And we were.
The Big Men barged into the house and took the master bedroom setting – bed, wardrobe and dressing table. Next to go was the lounge room furniture – the sofa, armchairs and new television.
I remember wailing and trying to stop it all. My younger brothers and sisters crying out in despair too. To no avail. We were only little kids running down the driveway.
All was loaded by the Big Men into the Big Truck and driven away, leaving our house almost empty.
Mum and Dad were not there that day.
Years later I came to understand that all our lovely brand-new things had been repossessed by the department store. Dad had bought them on hire purchase in the hope that Mum would come back. She never did.
I recall a dinner of dry Weet-bix and Vegemite - the only thing I could find in the cupboard. But we built cubby huts in the house, made plays and performed them in the woodshed for fun. Went wandering wherever we wanted and counted ourselves lucky not to be called inside like other kids when the sun went down.
A year earlier, when I was 10, my mother, just 27 years old then, had attempted to take her life.
The vivid details of that day are for another time, but my abiding memory is of my father, as the sun went down, carrying my mother to the car to take her for treatment.
She went to live in Tasmania, which was impossibly far away. I would look at the moon and imagined she lived there. You know how the bright, full moon follows you when you look out of the back seat of the car?
That was my Mum, up there, shining on me.
When I was sixteen we reconnected and on the first of many visits to see her in Tassie I was struck by her laugh. It sounded exactly like mine!
We are still good friends.
The four of us made the best of it.
I recall a dinner of dry Weet-bix and Vegemite - the only thing I could find in the cupboard. But we built cubby huts in the house, made plays and performed them in the woodshed for fun. Went wandering wherever we wanted and counted ourselves lucky not to be called inside like other kids when the sun went down.
It was also our secret not to complain in case we were split up and sent to an orphanage. We knew that was a possibility. Dad cried when he told us and implored us to stick together and look after each other. And we did.
After a few years of utter mayhem, moving house, changing schools (and that, too, is for another time), Dad finally got back on track with the love of his extended family and we four kids, who believed in him and forgave him.
We had many happy, loving years together with Dad. Our live-in housekeeper later became my stepmother, but that relationship was always difficult.
Surviving, but only just.
More than 50 years on the family heartbreak has reverberated in untimely death and estrangement into the next generation.
But we have so much to celebrate too, and again, we will survive.
That word “family”... It could be the one you’re born into or the one you’ve created for yourself out of scraps from a bare cupboard.
You can survive or celebrate your family.
But, take it from me, you will never know how much it means until the Big Men in the Big Truck come to take it away.
It’s in the name… “The Smith Family” and it’s why I donate to them.
Every child deserves one.
Wendy’s story is as unique as any of the stories of the more than 170,000 students supported by The Smith Family.
The Smith Family partners with families today to support children and parents and communities experiencing similar challenges to thrive and achieve their goals.
If this story has raised any issues with you, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
