Michaela Gilewicz - Army veteran

Motivation to enlist

I grew up in Southern Tasmania, an area called the Channel which is a really beautiful semi-rural area, originally from a place called Sandfly, in a house that my mum and dad built, and then we moved to Margate, which is where I grew up and we were really close with our neighbours and one of my neighbours, Eddy Hodge, was an Army cadet, and he got my brother into Army cadets and then not long after that I followed. One of the reasons we both found that interesting was because my dad was a Vietnam veteran, and he died when I was quite young. So, feeling a connection to him became very important, the older that we got.

Army cadets

Army cadets is a funny thing to talk about as a grown up, especially having been in the regular army, it's kind of joked about when you're in the army, because a lot of Army cadets join the army thinking they know everything about the real world and, obviously, it's a children's group, when you're a cadet and when you're in the army it's, you know, adults and real weapons and things. But Army Cadets, for me was a really good stepping stone into the army, we got to wear the uniform and we got to go out and get money and learn about general structures of how the army worked and I found, for me, that was an environment that I thrived in. I really liked the leadership opportunities; I loved the structure. People find it funny that I like being told what to do but really, it's just knowing how to operate in a framework that really worked for me and when I was an Army cadet, I was lucky enough to go, basically do work experience with the regular army. Found that it was similar enough that it was a career that I wanted to pursue and basically took steps from there to go and do officer training … I think you can join Army cadets from the age of about 12 or 13. I think I was about 14 when I joined and I had been a dancer before this, so I did lots of, you know, costumes and structure in that way, learning routines and stuff and I think my mum thought it was just a passing phase and that my brother was probably going to be the one that joined the army, and he was very good at Army cadets, too. But ultimately, I was the one that pursued it and you can stay in cadets until you're 18. When you finish school, basically, and then it's, you know, you either become a cadet volunteer and help run the show, or you join the army, or you go and do whatever it is that you're going to do with your life … Anyone that wants to can go and do Army cadets, can do Army cadets. There's no gendered anything. It's not like in the military where some roles are gendered and some aren't, because we're not doing, you know, any operations or anything. It's very much basically a leadership exercise. There's a lot of camping, there's a lot of getting muddy, sort of getting shouted out. Cadets liked to do a lot of shouting. For some reason, I just loved it … I called it camping because the majority of my friends now are civilian and that's just the word that makes sense to them, but it was much more like sleeping under a tarp. We did actually carry, we call them inox, which I think is like an inoculated weapon, none of the parts moved but it was the same weight and shape as the weapons that they use in the real army and we'd have to do patrols in the nighttime, and we'd go out and do, you know, just basically play army. It was a lot of fun.

Father’s legacy

I grew up, always knowing about my dad, I knew that he was a Vietnam veteran. The circumstances of his enlistment have been a little bit blurry, because everyone tells us a different story. I was under the impression that he was conscripted. As it turns out, he might have been given an opportunity to do that instead of going to another establishment but he's not here to confirm or deny that and as I grew up, I was surrounded by Vietnam veterans sort of telling me that he was a great soldier and that it was something that he had been asked to stay on and continue to do. He didn't take that opportunity but then as my brother and I got older and people started telling us about things that he was interested in, that were similar to things that we were interested in, it sort of sparked a bit of an interest to pursue things that he had done, just to see if there was a connection there. So, when I found that I did, like, the sort of stricter environment, the uniforms and all of those sorts of things, it made me feel a lot closer to him. I don't actually have any memories of him. I just know about him through the memories of other people. So, knowing that I was being shouted at in the same way that my dad was probably shouted at was weirdly comforting to me and I think that's probably why I took to it so well … My mum did a really good job of commemorating and celebrating my dad. So, every year, I don't remember ever missing an Anzac Day, I know it took my dad a long time to get to an ANZAC Day dawn service and once he did start going and he realized it wasn't a celebration of what had happened, but a reflection to help people move forward, he sort of then would go every year. My family still go to the same service that my dad used to go to and so Anzac Day, Remembrance Day, and all those important historical events have always had some personal meaning for me as well and I think, I mean, I did history when I went to uni, so it’s always had an interest, it’s always held an interest for me to remember and reflect on those things and I think adding the family element in just makes it extra personal.

