The Small Picture Podcasts

The Weight Of Silence is the gravity of all the unsaids, the unseens, and how they shape our lives. A father's drinking, a mother's shame, a daughter's longing to hold onto a trouser leg to hear someone speak of what never happened. The Weight of Silence = 9 lbs 4 ozs. In her achingly funny, heartbreaking childhood memoir, Catherine Therese takes the reader inside her head, and upside down on a unique emotional rollercoaster from picking her belly button in her backyard in Blacktown, pulling her hair out standing on her head, to the stage; hiding inside her wardrobe interpreting silence, to the bedroom of a boy with half a thumb and to the labour ward, in an unforgettable story of remembering, forgetting, pretending, of becoming who you are.

Catherine Therese was born quietly in 1965. She wrote the first draft of her memoir ‘The Norty Girl’ aged four, acted it out for the next 36 years and began rewrites in 2001. In 2005 she attended the inaugural Varuna Masterclass. In between acts she's created poetry, prose and children in Australia, Belguim and Spain; studied Languages, Car parks, Colour and Design, and worked as a stylist, mentor and lecturer. She is a 2007 Varuna Fellowship recipient. The Weight of Silence is her first book. She is married with three children and lives noisily amongst trees in Sydney.