Geraniums in my garden

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...