Australia

Citizenship Application is IN!

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This last week I finally qualified to apply for citizenship in Australia. I’ve been here 8.5 years, and the amount of relief that came when I paid and submitted my online application was tangible. My shoulders relaxed, a smile broadened across my face, and tears ran down my cheeks. I have wanted to have the stability of being here in the world that I have created for myself and my family and now I actually have that chance. It’s so much more than having Permanent Residency as I could still technically be asked to leave with PR, and have to apply again in 5 years to get a Resident Return Visa, and wouldn’t have the right to vote. I want to be a contributing member of society in this beautiful country in which I live, where my family lives, where my life is. I love Australia and I honestly feel like change is possible here and that votes count. I feel like there is so much opportunity here and I want so badly to be able to participate freely, and soon, I shall.

The process of applying for citizenship was eerily easy compared to applying for the various visas I’ve had over the years. Also we’ve spent at least ten thousand dollars on visas until now, and citizenship cost a mere $288. Wild. Also the most tricky part was finding someone that knows me personally for at least a year, who also works in an occupation that the Identity Declaration Form 1195 deems is worth enough. Thank goodness I have a friend from Mother’s Group who is also a police officer as she is the only person I could think of that I know personally who would be able to fill out the form for me. The rest was straightforward. I know there’s still the interview and the test, which come later, but even this preliminary process was so much easier.

The relief though… I can’t even begin to fully describe what it feels like to finally get to this point. I am thankful that my partner has stuck by me in all of this as well, as he could have easily chosen a much easier path and chosen an Australian wife rather than a foreigner and would have avoided all of these years of headaches, heartache, and expense. I so look forward to becoming an Australian citizen and it’s closer now than it’s ever been.

The Immigrant Process

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I am an immigrant. I chose to leave my home country in pursuit of a new adventure, a new life, with new opportunities. It’s taken a considerable amount of courage, bravery, and resilience. Being an immigrant is a hard road and comes with many challenges, especially as the global powers tighten boarders and make the pathway to citizenship longer and more complicated than it needs to be.

My niece has asked me about my experience as an immigrant and specifically my pathway to citizenship as there are bound to be many similarities that I have faced that immigrants to America would also face. I’ve been wanting to write about this for some time, I talk about it a lot, but haven’t fully put it in to black and white, and I welcome that chance now.

I read somewhere a line that went something like to be an immigrant, you will always have your heart in two places, and that’s as true as it can be. My heart has always been torn between forging a new life for myself in Australia and leaving behind my family and everyone I have known before now in order to do so. It’s a compromise that has to happen when you venture out into the unknown of anything, and absolutely applies to traveling and making home abroad.

The process to citizenship here in Australia has been very long and convoluted. I still, after being here for more than eight years, being married to an Australian, having an Australian child, owning a business in Australia, and having gone to University here in Australia, I have still yet to be granted citizenship. I’ve had various visas that always cost a lot of money, and I’ve had to learn to live with the instability that comes with not being fully allowed to live in a country. Honestly the stress that this has caused, I’m certain has negatively impacted my health and also my first pregnancy. The stress that you can be asked to leave at any given time because you don’t have the right to stay is ever present. It’s like holding your breath, and wanting to give all you can to the country you are now living in, but at the same time holding back because why set down roots if you will have to cut them off and move again anyway.

When applying for Permanent Residency which precedes citizenship, there are typically requirements that need to be met like being in the country for a certain amount of time and not having any issues with visas before. For PR, as it’s commonly called, you have to submit so much paperwork not only about yourself, but you also have to give information about your friends and family as well, private information like their birthdays, their occupations, their own families, their marital status. It’s incredibly invasive, and asking friends and family to do this feels like one additional barrier that we have to go through. There’s a thorough health check, at designated immigration doctors offices, and you are treated like just another immigrant, no bedside manner, all matter of fact, and then you’re on your way awaiting the results. There’s character checks that happen from your original country, then within the country you are trying to immigrate to, along with any other country where you have spent more than a year. If you’ve married a citizen then you have to prove your relationship, which feels so false, and the things they ask, normal couples wouldn’t do. Specifically, who opens a joint bank account with their boyfriend or girlfriend the day they decide they’re going to be exclusive? If any regular couple did that, it would be a huge red flag, but for immigration, that is one of the ways to prove your relationship, and if you don’t have that you get knocked back in the queue.

