Louise Newton Keogh

So when I was in grade three, I learnt a valuable lesson about controlling the universe from my little sister Helen and a pair of dodgy rosary beads.

So there wasn't a lot of control in my life at home at that stage.

I mean, my mum was living with a mental illness and my dad was a Vietnam vet who tried to manage his PTSD with alcohol.

So there was a lot of chaos, not much control.

And certainly not much an eight-year-old could do about it.

But when I was in grade three, I thought I'd solved this.

I thought I could find a way to control the universe.

You see, grade three is a very special time when you go to a Catholic primary school.

It's the year of the first Holy Communion, which basically means you get the bread and the wine and also means that you get to wear a white dress and eat lots of fairy bread and drink lemonade at the party afterwards.

So it was a fairly big deal.

It also means you get your first ever religious education.

So in our school, religious education, they introduced these two amazing, wonderful storytelling nuns.

And these women, if they were alive today, would be on the moth for sure.

Now, the first nun was called Sister Mary Claude-Tield, and she liked to tell stories of gloom and doom and what would happen if we sinned.

So she would tell stories that you'd never forget, like the boy who went to church and refused to kneel, and then when he went outside, he got hit by a bus and broke both legs and had...

and had to kneel for the rest of his life, so... Yeah.

That one stuck with me forever.

And then there was Sister Vincent, Sister Mary Vincent, and she was this amazing Oprah-esque woman.

And she could honestly, she would not be out of place, you know, as a motivational speaker today.

And she said, basically she said, the secret to the universe, the way you could, or Jesus is what she called the universe, says just to follow Jesus, to put what you want out to God and he would follow.