- You know when we were growing up
we always spoke Greek at home,
which I didn't think was highly unusual.
I know I lived in Australia, but um--
- [Holly] We never spoke Greek in my house.
- Well, I know. (women laugh)
Well, you know, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
You think everyone is Greek.
Give 'em a word, any word, it's all happening.
My mom would pack me up feta cheese,
olives stuffed with garlic.
- Yes.
- To take to school for lunch.
This is 1972, okay, so with the dinosaurs.
In Australia, there's this cuisine called Vegemite.
The average Aussie kid would take Vegemite sandwiches.
Just two slices of white bread, butter, Vegemite,
slice of cheese and that's their lunch.
Christine goes with her little lunch box.
Feta cheese, garlic and olives.
Most of the Aussie kids didn't even know.
Nowadays you pay a lot of money.
- I would struggle with that.
- Gourmet.
- Now it's really cool, 1972 not so much.
I go to school not thinking there's anything wrong.
It just shows you, you know, your culture.
I go to school.
I remember six years old in kindergarten
at Linwood Park public school.
I have healing of the memories.
Anyways.
I open my lunch, and I'll never forget,
there was two little boys, Raymond and-
- Call 'em out.
(women laughing)
- Wayne and Raymond, very Australian names.
I remember just the ridicule.
Just they straight away.
"Oh my gosh, what is that smell?"
I mean they said a lot of four letter words,
none of them were in the Bible.
They sort of like, you know, just started calling me names.
At first, I didn't even know why.
You know when you're just kind of like--
- [Woman] Yeah.
- And then because my English at this point
still wasn't very good, I was just at school, just learning.
I had a thick Greek accent.
Just based on my ethnicity and the food I ate,
I remember shrinking.
The shame of that.
Imagine any kid in that moment.
Then a couple of the other girls.
I mean, man, mean girls.
They start from a young age just kind of like--
- And their names were?
(women laugh)
- Cathy and Leanne, but who remembers?
(women laugh)
I remember right from kindergarten when the kids laughed
at me because my lunch was different.
I didn't even know it was different because for me
it was normal, but obviously it was different.
I realized that difference wasn't good and I realized that
if I was gonna have to survive, I was gonna have to find
ways of blending in and not sticking out.
I remember from that day on,
that whole year at kindergarten,
that my mom would pack me lunch and because I didn't want
to hurt her feelings, I'd take it, but I'd throw it out
on the way to school, you know.
- But then would you go hungry?
- I know, but still you'd rather go hungry
than have the ridicule of other people.
- [Woman] Wow.
- And you would've probably rather have gone hungry
than to have one of those Vegemite--
- One of those Vegemite sandwiches.
You know, I just think, just kind of that marginalization
because of my ethnicity.
I was a little bit darker.
You know, I'm not quite as cute as you,
but for the average white Aussie, I was the ethnic girl.
Then in my own culture, I'm the girl,
which is a little bit less than a boy, you know,
back in Greek culture there.
On top of that, you add that, you know,
I had experienced sexual abuse for 12 years.
I was kind of just like a mess waiting to happen.
Marginalized either ethnicity or gender or, you know,
- You got a lot of labels.
- Just my brokenness.
You'd think then the fact that I was left in a hospital
unnamed and unwanted and then adopted after that.
There's was lots of that.
The abandonment, the rejection and then the label of
well you're just an ethnic woman, you're just, you're just.
The labels always try to minimize who you are.
Even when I came to Christ, I had to get radically saved
in that I understood radically the forgiveness of God.
Certainly, encountering Jesus and the shame
beginning to be lifted off my life.
I got a glimpse, I think, of what I could be.
But then I had to work out the reality
of how do you drop the labels.
Because you don't even know you're wearing the labels
'cause you've worn them for so long.
You know when you got a new jacket and you're going out
and you're all that and you don't know and someone says,
"Honey you've got the label on your jacket."
You know, when you first start being abused,
you think what's happening to you is wrong,
but when it keeps happening, you begin to believe the lie
that there's something wrong with you,
that's why it's happening.
I went to school and kids said,
"There's something wrong with you."
I was being abused.
I believed the lie that there's something wrong with me.
I would say for the first two decades of my life, at least,
I believed the lie.
I had so internalized it, in the very fabric of me being,
I believed there's something fundamentally wrong with me.
No wonder people like me are kind of ridiculed
or bullied or abused.
I used to think I had a sign on my head that said,
"Come and get me," because there was
something wrong with me.
It took me quite a number of years in the word of God
to begin to renew my mind to replace the lie with the truth.
I think in a lot of the era in which we're living in
we had to be very careful because sometimes our identity
becomes our victim hood status and we don't actually want
to change it because we're very comfortable
with the cloak of victim hood.
Yet, you had people around those porticoes.
The Bible says there were five colonnades.
Everyone was gathered around their issue.
You know, because misery loves company so if I could find
someone else that's gonna lie there with me.
Then Jesus comes.
I think you can be saved, heaven bound, lying on the mat,
not fruitful, not fulfilling your destiny,
you're gonna go to Heaven, but you're not gonna do
what you were on the earth to do.
I think Jesus comes to us and says,
"Do you want to be healed?" because with healing
comes responsibility.
When I'm a victim, I can lie on that mat
and everyone can feel sorry for me.
- And blame you.
- And blame everybody else.
Then I don't have to take any personal accountability,
any personal responsibility.
So I'm 52.
I was sexually abused for 12 years.
I get a choice.
Am I going to spend my whole time on planet earth
talking about those 12 years, lamenting those 12 years?
Now the enemy robbed those 12 years,
but I haven't been being abused for 40 years
so what story am I going to make bigger?
The fact is I have not been being abused for 40 entire years
and 30 of those years I've known Jesus.
- So which label--
(women speaking simultaneously)
- That's what you've gotta--
I think that's our deal is.
I've spent my last 30 years basically making what Jesus did
for me bigger than what they did to me.
- Hi, everybody.
I hope you've enjoyed this video.
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