The hardest part of all of it, beyond the utter lack of privacy, beyond the inane requirements that normal people wouldn’t do, is that the government is always changing, and with that, their stance on immigration changes. So you can call up and be told one thing on Monday, and then call back the next Monday and be told a completely different thing. For us, we were advised to wait until our three year anniversary before applying for PR because it would go right through, no more than six months the immigration agent said. So, we waited the additional year and a half and when we applied, the rules had changed, and had to wait an additional two years, not six months, to finally hear back, which gave another waiting period of a year. So it took a total of three years from the time I applied for PR to the time of being granted it, rather than six months, and that was after waiting for the full three years beforehand to apply. In this time, the fees go up, the waiting stretches out, and you find yourself checking your email account every single day, and every single day you feel disappointed and feel like it’s not going to happen.

Also in this waiting period of seeing if you will be accepted, and this could only be me, but I felt completely restricted about what I could say online. It was during a time when America was changing greatly, and Trump had been granted President, and the whole world was in shock and disbelief. Even before then with whistleblowers being outed and vilified, I didn’t feel like I could speak freely about this. I didn’t feel like I could even seek help with dealing with the dark feelings I had after having a very traumatic birth because all of that would be linked to me, and all of that would go into the decision making of whether I got to stay in the country where my entire world existed now, and I didn’t want to do anything at all to jeopardise that.

Looking for jobs as an immigrant is always a trying situation, because employers want to know that you will not be a fly by night, and the time and training they put into you will be repaid by long service. Going to University and further education is also limited unless you have the access to pay for the exorbitant fees they charge international students, and even then only some courses are available. There are restrictions every way you look, and sometimes, it feels like it would be easier to just throw away the dream and move back to your home country. I’m lucky I’m not a refugee and that is an option for me but for a lot of immigrants going home isn’t an option, so they have no choice but to deal with each obstacle, each setback, each challenge, and trying to maintain patience with their heads down, waiting for their time to come and be welcomed officially into their new country.

Lawmakers must be so removed from this process, because I can’t imagine that they would put us through all of this hardship, which ripples out to our new families here, and our friends, and the economy because we are going through unnecessary challenges to gain access to stay in the new country. I would definitely recommend a change that would include having English classes for migrants who don’t speak English as their first language while in the process of immigration because everyone benefits when we can speak a common language. I would recommend each immigrant being issued a clear plan with dates for them to apply and what to do at each step, currently the information is all over the place, and it changes so frequently that making a timeline with a plan is almost a joke currently.

Resigned

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I’ve let my job go. In part due to truly feeling like I need to have the flexibility to be available in case my family, including my in-laws who have experienced very ill health as of late, need me, and more specifically if they need my son, the golden sun, around to help brighten moods.

It was bittersweet. I know it’s been coming, and I truly do want flexibility, but I also liked that I did have a team of people I was working with and I enjoy the feeling of being productive. I learned a variety of different real estate based systems in a short amount of time and even wrote some Marketing AdCopy, which I definitely enjoyed doing.

My son has just gotten up from his nap and is standing next to me with his hand on my leg, asking for my attention, so I have to cut this short.

Now, comes the entrepreneurial phase and I’m totally open to this.

Back to Work

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What a glorious day it was. My very first day back at work since having my child. That’s not entirely true, I’ve been doing work for our own business, but this is the first time I’ve been back and working for someone else. I will actually get a paycheck too, and that feel really great.

It does feel like a very precarious situation. When the HR manager walked in, before she even sat down, she said she had received a call from the Director rethinking that the position needed to be on the weekends, rather than midweek. She said she told him that I wasn’t recruited for that and didn’t think I would go for the switch, which she is right and I told her I was not available to work on Saturday and Sunday. So starting the very opening of my first day back in the workforce, and first day in Real Estate this way, definitely felt uneasy. I made it clear that if that is what the business needs, then do that and let me know. The job sharing role that I have is to help out the other Admin who wants to transition into Sales, which requires her to work on the weekends anyway. I realise the company is growing at a massive pace, and this is part of that, and I am aware.

