Geraniums in my garden

Stephanie and I have been watching "Frozen", and as always, I'm looking for hidden meanings in the story. I love to look at movies and songs and apply them to my daily life. Our household is all-autistic.  We all have diagnoses of Autism. I see Elsa's super power of ice as being similar to the Autistic super powers that we all possess. We don't have the power to freeze things, but our overzealous emotion can hurt those who we care about.  Autism is defi ned by the Oxford Dictionary as " a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterised  by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behaviour." What this means for us, in my family, is that we experience external stimuli as blasts of information.  When we are out in public, the smells, the sights, the sounds and the people can all merge together and become completely overwhelming. In order to regulate, we can focus on ...

On this date, twelve years ago, I was in the psychiatric ward of North Park Private Hospital.  I'd had my first child, and although I'd wanted to be a mother for as long as I could remember (even though I found babies kind of annoying and squishy, but I was sure that would change when I had one of my own).  It didn't. Motherhood is the place where you need to know who you are and what kind of mother you want to be.  You need to back yourself and your decisions. You need to scream for an epidural if you want one. You need to tell the brestapo to fuck off if you want to use bottles because you can't stand the feeling of breastfeeding and it's making you insane.  You need to look in the mirror and be able to tell yourself that this is hard and messy but you can do this because you are strong and that YOU ARE THERE FOR YOU.  It doesn't matter what happens, you back yourself and you know you can do this. I had none of that.  I had a chameleonic sense of sel...

This past few months, I've been working hard in the gym, I've been working my arse off, literally.  I have a really addictive personality and so it has been an amazing shift to move away from defining myself as a fatty who loves chocolate and who isn't active, to a person who loves to eat healthily and do the exercise at every opportunity. With any shift in self-definition, there is grief.  I have experienced grief at all the major turning points in my life.  I felt grief when I swapped my single girl life for that of a married woman. I felt grief when I became a separated woman. I felt grief when I became a mother, and again when I became a mother of two. Every time I am assigned a new role, I feel a sense of fear.  Even if it's me who assigns it.  When I decided that I was sick and tired of feeling fat and old and ugly and invisible, and I wanted more energy and I wanted to change my life, and gosh darn it, I wanted to attract a hotter type of emotionally ...

So, a while ago, I wrote a post about "shouldn't this be getting easier?".  What I was talking about was the navigation of a post separation life, but what I really mean was....when does life get easier?  And do you know what? Sometimes life isn't easy. And it continues on being not easy, and then instead of getting a break, things get even more not easy.  In fact, they become downright difficult and hard and anxiety ridden and awful. And do you know what it means when life is hard and shit and awful like that? It's the universe prompting you to change. To let go of what "easy" might be.  If you're a single mum, and you have two young kids, and you're on a fixed income, and you're still trying to be a twentysomething with a fabulous life when they go....you're going to have lots of troubles. You're going to be going back and forward between enjoying your money, to being broke, you're going to be angry and sad and resentful. It...

So, welcome back to another episode of introspection and analysis, brought to you by a slightly neurotic but definitely positive woman who is kinda ok with being forty one and single. There has been so much going on in my life lately, that my blog is where I come to sort out the little threads that look messy and untidy, until I turn them over and see that my higher power is actually making a kind cool abstract needlepoint tapestry thingy. Like, look at this piece of art.  I like to think that my life is in the midst of creating one of the corners of this.  Sure, all the pieces that I'm working on sometimes don't make sense.  It looks messy, it doesn't always make sense to me.  There are things that I think are "the answer", only to find that I can't continue with them. I have to knot that thread off.  Most recently, I had to give up my job, working two days a week in admin, doing a job I loved, with people who I adored. It was a bright, shiny, splash...

It's my 41st birthday and I am like a mythical phoenix rising from the ashes of my 40th year. Jealous of my poetic sentence and my fabulous balloon animal?  Well, in searching for "41 Balloons", I also came across a news story from 2010 of a woman who had swallowed 41 Balloons of heroin.  Hey, I know how to have a good time, but that's taking things a bit far.  I'd rather swallow 41 slices of cake.  Ha! So, today I write to you from a little house in North Shepparton.  I've been separated from my husband for eight months exactly today, I moved out on the 5th of November 2016.  Not gonna lie, this has been the most difficult and challenging year of my entire life.  I have felt so sad that I thought I was never going to keep on living. I've lost my temper spectacularly, I've made mistakes, I've lost a beautiful kitty who I thought would be with me forever. I've had intense fails in the area of internet dating, I've met wonderful people...

