Divorce, Grief, and a Coven of Witches | Katie Noonan | Club Sandwich

I used to be one of four on a Medicare card. Now I've got a solo Medicare card and they ask me, who's your next of kin? And I'm like, oh, I don't really have one anymore, you know, like I put my mum now, which is. That's a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm deep in the sandwich. It's a very, very large sandwich. It's a big pastrami sandwich with lots and lots of filling. But you come from good genes, so my dad lived till 90. He passed away on 22nd March, 2024 and after a 20 year significant health battle which was started by a stroke. I never thought he'd meet my kids and so, and my children are 21 and almost 20, so it's a miracle that he lasted as long as he did. And that is largely. Well, no, it's completely due to the care of my mother who was his full time level 4 carer for 14 years. So anyone who knows about the care, the levels of care, level four is as hard as it gets and most people last three to four months and then they put them in a home because it's just too hard. My mum did it for 14 years

With some help. Of course. Yes. My dad had. Obviously he was on a level, you know, he got support from the ndis. But yeah, no, full on. And basically my father was actually incorrectly diagnosed with Parkinson's. He never had it. The thing is, he was the most beautiful thing. Beautiful, beautiful patient. Everyone fell in love with him. All the nurses, all the doctors. And he was the love of my mum's life for 56 years. So they were the real deal. They were the real.

So young.

And horrible disease.

was a beautiful death at home, surrounded by family, lying in bed with my mum next to him, singing and praying. And at home we had amazing nurses. The. They're called Karuna, they're sort of Buddhist palliative care nurses. And the Buddhism approach to death is obviously very different to the Western, you know, Christian. Well, no, I mean, it's a very peaceful thing, basically. So he was Catholic, but he was a profound Catholic. They were just beautiful. It was just a beautiful palliative care option. We were very lucky to have a beautiful death at home.

And that's the thing, it really was a perfect death because most people who try to die at home don't get to. I think about 90% they just end up dying in hospital, which of course there's not, you know, but if you can. We got dad home on the Wednesday and he was gone by Friday night and we were all there and I was pulling out pictures of the wedding and you know, so. And he was happy and he could hear us at peace. So he knew. He got the last rites from his priest, Father Tuong, who's a beautiful, beautiful Catholic priest. And so it could not have gone better, really. It was quicker than. It's always quicker than you expect. But now my dear mother, who dedicated her every single minute to my father's well being, now she is slowly recovering and going, well, who am I now without this full time job of being a full time level four carer? And she kept up her teaching because she's an amazing she's just turned 81.

Yeah.

My mum and dad met on Showcase, which was like a classy TV show. Yeah, a talent show. My dad won the viewers vote, my mum won the judges vote and three weeks later they were engaged. A year later they were married. A year later my son, my brother was born. So. So, you know, good Catholics, they didn't mess around. This was in 1968. They met, married. 69. My brother born in 1970 and then myself in 1977. My dad was a journalist for the ABC for almost 20 years and then left to move back to his hometown of Brisbane in 77. And then I grew up in Brissy, so. But mum was quite the opera star. She was the first female, I believe, and certainly the first singer to get a full scholarship to the Sydney Con. Sydney Conservatorium of music in 1960. 60, I'm gonna say 5ish. And a star singer, you know, who won all the competitions. And I think everyone else had her career mapped out for her. But then she fell in love with the love of her life and she always wanted to be a mum, so she managed to do both. But you know, in the 60s and 70s, that was quite an arduous journey, you know. And obviously until 1968, until the abolishment of the Marriage Bar act, it was actually illegal to be married and have a job or be a mother and have a job in, in the public service in any sort of bureau. Like if you worked for the ABC or you were a teacher or a police woman or you could obviously be self employed.

Who am I?

Yeah.

Yeah, she. And it's only been two years. It's still and you know, of 56 together. You know, it's unabashed, but actually we've been a great source of comfort to each other because we both found ourselves to be single Women. Mine After 26 years in November 2024 and then in March 2024, seven months earlier, my dad died. So mum was suddenly a single woman. I was suddenly a single woman. I took her out for Valentine's Day in 2025 and that was our first Valentine's in, well, hers in, you know, over half a Century on her own. So we've. And she's been a great source of comfort for me as I've gone through the utter desperation of separation and divorce. But, you know, I'm. I'm half of us. It's 50% of 10 of my coven, my witches, my coven girlfriends who are all across the country. But I've got 10 very dear friends. Women.

Five of us are going through divorce.

Yeah. Well, this is the thing. I mean, you know, it's. Whether it's perimenopausal rage or midlife crisis. Half of them, it's the cliche of they've fallen in love with a woman bloody 20 years younger, which is so boring. That's not my situation. But so on. It's so boring. It's just like, dear God, the reason why these cliches are in all these shows. But the others are just Covid broke, Particularly in my industry and yours. Imagine as a freelance, you know, unsalaried freelance people. Covid was catastrophic.