Nonetheless, I jumped right in, took notes, learned how to open and close, met everyone, and got oriented in my, potentially, new role. I still won’t know for another week or two if I even get to keep it. Since I’m a casual employee I can be let go at anytime, so there’s also a lack of security there too. I just need to roll with it.

It’s hard for me sometimes to roll with it though. I know I’ve signed up for a job that is two days a week, but sure enough all last night my mind was swirling with the day. I couldn’t even get back to sleep for hours in the middle of the night with ideas based on the meeting we’d had earlier in the day about the business. It’s also hard for me not to give my all, I am naturally a disruptor I’ve come to realise, and i don’t necessarily mean to be, but it’s so hard for me not to share my insight or opinion when asked, so I do.

Now, will I keep this job? Will I be let go? Shaking my head. I’d love a bit more stability please.

Multiculturalism of Australia and White Nationalist

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At Costco in the line to return something that happened to be the wrong size, I was marvelling at all of the different heritage around me. There were so many shades of skin colour and accents it was truly a moment capturing the beautiful multiculturalism in Australia. It was totally awkward, but I couldn’t help but compliment the woman who had been partially helping the woman who was helping me as her skin colour was this incredibly rich shade very different from my pale freckled skin, and she had such a great complexion too. Anyway, I smiled to myself during the whole encounter because it really made me feel that Australia is a country that has so many immigrants and in places where we all converge all just flows.

As it usually goes in just about every shopping experience, there’s a signal to everyone that it’s now time for every single shopper to make their way to the counters to pay. This happens everywhere, we as humans must all feel the urgency of timing all at once and all in unison turn around and make a b line for the closest checkout. I was in one of the lines and moved back so other people could pass in front of me to get to the other side. In this, some people got a little confused about where the line started, but I hadn’t thought it was going to be a problem because there were clearly people already waiting behind me, specifically this woman and her baby who my son and I had talked about during our shopping trip. We heard the baby talking and talking, and then by checkout time, bub was not happy and needed to be held. My toddler noted all of this as we’ve been talking about feelings a lot lately so he narrated the scene when we saw them. Apparently an older woman didn’t realise the line was much longer and put her cart behind mine, and I politely told her that I thought the woman with the baby was next in line, and the line was curving a bit making a hand motion in the direction of the curve. I could tell that English wasn’t her first language, but she understood, and moved her cart to the end of the line. All was fine, just helping create some order. Then all of a sudden I hear the two guys who are with the woman and baby, say “Yeah, we need to take care of our own” and I made eye contact with him, and at first the thought was just that I have  child and I assumed that was probably his child. The mother now holding the baby didn’t say a word, and I loaded up my items on the conveyor belt and the comment swirled around in my head. Why I can’t just let things roll over me and be done with it, I’m not sure… but I thought about it and I was the only other fair skinned person with my son in our line besides them. I hadn’t even considered that the remark would have been racial in nature. So I purposely talked in my very American accent to the checkout helpers and talked about the wagon I had in my trolley and how it was going to be great this summer, especially with the extra drink holders. As I left, I distinctly noticed a big Southern Cross tattoo on the man’s neck who made the remark. And I quickly pieced together an episode of Triple J’s Hack where the Southern Cross had been coopted and now was representing something more like white nationalist pride, or something of the like. My stomach turned.

I enjoy the richness that comes with multiculturalism. I enjoy the opportunity to learn and grow with the people around me. I know I am an immigrant, and I cannot help but feel the same amount of slightedness that might be aimed at people who are more obviously not from here based on their accents, or their skin colour, or the way they dress. I am one of them, I am one of the Australians too. We are all one.

Maybe I misconstrued what that comment meant and probably I am overthinking and overanalysing it, but maybe not.

Finally I Saw Therapist

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Finally I got some face to face help. Two sessions today after calling around yesterday to see if I could talk to someone. I felt the dark wave of grief and despair rolling over me yesterday. I know this feeling. I know it very well since having my child. It was a very traumatic experience for me and I haven’t felt confident to seek a qualified professional as I didn’t have Permanent Residency and didn’t want to jeopardise my chances of getting to stay with my family here in Australia. Now I do have PR and I am working through this now.

