Alice Coster: How to cope when tragedy strikes close to home

Shame. Guilt. Anger. The sickening details that keep emerging around alleged childcare abuser Joshua Brown have left families reeling, and we all feel their pain.

A winter tragedy. It’s not a black dog circling, but a pack of them.

Wanting to hibernate. Hide. Climbing the walls. Whatever your demon might be, that noise inside the monkey mind is loud.

While the population of Greater Melbourne is more than 5 million, it can often feel like six degrees of separation when a grim story hits the headlines.

Little Darcey Freeman. The heartbreak of Rosie Batty. Bourke St.

This week it has been the sickening details that keep emerging around alleged monster Joshua Brown. A Melbourne childcare worker accused of heinous sexual offences, affecting more than 1200 children who are potentially at risk. Families awaiting STI test results. Sickening.

Shame. Guilt. Anger. The Point Cook community so deeply affected left reeling. Parents tuck their kids into bed just that bit tighter. Confusion. Depression. We all feel their pain.

Working in a newsroom can create a rather hardened armour when these stories hit. My lawyer and social worker friends are much the same. You need to create a level of distance and deflection to cope.

Alleged child sex abuser Joshua Brown. Picture Supplied.

It’s only when someone you are connected to is caught up in it. In this case an old best friend from school and Point Cook parent that the horror of it all gets under the skin. It crawls and creeps in. You are not immune anymore.

Elsewhere other friends have been calling, their voices low.

Sometimes it is just them trying to make it through the day with trying kids that require more patience than most as the school term draws to an end. Others, the empaths who feel the state of the world just that bit harder, struggle to not spiral amid global events, from the US to the Middle East.

Olympic gold medallist Leisel Jones was feeling it. On Wednesday in a vulnerable social media post, the swimming great spoke through tears of her “high-functioning depression”, saying she was struggling in a “dark moment”. That yesterday was one of her worst days.

“Stay until tomorrow” were the words that pushed her through. An hour-long walk helped.

Because sometimes it’s not really anything you can even put a finger on.

Leisel Jones has been battling high functioning depression and urged other people struggling to “stay until tomorrow”.

But you know just listening to them on the other end of the phone they aren’t okay. Struggling. Barely holding it together.

Yesterday after one such call after her morning school drop off, I just jumped in the car and drove over. She said she wanted to be alone. But sometimes alone is not where someone should be.

We hugged. No words required. I got the computer out and we just sat together with cups of tea and worked respectively in silence.

It helped.

We all can feel it at some point. Sometimes just for a moment over a situation. For others it is more clouded, lingering longer.

So take the phone call. Make the drive over.

Stay until tomorrow.

Alice Coster is a Herald Sun columnist

Originally published as Alice Coster: How to cope when tragedy strikes close to home