The financial pressure for me was mind blowing. I get freaked out just thinking about it.

Genuinely. No, I remember you talking about friends in Melbourne too. They genuinely like girlfriends who are on my own. Who's one of my coven.

I built that. I fought for a coven because I've had a husband and two boys, so I needed a coven.

The love of her life.

We're caring for each other. Yeah. And my brother's been amazing as well. He also has married the most divine woman, Glennis, who's from Trinidad and very much a family person. Comes. I think she's one of nine kids. And what has been beautiful also and has been the making of my brother because he didn't have any bio kids, but he's now a stepdad to two beautiful young humans, Liam and Ava and Eva. Sorry. And he's been amazing. He's been very supportive of both of us through this time. So. But, yeah, the coven. So, yeah, and half. And you know, one of my friends, she's Venezuelan and she's very fiery. And the first time she knew because I didn't. The first thing I knew was a letter from a lawyer.

the end marriage was a letter from a third party lawyer? I mean, I knew we were bad, but that was. And when I got together with, I said, coven, we need. I need you. Let's meet here at 7. My friend, I won't say her name, but she's Venezuelan and very fiery. She said, now listen, I know he already told me and I love you both. And so am I allowed to swear?

She said, so get. I love you. I love him. I'm not getting involved. Just want to say that. Okay, thanks.

Bye. Keep talking. And it was very clear because, you know, that's what happens. You end up going to one side and even with girlfriends of mine, like, who've, you know, I generally side with, obviously the sister, but sometimes male friend, you know, when there is this huge break, it's difficult to remain with both parties. And she was like, I'm doing that because I love you both.

And that was really good that she laid down those boundaries clearly. Then the other nine were like, we're with you nudes. And I was like, thank you very much.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. So I recently took her on a trip. I took her on a cruise. Mum has never been on a cruise. It was quite confront, you know, she was so brave to do this thing. Unfortunately, because of the mad orange man, her beautiful flight via Doha, that was nice. And direct. Had to go via America. So she literally flew for 30 hours to get to Barcelona, which was horrendous. I was already in Europe, so I couldn't go with her. So to do that on her own at 80 is wildly, wildly brave. And she got through that and then she came on a cruise with me and she'd never been on a cruise. We went to Barcelona, Genoa, Napoli, Roma, Firenze, Marseille, Provence, Crete. Anyway, we went to like a.

Well, it actually was an intense schedule and I said to Mum, the thing about cruising is Jomo, the joy of missing out. So I look at the schedule and look at all the things and I'm like, I'm doing none of that. I'm sitting on my deck and reading a book. But that cruise was very. You were pretty much at a different port. There weren't many sea days, but you

We've been together. We shared a room, see the world. Because I said, mum, you cannot die and not go to Rome. It's not possible. It's just too spectacular a city to not experience. And as a profound, devout Catholic, it's the home of the Catholic Church. Now, amazingly, my mom has this dream of doing a concert at the Vatican, and if anyone can womanifest it, it is my mother. But we had a meeting with the Australian ambassador to the Holy See, the Honorable Keith Pitts, who's actually grew up in the suburb where I now live, which you couldn't make this stuff up. And his ea. Her name is Madonna Noonan. I'm not joking. Could you get more Catholic if you tried? She's from Adelaide, Right. And anyway, we had a meeting and he said, listen, because we were there for Easter, and I said, let's go. So we were in Rome. Did she dad the Pope? We did not meet the Pope, but we went. So we were in Rome for Dad's anniversary and there was a double rainbow. So whenever I think of dad, there's a rainbow. So that's a thing. And it's him. For Mum, it's a feather. For me, it's a rainbow. And then Mr. Pitt said, well, we've actually got two tickets for the Vatican Mass on Saturday night, if you'd like to join us. Now, these are money can't buy tickets that only basically consulate, you know, d fat people get. And ambassadors. And Mum was levitating, basically, like, for a Catholic. And she loves Papalillo, Pope Leo, because, well, he's a Jesuit. He really is a good one. I mean, he's a good one. So we went to St. Peter's Basilica on Easter Saturday. It was a four hour mass and I loved every second. I'm a lapsed Catholic. I haven't been to mass other than Easter and Christmas for, you know, I don't know how long, 20, 30 years. So even though I love the tenants of Christianity, there's a lot about the organization and obviously as a queer ally, I have some issues, but. And the fact that men can't get married and that women can't be priests, they're the three big ones. But it was amazing to be in Roma for Easter because Easter is with my mom and Italians are just such beautiful people generally and all about familia and the mama. And she had the best time. So then she said, I'm moving to Tuscany. I was like, go, okay. Is she well? Maybe. But then her physician said, well, you know, you don't speak Italian and you're righty, yeah, that could be a little challenging. So. But I was like, listen, mum, this is your era.