The first session was a woo woo style practitioner. She let me ramble and ramble, and that’s what I did. I cried a bit, told my story, described how I felt in creative ways, and at the end did some sand play where I just created what was circling in me and brought it to the surface. That was fun, I always enjoy these kinds of ways of bringing out creativity and to help gain insight. I described what I thought about each piece I chose to add from her shelves of figurines. I chose a mini pot of flowers to add beauty and symbolise the circular path that life seems to be. I chose a native woman carrying a child on her back and a golly wog doll which is an inherently racist black doll that is very kitsch Australian, and I chose these because I feel empathy for them, and in my own plight I understand theirs better. I chose Merlin with a unicorn to help represent how magic is all around, I just have to ask and see it. I chose a happy smiling buddha because I want more of that in my life, but am not sure how to fully detach to get to that stage these days. In the middle I drew out two big eyes, like that Grateful Dead song that goes “wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world” as it’s been running through my head for days now. All in all, it was a good session and I appreciated having that kind of very soft space to talk about things.

The second session was just a few doors down, also upstairs in this downtown charming historic town. When I walked into the stairwell it smelt like beauty parlour that specialises in waxing, and it took me by surprise. I guess that smell went with how I felt when I was in the session, very similar to when you are going in for a wax, you know you need to do it, you know you’ll love the results, but for christ sakes the process is painful, but some areas are strangely very satisfying and almost enjoyable in their pain. The psychologist was an older woman who I can only guess has hair that reaches all the way down her back, she had it piled up high on her head into a bun, she’s of retirement age, but so youthful and full of energy as soon as she opened her mouth with a bright sparkle in her eyes. She wore older woman nice clothes, you know the kind that were popular ages ago and they’re still in fine knick but not necessarily up to date. She also wore a beautiful broach that coordinated with her maroon pantsuit which gave me a sense of comfort thinking about how my grandmother used to wear broaches.

We got down to business after I sat in her narrow office. I had already filled out the paperwork, which thankfully my husband’s work pays for these sessions so we don’t have to pay out the $175 per visit as the contract had read. I get five sessions with her under his program and I will use them all. She asked me to give her a summary of why I am there and what I’ve been up to. So I backtracked to 2010 and mentioned that after a head on collision that happened just months after arriving in Australia, that I received counselling which was very helpful. I mentioned that due to a Medical Treatment visa I was able to stay here, and that’s in the timeframe that I met my husband. I mentioned about going back to University and finishing my bachelors. I mentioned that although my husband and I both had chosen in our earlier lives to not have children, that together we changed our direction and intentionally created our son who was conceived on our wedding day out of love, and that he is all love. I then talked about how that pregnancy went haywire, and I ended up in hospital for nearly three weeks until an emergency caesar where he was extracted from my body, and put into the NICU in a  plexiglass box and that a couple days later I was able to see him and all of it was very disorienting. I told her that before I was put under with the gas that I made peace with my life because I thought I was going to die, and how I had just left my husband’s hand in this stark white corridor on the way to the surgery area. I talked about how I had been so straight during my pregnancy with everything I was consuming and then all of a sudden I was taking major drugs to help me cope with the pain, and how that along with having to inject myself with a needle to help prevent dissolve the blood clot that had formed in my groin, was the worst kind of self harm I’ve ever known physically, and all of it took me so far from my natural clear headed state. I talked about the uncertainty when bringing home our child, and being all alone in Sydney with my husband working shifts of four days on and four days off, and not having any additional help and those first months were the darkest of my entire life. I shared how when I think of the newborn phase I think of the smell of Aquim hand sanitiser, chords, beeping, uncertainty, pain, hurt, and grief. I shared with her out loud things that I have never shared with anyone else that went on in my mind during that stage and I wept so loudly and it all came out. I completely lost it, and it may have only been in the first ten minutes of me walking in. Progress was being made.

She talked about the amygdala and how it stores all of our past experiences and how it’s like a volcano that has many layers and how when something gets triggered it then accesses every time I’ve ever had that feeling, and this made perfect sense to me. I had thought of it as wells of emotion within me, something I was holding, something I was internalising, something that was there always with me. She helped me to see that the release can happen by changing it to be a volcano versus a well, and to do whatever I need to in order to get the hell out of the fucking well. She didn’t say it quite like that but this was definitely how I heard it.

