Margaret has been pondering – what is a good life? Is a meaningful life one that will only occur in the paid workforce or can a life spent doing unpaid work be of value?
Margaret never envisaged spending much of her life, as an unpaid mother and wife. She began her working life in nursing, meeting future husband Barry when they were both working at King Edward Hospital. He was a gynaecologist and obstetrician, and after they were married he continued to work long hours, and was on call day and night.
In 1978, after giving birth to three boys in six years (the fourth son came along two years later) Margaret became involved in volunteer work. She became a foundation member of CPEA – the Childbirth and Parenting Association. As a trained midwife Margaret was well placed to run classes for expectant mothers and fathers, and recruit others to run more classes.
This led onto supporting women after they had given birth, especially those with Post Natal Depression. At that time there was little support for anyone with less than clinically severe PND. So Margaret organised support groups. This led onto the CPEA founding an association inspired by a similar group in the UK called MAMA: Meet-A-Mum-Association so new mothers could connect with other new mothers.
CPEA also produced Directories for new parents listing contact details of many organisations that might be of help. Margaret and a close friend produced this directory for 10 years, funded by appropriate ethical advertisements. Over that time the two of them printed and distributed 350,000 copies.
Margaret has been involved in many other organisations and causes, including getting the heritage buildings at Applecross Primary School listed before the valuable land they were on was sold off to raise funds “Consolidated Revenue”.
In 2001, Barry went to East Timor for 3 months. This was two years after the Indonesians tried to destroy the country they had earlier invaded and once controlled. The work Barry and Margaret did there through Applecross Rotary, and the community support they engendered, is a whole other story, and we haven’t even started on their work as qualified Mediators, AMR and One Health, and the five anthologies she has put together (plus one in preparation) of articles about Australia published in Charles Dickens’ weekly magazines between 1850-59.
It’s not too late to enter Mastermind, Margaret! Those anthologies sound like a great “Special Topic”.
So the opening question posed by Margaret, which pondered whether only paid employment can lead to your life being “meaningful” has to be answered with a resounding NO!
It also made me wonder why it took so long to recognise this outstanding citizen with a Paul Harris Fellowship!
