I recently kicked myself because I missed the 30th Anniversary of Wellington’s lesbian library event – and an opportunity to hear Emeritus Professor Jan Jordan discuss her memoir, Snorkelling the Abyss - One woman, striving to survive, fighting for survivors. (Cuba Press, 2024.) 

I was introduced to Jan’s work only at her inaugural professorial lecture in 2020 just as she reached retirement. Her contribution to Victoria University's work combatting rape and violence against women through the justice system’s response clearly justified a continuing role with the university. As well as the memoir she has published three books and multiple journal articles and opinion pieces since 2020. Her professorial lecture “The Price of being friends of Harvey” discussed the treatment of Harvey Weinstein’s victims and the trial that found him guilty. She quoted Australian Pia van de Zandt that “a sexual trial is ritualised degradation dressed up as court process”. Inspiring, distressing and often bitingly witty, it none the less showed that there is still much to change in addressing violence against women and that the judiciary and legal system still have a problem incorporating women’s voices and experiences into the law. 

Jan’s memoir rang bells for me in so many ways. We are almost the same age and like Jan I am a lesbian. Her descriptions of a 1960’s New Zealand childhood had such unexpected similarities to my own English version, but while my childhood was loud hers was almost silent. I have been on both sides of the mental health issue– my own struggles and in the role of attempting to care.

Professional colleague and former editor of New Zealand Books, Harry Ricketts, has reviewed the book on Radio New Zealand, noting that Jan does not wallow in self-pity, and describing the memoir as well-written and witty. 

Jan is an only child, and her parents present a sorry picture with her mother’s ill health and depression and a self-absorbed father who humiliated his wife with his frequent and public admiration of other women. Jan’s needs were largely ignored by her parents and life at home is a sea of unspoken words and endless silences coupled with her attempts to win the uncomplicated love that they could not provide. Jan becomes the nice girl who must hide her internal turmoil at all costs. She was all too aware of the painful inner conversations that won’t be silenced, and the feeling that they must never be spoken to the world. Mental cruelty, even when unintentional or through a lack of ability, can bite just as deeply as physical violence.

The damage this wreaks on her early adulthood is dramatic and distressing. Slowly she comes to find herself and to start out on her academic career.  But the journey is devastating, with self-harm and suicide attempts. Jan was clearly likeable, smart, intelligent and good to be around even as her own self estimation could see none of this. Indeed she sees the attention she receives as only the result of her own neediness and manipulation. She describes the events and relationships that helped develop her self-esteem as well as her academic thinking. Her maturing and finding solace and happiness reminded me of a recent article, that I read by chance recently. Maria Popova outlined the thinking of child psychologist Winnicott on trust, constancy and truth telling, and the support of others.  They don’t change things directly but they seem to be what allow us to develop and change ourselves and to develop self-esteem and self-worth and they have a vital role in our becoming fully human A big breakthrough for Jordan was when she was “helped by the growing realisation that my feelings were separate from my ‘self’. I let myself feel a twinge of hope as I described how “they are in fact emotions that I experienced at a particular time or in a particular situation. They are not me. I exist somewhere beyond these emotions. I am not the same as my emotions. They do not possess me, rather I possess them.” 

I’ve been a meditation teacher so she hit the nail on the head for me when she described how she saw that there was a part of her mind that began to see the nature of her overwhelming and often judgmental present-moment thoughts and feelings. By observing their ebb and flow a different part of the mind can become a witness to our present-moment reality and this stable observer can note and decide to give less focus and weight to our habitual patterns of thinking and feeling about ourselves.  

I hope the book is read and enjoyed by the young women who have been her students and indeed every young woman who may benefit from the knowledge that adolescence can be dreadful, but that the searing unhappiness does not have to persist and that they too can survive and flourish. Reading about Jan’s struggle for self-hood was gruelling and yet ultimately uplifting. It is a compelling story of a difficult, and often unbearably sad, very moving and ultimately inspirational coming of age.

Jan Rivers
15 October 2024