Joining the army

The process for joining the army is convoluted. So, the position that I wanted to apply for is one of the hardest positions to get into and this is where things like Army cadets can be beneficial. It's more about the recruiting process than actually being in because once you get in and you start showing your Army cadet history, it's very embarrassing. But basically, for the career stream that I wanted, you had to get good grades, you had to have a certain amount of particular subjects to get in and you had to have demonstrated leadership skills as well. So, I started applying for the army at the beginning of year 11. I think by the time I got through all the interviewing and went to Canberra and did my interview board, and finally got accepted it was towards the end of year 12. So probably about a 12-month process, and it was only an offer that was under the circumstances that I got the grades that I needed to get in. So, I actually decided on joining the army when I was in high school and started making plans then for which subjects I was going to do, which extracurricular activities to do, because I knew that it was quite difficult to get into that career stream. There are other career streams that you can sort of just walk in the door, say, I want to join, you do your aptitude test and they say, “These are the jobs” and you can sort of go away the next month or the month after. But what I wanted to do was officer training, and that's quite sought after, that’s Duntroon … There's  two streams of officer training, you can go through the Australian Defence Force Academy and do your degree before you then go and do your 12 months at Duntroon for the army, or you can go in as a direct entry, and that's an 18 month course at Duntroon. I chose the officer, the university stream. So, when I joined, I was accepted as a General Service Officer into the army but I went to the Australian Defence Force Academy, before officer training … The Australian Defence Force Academy is a military academy. UNSW is like the only civilian part of the academy. So, you wear your uniform to uni and you can get military charged if you don't turn up to classes and those sorts of things and for an art student, we always got teased because we had the least amount of uni hours, and what they would do is twice a week, you would have AMET, which was Academy Military Education Training, and that included things like PT, military history, all the things that you would sort of do in your basic training, if you were just going straight in … The  training for officer training for ADFA entry is your three year degree, four years if you're doing engineering or you do an honours and then from there you go and do your 12 months at RMC interspersed throughout your degree, you do single service training and there's two or three blocks every year where you will go away with your air force or your navy, army, and go and start learning how to do that officer training. So, at RMC, there's three classes. Third Class is the one that you started then you finish in First Class. Third Class is covered in your training at ADFA and you're single service training.

Getting injured

My first year in the army, I was 18 when I joined and after we do our first six weeks of training, which is that really intensive institutionalization where you learn how to stand and learn how to speak and learn who you're allowed to speak to, and who to salute, and all of those sorts of things. Towards the end of that, the older cadets from second year and third year come around and try and recruit you for their sporting teams. I, being from Tasmania wasn't really aware of what rugby was, rugby union, I was like, “Ah, that'll do, I'll sign up for that.” I was the sort of person that would put their hand up for anything and was fine with it, wasn't excited, wasn't not excited, it was just something to do. Turn up to training, realize that it's pretty intense kind of sport and then in the March, so joined in January, in the March of that year, busted my shoulder up pretty good in a training session, actually did it in the last training session before our very first game, so I dislocated my shoulder. I didn't know that at the time. Unfortunately for me, one of the lectures that we'd had very early on in our initial training was don't go to the medic unless you're actually injured. If you're malingering, you'll get in trouble. If you're just experiencing discomfort, you’ll get in trouble. So, I spent four days with my shoulder dislocated before I went to the hospital and I got there and they’re like, “What have you done?” And that was, unfortunately, well, the beginning of the end for my Army career, and I was only three months … When I first got injured, I didn't really know how badly I'd done it. So, I felt like I kept all the balls in the air fairly well. I missed out on a few things. I missed one of the single service training components from the first year because I was getting surgery and I did a lot of standing on the side watching PT, because in the army, when you go to PT, you line up, all the healthy people line up in one spot, all the sick, lame and injured line up in another spot. And for the first 12 months, that was, I mean, it wasn't great, but it was okay, because I thought I was gonna get better. Unfortunately, by the beginning of my second year, it became clear that I needed another shoulder reconstruction. I was still standing on the side, I was still missing out on the training that I wanted to do, to sort of continue my career and that's when it really started to become a struggle. I was really lucky in that somehow I managed to keep my grades good enough to get through but I was experiencing chronic pain at this point, anxiety, depression from missing out on stuff. Unfortunately, I was also experiencing quite a bit of bullying, because once you're out of your sling, you can't see what the injury is and sometimes my shoulder can do some things, and sometimes it can't and so, unfortunately, in the environment that I was in, people started to think that I was making it up or that it wasn't as bad as what it was. So, there were people second guessing me, which then made me to second guess myself and it just became a really difficult environment to be in … My initial injury, which I thought was just a dislocation turned into, I tore the rotator cuff pretty well all the way off, got some pretty decent ligament damage. I actually dislocated in a way that it fractured the head of the humerus, which is the top of the bone there, because it just got pushed so hard into the socket and shoulder injuries are notoriously difficult to heal. It's a really shallow joint and once the cartilage has been damaged, it's very difficult to get full range of motion and full strength and stability back. Unfortunately, for me, I'm also hyper mobile, so it just meant that things were not going to turn out very well. I ended up having three shoulder reconstructions and by the time I was 24, I think, I was told that I would need a full shoulder replacement … The incident that caused my shoulder to dislocate was just a very basic rugby tackle. Probably a combination of me not being very experienced in rugby, not being strong enough and, also, being hyper mobile. It just came out, went in forwards came out the back. I was making the tackle, and it was just a practice, it wasn't even in like a game, it was, we were just doing tackle practice and the person wasn't even very big and it just, it's just come off the wrong way and, “Oh”, that was that.