It's been five months since I last blogged, on what was going to be my daily mindfulness and gratitude blog. Ha!! The only thing that I seem capable of completing at the moment is a family size cheesecake. Just kidding.  Although the cheesecake was delicious, I have managed to stay sober for a long time, to parent my kids for 10 years, and to keep living even when things seemed truly crap. At the moment, I am recovering from having a tooth pulled. I hate dental stuff. I am slightly phobic.  I had a filling about two weeks ago on a tooth that was already heavily decayed and filled.  The dentist seemed sure that he could save the tooth, I thought it would need to be pulled.  He numbed me up and started on his journey to save that tooth.  As he started pulling out the decay, drilling and scraping, he started seeing that the tooth was almost more decay than tooth.  He started saying "oh dear, this is a lot of decay".  He started saying that they would ...

It's Valentines Day today, and I am separated, and getting divorced in October.  And yet, I am the happiest I have been in many many years.  I know from speaking to my ex that he is happier and calmer, and I have been reflecting back on Valentines Days past and what's changed. What's different now? I'm more confident in myself. I made the massive decision to move out of the family home in November, when I felt that I couldn't hold all the pieces of our family together and keep myself intact.  So, over the past few months I have been putting myself back together, and I am discovering some wonderful things along the way.  I have made mistakes and I have cried, I've been rude and shouty, I've smiled at strangers, I've helped friends. I've been helped.  I've read great books and crappy books and watched TV and played with my kids and grieved my cat and grieved my marriage. I've taken up smoking and quit again.  I've had some incredibly pain...

I had the opportunity to speak to a couple of my friends who were single mums in the months before I moved out of the marital home.  They said "it's hard, it's lonely, but you can do it".  I didn't think that I would get lonely. I thought that I would be glad to be able to do what I wanted, queen of the remote control, able to make her own rules and do whatever she likes. That's the great part, and the shitty part. Because, whatever decision I make, I do it alone.  I mean, I have my faith in God, and I have my family, and I have my friends....but never before have I had a keener sense that I am on my own in life.  That there is nobody to roll their eyes and grudgingly take care of me. That there is nobody to surprise me by doing something nice.  That there is nobody that I immediately put down on my "in case of emergency" form.  That I am a single mum and I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life.  And, stupidly, even though I...

Today was my first Christmas without my husband and my children. I got sober in May 2003 and started dating my husband in October, and was engaged by my first sober Christmas. I don't think anyone but a sober alcoholic and can understand the excruciating reality of that first few months, years, the first firsts of sobriety. It's like, relentless consciousness. Most alcoholics have BIG FEELINGS and we drink to diminish these. To turn the volume down a bit.  So when we take away that barrier, we're left with life on life's terms...which can be terrifying.  Many of us plunge into therapy and working the twelve steps, and some of us also pick up another addiction. A lot of us get into relationships because we don't know how to be alone. I met a wonderful man at my sister's wedding and we had an instant attraction. We were very different, but were both at places in our lives where we were ready to settle down. He was ready, having worked hard and assembled a nest...

This weekend, my ex (I guess that's what he's called?) had the kids for about 48 hours and I came to terms with more of the feels around being separated.  It was weird.  When you're a stay at home mum, usually you'd sell your left bum cheek for a few hours of uninterrupted time.  But, after the first 12 hours, things start feeling very quiet and very lonely. The danger is to start filling the silence up with people, places and things.  Things that are bad for me, like trying to use a relationship or friendship to fill the silence. Using food, using approval, using spending or Facebook or compulsive hair cutting.  Some of those things are obviously worse than others....I've indulged in a bit of food, a bit of hair cutting and a lot of feeling the feelings.  On Sunday I went to the local farmers markets and wandered around looking at things.  When I'm at my house by myself, I can distract myself, but out in the world, it's a lot harder to ignore that I...

Hey, as most people know, I am a very open and honest person. I tell it how it is and let people know how I feel. And that's ok if it's only affecting me, but social media is a difficult beast, and the things that I say can sometimes have repercussions for the people I love. And that sucks. Because I am all about relentless self expression....but not at the expense of other people's feelings.  I've deleted a whole bunch of people from Facebook today, not because I hate any of them, or because I'm having a midlife crisis, but because I want to show respect to the people I love and my extended family.  I'm going through a lot of changes at the moment and I'm talking a lot, emoting, feeling, doing, and I'm aware that what I post on Facebook can seem really huge and big and unwieldy.  But, rest assured that the thinking and growing and posting that I'm doing is underpinned by a whoooole load of strategies. I'm on antidepressants, I'm seeing a c...

