Janet Inglis on Speaking Up When You Can't Control the Outcome
Janet Inglis had been careful about the kind of mother she was. She listened. She guided. She did not swear in front of her children.
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Then her twelve-year-old son became seriously ill, and the rules she had made for herself no longer seemed quite enough.
Sitting behind him in his hospital bed, with him leaning against her, she swore. He stiffened, turned to look at her, then burst out laughing. Janet remembers feeling his whole body relax. What he needed from her had changed. She could change with him.
It is one of the most revealing moments in her conversation with Peeja and Hazel Moon Audio on Red Tent Storytellers. The woman known on X as @ThatAussieWoman talks readily about feminism, Australian legal disputes and the importance of plain language. She is just as frank about the parts of her own life she cannot make orderly.
Her account of speaking up begins to look different when you hear what she has lived through.
Confidence in an argument can coexist with fear for the people you love. Being outspoken does not mean feeling in control.
What happened to the certainty?
Janet remembers raising her boys in Coffs Harbour with particular affection. There were beaches, bicycles and the freedom to disappear outside for a while. She was working, studying law and bringing up two children. It was demanding, and she was happy.
A planned move to Fiji fell through when a coup intervened. The family bought a supermarket in Lightning Ridge. Then her younger son became ill.
She describes a long struggle to get him diagnosed, followed by cancer treatment in Sydney. During that period, the family lived in different places. Her partner kept working. Her older son stayed with his aunt. Janet stayed close to the hospital bed.
Her younger son survived. She speaks with enormous pride about the adult he became. She also acknowledges what the separation cost her older boy, and the work of finding their way back to each other.
She never returned to finish her law studies.
Asked whether she feels settled now, Janet gives an answer that resists an easy recovery story: “I haven't been settled since my son got sick.”
Later health crises involving people she loves intensified that uncertainty. She describes the dread that can arrive when a call goes unanswered, and the effort of recognising that her adult sons have lives beyond her worry.
Survival did not return everything to its former place. She loves her family, enjoys her home and laughs easily. The fear remains part of the account.
A house with holes in the walls
After another business failed, Janet and her partner Peter travelled through South Australia looking for a house they could afford. Their son helped them buy one. On first walking through the door, she nearly cried.
There were holes in the walls, rotten floorboards and a ceiling coming down. The stone structure was sound. They did the work themselves.
Janet now describes the house with pride. Its garden is taking shape. Peter restores furniture, and she has plans for two old chairs with rattan seats.
She jokes that she will reproduce the weaving perfectly from a video. She has also bought extra rattan for the mistakes.
That small admission belongs beside the larger story. She is willing to begin something without knowing how well it will turn out. The house, the garden and the chairs give her something specific to do, and something to enjoy.
Cooking offers another kind of satisfaction: make the food, eat it, appreciate it. Everything does not have to become a permanent achievement.
Speaking plainly, without claiming to know everything
Janet describes a shift in her relationship with feminism. Earlier in life, she had read feminist writing and understood it partly through her own opportunities. Now she places more emphasis on what women owe one another and the work of defending sex-based rights.
She also discusses Sall Grover's case, women's-rights rallies and her frustration with political responses in Australia. These are her reflections on why she became involved, rather than a complete account of the law.
She has strong views about sex and language. Yet when discussing her own writing, she is explicit that she is offering a viewpoint and welcomes disagreement.
Longer pieces give her room to develop an argument that becomes fragmented across social posts. Editing is the less enjoyable part. She knows she can use ten words where one would do.
Her enthusiasm for talking is matched by an appetite for testing ideas. She says she likes finding out when she is wrong because it gives her a chance to learn what is right.
For a reader considering whether to contribute, that is a useful distinction. You can take an issue seriously and still leave room to revise your understanding.
How do you back other women's voices?
When the hosts ask whether she sees herself as a leader, Janet declines the description. She points instead to a habit: sharing other women's posts, responding to their arguments and telling them when they have expressed something well.
She does not mind a messy timeline. If a woman has made a useful point, she wants more people to see it.
Share a useful contribution with your own audience.
Tell its author what landed and why.
Give credit instead of treating every idea as material for your own profile.
Allow women to contribute at the level of visibility they can manage.
Janet is particularly clear about that last point. She uses her own name and acknowledges that running her own business gave her more freedom to speak. She does not turn her circumstances into a standard every woman must meet.
An anonymous reader still has a workplace, friends and family. An argument she encounters online may help her put something into words in one of those settings.
Public recognition is only one way a contribution can travel.
Who is the reply really for?
Janet's closing advice concerns the audience beyond the person answering back.
An opponent may have no intention of reconsidering. Someone else may read the exchange later. Janet wants that person to encounter a clear argument.
That changes the purpose of a reply. It can become an explanation another woman can use, or a thought she has not yet found words for herself.
Janet also refuses to treat insults about her appearance as a reliable judgment of her worth. She jokes that the same people would find something to attack in a photograph of Marilyn Monroe, her childhood idol.
Her advice is personal: this is how she approaches hostile exchanges. She expressly says that speaking under her own name is not an instruction for other women to abandon anonymity.
The useful question is whether a response gives the watching reader something worth taking away. You cannot guarantee that it will. You can decide to make it clear, credit another woman's contribution, or explain a point patiently.
Janet cannot recover the certainty she had before her son's illness. She can restore a house, plant a garden, laugh with her family and make room for another woman's words to be heard.
She keeps talking with that possibility in mind: somebody may be listening.
Listen, read, and stay connected
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