Medically discharged

I found out I was being medically discharged when I was away on leave. I got a call from my boss who had received the paperwork and he told me that I'd been put up for medical discharge and that there was a way to respond to that if I wanted to stay in but my chances weren't great because I was being discharged for physical impairment and I was on the street in the middle of Canberra, and I just sort of collapsed to the ground and started crying, which is an element of naivety, because I probably should have seen that coming. I knew at that point that my shoulder wasn't going to get better and the army was a very physical job but I wasn't ready to hear that. So, at this point, I then have to go back to work where a job was invented for me because I was supposed to go across the road and go to Duntroon and do my 12 months of officer training. I couldn't do that physically, so a job was invented for me which made it feel very meaningless, and the reason they had to do that is because they weren't allowed to medically discharge me until they had rehabilitated me to a reasonable extent. So, I had to get another surgery and go through the rehab from that before they could medically discharge me. That six months of rehab and job was absolute hell. I was extremely depressed, very anxious, sort of drinking my sorrows away, just getting myself in situations that I shouldn't, you know, that I wouldn't normally be in. I was so stressed to the point that I actually started hallucinating and I didn't realize, obviously, hallucination you don't understand that it's hallucination until I said to somebody, like, “There was a possum in my room last night” and they’re like, “What are you talking about?” and you know, I was seeing snakes in Canberra in the middle of winter and just my brain was just not keeping up with what was going on. I medically discharged in the July of 2012, and went to live with my mum in far north Queensland where I was still in denial about how unwell I was and how unhappy I was. So, I basically was treading water for six months until I came home to Tasmania on a holiday and just had a complete breakdown.

Return to function

I came back to Hobart to see my auntie and her, who were young at the time, children. My family is quite close, so my auntie is still one of my best friends. Her kids are still, you know, they're my cousins but we've got a much closer relationship than that. So, I came home to see them, and I actually got off the plane and my auntie looked at me, she just she knew something was wrong. After that trip because at this point I wasn’t connected to DVA. I didn’t know about incapacity payments. I was working because I had bills to pay and also had this expectation on myself that I needed to do something because when you’re in the army it’s always forward planning. Whatr are your short-term goals? What are your long-term goals? And I was sort of caught in that trap of, what is happening next? … After I came home and admitted I was miserable, I packed up all my things in Far North Queensland and came back down here and moved in with my auntie, her husband, and their children and was basically a third child to them as a 22-year-old and it was to the point where she had to make sure I was eating. I couldn’t drive my car because I would have anxiety attack. I had to sleep with the light on. It was rough. I think from the point that I essentially admitted defeat until when I started to feel like things were getting better was probably, it probably took a good 12 months. My auntie knew an advocate who got me engaged with what was then called VVCS and is now called Open Arms and I was having weekly, sometimes twice a week, psych sessions. I was engaged with rehab management. So, I was doing, at this point it wasn't a return to work, it was just a return to function. So, they engaged me in a personal training qualification. I did a photography course, just sort of stuff to get me out of the house and sort of try and reengage me because, at this point, I wasn't seeing friends. I wasn't interested in hanging out with people because I just felt disconnected and fragile.