It's a new dawn you can do.

You now have the autonomy and the agents and. And she still can't believe he's like, she's still grieving and so. But she has such amazing friends and a beautiful parish and you know, her physician is amazing. And I said, I think you don't, you know, like it's a long way. We can't just pop around for a cuppa.

By the way, Turkey was her favourite country. We loved Turkey.

And so has she and so has she. Mostly before children. And then once we finish school, you know, it gets that compartmentalized, doesn't it?

And that generation, you know, when you got married, you became the wife because. Yeah, you know, and that. I remember mum would lay out dad's clothes and make him lunch and like, she was quite a, you know, 60s, quite traditional and she'd seen her mother do that and I was like, what are you doing? Like, I was always a feminist, basically, since I was little.

Yeah.

It's absolutely not a great lesson in age for us. Absolutely. She's stronger than ever and she's like, well, now. And I'm just trying to encourage her to. That generation aren't, Aren't great at self care. I'm like, have you had. When was your last pedicure and when was your last, you know, just. But to be honest, Sarah, the reality is that in Australia we don't respect our elders properly. The pension is unlivable. I mean, it's so crap. And so luckily my mum teaches and my dad left. You know, she's still working, she's still teaching, but I mean, part time. But my father, you know, we're fine, like in terms of, you know, the financials. But there are so many of our elders who don't have children, still alive or don't have family, and they are suffering from unbelievable levels of loneliness and depression and the pension is unforgivably small and. And we have this weird thing in Australia where, opposite of Italy, where the elders, they're the elders, like first nations communities, they are the elders, they're the truth keepers, they are the wise ones, they're the ones that have lived this life and look at how much they've lived through. I mean, my mum grew up without a telephone or a television or a fridge, and now it's, you know, now she's figuring out an iPhone.

And she's got great friends and she's

She has a coven. She does.

It does, which is not all depressing. So half of it is songs that fell out. Expressing my grief at who am I now? I used to be one of four on a Medicare card. Now I've got a solo Medicare card and they asked me who's here, next of kin and I'm like, oh, I don't really have one anymore. You know, like I put my mum now, which is. That's a lot. And I never thought. I'd always thought it'd be the four, you know, all of that stuff. Also, I'm grieving the fact that my children are now adults. So that would have happened anyway. Any mother or father going through that transition from sort of 18 to 25, when you know they're finding their way in the world, there's a grief there. Anyway, it's beautiful, but it's. Oh, you know, my baby's heartbreaking. Yeah. Yeah, you are. I call them my little boy men. So I would have gone through that anyway. But yeah, it's an interesting. It's definitely an interesting patch. But I have actively built a coven because I did see actually with my parents that they ended up being. Their friends were friends of them both. They didn't have a lot of independent friends of their own. And I thought, I don't want. I want to have my own coven. And I need feminine energy in my life because I'm in a band with four boys. I'm usually the only girl on the stage. I'm in an industry that's extremely male dominated. I'm in a family with two boys and a husband. There's not a lot of female energy in my life. I need it. So I actively have ladies dinners. I organize the dinners now I'm starting. We're trying to start a monthly get together on whatever Monday of each month. And one is a dinner at someone's house or we splurge and go out if we can all afford to, which often we can't.

And the next one is book club. And I've recently moved to near Nambour. The cinema is $10 and gold class is 15 and popcorn's 350.

It's the best. So cinema, that's an affordable cinema. Chat, bit of popcorn. Happy days.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, well, so it's a tricky one because most of my covenant, actually my Sunshine coast one, they're all happily married and they're not going through the thing. The other one, my other girlfriends, like in Sydney and Melbourne, have and are single and. Or whatever. Single and ready to mingle or have friends with benefits or whatever. But one particular girlfriend who lives around the corner, she has gone through divorce. And so it just that knowing that the other thing, though, that I was paranoid about, that I was. That I was trauma dumping too much, you know, because I didn't want to be the. Oh, God, here's Nunes again. Oh, this is a 40 minute conversation about, you know, hiding under the COVID Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was aware of that because I didn't want to be like a burden. And another girlfriend of mine in the coven. Sorry, the Sunshine coast coven. She is divorced and. But divorced like 20 years ago. And it's still fresh, though. Like, she still loves him and I still love Isaac, like, of course. So it's this. And she's been the most extraordinary single mum and now her kids are basically becoming adults. And she's like, oh, hold on, I now have agency to go. What do I want to do? So she's going through a similar thing. I mean, she's my age, but. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, oh, you know, like, as I said briefly before, before we started pressing play, I'm going to New York in a couple of weeks. And, you know, my entire life was based around providing for a family of four financially on my own, which was quite a intense pressure, but also planning around, you know, school holidays and when was this, you know, of course, around the family. So now it's like, well, whoa, I'M just. I can go to New York for a couple of weeks. My main thing is my dog. And so my dog is also 12. She's a beautiful Sassy the Staffy. She's a fiery bitch just like her mum. But I got the dog, so I. I mean I could not have survived. I genuinely could not have survived. That sounds very dramatic, but it covers. And my bitch, she's definitely in the coven. Yeah.

