There will always be Stella Young in this world as long as we continue her legacy of calling out injustice and demanding better, writes her friend and Ramp Up colleague Karen Palenzuela.
Kids ask a lot of peculiar questions. Stella, on the whole, loved her interactions with them. Many of their questions made great material for her comedy shows. Once, she told us, a little boy looked at her with hushed wonder and asked, “Are you imaginary?”
In the shock of losing Stella, I wondered that too for a moment. I felt I’d dreamt everything up – working on Ramp Up, working with Stella.
I first met Stella when she joined the ABC in 2011. In the four years that we were friends and colleagues, her world opened up spectacularly. It was a privilege for me and the small but tight group that sat in one corner of ABC Southbank to share milestones in her life like her first ever overseas trip, the first time she was published in print, meeting people she admired like Simi Linton and Julia Gillard, being named one of Australia’s 20 most influential female voices of 2012, winning Best Newcomer in this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and talking about “inspiration porn” for TEDxSydney at the Opera House.
We started working more closely when I became sub-editor for Ramp Up in 2013. We both loved our work and we were a great team. Ramp Up was the first national online space for the disability community and we were honoured to produce it. Being appointed editor made her so proud, and she achieved so much. We had dreams of doing more – a weekly podcast and establishing a mentoring program for journalism students with disability, to name just two.
As her profile grew, Stella took on more radio and TV appearances on top of her writing work. Her energy was boundless. Some days, in between hashing out a piece at her desk, she would come in early for News Breakfast or pop downstairs to a studio for a radio slot in the afternoon, then stay back at the end of the day until it was time to MC a gig somewhere before finishing up on a dance floor in the early hours of the morning.
Some days, however, god knows how we got any work done. You had to keep your headphones on and your gaze fixed firmly on the screen to convince her you were busy. Because dear Stella, as some of you well know, liked a chat. Whether it was a yarn about the latest stranger to pray over her on the train, or how she indulged her inner craft nerd over the weekend, or how she ended up in a pony club in Stawell as a kid, she was expert at spinning a story.
And goodness, she could write. Stella asked me to read her pieces before publication, but I only ever cut out the occasional superfluous conjunction or fixed a typo. Her writing was always interesting, thought-provoking and succinct, with never a word out of place.
The only time I suggested she delete a line was in an article she wrote about access, where in typical Stella fashion she’d used personal examples. It had moved me to tears (as her writing often did) and I asked, for her sake, to remove a line where I felt she gave away too much, exposing how hurt she’d been. (She thought about it and agreed. Later she wrote to me: “what I meant was I CRIED AND CRIED AND CRIED YOU BIG MEANY JERKS.”)
Those were the odd days when things got to her. She would come in bruised after learning she couldn’t attend a party with friends because the venue had no wheelchair access, or after going to yet another restaurant with no disabled toilet, or after hearing about the latest murder or abuse of a person with disability. Or, because she was terrible at saying no sometimes, she was just physically spent. But she never forgot the battle, and after a day or two or even a few hours, the fire inside her would be roaring again and she was back at it.
Losing Ramp Up and a dream job was devastating. And hearing of Stella’s death was just unbelievable. Two things I loved, gone. I wondered if any of it had been real.
But Stella wasn’t imaginary. She was most emphatically real. She was here. The proof is in the mark she left on you and me and countless others who never even met her.
For a while I mourned the thought that there was no more Stella in this world. But in fact there will always be Stella in this world, as long as we continue her legacy of calling out injustice and demanding better.
I’ll miss you, dollface. x
Read the full story... (off-site)- Author:
- Karen Palenzuela
- Source:
- The Drum
- Date published:
- Fri 19th Dec, 2014