The Invictus Games 2017

I found out about the Invictus Games, when I was on an activity with Mates for Mates. So, without going into that story, I engaged with Mates for Mates after a lot of encouragement and a lot of excuses not to go in and I went on this Tassie adventure trip and met a person that had competed the year before and she sort of said, “Oh, it'd be really good for you, I think you're ready for it.” And I was like, “I'm not very good at sport and remember what happened last time.” And she spoke to me about it over the week that we were sort of doing this Tassie adventure trip and she really reiterated the fact that it wasn't competitive in the way that say the Olympics is, you compete against yourself and you compete against others but it's not about winning, you don't have to be the best at the sport, you don't have to even be good at it to get picked for the team. It's really a rehab exercise and so I thought, “Actually, that does sound pretty cool.” I was doing exercise physiology at the time. I knew what a rowing machine was, and I was like, “Okay, I'll just give it a go.” and that came with its own challenges because the previous years had been fairly well slapped together; You can do archery, you can do this. We’ll all meet here, and we'll go overseas, but this year was being taken a bit more seriously and the camps were in Canberra and I hadn't been back to Canberra since I left the army. So, it was a different type of exposure therapy and it certainly isn't something that I would have signed up for had I known at the beginning that it was going to be in Canberra. Actually, some of the training was at ADFA as well, which was very stressful, and ultimately, probably very good for me, but definitely would have been a barrier had I have known about it before I signed up … To compete in the Invictus Games you need to be sick, injured or ill as a result of your service. You can still be serving, there's plenty of full time and part time military competitors as well but for me, my qualifying factor was the shoulder injury but more significantly, the mental health and that is, for me, the thing that benefited the most from doing the Invictus Games was my mental health … The Invictus Games is set up in a way similar to the Paralympics. It's an adaptive sports program. So, if you've got a lower leg injury, you go into a category with other people with lower leg injuries. I did, also, stupidly choose powerlifting as one of my events. Now the powerlifting event at the Invictus Games is just a bench press and for someone with a dud shoulder, that's a silly thing to do. The reason it worked for me is because I wasn't trying to be the person that lifted the most weights. The powerlifting event for me actually was my first event and it was after I'd had a panic attack the day before on live international television and at this point, I didn't know if I was going to be able to walk out and compete because of what had happened the day before. So, it's really great for me to do the power lifting. I think I lifted less than everybody else by about 40 kilos but it was just getting past that mental barrier and for me, that's what the Invictus Games is about, it's about rehabilitation and doing something that you didn't expect that you could do, whether that's physical or mental.

Rowing at the Invictus games

The rowing event at the Invictus Games is one of the most fun events to be a part of and to watch. The way they set it up makes it really engaging. So, it's a rowing machine that you would see it a gym. So normally, if you're watching someone on that, it'd be very boring but what they do is they connect them all to a computer and on a big screen they have little boats, and with the names next to them so you can see who's in front and who's behind and how close you are and who's gonna win. They have a projected winner as well and so the room is just absolute pandemonium, the tickets sell out and there's two events, there's a one-minute row and a four-minute row. I was never very good at the one-minute row because you need to be long and strong for that one, the longer your legs are, and the stronger out and the quicker you'll go but the four-minute row is an endurance row and four minutes does not sound like a long time but next time you are on a rowing machine, go as fast as you can for four minutes and it feels like four days.… I am not hugely competitive by nature, I always like to do my best. Looking at the screen in front of me, it was always like, “Oh, I could probably just run a bit quicker just to get in front of the person in front of me.” It was never about being the first person but if there was someone in close proximity or if there was someone right behind me, it was like, “Just don't stop, just don't stop.” And there was one point I was sort of physically exhausted by this point because of the emotional upheaval of the games and there was one point about two minutes in and I was like, “I think I'm just going to stop” and I looked up and about seven seats in front of me into the crowd, my partner's there and two volunteers that we'd met the day before. They were all screaming my name so that's what gets you over the line. It's the family and friends and maybe a little bit of that boat in front of you or the boat behind you.

