David Roche calls himself an inspirational humourist. The Sunshine Coast-based author and public speaker was born with a vascular malformation. The veins in his face, head, neck, throat, and tongue have continued to grow throughout his life. He calls his facial difference an incredible gift because it made him look inside himself to find beauty and self-worth.
His second and latest book — Standing at the Back Door of Happiness (And How I Unlocked It) — is all about finding and nurturing a positive sense of himself and encouraging it in others.
“They’re usually my stories, but if you look for a thread, you’ll find a sense of community, of family, of relationships, which is how I have survived and thrived over the years.”
The book isn’t a straight-up A-Z memoir per se, but a collection of 28 bite-sized essays. The first one is entitled For The Love of Scars, a meditation on his facial difference.
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“Scars are the adoptees in the family of flesh,” he said. “Scars have a purpose of protecting nerves. They do the hard work in life as part of the human body. [But] they get a bad rap in life. [People say] ‘I gotta hide my scars.’ No. Be proud of your scars. They’re doing a good job for you.”
Another essay, Picasso, talks about how Roche came to accept his reflection in the mirror.
“Now, that changed with the internet, because I saw myself looking at myself on a screen,” he said. “And it’s pretty unavoidable when you’re on Zoom and you can’t avoid looking at yourself. And I just had this incident where I saw something that I did not recognize as my own face. It shocked me deeply, and I had a very brief time when I had to piece all the pieces together as if it were a Picasso painting, and I had to adjust to that.”
But now he says he is more comfortable with his appearance.
“There’s always a substratum of discomfort [but] I do feel very accepting of myself,” Roche said. “I actually think that I’m quite cute, and I believe that, because people tell me that, and I think like, ‘Oh, they’re just being nice to the little disfigured guy.’ But no, they think I’m cute. And somehow, I carry it off. So, there you go.”
Roche credits his inner strength to his Irish-Catholic upbringing in Hammond, Indiana.
“I was born during the Second World War,” he said. “My father was living in Stalag 17, a Nazi prisoner of war camp, and my mother, her two sisters, my grandmother, and my grandfather did not know if he was going to come back. So, when I was born, I was like King David, because I was a treasure at that time, in a time of war and horror. So, I was never teased in my family, one of seven kids. Well, it helped being the eldest, that’s for sure.”
So, what does it mean to stand at the back door of happiness? Roche admits he just liked the sound of it.
“I just thought was a cute title,” he said. “I don’t have a good reason for it. I just thought was clever.”
But if there is one overall takeaway from the book, Roche hopes the reader learns that one key to happiness is connection.
“So, if you’re standing at the back door of happiness, [as] we all are, there’s a way in, and that’s not by yourself, but with other people,” he said.
The 28 essays are in a loose chronological order, but you can open the book just about anywhere and take away some nugget of wisdom.
Standing at the Back Door of Happiness (And How I Unlocked It) is available from Harbour Publishing.