BEK CONDELLO

SUBSTACK

I Wrote A Book & Shared My Trauma, That Doesn’t Mean I Want to Bond Over Yours.

I want my book to help people. I want that more than almost anything in the world. I want someone to read it and feel braver, less ashamed and less alone. I want someone who is still trapped in grief, control or shame to feel a small crack of possibility open inside them. I want the book to give language to things people haven’t yet found the words to say out loud, especially women. But I also cannot now become the person everyone brings their unprocessed trauma to.

What I’m Actually Worried About When My Book Comes Out

I feel so much grief for my younger self that I can never get back, a younger woman who should have had more room to get an education, be curious, reckless, social, sexual, selfish and free without so much fear wrapped around her. I feel the strange disorientation of having lived my 20’s in my 30’s, and then arriving in my 40’s with deep gratitude for the life I have now and immense sadness for the years that were robbed from me to get here.
A Girl Like Me •

Australia’s Low-Effort Culture Is Costing Us Real Connection and Real Purpose

Most friendship groups in Australia are closed ecosystems, forged in school or university and rarely opened up again. If you didn’t grow up in proximity or weren’t part of those early circles, you’ll always be orbiting on the outside. In other countries, community feels instinctive and primal. You meet one person, and suddenly you’ve met five. You’re invited to dinner, to birthdays, to family events, to group chats. You’re folded into a social fabric that keeps widening and reshaping itself, and nobody is threatened by your success or your ambition. There’s no gatekeeping, no emotional distance, no quiet suspicion that wanting more means you think you’re better than everyone else.

You Are the Sum of the People You Keep Close

Morality is social. The people around us don’t just shape our tastes or ambitions; they influence our thresholds for truth, empathy, and accountability. Spend enough time with people who lie, excuse harm, or treat others as disposable, and you’ll start to absorb that mindset - if you didn’t already. It’s like your housemate having the flu, the air you breathe together is full of germs, and you will eventually catch something.
LinkedIn •

White Women, Fragility, and the Failure of Performative Feminism

Not long ago, a friend reached out to me after seeing an article I had written being shared on a well-known public platform. My friend was confused. My words were there, but my name wasn’t. I hear me, but I don’t see me.
When I looked into it, I realised that the post had first been shared on someone else’s social media account. It appeared that this person had taken a screenshot of my LinkedIn post, removed my byline, and placed it among their own written content and posts.
Black Dog Institute •

Navigating the Voice Referendum: Ensuring Respect, Empathy, and Social and Emotional Wellbeing for First Nations Australians

On Saturday, October 14, 2023, Australians will exercise their right to vote in a referendum which aims to acknowledge and recognise the First Peoples of Australia by instituting a government body, known as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
During this process, however, there is something that non-Indigenous Australians can keep in mind: this debate carries some potential risks, and we should all actively work together as a community where possible to minimise any harm it may cause First Nations Australians.

Draft City Ballers - Futuro Magazine Interview

Roe grew up in Jackson Heights in Tampa Florida. The neighbourhood was a melting pot of different cultures, mostly Hispanic and Black. But everyone respected each other and minded their own. His Mom was only 16 and his Father was 21 when he was born, and neither of them were ready at the time to be parents, so he was raised on food stamps for the first 9 years of his life by his Grandmother Georgia, and 6 Aunties. Roe's uncles were in and out of jail and his father lived nearby, but he only saw him a handful of times.