Opening ceremony and meeting Prince Harry

We went to Canada for the Invictus Games in 2017. It was in Toronto. We had all travelled over as a team. Everyone was really excited and I was feeling really good at this point, because I felt like all the difficult stuff was over. The Canberra stuff and the ADFA stuff was really challenging for me and I wasn't going over to win medals, I was going over to just be a part of it and be engaged in the community and we all start getting ready for the opening ceremony. We all travelled there on a bus and we're backstage and at the opening ceremony all the countries walk out in alphabetical order, Australia's pretty close to the front when it's alphabetized and we're backstage and I start having a massive panic attack. Haven't had a panic attack in a long time but it just sort of hits me. I get that impostor syndrome, feel like everyone else deserves to be there more than me, “What am I doing here?”, you know, and just get really, really overwhelmed. They were great backstage. I mean, they had therapy dogs everywhere, they had all the right support people and one of my coaches was there with me and sort of said, “You don't have to walk out. We can take, you know there’s quiet rooms and stuff” and I was just like, in this, like, “I don't want to do this and I don't want to walk out” but at the same time, this is the one opportunity I'm gonna get to do this, wearing Australian colours, which is, you know, I was really excited to be able to represent my country and do something for my country again, and it just got the better of me but I made the decision, I said, “This is the one time I'm gonna get to do this.” So, I decided to walk out mid panic attack and the camera crews decide that they love that image. I'm walking out hyperventilating, tears streaming down my face, I think it probably comes across as though I'm like overwhelmed with pride which, again, like maybe a little bit, but I was definitely just freaking out and walk out, go and sit down and I'm still having a panic attack. Some people’s panic attacks only go for a few minutes, mine tend to go for ages. All of the family and friends are sitting just out of reach. They're not supposed to come down on the floor, my coach actually swapped spots with my partner and let him come and sit next to me, which was amazing. I think he was one of the only non-carers to be able to come and sit on the floor and he said to me, “Do you know Prince Harry's here?” And there is hilarious picture of me, swollen and blotchy eyed, turn around with my face wide, because my partner is pointing Prince Harry's in the room. I was really excited and I didn't really know at this point, how big that moment was going to be. I was getting messages in my pocket. My friends are saying, “You okay?” because they had seen that I was crying on TV. Well, the next day was my first event and I turn up to the event and my partner tells it as though Prince Harry turns up, looks around, sees me and makes a beeline for me. I'm gonna roll with it because it makes me feel good and he came over, tapped me on the shoulder, shook my hand and asked me if I was okay, said, “Are you okay. Were the those tears of pride, or were you panicking?” and I said, “It was a panic attack.” and he said to me, “I had to look away because you were starting to set me off.” And, you know, the Royal Family are quite stoic and the fact that he sort of alluded to the fact that I had made him a bit of emotional just became wild news. So, I went from that moment, meeting Prince Harry going, “Oh, this is amazing” to walking out and basically every journalist in the street stopping me to ask me about my interaction with Prince Harry. Journalists were calling my hotel room to interview me about it. I was getting stopped by people in the street to get pictures with me. People were taking pictures from across the road, because this image of my face had been beamed around with the headline, ‘The Tasmanian that nearly brought Prince Harry to tears’ … It wasn't broadcast, what he had said to me, but I was sort of so in the moment that when someone asked me what he'd said, I just repeated it and in hindsight, I've actually thought, you know, I probably shouldn't have made that public, but it was just, you know, I wasn't thinking and that's how it went. One of the other reasons that it became so big, I think, is because a lot of people felt connected to that moment. I had police officers come up to me, these are the big Harley Davidson riding police officers in Canada, come up to me and hug me and say that they felt like that and that I'd set them off and that, you know, it was nice to see somebody feeling the way that they felt. I just had so many people reaching out and connecting that that moment had meant something to them. So, a moment that had been very stressful and overwhelming, and I felt quite embarrassed by it, actually became quite beautiful. It became really nice to be able to connect with people and know that I had lessened somebody's isolation, and then reaching out to me also made me feel the same. So, it was actually really nice in the end … I think Prince Harry gets a pretty bad rap in the media. I met him then but also lots of my friends met him over that week and across the other games as well. He's genuinely interested and invested in the Invictus Games, in veteran welfare and I think him recognizing that moment for me, might be surprising to an outsider but it just, it's just in him. I mean, everyone says he's like his mum and she connected with so many people and I think that he's obviously got whatever she had and when I spoke to him, I genuinely felt like he cared about me as an individual, not about the moment or the media opportunity or whatever. There were no cameras there when he approached me. So, yeah, I genuinely feel like he's the right person to be running that, that big ship.

