Glen Ochre 1944 – 2014

Glen Ochre died last Tuesday.  This remarkable woman changed the lives of most she touched.  From midwifery to non violent conflict resolution, from facilitation to partying Glen held nothing back.  She had an ability to be inclusive, caring, respectful yet always principled.  Glen engaged like no other, she listened, respected, and challenged.  Glen, above most others, gave me the confidence to speak out, to work for a better world, to counter Ayn Rand and her ilk, to show that community, that groups, are capable of being immensely greater than the sum of their parts.  

Glen’s funeral was held at Commonground, the intentional co-operative community near Seymour in Central Victoria that she co-founded.  This is an abbreviated summation of the notes from that funeral.

Glen died at the age of 69 on Tuesday May 13, after wrestling with pancreatic cancer for 15 months.  Cancer was one of many setbacks that marked her life of great achievement.  These included an abusive and difficult childhood, the poverty of living as a single mother and the death of two of her six children.

A pioneer of collaborative work practices and group work, Glen Ochre was a giant of the facilitation movement in Australia.  She co-founded the intentional community and workshop space, Commonground, in Seymour, Victoria, and its offshoot – the Melbourne based collaborative education centre, the Groupwork Institute of Australia.

Glen was driven by a passion for a just, nonviolent and sustainable world that arose from her own experience of violence, poverty and discrimination.  These same forces propelled her work as an activist, counsellor, social worker, nurse, educator, facilitator and group worker that influenced thousands of people.

Glen was born in Fairfield, in Sydney’s west in 1944.  Her twin siblings, Bland and Annie, were born nine years later.  Her communist parents fled the city during the anti-communist witch-hunts of the post war era for a small farm at Ulan, near Mudgee in Central NSW.

This was a deeply unhappy time for Glen.  She was sexually abused by her father from the age of three.  She eventually worked out strategies to end the sexual abuse, however the physical and psychological abuse continued until she fled her home at age 15.  She was gang raped at the age of 13.

As a young girl Glen was developing survival strategies.  By the time she was five she regularly sought sanctuary in the bush.  What started as day walks became camping trips.  She would build gunyah from saplings and cook and fend for herself.  She spent hours contemplating natural wonders – a majestic tree, a wasp nest or a bubbling creek.  She never doubted that the connection she felt with the bush saved her life.

Glen began to tap into one of the great gifts that nourished her life – her spiritual affinity with the natural world.  Later she identified the healing power of the special place that is within all of us, the ‘sacred centre’ as she called it.

This profound intimacy with the natural world that she shared with Indigenous people, and with the Gypsy heritage of her mother’s family, became integral to her work.  It formed the basis of her model of self-awareness, the Community of Selves.  In Glen’s candid language, this model shows us how to ‘deal with our own shit before we start to deal with everyone else’s’.  It remains a core element of the Groupwork Institute course in group facilitation.

The deep scars from this brutality took many years to heal.  Glen did a lot of therapeautic work throughout her life coming to terms with the shame, bitterness and hurt.  As always, though, there was an upside.  The therapy laid the groundwork for her powerful counselling techniques.  It also strengthened her commitment to what she called ‘practical femminism’, providing personal and political support for women and children and to many groups struggling to throw off the chains of patriarchy.

When Glen fled the farm for Melbourne, she trained at the Alfred Hospital as a nurse.  Her mother falsified Glen’s age on her birth certificate so she could get in.  The country girl blossomed in the heady days of rock ‘n’ roll.  She discovered make -up, hair curlers, electric lighting and cow’s milk.  On the farm milk came from goats and light from a Tilley lamp.

Her friendship with a young university student, Bob Alderson, grew into a relationship and they married by the time Glen was 17.  They had four children together, David, Brian, Jodie and Cherie.

PART 2 Tomorrow…