She talked about how this kind of trauma creates spikes in my cortisol levels and with that comes fight, flight or freeze. This was also an ah-ha moment to me. I know that my cortisol levels have been spiked from childhood due to having a very traumatic upbringing, and over the years it was clear to me what I was doing I was definitely fighting or fleeing the situation. This time around I have been full on in freeze mode. I hadn’t even considered that freeze was an option, and that’s exactly where I’ve been for the past three years. Adding on the waiting for Permanent Residency and that just created a stronger freeze feeling for me. So I’ve been on edge pretty much my whole life and in this last stretch, it has become freeze and now I get to fucking work it out so I can move forward. No more internalising. I see it, I understand, I have ways to move past this, and now that is what I am doing.

She talked about the importance of getting my levels checked to make sure all of my vitamins, thyroid and all other blood markers are normal in case that needed attention. Thankfully I’ve had those earlier this year due to the endometriosis. Oh speaking of endometriosis, she also said that by keeping all of this in my “well” rather that in a volcano, it would create disease in my body, and then I told her about the endometriosis, which completely makes sense. It came on strong and seemingly all of a sudden, and lasted about ten months. After using the Mirena IUD and getting PR, it’s amazing how it’s settled down, but not at all surprising as I’m not as on edge about everything.

She talked about the importance of deep breathing. 3 count in, hold for 3 and release for 5. She said that if I’m in freeze mode and I’m shallow breathing all of my cells think that they are also in survival mode. She gave an extra oomph to it by talking about Taming the Tiger, and with the breathing to clench my fists in the in breath, and release my hands completely in the out breath to signal to my body physically as well that it’s time for this to go. I loved this. I love that this is actionable and we did it in her office, and I could feel the difference. I will continue to do this.

Overall I feel completely drained from today. My eyes are so tired and dry from all of the crying I’ve done, by far more than I’ve cried anytime in the past couple years, probably not since my father died two years ago. Interesting that it’s also his birthday today, feels very auspicious. I don’t want to be that kind of parent and it almost feels like I’m honouring that by getting help now.

I see her next week and I really look forward to it. I am writing it out. I am moving past this. Thank fucking god. I’m so ready.

My Artistic Creation Insight

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When I create words as my art by stringing them together in some kind of poetic way, they come out in a very emotional way of sharing. For those words to flow as they do when I am alone, it is usually because I am tapping into the deep well of emotion within me. Generally those emotions are darker and with more depth than if I am having a regular conversation.

When I am creating visual art, in the form of a painting, it is light, it is easy and it feels so free. A distinct difference of creating art with colour versus in black and white.

With social media, I found that originally my “art” was in sharing openly in black and white. Over the years, that became so limiting, and places like Facebook became entirely too emotional for me, so I had to step away for a while. Fb added the news feed along side my home area and although I normally choose to avoid the news in the paper, on the web, on the radio, and obviously on the tv as we don’t even own one, to find it where I logged in to be social became incredibly confronting. That space that used to be full of inspiration to me became toxic as i would end up diving into emotions that I didn’t log in with, that I picked up as I scrolled along.

Now with Instagram, I find it to be light, and to be easy, as it’s a visual art social media space, at least that is how I use it. There aren’t long winded messages, there aren’t tons of entrepreneurs and life coaches filling up my newsfeed alongside the news like on Fb, and it feels refreshing. I don’t even care about the comments really, but I do want the attention, which I find interesting to think about. I want the attention for my art. I appreciate my visual art and I want others to also appreciate it, in the form of attention.

Seeing how much I am outwardly creating is a positive gauge on how I am feeling. If I am producing a lot of visual art, I am living in the realm of more positive feelings. If I am posting deeper poems or writing in that fashion, then I am diving in. It’s nice to have at least these two very obvious art forms that I use to create.

Yay for creating. Yay for looking in. I’m ordering new canvases this week to keep on painting. Colourful, bold, large, and feeling good.

