Meet your vendor.
I was adopted at 12 days old and always knew I was adopted. I guess I was never interested in knowing my birth mother. I had an amazing Mum and Dad. Most of my childhood was in Revesby, New South Wales. I used to do swimming and lifesaving, representing my school in district and state, and my dream was to be the next Dawn Fraser and go to the Olympics. I trained six days a week for swimming, before and after school, and lifesaving on Sundays. Swimming to me was enjoyment, not a competition.
My mum passed away when I was 15 years old. This was the start of my life’s traumas. As we were burying my mum, my auntie walked up and said, “You know I’m your mum, right?” So, my cousins had actually been my siblings my whole life.
I wanted to stay in school and go on to uni to make Mum proud. But I’d been a bit of a rebel as a kid and fell pregnant at 17 years old. I got whatever jobs I could – cashier in a supermarket, a plastics factory…the best job was fibre-glassing. I had two sons by the time I was 21, and I’ve been married twice – both of them were heroin addicts and they both got me into it, too. At one point my oldest son and I hadn’t spoken for 10 years: in 2010, he phoned me to tell me that I was a grandmother. That was a turning point and I’ve been drug free 20 years now.
My friend Tracey was a vendor at The Big Issue and got me to become a vendor in 2007. I started at the Women’s Workforce in 2010, and that same year I was the first female lived-experience speaker at The Big Issue Classroom. I found all these jobs hard at first as I didn’t make friends easy, or like talking; now it’s hard to shut me up.
My youngest son and I had lost contact, too. He didn’t know I was battling cancer. He walked into the vendor support office asking if I was still a vendor – he is now my carer, and we’ve moved back to the country.
People think that Big Issue vendors are all homeless or that it’s a religious or a political magazine – well, it’s not. The Big Issue isn’t a business; it’s a family. What business can you walk into and talk to editorial, the Classroom, the CEO? I reckon The Big Issue kept me clean, and if it wasn’t for Kirstie in vendor support, giving me the kick up the bum that I needed, I wouldn’t be here.
My cat, Cougar, knew in 2020 that I had cancer, because he started snuggling up to me all the time. Later, I got another cat, Missy, and she can tell when I’m upset, too. I’m not really religious – I believe what goes around comes around. My joke is that the big man upstairs isn’t having me, because I’m not ready yet. I’ve been given six months, but my new home is helping – I wake up to birds singing outside. Hopefully, being in a peaceful place, the cancer will go, “Okay, you’re relaxed, we’re going to start shrinking now.”
Cheryl sells The Big Issue outside Queen Vic Markets and works with The Big issue Women’s Workforce in Melbourne
Interview by Eliza Janssen
Photo by James Braund
Published in ed#758
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