There are some people who enter your story without ever meeting you.

Elle Macpherson entered mine when I was thirteen.

She was everywhere then.

Elle. The Body.

That magnificent Australian woman running along beaches with golden skin, wild beautiful hair, endless legs and a presence that somehow held strength and femininity in equal measure.

I had a photograph of her torn from a magazine pinned to my bedroom wall, an extremely committed 1980s wood-panelled wall, I might add.

We worked with what we had.

Of course I thought she was beautiful. The entire world thought she was beautiful.

But there was something else about Elle that stayed with me.

She looked healthy. Strong. Confident. Graceful. Completely at home in herself.

At thirteen, I didn’t have the language to understand what I was responding to.

I think I simply wanted to feel the way she looked.

Strong in my own skin.

Nearly forty years later, I have a thirteen-year-old daughter of my own.

And sometimes I look at Lylah and time folds in on itself.

Because I remember being her age.

When you’re thirteen, you feel so grown. Then you become the mother of a thirteen-year-old and realise you were really just a little girl standing at the beginning of everything.

I look at Lylah and wonder what she is seeing right now that she will remember at 51.

What woman will inspire her?

What tiny detail will lodge itself somewhere in her mind and remain there long after a thousand supposedly more important things have disappeared?

What will life ask of her?

Who will she become?

And what extraordinary things are waiting for her that she doesn’t yet know enough to dream about?

Because that girl standing in my bedroom certainly didn’t know.

She didn’t know about motherhood or grandchildren.

She didn’t know about love and loss, art and Country, culture and ancestors.

She didn’t know that strength would eventually mean something entirely different to her.

And she certainly didn’t know that nearly forty years later she would write this sentence:

Elle Macpherson uses Palyani.

Our bush medicine.

Even now, I cannot pretend to be remotely sophisticated about how that makes me feel.

I am deeply, genuinely honoured.

Recently, Elle included Palyani among products she personally uses and loves, sharing our little black jar and speaking about how beautiful and soothing she finds it on her skin.

I stared at it for a while.

Elle Macpherson.

The woman whose skin an entire generation of girls suspected was possibly made from something unavailable to the general public…

is putting our bush medicine on it.

There is a poetry in that which isn’t lost on me.

But beneath the fangirl moment, and there absolutely is one, something deeper happened.

Although somewhere inside this 51 year old woman, that thirteen year old girl is still quietly losing her mind that The Body uses her bush medicine.

And frankly, I think she’s entitled to the moment.

Then I had one of my penny-dropping moments.

I’ve never experienced my life as a series of random events. I’ve always felt spiritually guided by my ancestors.

There have been glimpses before things happen. Thoughts I’ve inexplicably known to hold onto. Details that remain in my mind for decades until something happens much later and suddenly…

Oh.

That’s why I remembered that.

I’ve often wondered what time means in the spirit world.

We measure everything here.

Days. Birthdays. Years. Decades.

But perhaps forty years to us is nothing more than a heartbeat somewhere else.

Perhaps the thirteen year old girl staring at Elle Macpherson on her bedroom wall and the 51 year old woman watching Elle use something made from her bush medicine aren’t nearly as far apart as they seem.

I don’t know.

I’ve learnt that I don’t need to know everything.

My part has always been to listen.

Listen out bush.

Listen while you’re driving.

Listen while you’re painting.

Listen while you’re making medicine.

Listen while you’re feeding the dog.

Listen while you’re in the shower, that one always gets me, are my ancestors seeing me naked!

Spirit has never seemed particularly interested in waiting until I am suitably prepared.

Sometimes the thing you need to hear arrives in the middle of something completely ordinary.

You just have to be quiet enough inside yourself to notice it.

I don’t always know what’s coming.

But I believe my old people do.

When I’ve pushed towards things that weren’t meant for me, I’ve felt it.

And when I’ve been where I’m supposed to be, doors have opened that I once wouldn’t even have dreamed of knocking on.

This feels like one of those doors.

Because Palyani isn’t simply another product to Shane and me.

Before the little black jar, there is Country.

There is Irmangka-Irmangka growing beneath an enormous sky.

Red earth beneath our feet.

Knowledge carried across generations.

Our old people understood these plants long before the modern world created an industry called wellness.

There is Shane and me walking Country and collecting medicine, knowing there is responsibility in our hands.

We didn’t discover something new.

Quite the opposite.

We have the privilege of carrying something very old forward.

So when a woman I associated with health and beauty before I was even old enough to understand either chooses something born from our culture, our Country and our hands as part of the way she cares for herself…

that means something to me.

There are endorsements that are wonderful for business.

And then there are moments that reach the human being behind it.

This reached me.

Because Elle couldn’t possibly have known about the girl with her photograph on the wall.

She couldn’t have known what she represented to me, the life that girl would live, the things that would break her heart, the things that would put it back together, or the woman she would eventually become.

Elle simply chose something she loved.

Yet somehow, without knowing any of this, she reached backwards through almost forty years and touched that girl too.

And I think that’s where many women will understand me.

There comes a point when you can look backwards and forwards at the same time.

I look at Lylah and remember being thirteen.

I look back at myself and wonder why I was ever so hard on that young girl.

At thirteen, I thought beauty was something you could see.

At 51, I know better.

Strength has acquired scars. Beauty has acquired lines. Health has become precious.

And grace?

Grace isn’t getting through life without falling.

It’s how you rise without allowing the fall to make you hard.

Maybe that’s what I saw in Elle all those years ago before I had the words for it.

A woman who seemed completely at home in herself.

And perhaps that’s what so many of us spend half a lifetime learning to become.

So, Elle, if these words ever find you…

Thank you.

Thank you for choosing Palyani.

Thank you for speaking so beautifully about something Shane and I hold close to our hearts.

And thank you for receiving something born from Aboriginal culture, Country and generations of knowledge with such appreciation.

You inspired me as a thirteen year old girl without ever knowing she existed.

Nearly forty years later, you’ve honoured the woman she became without knowing her story either.

The girl admired you.

The woman thanks you.

And now I look across at my own thirteen year old daughter and wonder what seemingly impossible sentence she might get to write about her life one day.

That’s the beautiful thing about being thirteen.

You have no idea what’s coming.

I certainly didn’t.

At thirteen, Elle Macpherson was The Body on a magazine page pinned to my wood-panelled bedroom wall.

At 51…

Palyani.

Our medicine.

In her hands.

I don’t think that will ever feel ordinary to me.

Perhaps my old people knew.

Perhaps somewhere beyond our clocks and calendars, they have always known.

I haven’t.

That was never my part of the arrangement.

My job was simply to listen, follow the doors they opened and live long enough to see some of the pennies drop.

And this one?

This one landed beautifully.

I am deeply honoured, Elle.

And after 51 years of seeing where those open doors can lead…

I’m very interested in the sound of the next one opening.

Nina xx