But she's gonna be. She's. So now I'm like, maybe I need to get a puppy. Because, you know, Sassy will. She's a staffie. So I've maybe got three, four years tops. And they're gonna get harder.

Not at the moment. Little bit of advice. Not at the moment. Yeah. But the only thing I have to deal with is a dog sitter. And thankfully my dear friend Greer, who has been through a divorce, she's been a single mum since her son was 2. He's now almost 16. I have a little granny flat which is self contained and so for a 15 year old around the corner from his mum, it's just been perfect because he's. And his school's in my street.

Yep.

All these albums also got that double dichotomous thing.

There's been all this sort of strange magical serendipity because. So Trent and I met in the late 90s noughties in Brisbane. We're pretty much the same age. He. We remember our first interview. It was for my song Special Ones. We. It was 26 years ago in 2000 and he was like my first proper grown up interview. And I think I was one of his first proper sort of interview subjects of someone that he actually knew because he was a music fan. And we both remember it clearly as a formative part of our burgeoning careers as him as a writer and me as a musician. Little did I know that for me Special Ones was Not about domestic violence. It was about walking away from a drug addict and realizing that I had to self preserve self, you know, protect myself. Boy, Swallows Universe wasn't written. So I didn't know, you know, that that was actually quite very closely related to Trent's life much later. But so 26 years ago we met. He wrote. So yeah, these sad songs of mine just fell out and they're very. They're incredibly vulnerable and exposed and the most honest I've ever been in my life. Which I think as you get older, you give less shits, to be honest. You're just like, well, this is me. I'm here. And music is the safest place for me to explore that. But then February last year, Trent gifted 153, I think, pages of unpublished exclusive text that he wrote between 2000 and 2006. And I was just inexorably drawn to these five vignettes that form half of the ten song album that are all about the wonderment and the overwhelming joy of falling in love. And it helped me remember that in my times of utter desperation and deep anger and all of the things that you go through and that I did, I fell madly in love with Isaac at that same time. 2000 to 2006. We got married in 2004. Dexter was born in 2005. Jonah was born in 2006. So he's 20 this year as well. It's just all these.

loss and the classes.

I'm honoring both in the record because

Look, if you don't process grief, you know, grief manifests and stress manifests physically in the body. And if you don't process it, you'll get very sick. And I have been running on cortisol and adrenaline for a very long time, but particularly since COVID it's been wild. Just the financial pressure and the breakdown of all the things. And I was definitely leaning on alcohol far too much at the end of the day.

Discover the joys of heaps normal and you know, Peroni zero and I never drank beer. I've only ever been a red wine. Girl.

Yep. You're loving your mum. But it's also brought up a lot of stuff that I numbed with. The oblivion each night.

That's too hard. I'm just gonna drink a bottle of wine and forget about that and deal with that tomorrow. And then you just get up and you get on the cortisol train and you live on that until you have the wine at 5pm and then my generation and Australia is obviously a very, very heavy drinking nation and we have this psychology of. It's a reward.

On the Friday night or the end of the day, the kids are finally asleep. Yeah. You have a wine with the husband. That's a big change, isn't it?

It's encouraged, if anything. And also, if you're out and you're like. It's different now, though. Both my kids are sober.

And they're 21 and almost 20.

They've made that. They don't. They're sober.

But that generation don't. We drank to get drunk in the 90s and noughties. We didn't drink to have philosophical discussions. We drank to get munted. Yeah. That was. That was the generation. And that was what was encouraged and. And idolized, really. Or not idolized, but glorified. Yeah.

Oh, the best gigs are always sober. They always have been.

Yeah.

Piano string quartet. And I've recorded in my lounge room with my executive producer, Sassy the staffy. She's quite a. Quite a bossy bitch, actually. And I recorded in my lounge room, which was really special as well, in my new home, which has been empty and lonely most of the last 18 months, you know, so to have it full of musicians. And we made a film clip. We've made four film clips, actually. And I even had a street dancer reach out to me, Susanna Lee, who's made three short films dancing to my music, which is incredible. And again, I discovered her through Covid, because She would go within her 5k radius and make dance videos and she did one to one of my songs and we discovered ourselves that way through Instagram, you know. But yeah, communing with people and sharing in the fundamentally the need to commune and make music and share stories, you know, we all know how desperately we missed that in Covid and now that we can again is just so great.

My pleasure.