Standing Strong by Fiona McCallum

tutorial presentations, despite having done several. He’d hoped she’d never totally quell the butterflies because if she did, it would mean she’d have lost her respect for her subject and her audience. She could see his point. A part of Jacqueline hoped the milkshake wouldn’t leave her feeling sick. Another didn’t care – it was oh so good.
    Ethel was clearly enjoying her blast from the past as well. ‘Sorry in advance for my slurping like a child, but it has to be done,’ she said with a grin as she sucked on her straw and moved it about, trying to get every last drop.
    Jacqueline laughed. ‘I was wanting to do that, but thought I’d better not.’
    â€˜Can’t not, the best bits are at the bottom,’ Ethel said with a laugh.
    â€˜They are! Just hope my nerves don’t cause me to throw it all up.’
    â€˜You’ll be fine. Might be good for you to have your stomach lined so well. Well, miss, guess we’d better present you before we start getting frantic phone calls,’ Ethel said, starting the car.
    Jacqueline was given a warm welcome by the CWA President, Mrs Lisa Bishop, who explained they’d opened the evening to all the women of the district, and any who were visiting for the summer holidays. She was then taken onto the stage and introduced to the audience of at least one hundred ladies of various ages seated on rows of old wooden chairs. The room was nice and cool – clearly the building had been shut up for several days and the warm weather kept out.
    Jacqueline’s spiel was similar to what she’d used for each of her other community talks, she just tailored it a bit to the particular audience with the examples or stories she told. She didn’t use notes; she was talking about herself and the profession she was passionate about – she could talk for hours unaided. She didn’t see herself as a comedian by any stretch, but was usually able to get a few chuckles from her audiences by uttering some self-deprecating stories. It was important for her growing business to be seen as down-to-earth and approachable. And she’d seen that country people saw through any inauthenticity and bullshit as quickly as a hot knife went through butter.
    Tonight, as always, she talked about how a psychologist could help with a problem and that it wasn’t the same as airing one’s dirty linen. Everything spoken about within the walls of her office remained confidential. At least this time around, Jacqueline had the benefit of a little more knowledge of why she thought people were reluctant to seek professional help: they didn’t like to show themselves as being weak. From what she’d seen – and heard from Ethel and Damien and a few others – country people generally seemed a very resourceful group. They wanted to sort out their problems on their own. To seek help was to show weakness or to complain. And another thing country people tended not to do was openly complain.
    Once she explained that to seek help might actually be seen as being smart – using all the resources available – she left the subject so it might sink in, and turned to a lighter topic. She spoke about her tidy life, tidy mind principle and how lists could help to make an overwhelming amount of things to do feel a lot more manageable.
    Finally she got to her favourite subject of learning to listen to one’s intuition or inner voice more to avoid making mistakes that turned into regrets. Intuition, she explained, was there to protect you. It was your soul, governed by the universe – or God, if that’s where your faith lay. Personally, Jacqueline detested organised religion – it was control through fear, in her opinion. But she kept her religious views to herself. She was very spiritual, it just didn’t manifest itself in her through being Catholic, Anglican, or whatever. While she’d been raised to believe