#BeBrave: A Braveheart’s story
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Christine Carey presents CBR Brave import Stephen Blunden with an award for the 2014 CBR Brave Highest Scorer at the inaugural Brave Ball.
A Braveheart in more ways than one and a brave heart within her own right, Christine Carey first heard her calling to foster children almost thirty years ago. Her first foster experience saw her with four young ones in tow on weekends as she learnt how to be a friend to children of broken homes and families, and where she realised that although it was challenging, it was ultimately rewarding.
Through Barnados and Marymead, Christine has had a hand in raising 24 children including her maternal son, Aidan. Some were just babes straight out of hospital, others…teenage boys in trouble or detached from their families.
Yet for Christine she knows that it wasn’t just the children for whom she was caring.
“I was supporting the mothers of those children as well as providing a welcoming and supportive environment for their child,” she says.
“Canberra can be a really difficult environment to live in if you’re struggling. We don’t see it, we don’t know it.
“It’s not a pretty picture and so I really feel for women who get into that position.”
Every night there are over 500 children who are without a place to call home; they are cared for by related family members, total strangers or staying in out-of home-care like refuges or supported accommodation.
Kyle
Although Christine has a long history fostering children, it wasn’t until she was two months pregnant with Aidan that her work with displaced youth came about and her life changed forever.
She met Kyle; a troubled two and a half year old toddler and a little boy from a broken home.
Not knowing how long he would be with her, Christine cared for him like her own and raised Kyle and Aidan as brothers.
That was twenty years ago.
Today their values and qualities are uncannily alike but Christine realises there is a recognisable difference between her two boys, and it’s not genetics.
Tonight one son will sleep on the streets of Melbourne, his location unbeknownst to his family; the other under the comfort of a doona and under the same roof as his mother, just metres away from her room.
Upon reflection, and what brings this loving Braveheart to the Brave, is the very thing that her two sons do not, or at least struggle, to share— a sense of belonging. To a family. To a sporting team. To a community. A sense of belonging that has kept Aidan on the straight and narrow, yet saw the very opposite for Kyle despite Christine’s selfless efforts to offer him everything she could.
In contrast, Kyle and many other foster children who have struggled to find this same settling feeling, be it in school or in a community, have in some ways been deprived of this small yet significant birth right to opportunity. But at no fault to any. Just unfortunate circumstances.
Kyle has drifted in and out of Christine’s care as often as he has juvenile detention centres. Three years ago, Christine walked her eldest son down the steps of the ACT Courts into her car and drove. She didn’t stop until she was over the NSW/Victoria border, and there she parted ways with Kyle. On July 28, Kyle completed his three year good behaviour bond, but like the beginning of his life, it has not been an easy road.
As much as she has loved and cared for her children, Christine realises now just how important it is for youth, in particular teens, to have something to focus on and keep them busy, involved and engaged.
Idle hands, idle minds.
For some teens they struggle with it everyday—depression, drug abuse, bordeom or a lack of belonging. In knowing Kyle and the other street kids Aidan and Christine have opened their home too, regardless of their circumstance, they all have a story to tell yet nothing to do. And when they don’t have something a parent would love them to do they’ll find something and before long find themselves lost.
Like the ripples on a pond, one wavers into the next…exactly in the same way that the layers of belonging overlap. A family is often part of a school. Within a school there is a team and that team becomes part of a community. A family works as a team. A school and a team work within a community. And to be part of a community is to belong.
Much like the CBR Brave.
Aidan
Throughout all his school years, Christine’s younger son, Aidan was involved in sport, often flipping from one thing to the next until he found ice hockey during his senior year at Orana Steiner School. Becoming involved with the school team—and the only team in Canberra—Aidan took on the ambitious project to establish an interschool ice hockey competition in the ACT as his senior year assessment. He spoke with local politicians, researched various funding methodologies and worked with IceHockey ACT in a bid to attract players and put teams on the ice. With his school on side, Aidan realised there was method in his ice hockey madness.
The end result? A mixed full-kitted team that had grown to at least 30 kids attending training every week. And while a competition is still yet to form, the conversation has been created.
Rather than head off to the defence force as he had planned, Aidan enrolled at the University of Canberra earlier this year to study sport coaching and exercise science, not yet ready to give up his involvement with the ice hockey.
One of the key propositions that arose in his project was, and still is, to establish a strong local highschool competition that feeds into the IHACT, and of course into the Australian Ice Hockey League in a bid to grow support for the then Canberra Knights, now CBR Brave.
All was on track until Christine and Aidan woke one March morning to discover the Knights had folded. Feeling gutted for her younger son, Christine realised something needed to be done, immediately. But with no knowledge of the game except a passion for supporting her children, she pledged support the only way she knew how—through her company Patriot Alliance.
“It was a callout to say I’m here. I want to help,” she says. “I was willing to run a marathon, whatever it took, to keep ice hockey in Canberra.”
“I remember thinking to myself, there goes something else that I thought we could build into an opportunity for teenagers because really isn’t anything for teens in Canberra.”
Aidan and Christine spoke to anyone and everyone that would listen in what was a small window of opportunity to keep hold of Canberra’s only semi-pro ice hockey team. Through perseverance, passion and a team of committed locals, the outcome has been incredible.
Christine (purple jacket) with the Bravehearts…the best fans in the Australian Ice Hockey League. Photo: Harv French (CBRBrave Braveheart)
Christine often wonders had Kyle found something like ice hockey would he be where he is right now?
If these same 500 Canberra foster children had the same opportunity, so small yet so significant, then would it have given them a focus and guided them to make healthier and smarter life choices?
For Aidan it is ice hockey. But for Christine it is so much more. She wasn’t prepared to just standby and let another opportunity for teens disappear from Canberra.
Not only has Christine left a legacy through fostering 24 children but she is now continuing that legacy through fostering a team for the Canberra community.
“If there’s a conversation to be had then have it,” she says. “You don’t need to be a millionaire; just a person with compassion who is willing to share it.”
And so today, for the first time in 16 years, the CBR Brave will be heading to Melbourne to play in this weekend’s AIHL finals. It may be a Cinderella story for the team, but for Christine she just followed her brave heart.
The CBR Brave take on the Melbourne Ice this Saturday 30 August at 6.30pm AEST. Can’t make the game? Catch all the live action on Facebook or follow on Twitter where I’ll be tweeting live from the game.
Livestream
ATC Productions will livestream the finals series live. Viewers are requested to make a donation to the Soldier On charity in lieu of an access fee. Details here.
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