Michelle Scheibner calls herself the ‘Identity Activator’ because she knows from personal experience what it’s like to feel that you lack an identity. After the death of her partner, she needed to reinvent herself and chose the peninsula to do it. Michelle’s Mornington home has Tanti Creek burbling away at the bottom of the garden; it’s an idyllic and inspirational setting.
But before that, she had to invent herself, which is what her memoir, Hush, is about. Aptly named, Hush tells the tale of Michelle’s family secrets which prevented her from developing a sense of her own identity and even played a role in her never having a child herself.
Michelle says, “Hush wasn’t written just to tell my story. It was written to give hope to others that they, too, can resolve the recurring complaints, problems and hidden fears that have kept their true identity hidden. In my case those secrets held a lot of information about who I was and where I’d come from.”
When she was eighteen, Michelle discovered that her brother, Grant, hadn’t died; he was alive, and had Down syndrome. “I knew that I had a cousin who was born with profound intellectual and physical disabilities. There was another cousin who was living in Kew Cottages who my mum would visit.
I didn’t know she was visiting my brother as well. I had no idea he was alive and institutionalised. So the child that was put away with the expectation that he wouldn’t live, outlived the two people who made that decision, and I think that’s very sad. What I have now is compassion for my parents and that decision has only come about through doing this project. I’ve come to terms with that.”
When Michelle was engaged and considering having children, she consulted a genetic clinic and was asked for a blood sample from Grant. She rang Kew Cottages and struck a dead end, being told that no one of that name resided there. Michelle thought, “Oh well, that’s that.” Eventually, Michelle found that her brother was indeed alive and was living in a facility in Stawell. Tragically, Grant had recently passed away, and Michelle was there at his funeral, too late for answers.
“What would it have been like to grow up with a brother?
“What would it have been like to grow up with a brother? I would have learned a lot, but instead I was with adults. ‘Speak when spoken to.’ Being hushed, and without siblings to fight and negotiate with, I didn’t learn conflict management. With a distracted mother I didn’t have a sense of boundaries or an ability to articulate my needs. I didn’t know where I fitted in.”
Michelle grew up with an aunt living with an unnamed disability, causing her to scream in frustration. “It scared me. I spent a lot of my childhood being scared. I was afraid of cats and dogs, doctors and dentists, and scared of Daphne (my aunt upstairs) because I didn’t understand” Michelle hid in a cupboard under the stairs.
“Mum was Daphne’s carer. I think my dad was a handful, too. Being German, he was held in an internment camp during the war as an ‘alien’ and suffered a nervous breakdown. There are letters documenting that this put him in hospital. He had experienced war and the rounding up of Jews in Germany even before World War II broke out. My grandfather lost his job because he was Jewish. They had to move many times. But this was all kept secret.”
Both of Michelle’s grandparents were murdered in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. How was Michelle affected by the recent 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz? “I’ve been affected a lot by what started in October 2023 (the taking of Israeli hostages). I have a letter that my grandmother wrote from Germany to a cousin in Brisbane saying it was no longer safe for Carl (my father) to stay in Berlin – he must go. He came here to survive, but now I hear Jewish families talking about leaving Australia and going back to Israel because they see that as safer than trying to exist in a climate of antisemitism. So that affects me greatly.”
But it wasn’t only family secrets that Michelle discovered were the barrier to her discovering her identity, It was emotional inheritance – inherited family trauma.
“I was never a happy child, except maybe on Christmas Eve. I grew up with grief and sadness as my companions, and I have come to understand that it wasn’t my grief. It was my father’s grief; it was the shame on my mother’s side of the family; this is why epigenetics is important. External features can impact the expression of genes.
According to Rachel Yehuda, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and director of the traumatic stress studies division at Mount Sinai Schoool of Medicine, epigenetic changes biologically prepare us to cope with the traumas that our parents experienced. In preparation for similar stressors, we are born with a specific set of tools to help us survive.
There’s a cost to keeping a secret – it’s an aspect of our identity – of who we are.
“Absent family members – missing people – hold tremendous energy in our family systems. They haunt us. When we fail to acknowledge or mourn a loss, when we try to erase, silence or forget family members whose deaths or whose actions in life have been painful or shameful, we find that they insist upon being seen and heard.”
“There’s a cost to keeping a secret – it’s an aspect of our identity – of who we are. The future for me is working in this field, and to this end, I’m going to an ‘in-person’ immersive event in Corfu in May with Mark Wolynn, who developed a pioneering approach to identifying and breaking these inherited patterns.”
How did epigenetics affect Michelle? “I saw my dad constantly very tired, very sad, very in his own head, and when I think of him, I see that in myself, and I didn’t grow up just imitating that. I know it was inside me, and I see part of that as coming down that line of Jewish families that have just had to continue to fight and struggle to survive. But I didn’t know any of this growing up. “I thought dad was Lutheran and Mum was Anglican. That’s how I was raised.”
Michelle discovered her Jewish identity through a DNA test in 2018. She was hoping to get some history of her health but instead discovered her genetic heritage was over 50% Jewish. “There was a relief in this – to stop guessing and have proof.”
Michelle is at peace in her Mornington home. “I was drawn to the peninsula because, as a family, we had a history here. The family had a holiday house in Capel Sound, right across the road from the beach, so all weekends and major holidays were at Rosebud. I got to know the peninsula, and when I had to reinvent myself and wanted to get out of the Heidelberg/Ivanhoe area I thought, I need to live near the water. I need to get back to the beach.”
Michelle consults online and does frequent guest podcast appearances. She also does coaching sessions, webinars and expert author community mentoring online. Find Hush and info about Michelle’s practise on her website.
michellescheibner.com