‘My romantic life had been stolen by pain’: how this writer tapped into her trauma

When I was little and watching Disney princess movies, I so distinctly remember wanting the stories to be entirely conflict-free. I didn’t want a parent to die, an evil stepmother, a tense quest to battle the dragons – I just wanted to watch the day in the life of the princess. Watch her wake up, make pancakes, get a head massage, play with her dogs, ride her horses. Just happiness. Screw adversity.

Lucy Coleman says that reclaiming her agency and setting herself on a path of healing has restored her empowerment.

Then life happened, and I went what the actual f--k? I started to learn the value of storytelling, and being seen on screen. The power of its connection in making our suffering feel not so agonisingly lonely.

Beyond my innocent pancake days, as an adult storyteller I felt compelled by the writerly pull to step into the lava – the core of our suffering, and what can become the potential core of our transcendence. But I want to make it clear, sexual violence should never be linked to lofty statements of “things happen for a reason” and “there is a silver lining to everything”. Sexual assault is implicitly wrong, criminal and a heinous act of egregious male entitlement that destroys life.

But it happened to me. It’s a trauma I will never transcend from. A trauma that shattered a decade of my life when I should have been forming healthy attachments. PTSD I continue to navigate.

It was in 2019, after I had written the very first draft of my TV show Exposure, that this burning hot lava became clear. I was on a work trip to LA, and I woke up in the middle of the night in my hotel room in West Hollywood and realised: this draft, this show, was the paradoxical echoing of my burning rage towards men and my shameful desperation to be validated by them. Trauma isn’t neat or clean. It’s messy, complicated, and at times, f--king humiliating.

I wanted the same gender who had so brutally violated my integrity to restore it. This was an agony I lived in for an appalling amount of my youth. What I didn’t realise the night of my West Hollywood epiphany was that acceptance was still an abstract concept. Denial still had its stronghold. Exposure became my calling. Jacs (the lead character) had been born and she was going to take me to my knees before I could stand back up again.

I was in the lava. It scorched my skin and melted my flesh. I couldn’t run or hide. The drafts were due and I was forced to sit there and write through it.

LUCY COLEMAN

I wrote episodes one to four feverishly. The drafts flowed. It was Jacs as I knew her: angry, embarrassing, everything suppressed and buried down.

Then came the first draft of episode five. And, well, it all just started to come undone. I was in the lava. It scorched my skin and melted my flesh. I couldn’t run or hide. The drafts were due and I was forced to sit there and write through it. A fictionalised version of this life-shattering event. I was forced to face this irrevocable moment when I walked into the path of a male perpetrator. That it really had happened. That it really was horrific. And the fact that I was in tears day after day. That it had really happened to me.

I was in the deafeningly quiet room of acceptance. And it burnt.

What I didn’t expect was that on the other side of that acceptance – and I know you are all wanting me to say “transcendence” – but what was waiting for me on the other side of flying through the production and the adrenaline-fuelled collaboration of TV-making was the giant, cavernous well of grief.

That over a decade of my romantic life had been stolen by maladaptive behaviours and pain. That I was still single, with frozen eggs. That I couldn’t shake this omnipresent, suffocating sadness. That every news day a woman had been violated, raped or murdered. Was there hope? Really? Honestly? Was there hope?

This piece flowed out of me quite naturally until I hit this question. A question I know is too raw for many women in Australia right now. As I begged a friend for words of wisdom one night, they offered me something that has since sat with me with clarity. “I have a right to happiness even if this person never sees the justice or vindication they deserve. I have a right to happiness.”

Our collective anger can fuel change. Reclaiming my agency and setting myself on a path of healing can restore my empowerment. And, I have a right to happiness.

This is an agonising and terrifying time for Australian women, and for the men who have also been affected by male violence. From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank the advocates who are out there every day fighting the good fight for meaningful change. Sarah Williams, Tarang Chawla, Chanel Contos. Journalists Jess Hill and Hannah Ferguson. Just to name only a few. I know there is a growing army of many at this crucial forefront. They are the people who give me hope.

What I also hope is that the storytelling of Exposure will give you a moment to feel seen in your darkest hour, and alleviate your loneliness just that little bit. To you, I say: I’m just so sorry. You have a right to happiness and I love you.

Exposure will premiere on June 20 on Stan (owned by Nine, owner of this masthead).

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