“Steve sometimes calls me a truly righteous sister who has found herself a gypsy husband…”

Kim and Steve Cooper

Is your marriage filled with heartache and pain? If so, you are not alone. Steve and my story aims to free you from the faulty programs and destructive beliefs that have left most couples lost and confused, help you get to know yourself and your partner better and learn why couples who deeply love each other still can’t end the fights.

Steve and I believe in love, but there is no happily ever after. Love is the challenge we must all face daily or waste our reason for being alive. It’s a dangerous game. We’re here to guide and support you, but you must take the time to build your love safety net as, ultimately, success or failure is up to you.

I was a child of the peace and love movement in California in the seventies, while Steve grew up—in close to the same era—in the ethnic melting pot that was Melbourne, Australia.

Steve sometimes calls me a truly righteous sister who has found herself a gypsy husband. Considering the vastly different worldviews we each grew up with, if Steve and I have found common ground in our marriage, I think that almost any couple can.

Steve and I offer our work as humble guides and mentors, leading the way as peer support specialists who have personally traversed love’s dangerous terrain. Helping you find the programs you need to avoid chaos and cynicism in your life. Programs that will help protect you from all the bad suggestions and misleading signposts that deliberately tempt you every day. Taking you to that place within yourself that you can’t go by yourself. Helping you get back in touch with the power of love that is within you.

A little more on our different backgrounds…

My life started in Northern California in the late 1960s. I was born to a (mostly) devout American Protestant father and an Australian mother.

My mother, raised in the Church of England—in Australia’s then decidedly secular and egalitarian society—came to call herself a feminist who sometimes claimed that God was water.

As a child of the seventies, naturally, I was influenced by The Peace and Love Movement in California, alongside The Women’s Liberation and Black Rights Movements. The Sexual And Cultural Revolution of the sixties influenced my older half-brothers and sisters more heavily. I watched first-hand the sometimes-bloody intergenerational war those violent times in history produced. The Manson murders occurred in California when I was only a toddler. Later, when I was still a child, Myrna Opsahl, a friend of my father’s from church, was killed in our local bank by Patty Hearst and her kidnappers.

Serial killers seemed to be everywhere in California in the seventies. The East Side rapist, later known as the Golden State Killer, was one of the most prolific and was active in my neighbourhood in Sacramento. As a child, I spent countless sleepless nights lying awake in terror.

My grandmother (Maude), on my father’s side, was a pioneer who left her family and travelled to California in the late 1800s, where she worked as a waitress. She saved money to bring her fiancé Fred from Michigan and buy farmland in California’s Imperial Valley.

My father worked in the US Navy as a radio operator. He studied and practised medicine for most of his long life.

My father and mother met after my mother travelled alone from Australia to California to join her sister, a beauty pageant queen and war bride who had already immigrated to the US.

I think my father must have first regarded my mother as a pioneer like his mother. Maude and my mother, however, couldn’t have been more different—in religion, politics, worldview and temperament. My parents’ marriage sadly didn’t last. My father returned to the United States when I was seventeen.

My mother, sister and I remained in Australia, my mother’s country of birth, where our family had resettled in 1978 when I was twelve. My parents’ very different values and beliefs meant that I was bounced between religious and secular schools in California—and later in Australia.

We moved to Australia because my parents feared for my well-being in junior high school in California. I was a reasonably pretty girl but a social misfit, reading anything I could get my hands on. I liked ‘boys’ stuff’ like science projects, camping and taking things apart to find out how they worked. I was also known for asking uncomfortable questions. Born today, I most likely would have been diagnosed as high-functioning on the autism spectrum.

My father was an avid traveller, inventor and explorer, and we did a lot of fun and exciting things. We often went water and snow skiing and went on lots of travel adventures together. My curiosity about the world was always encouraged by both of my parents.

I didn’t make many friends through primary school, however, and my parents wisely sensed that the attention boys would start paying me when I reached puberty would leave me vulnerable. I believe they were right and am glad to live in Australia. I still miss the United States sometimes, but life in Australia is less complex and far less dangerous.

My father was born in 1919. Like most of my grandmother’s descendants, he inherited her pioneering spirit, with Maude’s children and grandchildren now living worldwide.

The town my family moved to in Australia had about the same population as the local high school where my family had lived in California. Culture shock barely describes what I experienced. I knew the people around me spoke English, but I still had difficulty understanding most of what was said. We wore uniforms to school. Everyone in our community knew each other’s history and family connections, while I knew nothing about anyone.

I was a talkative child but also liked to hide away and read. Suddenly, I stood squarely in the spotlight, a stranger in a strange land.

Settled a long way from the USA, my country of birth, I am proud of my American Protestant roots. After coming to Australia, it took me a long time to understand that English and American Protestantism are vastly different. American Protestant churches have large congregations in Australia, but nothing like the US. The evangelical movement has also dramatically changed American Protestantism in Australia and the US. I can’t detect much of my grandmother’s or father’s humble values or quirky, independent spirit in the modern worldwide evangelical movement.

