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Random Words and Poetic Musings
This is a place for me to spill my words and random thoughts into the void. Mostly words and thoughts and curiosities bat around my mind like startled birds. This space and place is somewhere to unleash them, settle and untangle them.
Go easy...not everything that is on this page is fully thought through or edited. It's a dumping ground, a beautiful dumpster fire of semi formed thoughts.
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When Arrest Becomes a Badge: Reckoning with Privilege in Activism
Lately, I’ve found myself sitting in rooms, at events, or scrolling through feeds, where people speak lightly about being arrested at...
Tabitha Lean
Oct 11, 20253 min read
Not All Spaces Are for Us: A Response to the Anti-Poverty Centre’s Statement
The Anti-Poverty Centre’s latest public statement is less about accountability and more about damage control. It is a textbook exercise...
Tabitha Lean
Sep 29, 20255 min read
“Applause Without Liberation”
There’s a powerful moment from I Am Not Your Negro (the 2016 documentary by Raoul Peck based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript...
Tabitha Lean
Aug 18, 20253 min read
We Are Not Your Redemption Story
On the exploitation of criminalised people in the lived experience space There is a particular kind of violence that cloaks itself in...
Tabitha Lean
Jul 31, 20254 min read
We Were Never Meant to Be Polite: A Reckoning with the Professionalisation of Lived Experience Spaces
There is an insidious trend infecting lived experience spaces: the demand for professionalism. A quiet call to civility. A push for us to...
Tabitha Lean
Jul 27, 20255 min read
Hope Is a Weapon: On Refusing the Carrot While Still in the Cage
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about hope—what it offers, what it costs, and most importantly, who it serves. There’s a version of hope...
Tabitha Lean
Jun 26, 20255 min read
Lights, Camera, Carceral Logic: Songs of Survival, Stories of Silence
I remember the day clearly. It was hot and I was fed up and sad and really missing my kids. My long, limp hair that was permanently...
Tabitha Lean
Jun 13, 20257 min read
Scraps Beneath a Gum Tree
I’ve spent a fair amount of my life being told who and what I am. Some of you will know me as Tabitha Lean, the name my mother gave...
Tabitha Lean
Jun 8, 20254 min read
Woman Unmade
I am a dangerous woman. A spook beneath your bed. Clutch your pearls, hug your handbag tighter, lock your doors. Say a silent prayer...
Tabitha Lean
May 5, 20252 min read
Too Tired to Be This Sad
I am too tired to be this sad. It ’s like my body can’t even hold the weight it takes to make space for the grief that lives in my bones....
Tabitha Lean
May 2, 20252 min read
From Lived Experience “Advocates” to Loyal Servants: The Co-option of Our Pain
There is a dangerous thing happening in the spaces we’ve fought to enter. The language of “lived experience” has become currency in rooms...
Tabitha Lean
Apr 27, 20254 min read
Marked for Life: The Permanent Stain of a Conviction for Deception
I have spent a good part of my life being told who or what I am, and what I am not. I’ve added a few new adjectives to my identity in the...
Tabitha Lean
Apr 8, 20255 min read
Fate and Misery and Despair
I know anger. I know misery, and I know despair. My life has been shrouded in it from the time I was one year of age. As my mother’s...
Tabitha Lean
Mar 30, 20254 min read
The spook or the spooked?
I've had a long day. I'm exhausted—like, bone tired. You know that deep ache that you get in your legs, and the heaviness in your...
Tabitha Lean
Mar 21, 20257 min read
Resisting the Invisible Chains: Power, Vulnerability, and Survival
Late one night, in my prison cell, I watched the Stanford Experiment on television. If you’ve never seen it, it was a documentary about a...
Tabitha Lean
Jan 16, 20256 min read
When Power Writes the Headlines: Media and State Collusion
I have a pretty shitty memory. It’s the PTSD. It’s fucked with my long-term recall. I can’t remember dates or specifics of events. I...
Tabitha Lean
Jan 13, 202510 min read
An olive branch in a snake's mouth
A curious thing happens when you are criminalised. You find yourself living in a state of hyper visibility, while simultaneously being...
Tabitha Lean
Jan 3, 20258 min read
Death, my love
TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSES SELF HARM & SUICIDALITY I have had my longest relationship with death. I’ve danced the waltz with its reaper...
Tabitha Lean
Dec 14, 20247 min read
Truth
I’ve been thinking a lot about truth lately. Who tells the truth and who doesn’t How it is withheld How it can be spilt, and vomited How...
Tabitha Lean
Oct 11, 20246 min read
Curses and life courses
And in that moment, he wasn’t a strong and independent 19 year old, who was half way through his university degree, had a car licence,...
Tabitha Lean
Aug 12, 20245 min read
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