Of course this is the part where I always imagine how nice it would be if I did this thing that I enjoy doing and people paid me handsomely for it. Oh that would be nice if it happened. Imagine sharing my love and my inspiration via visual art to help inspire love in others. Yes please.

Immigration and Permanent Residency

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10 days ago I got the email casually in my inbox that I had finally been approved to stay in Australia. The glorious electronic communication that will forever change the course of my life. Now I know that I am able to stay here with my family, in the home, in the reality that I’ve purposely crafted. There isn’t the fear that was looming before that I would be asked to leave. I guess it’s still there until I get citizenship, which I will apply for when I have met the new requirements, which are 4 additional years of waiting after gaining PR to apply to take the citizenship test. This citizenship test is apparently so difficult that when Media people have taken it, they have even failed despite living and growing up in Australia and working here their whole lives. I’ll worry about that later.

It had almost been a full three years since we applied. The application was submitted after my husband and I had reached our three year anniversary as being an exclusive couple. The immigration representatives that we spoke to on the phone before applying all said it would be faster if we just waited until the 3 year mark, then it would only take six months and I’d have PR. We qualified after one year of being in an exclusive relationship, 5 years ago I could have applied, but listened to the authority and went along with what they suggested, after all, they know best, right? The political winds changed, immigration became a very sore subject for Australia with tons of refugees trying to come to the country, and immigration around the world due to wars, had created a big division amongst the people in western countries. England closed it’s borders and left the European Union over it, Trump was elected president in the United States with his claim that he’d build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, and Australia elected one of the most right wing, anti-immigration ministers Pauline Hanson, lengthened and delayed their processing times. Australia also has kept refugees essentially prisoners on some islands outside of the country in order to send message. I’m not sure where and how common decency and the humanity left these western countries, but it’s a sad sight, and horrible to be caught in the system, even when I’m doing it willingly.

After the six month mark came and went from after applying, then a year later, they requested more information, then more time passed, and a year later more information was requested, and finally one last time, again a year later, more information being asked, and I was approved. The information was always the same information. It was always about references from people we know, it was how our relationship began, what we do together and how we are building our lives. It was always about character and police reports, and official documents. I get it, I understand all of it. When we didn’t get the approval straight away, we were scratching our heads, it didn’t make sense. Tony Abbott had recently become the Prime Minister in Australia and the Labour Party no longer had the majority. Liberals, strangely that they are called liberals, are pretty much anti-immigration, and seemingly anti-women, as we watched Tony Abbott become the Minister for Women, and for Aboriginals’s Indigenous Affairs while he was in office. The liberals have nearly completely undercut the government funded science branch CSIRO, nearly put out the Australian Broadcasting System which is truly the only for-Australia station on radio and television, and reduced funding in schools and universities. It was a crazy time, it still is. There’s a new PM, Malcolm Turnbull, but he’s just the same, he just presents better at face value.

Being an immigrant during this tumultuous time, has come with a lot of hardships. Honestly it’s nothing compared to the people who are kept at Manus Island. It is nothing compared to Syrian refugees searching for a new home. My hardship has been an emotional one. Not knowing that you have a base, being told one thing and then years going by before you actually know what’s going on, has left a bitter taste in my mouth, and in my husband’s as well. The first time when the application didn’t go through they basically said that we needed to have started a bank account or had some kind of authority confirmation like buying real estate together, from the day we started our exclusive relationship, in order to count as that being our “start” date. It would be so suspicious if when entering into a relationship, on the day you have the all important exclusive talk about being committed to one another, that you then say, “okay, now lets share a bank account”, who would do that? It’s so far from what is normal that we were appalled that this was the requirement. We had tons of support from multiple articles posted in the paper about us, to starting our own business, but apparently that wasn’t enough. Since we lived in a share house, there weren’t any actual receipts saying that we both lived there, and although we honestly could have forged them, we didn’t because it’s not the right thing to do, even though it was true, we both did live at the same address even in those early days.

I’m glad that I’ve been granted PR, and if anything it makes me want to, in the future, run for council or get involved in politics, specifically because of immigration, and to humanise the process again. The emotional toll is so big, and the rule makers obviously don’t understand this, or rather they don’t care. I am also certain that my health was impacted because of this. Having to carry that stress for so many years, with a newborn, impacted me, how could it not. Now I need to somehow brighten this thought, move forward in a new way, and start life again knowing I can be here. This includes taking some classes so I can reskill to create new opportunities for this new life. Six years after starting a life with my now husband, we get to start again.