My American Protestant roots have undoubtedly inspired our family’s journey and will always colour my writing. However, Steve’s and my faith is now based on a personal narrative we have pieced together, a worldview that has made sense of our struggles and explains the chaos and despair we witness in the world around us.

It is a creative belief narrative that inspires our faith in love that we share throughout our work: a journey of redemption and healing that has helped many other families. Putting together your own story of healing—and a belief system you can have genuine faith in—is the central theme of our writing.

Two fifth-generation Australian sheep farmers raised Steve’s mother. Steve’s grandmother, who died only recently, ran the farm for most of her life.

Steve’s mother’s family’s generations are much closer in age than mine. “They breed ’em young in the country,” Steve sometimes laughs.

Except for Steve’s mother—who in Australia has done the equivalent of retiring to Florida—most of Steve’s mother’s large family live in the same country town or have moved no further than the closest Australian city. Steve and his sister, raised in Melbourne, are also exceptions, now living far away from their country relatives.

Steve’s father was born in Egypt and moved to Australia while still a baby. He despises religion but has a strong Protestant work ethic. His father and mother (Steve’s grandmother and grandfather on his father’s side) were Persian and Maltese immigrants to Australia via Egypt, who, into their nineties, still drank coffee until after midnight. Steve’s Persian grandmother always liked to read, keep up with world politics and current affairs, and spoke seven languages. His grandfather was a lovely gentleman who worked as a public servant and always loved his music.

Steve’s mother and father separated before he was born. Another two fathers raised him; one I sometimes describe, jokingly, as Scottish Presbyterian (‘Thou shalt know thy place’), although I don’t think he ever attended church. He raised Steve as a child, and Steve calls him ‘Dad’. Steve was better socialised than my parents managed with me, being taught never to ask uncomfortable questions!

The second stepfather was an abusive Irish Catholic alcoholic. Steve and his mother and sister eventually ran away from that home.

Steve was first raised in a suburb of Melbourne, with a large immigrant community—Vietnamese, Greek, Italian, Yugoslavian and African. He later lived and attended school in an area closer to the inner city, known for its dense Eastern European population, predominantly orthodox and secular Jews.

Steve senses that he has gypsy blood and, besides the divinity that he has found in our union, probably considers economics as his religion. He is a talented musician and mimic with an avid interest in geography alongside English, European, and Persian history.

Sport has always been a big part of Steve’s life. He was the captain of his football team in high school and has a warm, likeable nature. He has always been a good team player and is now bringing that spirit to our home.

Bias

Everyone is biased. The better we admit and understand this, the less bias will affect our rational thinking. The short history I have shared above might help to disclose some of our biases, which will undoubtedly influence our work.

The work of master teacher Dr John Henrik Clarke, an African American historian, professor and pioneer, only came to our attention when many of the articles published here were almost finished (after Steve and I had a year writing together through the Covid lockdowns in Australia). We highly recommend that everyone watch the award-winning documentary, A Great and Mighty Walk.

Quotes from Dr John Henrik Clarke have since been added throughout our work, providing a touchstone.

Readers should know that while we have learned much from Dr Clarke’s work, his teachings have not biased our journey or conclusions. On the contrary, it amazed us to discover that regarding faith, history, and religion, Dr Clarke arrived at findings almost identical to ours. We are amazed that Dr Clarke found the same solution to save our people and nations. As he travels a different road, at other times with entirely different biases, this has helped confirm that we have done a decent job of keeping a close eye on ours.

The unimaginable suffering of Africans being sold into slavery was only one aspect of the horror of a far more extensive system, known loosely as colonialism, that, for centuries, has ripped families apart and hurt us all.

Helping families heal the trauma we have all faced and come to thrive as cooperative cultures is the central goal of our work.

Economically, the average family is under more stress today than at any time since the Great Depression. Yet the threats that families face now are far broader than financial, with assaults on our emotional, physical and mental security being orchestrated by forces—aiming to divide us—that even a decade ago would have been unimaginable. How do we organise ourselves now? 

Most of us feel the pressure but end up running in circles, pointing the finger of blame at each other while arguing about the cause: 

• men blame feminism; 

• women blame narcissism; 

• while bad psychology leaves most of us blaming our mothers.

This potentially deadly blame game has recently reached a crescendo with new hi-tech weaponry now upon us. Yet, in truth, husbands, wives, and mothers are, ultimately, not to blame. Men and women must urgently unite to defend themselves and their families.

Fifteen years online with close to 2000 testimonials, the Cooper’s real-life desire for an understanding of love that might keep their family united has served as inspiration for many thousands of readers, all searching for similar answers: refugees from love’s battlefield: heartbroken, lost and completely bewildered at why loving each other has become so difficult.

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