Surrendering to the unknown
Aden Ridgeway is a trailblazer, having once been the only Aboriginal in the Australian Parliament. But it is not his exceptional career that inspires his ex-wife (and my friend) Steph Sims. It is his courage to change and grow when that career came to an end.
This is a story for anyone needing the courage to make a major life change.
THE NOMINATION
I asked my friend Stephanie Sims who has inspired her with their courage. She surprises me by nominating her ex-husband, the former NSW Senator Aden Ridgeway. She names him not for his political or corporate achievements, but for successfully climbing to Everest Base Camp after retirement.
Many men get to retirement age and think, “What now?” A lot would buy a car or trade in the wife or look for externals to validate themselves. Aden set a goal for himself to achieve. It was not about everyone patting him on the back. He needed some motivation, so he set a goal and went ahead and did it.
Aden is my ex-husband. We met in ’94, married in ’99 and had our beautiful daughter in 2002. In that time, he was a senator for NSW with the Australian Democrats. Not only was he a representative for the state; he was the only Aboriginal politician of the time. There was no private life, and it was very high pressure. I admire how he did it. So, I suppose I always had him on a bit of a pedestal when we were together. I don’t know if I would have called him courageous.
We separated in 2004 and his political career finished in 2005. He set up this successful Aboriginal consultancy. Then at the beginning of Covid, he sold his interests in the agency and moved up to Sawtell. It’s very quiet up here and I think he thought “What on earth am I doing?”
It’s very quiet up here and I think he thought “What on earth am I doing?”
Everest wasn’t on his bucket list. It was just something he thought he could set as a goal. Something to work toward.
Aden has high blood pressure. He has diabetes. He has high cholesterol. And he’s had a heart attack. He had no idea how he was going to go at those high altitudes. Would his heart be ok? It was quite scary. But off he went…and on his own. I just thought that was courageous!
A lot of men want to climb things, put a flag on top and beat their chests. I was encouraging Aden to take videos and post them on social media, but it wasn’t his style. Which I guess is exactly why it’s so courageous: because he wasn’t being a show pony about it.
But I’d love more people, especially young Aboriginal men and women, to hear what he’s done. It’s a real inspiration. There were some fantastic results, which he wasn’t expecting. A very outward one was losing ten kilos. But he’s halved all his medications for high blood pressure and cholesterol. And there’s been this massive energy shift. You can see something has changed.
He's improved his health out of sight and that could have been the motivation. But I know it wasn’t. His motivation was finding some equilibrium, a goal to keep him motivated and on some sort of path. You can fill the void with a lot of things, or you can look for ways to grow.
ADEN
I decided one morning, I’m just going to trek to Everest (Base Camp). I didn’t have any interest in that sort of thing. It wasn’t on my bucket list.
I’m on what I call a sabbatical. I’d gotten to a stage of burnout. I had a heart attack in 2016. I felt quite vulnerable. As I was getting older, I didn’t have the same sense of youthful resilience.
I didn’t have the same motivation or drive and it started to feel like the pattern kept repeating itself. I got to this stage of feeling down about the focus or purpose in my life.
Everest popped into my head, and it triggered what I call an expunging. Getting rid of the patterns of all the things I’ve done in the same way for the last four decades.
I got to this stage of feeling down about the focus or purpose in my life.
I’m about to turn 60*, old in the Aboriginal community. I’ve had to reteach myself an understanding of mind and body. What I would do in the past is default to what I knew when I was in my twenties playing rugby league. That mentality of the alpha male is all about no-pain-no-gain. Get the heart rate up as high as you can and sweat as much as you can.
Training for Everest is about how you bring your heart rate down. You have to completely change the way you think about things. And that’s been insightful for me when I think about choices in life. I don’t need to have the same program that I had before.
I have vertigo. Climbing across some of the high-suspension bridges I had to emotionally and mentally suppress that, so as not to freeze or panic. This is also part of the reason for wanting to do the climb, so I can feel more comfortable about that feeling within me.
I sometimes wonder whether it’s not just about being frightened of heights, but some sort of developmental trauma. My father was at Kinchella Boys Home, part of the Stolen Generation. Children find ways to live through the experiences of others. I want to make sure I don’t pass it on to my kids and grandkids. And if I do pass it on that it’s in a way where they know that overcoming the fear and being able to look down the 1000-foot cliff at the same time is ok.
Children find ways to live through the experiences of others. I want to make sure I don’t pass it on to my kids and grandkids.
(Getting to Base Camp) was a euphoric moment. I was quite tearful. There’s this sort of feeling that builds up inside you and then releases at that moment. The mountains were saying “it’s ok to come here” and giving me that embrace.
It was a grounding experience. I don’t think many places put you in this space of complete discomfort and also strip you back to the bare essence of who you are as an individual.
I’m better able to deal with being vulnerable. As you get older, you become more vulnerable. I’d much rather equip myself to deal with that feeling.
It’s allowed me to feel more comfortable about not having a plan now that I’ve left work. It’s surrendering to the unknown in front of me.
It’s surrendering to the unknown in front of me.
I think of courage in two ways. One as it relates to braveness and overcoming fear. The other is the decisions people make to step outside their comfort zones or the patterns they’ve become familiar with. That means surrendering and sometimes falling in a free way: not knowing what the outcome is going to be. I would be teaching young people the notion of courage in that sense: being able to surrender to things, take risks, step outside those comfort zones. Because I think that’s where growth comes from.
Photographs provided by Aden Ridgeway.
Update on Aden
It has taken me a long time to find the courage to actually launch Finding Courage. My interview with Aden was done at the beginning of 2023 and much has changed since then. First of all, Aden is no longer “about to turn sixty” - he is now a man in his sixties. Secondly, Aden is no longer really retired. He is now one of three NSW Treaty Commissioners appointed in September 2024.