It was the depths of winter and she was by herself in the middle of remote southwestern Tasmania.

As part of the reality television series Alone, Chick had been dropped into “an absolute winter hell hole”. She’d been given only ten very basic items and tasked with solving the challenges of shelter, water, fire and food.

Her goal: To outlast everyone else. To keep going for as long as possible. To survive.

But, as Chick told a packed room at the FW Leadership Summit, by day 35 things weren’t looking good.

She was hungry – like, really hungry. She’d already lost about 15kgs, surviving off the likes of lizards, worms and fish sperm.

It was during this low point when two creatures flew into her path. They taught her a lesson she will never forget.

“I see these ducks,” Chick told the FW Summit.

“Two fat wood ducks, fat Peking ducks. And I’m starving.

“And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t wait to get this’ … I start sneaking up on them to kill them.

But just before she grabbed them, the ducks sensed something was wrong – they clocked her presence and flew away.

“I just thought, ‘Oh, there goes my Peking duck’,” she said

“I didn’t suffer, I thrived.”

“[But] the next morning, when I woke up and I pushed open my shelter, these two little heads poked around.

“… I called them Theo and Anastasia, and they became my friends, as did a platypus that visited me every single day, as did the wrens and the birds that visited me every single day.”

Forming this community was key to Chick’s survival on Alone.

“I was the last one standing and I won the first season of Alone Australia,” Chick said.

“Now I say that the interesting thing about me winning Alone isn’t that I won, it’s how I won … because I won by breaking the game.”

The game, as Chick told the room, is usually one of ‘man v wild’. It’s a game that is often won by “a knuckle-dragging survivalist” not a post-menopausal woman.

“The game, if you’ve ever watched any kind of survival show, is suffering … [but] I didn’t suffer, I thrived,” she said.

And by thriving Chick broke another cliché.

“The trope is that nature is something to be dominated and beaten, that it’s dangerous, that it’s trying to kill us, and it’s got to be micromanaged, and it’s very, very separate from us,” she said.

“I went in there to show that it’s possible to be part of nature, rather than apart from nature.”

Through her experience on the show, Chick learned not just her survival – but all our survival – is intrinsically connected with our surroundings. We don’t exist separate from each other, but connected to one another.

“A wild animal can only survive if it is in deep, profound, persistent relationship and connection with itself, with its pack and with nature, an animal that doesn’t have this connection will die,” she said.

“That’s how we lived for 340,000 years, and that is the intelligence that underpins our survival on this planet, doesn’t it?”

That’s why, as Chick told the FW Summit, those two ducks were so important to her – why they were more than just birds or a source of food.

“I never felt alone when I was out there for 67 days, because I found that community,” she said.

“And the thing that I realised … is that a village is healthy when every single voice is heard, where there is room for every single voice”.

The lesson she wants us to take from this is simple: “Know that your voice is exactly as important as every other voice”.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s in tune, it doesn’t matter if it’s loud, it doesn’t matter if it’s quiet.

“Whatever it is, it’s yours and it’s needed”.

IMAGE CREDIT: Vienna Marie Creative