There are moments in a country’s life when something unsettles us in a way we can’t easily name.

The recent events in Bondi have done that for many people here in Australia, not only because of the tragedy itself, but because of what it revealed about how fragile we feel as a society.

Long before that day, I’d been sitting with a question: What happens to us when we stop talking to one another?

For years, my work has circled around the same truth: we don’t heal in isolation nor do we grow there either. We need places where we can speak honestly, listen without defensiveness, and feel safe enough to stay in the conversation even when it becomes uncomfortable.

When Alice Perle wrote Resolve, she didn’t write it to be consumed silently. Alice wrote it to open a door. The topic itself is one most families never speak about, yet its silence shapes generations. The book was meant to be a beginning — a way for people to say, “This happened in my family too,” or “I’ve never understood this part of my story until now.”

But a book can only go so far.

The audiobook has been appreciated, with feedback that it feels like the reader is listening to the author read the book, just for them. Reading or listening to a book is not the same as being in conversation. Listening is not the same as participating.

Back in 2019, when I hosted small Conversation Cafés in Noosa, I saw how hungry people were for a space where they could simply be human together. No performance or pressure. Just a circle of people willing to explore ideas with care.

Later, I created a podcast, Coffee and Contemplation with Susan Dunlop, on Spotify. Interviewing women from each decade of life 10-19 through to 90-99, I was trying to understand something that still feels important today:

How do we learn from one another when our lives have become so separate?

Those conversations reminded me that every generation carries something the others need — perspective, memory, humour, caution, courage. But these things don’t travel through social media posts. They travel through story, and story needs a narrator and listener.

In March, I viewed an ABC panel on TV, that was discussing ‘what now’ and, the way I took it, ‘who are we being, together’ following the horror of the mass shooting at Bondi.

I heard the same longing for community connection.

One speaker said:

“It would be great if we could start to feel as safe as we need to feel with each other to talk about this kind of thing…”

Another offered a simple invitation:

“Put your phone down… turn assumptions into open curiosity.”

Neither comment was dramatic, they were simply human, and both pointed to something we’ve lost in our ‘nuclear’ way of living.

We’ve become very good at reacting from a distance, less practiced at staying close and we’ve become quick to drop an emoji, but, with apathy, don’t take the next step, to say, “Can we talk about this?”

This is where our circle of influence begins — not with grand gestures, but with the way we show up in the smallest moments.

A person who chooses to approach a conversation differently affects the people around them. Families, workplaces and communities feel it.

When someone steps out of the ordinary pattern — when they pause instead of react, ask instead of assume, listen instead of defend — something in the room changes, and that change travels outward.

This is why I will continue to host the Blue Borage Conversation Cafés and deliver the training I do in The Empowerment Dynamic and 3 Vital Questions, and will keep returning to the idea of brave, supported dialogue, is what will change the world.

Conversation is not a luxury. It’s a form of care.

Conversation is a way of saying:

I’m willing to meet you here, even if we don’t agree. I’m willing to understand you, even if your experience is different from mine.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing a series on conversation, influence, and the quiet ripples we create simply by choosing to engage.

Some pieces will be collaborations, drawing from the lived‑experience lens of Alice Perle and others who join us at the Conversation Cafes on a regular basis.

Others will come from my personal and professional journey, the community-building founder of Blue Borage.

Together, they form a map of what becomes possible when we lift our gaze from our screens and return to one another.

For now, I’ll leave you with a question:

Is there a conversation you’ve been avoiding — and what might open up if you chose to have it?