Yesterday was a bad day to try and find gratitude....poor Stephanie woke me up last night at 2am with a massive projectile vomit and was very distressed. Poor Alex was suffering too and I felt nauseous and like crawling back into bed. I had heaps that I'd wanted to get done yesterday, Monday is usually the day that Stephanie goes to daycare and Alex at school.  However, I can be grateful that thanks to the government and also generous child support, I'm able to stay home with the kids and not have to ring in sick or worry that I'm going to lose my job. Stephanie is talking so much more lately, it was very helpful with her being sick because she was able to tell me what she wanted.  She could say "no", or "yes" or "KIG!", which is her word for "Peppa Pig".  And goodness gracious me, did we ever watch a whole lot of KIG yesterday.  It kept her happy and I spent time in the loungeroom with her, cuddling her, then did some housework an...

As I've been looking at lots of dysfunctional things in my life lately, one that continues to affect me is the food thing.  I've been a dieter since a very early age, as I mistakenly took the view that being skinny would equal having a boyfriend, and I thought that having a boyfriend would make me acceptable. I have been 16, 6 foot tall, 80kg and thought I was the fattest person ever. I've been obsessed with my fat arms, and looked at the arms of every other woman that crosses my path and the toned arms of celebrities. I've been 19, 100kg and started Jenny Craig. I've been 20, lost 11kg and started throwing up and restricting. I've been 24, binge drinking, and 91kg.  Unhappy and paranoid but slim, but not slim enough. I've been 30, pregnant and 130kg, eating for two or three or perhaps a small continent.  Fearful that I wouldn't lose it but unable to let the opportunity for a safe binge to pass me by. I've been 38, pregnant again at 110kg ...

Today I don't feel like writing a gratitude blog!! I haven't for the past few days.  That's the trouble with these sorts of gratitude blogs, you start off with fabulous intentions but end up running out of time, getting bored or not feeling like you really have anything to say. And that's ok - it's good to be honest about where I'm at and what I'm feeling. It has been a long week and it's the time of the year where everyone is a bit grumpier, people have less patience in shops, on the road and in general. So I have to be honest with those around me and tell them that sometimes I get grumpy and over it.  I'm grateful that I can express my feelings honestly, in a nonjudgemental way....when I do this, the feelings lose power and I am free to behave in a more rational, functional way. Here's to losing your marbles occasionally, so that you can pick them up again and get on with life xx

Is gratitude annoying? Is it a humblebrag? Is it a way of surreptitiously complaining about your life in a way that you caption "#blessed" so that people don't realise that you're actually really angry and annoyed by stuff? I don't know.  Sometimes bad stuff happens in life and I find myself being annoyed by the smallest things. The person in front of me in traffic that turns right and doesn't use their indicator.  Pedestrians dashing in front of me.  Dropping things and forgetting stuff and getting a parking ticket.  Those things make me mad, and can send me catapulting into a crazy-valanche that is like a tiny snowball rolling down a snowy mountain, gathering speed and crazy as it rolls, until it crashes at the base of the mountain and wipes out a whole village. That's the kind of feelings I have.  Big ones. Intense ones. And I struggle with the here and now. Gratitude can be a really easy and quick way of reminding myself that even though there is p...

So today was a massively hot day where I had a little girl to entertain.  We decided to go to the Shepparton Markets and check out the stalls before it got too hot.  I had no plans to spend money as I'm trying to save up for Christmas presents, but I saw some gorgeous necklaces from The Little Bean and some cute shoes from Vintage Cotton Candy.  As soon as we got out of the car and went walking, I spotted my first geraniums of the day.  A beautiful pink bush, that reminded me of the lovely souls who are blooming all over Shepparton. I have met so many lovely friends at playgroups and sometimes just through striking up a conversation with another mum over a tin of formula at the chemist.  Lovely people are all over the place, if you just look. We filled the day in playing and unpacking and visiting. A quick trip to the library to pick up some new books, spin in the red chair, play on the boat, and get the obligatory cup of water.  When we got home I s...

There's a lot wrong with the world, but you know...there's a lot right with it too. Life is a bitch sometimes and the only way we can accept that is to practice accepting life on life's terms.  I admit that I can be a bit of a diva and I definitely have a lot of feelings.  I am in recovery from a number of emotional issues...I have in the past wanted other people to take responsibility for my life and absolve me, but in attending 12 Step groups and through my faith in God, I have become a person who is a lot more functional..... A daily gratitude journal is a wonderful way of seeing the positive in life and rising above my present circumstances.  I've had the good fortune to have a number of wonderful people in my life, including friends and family.  One of the people who I had a very close connection with was my beautiful Grandma, Hazel Cook.  She and I spoke often on the phone and she would say to me in her soothing voice, "nothing lasts forever, Deborah, ...