Throwing an axe  to feel better - video Dailymotion

Women veterans from the army, navy and air-force find throwing an axe helps them bond - and helps them escape the patronising attitude of men.

Transcript

00:00Axes up, 3, 2, 1.

00:07Axe throwing, it's a great stress relief, tension relief.

00:13Sometimes if there's a particular person or group of people that are causing stress or

00:21upset in your life, sometimes just imagining that face on the wall and throwing an axe

00:26at it can break that self-fulfilling prophecy that people just keep going through and thinking

00:33they'll never get out of it and falling further into darkness maybe.

00:41It's taken a while for a lot of women to actually acknowledge the fact that they're veterans

00:47because for so long the focus of veterans was the men overseas fighting.

00:55We have quite a few women in our broader Australian group who have served in Iraq, in Afghanistan

01:03and even some of them didn't feel like they were veterans because the focus was so heavily on men.

01:11Axes up, 3, 2, 1.

01:17It took a while for a lot of us to actually accept that we were veterans and even in the

01:24broader community because for quite some time, and it still even happens now, when

01:30you're out wearing your medals, there will be people, mainly men, who will come up to

01:36you and tell you you're wearing your medals on the wrong side because you should be wearing

01:42them on the right side because they're either your husband's medals or your father's medals

01:46or your brother's medals and we have to remind them and say, no, sorry, they're our medals.

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