A wonderful life
Adrienne Howley is unstoppable. In her 82 years she has encountered many obstacles, but has refused to let any of them deter her. For example, when she began to lose her vision about a decade ago she decided to enrol in the University of Newcastle to finish her Arts degree.
”I was going to the uni library to do research for a book. Then I thought ‘If you can get in there, why not finish’. I attended every lecture,” she says. “I had to really apply myself and my sight was deteriorating all the time. I am computer illiterate, so I had to hand write essays and get them to the uni’s adaptive technology staff to be typed up. It was hard work.”
Adrienne graduated in 2005, more than 20 years after beginning her arts degree at the University of Queensland. By this time she was no stranger to learning, having travelled to India, Nepal and Thailand to study Buddhism.
Eleven years after she was ordained by the Dalai Lama in Italy back in 1982, Adrienne took the highest ordination vows possible from a Vietnamese Buddhist master. She is now the most senior Buddhist monk in Australia and is officially known as the Venerable Adrienne Howley.
“I discovered Buddhism when I was living in Kin Kin, near Noosa Heads. I was always interested in religion and my home was not far from a Tibetan Buddhist teaching centre,” she says. “What drew me to it was the fact that you’re not handed the answers – they tell you to go and investigate for yourself.”
Her books on the subject are sold worldwide and have been translated into five languages. Adrienne also wrote My Heart, My Country about the life of poet Dorothea Mackellar, who she nursed for many years.
In her youth, Adrienne had been a nursing orderly in the army, then a civilian nurse. In her forties, with her family grown, she took to the sea having been diagnosed with cancer. She spent four years sailing the world on a gaff-rigged cutter, working along the way.
“I was 43 and had been operated on for cancer. They told me I wouldn’t live long. I had two sons and I didn’t want them to watch me die, so I sailed out of Sydney in 1968,” she says. “I wasn’t miserable though. I really fell in love with that boat.”
Now living in Lorn, New South Wales, Adrienne is a Vision Australia Newcastle client and a Local Group Representative on the Hunter Regional Client Committee. Her sight began to deteriorate 12 years ago. Adrienne says her vision loss is partly due to a detached retina, which was the result of a diving accident she experienced as a teenager.
“When I was in my fifties I was in France in a supermarket and it felt as if the skin had been ripped off my brain. It was my retina giving way, but I didn’t take notice of it. Looking back, I had carried a time bomb in my head and didn’t realise it.”
“Years later, my sight got worse, so I got new glasses. Then I found I had to go outside to read the paper. Next, a little black dot started to jump about before my eyes. Then there was a letter missing when I tried to read, then a word had gone,” she recalls.
“I went to the optometrist and a specialist and they said they couldn’t do anything for me. I thought ‘It’s about time I admitted I was vision impaired’. When I realised I needed help I went to Vision Australia. It’s opened up a new life for me. The hardest thing is to ask for help. But once you get over the first hurdle the world opens.”
Adrienne is currently working on her autobiography, which follows a booklet on vision loss - Now You See It, Now You Don’t.
”Everyone’s story about how they lost their sight is different, so I put in my experience plus that of others. I kept it as light as possible to show that life goes on,” she says.