Out onto the deck of a waterfront Wollongong bar it flowed; a tidal wave of sharing - a modern day group therapy session wrapped up in flower crowns and bohemian dresses.
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There were stories of wayward teens; of the little girl who scrunched up her stomach and declared herself fat; the parents who didn’t love; the body-shamer –reformed now, and wanting to spread the lessons learnt.
“They’re real lovers and they’re real community-based women here. They dragged me out here and I don’t want to go home.''
There to preside over it all was Constance Hall, the Freemantle mum whose fiercely popular blog has become a book – Like a Queen – launched before 250 women at Pepe’s By the Beach Thursday afternoon.
Hall has amassed more than 990,000 Facebook fans with her Queens of Constance blog - a witty, warts-and-all look at life with husband Bill and four young children. Through its e-pages, Hall has called on women everywhere to consider themselves ‘queens’ and tapped – to surprising effect – into a desire for women to be kinder to other women.
Hall says it is the empowerment borne of this that explains why there are fewer questions for her at her book signings, than stories.
“I could basically remove myself from these events,” Hall, 33, tells the Mercury afterwards.
“It’s all about them, and it’s all about us as a community. The Queen movement is the opposite of what the [actual] queen symbolises. I’ve found that at all of our events – it’s more about them and meeting each other.”
Miranda Hill and Megan Hill – best friends whose husbands are brothers – traveled from Engadine to tell Thursday’s gathering how Megan had a baby for Miranda, when a health condition rendered Miranda unable to carry a child herself.
Miranda discovered Hall’s writing during a four-week period spent recovering from a heart transplant after her son was born.
“The reason I talked so openly about our journey together is because there’s possibly a woman here today that has a best friend who can’t have a baby and thought, ‘I didn’t know I could do that’,” Miranda said.
“It's safe here, because she [Hall] has shared so much more than what we have … And this generation, this is what we're doing – we’re learning how to be sharers. I’m teaching my mother who was born in the 1950s how to be an emotional person, because she wasn’t.
"[Hall’s] real, she says it how it is. She doesn't sugar coat it. She just says: ‘it's sh-t’. Sometimes you do go into the bathroom with half a Tim Tam and try and stuff it in your face because it's the only thing you get to eat all day that isn’t stolen from you … And she says that. And you don't feel so isolated - because parenting and mothering is isolating.”
Hall intends to work on another book and an app that will help ‘queens’ to find one another, after completing the UK leg of her book tour.
She said Wollongong was included on the tour because “I was forced to by the Wollongong women”.
“Statistically, Wollongong isn’t huge,” she said.
“When I look at my stats on Facebook, I never thought about bringing it into the tour, but I think with a place like Wollongong it’s quality over quantity.
“They’re real lovers and they’re real community-based women here. They dragged me out here and I don’t want to go home. They’re positive, they just want to get behind things, and obviously they’ve got a really good community. So what I do just compliments that.”
Hall was accompanied by her children and Bill, who acted as personal drinks waiter as the questions and stories played out.
The family was to stay at Novotel with Hall’s three cousins.
“They’re all between the ages of 18 and 21 and they’re amazing,” she said.
“They’re so good with the children and they’re all on Tinder so I get to stay up all night and look at Tinder with them. I’m reliving my youth with these girls.”