Invictus Games 2018

After I finished Invictus 2017, people kept asking me am I going to compete again, and I felt like I had gotten what I needed rehab wise from the games. I would love to have competed again, just for the fun factor but I was really aware of the fact that there's only so many spots on the team and there's so many veterans that could benefit from it. So, I didn't want to take a spot, potentially take somebody’s spot that could get the benefit that I had from the year before, so I actually was a little bit cheeky and I filled out an expression of interest form to help volunteer with the media team. Because of what had happened with the Prince Harry story, I had done a lot of interviewing. I basically discovered an interest in media and interviewing and sharing stories and I thought a really good opportunity would be for me to experience that from the other side, from the professional side in a really safe environment. I knew the media team at Invictus. They knew my limitations and my experience from the year before and I knew that if I got the position and was having a hard time, they would understand and they'd be able to cover for me, and it worked out really well. So, I ended up helping run the liaison with the ABC broadcast. I did some media training with the team for the year, and I got to be there for the opening ceremony and I didn't tell you this before, but I was very, very lucky, the organizers of Invictus Australia asked me to be one of the flag bearers for the Invictus Games flag. So, they had four flag bearers, one from each of the countries that had hosted in the previous years and one from Australia and I was the Australian flag bearer. This was held in Sydney in 2018 and we actually used all the old Olympic venues for the event.

Being a veteran

After Invictus 2018 I was actually pregnant for the games. I think I was the size of a whale for the whole games. It was very hot. You know, pregnant ladies don't like the heat. So went home from Invictus had my baby in December and then the last five years I've been involved in the local veteran community. So, I spent a lot of time at Mates for Mates, which is an ex serving organization. I liaise regularly with the RSL, I'm on a subbranch committee as well and I like to just stay aware of what's going on. I tend to put my name forward if people are doing things talking about veteran mental health, because that's something that's obviously pretty close to home for me and I, one of the things that I talk about a lot is how hard it is to walk through the door when you need to seek help. I mentioned earlier that I had a lot of bullying when I was in the army, so when I got out of the army, I convinced myself that everyone from the military was a monster, because it made it easier for me to cope with the loss of my career and so walking through the door at an ex serving organization sounded like a nightmare. I didn't want to be around the people that had made me miserable when I was in. As it turns out, the majority of that stuff was exacerbated by my mental health and, if not true, it was just a construct of the time and the environment that I was in. I've never had any issues in the veteran community with personalities or people thinking that my service doesn't count and that I shouldn't be able to access these services, because one of the things I didn't do was serve overseas which can be a really big barrier for a lot of people but the majority of people that are in these ex serving environments haven't served overseas but they've still made sacrifices of their time and their health for their country … That's been a really interesting distinction in the time that I've been a veteran, it's become a lot easier for someone like me to call myself a veteran. When I first got out, that's definitely not a word that I would have associated with because, as with the majority of people, a veteran, in my mind, was somebody that had been to war … I think a really important thing to remember for veterans and for families of veterans is that it can be really challenging to seek help and it can be really challenging to get somebody to seek help. The support of family and friends is probably the most important element of that and whilst it might be really frustrating knowing that somebody needs to get help, you can't force them through the door. What you can do is be there and hold their hand when they're ready.

Commemoration

I never missed an Anzac Day or Remembrance Day and the reason for me is that I always go to remember my dad. It's always been about my dad for me, but this year was the first year that I wore my medals … For me, I prefer those smaller local services, there's less politicians trying to push their agenda and I think the community feels the effect of war more than, you know, say the big cities and stuff but, yeah, I like to spend those days where I feel at home and where I feel at home is where my dad used to go