With special guest:
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Dr Gregory Smith OAM
… in conversation with Bill Kable
Now well and truly out of the forest he described in his first book, Gregory Smith has produced a new book called Better than Happiness in which he lets us know how he has progressed in the five years since we heard from him last time.
Gregory’s life story is extraordinary and uplifting. Gregory had a type of epiphany when sitting on a park bench in 1999 when a stranger showed him some kindness. From there it has been one step at a time.
After being told so many times while he was growing up that he was stupid, he slowly began to realise that this was wrong. He found that he could learn more things than just how to survive day to day. In fact he achieved recognition in an academic field. Senior people were coming to him for advice.
There was still plenty to work on including his relationship with his daughter and his sisters, making friends and progressing in his career after a late start. Not on his list of priorities was entering a romantic relationship but after a rocky introduction he found a soul mate, his now fiancé Catherine. Gregory now has more than one place where he has a roof over his head. He has built a relationship with Catherine’s children and wonder of wonders he even has a new child born 36 years after his first.
This amazing story has lessons for all of us. The most frequent question Gregory is asked at TEDx talks and elsewhere is “Are you happy?” Gregory gives us the answer which may not be what you are expecting.
Gregory gives us the key to overcoming the anxiety and the lack of self-confidence that everyone feels from time to time. What about that little inner voice we hear that tends to shred any confidence we might feel on embarking on a new project? Gregory’s advice comes from surprising people and places and has a wisdom of the ages.
We agreed to get together again after another 5 years to see what Gregory has achieved by then. There are guaranteed to be some more surprises.
Dr Gregory Smith OAM
Gregory Peel Smith was born into a dysfunctional and abusive household in Tamworth, New South Wales in 1955. His formative years were variously spent in a brutal Catholic orphanage, foster care and juvenile detention centres. He became homeless and a rough sleeper for much of his adult life.
At 35 Gregory withdrew from the world to live in near total isolation in a rainforest in northern New South Wales. After ten years he finally emerged in 1999, close to death, to ‘give society another chance’. Hampered by a poor education, Gregory set his sights on studying – first for a Certificate I in Information Technology at a community college, then for a bridging course at TAFE. In 2004 he began a degree in sociology at Southern Cross University. Although he remained homeless during much of his studies, Gregory graduated in 2007 with first class honours.
In 2016 he was conferred with a PhD for his landmark research into the ‘Forgotten Australians’ – the estimated 500,000 people who, like him, suffered abuse in institutional out-of-home care during the twentieth century. Gregory was subsequently employed by Southern Cross University, where he is a research fellow, a senior lecturer in the social sciences and chair of the faculty of Business, Law and Arts.
Gregory is one of Australia’s foremost lived experience experts in post-traumatic stress disorder, mental illness, domestic violence, alcohol and drug addiction, rough sleeping and homelessness. A sought-after public speaker and policy advisor, he is a specialist consultant to a number of government initiatives including the End Street Sleeping Collaboration: a New South Wales Premier’s priority project to end street sleeping by 2030.
A leading advocate for the disenfranchised, disadvantaged and disconnected around the world, Gregory is a patron of numerous homeless vulnerability service providers in New South Wales and Queensland, and a global consultant for the Institute of Relational Health – a project run by CareSource in the United States to effect systems change in working with disadvantaged families.
Gregory’s first book Out of the Forest was published in 2018. Today he lives in Orange, New South Wales, with his partner Catherine, their family and his beloved brood of chickens.
Song selection by our guest: Annie’s Song by John Denver