If I were to do it again, and I know that this isn’t possible, but I would have applied straight away, as soon as we qualified for the visa, because looking at that old timeline, I would have already had citizenship. I can’t do anything about it now, but that is exactly what I would tell someone else now, don’t wait, just do it, do it now, you never know what the future holds, you never know how the political climate can change, and you have to think about you and your family first and foremost, and take the least risky way.

The Present Baby

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Today I had the pleasure of holding a brand new baby. A new life that is not even a full week old, and I got to be there, holding her, supporting her, allowing her to rest and sleep in my arms. She was so peaceful and just emitted this feeling that everything was wonderful in the world. I haven’t held many babies prior to joining my Mother’s Group, and I am trying to recall if I’ve ever held a baby this young other than my own, and I don’t have any distinctly clear memories of it, and maybe that’s why today felt so big.

She was dressed in a pearly white knitted dress with a pearly white ribbon bow to tie it together, matching little knitted booties, and a matching knitted bonnet. The outfit had never been worn before and it was so fitting for such a brand new little being, this pearly divine white knitted outfit for this divinely serene baby, truly a perfect match.

She mostly slept while I was holding her. When it came time for her meal, she had to be undressed a bit to cool down and wake her up for her feed. So I had the pleasure of slowly taking off one tiny little bootie at a time, then her bonnet carefully from the top of her head, and then slowly I untied the little waistband pearly white ribbon and opened up her little dress jacket, and took her little delicate arms out of each sleeve. I was like opening the best present on your birthday, or the best present on Christmas when you’re a kid. I was completely filled with joy in this process, and that I was able to do it.

There are other ways of having newborns, and I experienced one first hand myself today, and it gives me hope that if we ever do it again, that it can be different, and I welcome that wholeheartedly.

Self Esteem

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I’ve come to realise that over the past two or more years, almost three really, I have had a huge blow to my self-esteem. There have been highs of course and a lot of really incredibly rich experiences, none of which I would take back. However, the blows to my self-esteem have been a lot actually. Not being able to find a job, even a menial job after graduating was really challenging, and it seemed mostly to revolve around me not having Permanent Residency, but it was hard. There was a constant struggle with some renters at the farm which caused so much stress and a feeling of frustration and not being able to just get other people to do the right thing like take care of the animals. We had a lovely celebration for our wedding amidst it all, but were dealing with this other stuff before the wedding, during the honeymoon and afterwards. The there was the not-so-easy pregnancy. I shouldnt’ even sugar coat it, it was a very complicated pregnancy. It was like my body wasn’t cooperating with me. Then there was the crazy flatmates that totally lied to us and then left without ever paying the money they owed and finding out that they had betrayed us by speaking so poorly about us to our other flatmates who we are actually still friends with these years later. That was hard to deal with especially while pregnant. Then the craziness of being in the hospital for  the weeks leading up to my son’s birth, having to take pain killers, having to some how accept whatever outcomes because my body wasn’t coping and the baby was in jeopardy. Then the actual emergency delivery which was so very traumatic. Followed by the five weeks of hell in the NICU going back and forth not knowing what to do all the while having to leave my new son at the hospital. Not being able to take care of him, or myself at that stage. Then the constant looming feeling of death due to a dislodged blood clot and the twice daily self harm I had to do by way of injections of blood thinners. This was al wearing me down something fierce. Then having a baby, a new baby at home and not knowing what to do and having hardly any support with my husband working big 12 hour shifts, and having zero family support here in the city, and not knowing anyone. I felt so alone and helpless and incapable. Even now still not knowing about if I have permanent residency, waiting for over two years after being told that it would go right through in six months by the immigration department, and it clearly not happening that way. Every once in a while I still look through jobs and am always hung up on the lack of having PR. It sucks. Then all the time wasted with the banks and talking about buying the other part of the farm land for years now and still not being in a position to actually do it and feeling like I just can’t get it together to make it happen.  Also the huge amount of money wasted with the program that I signed up for to build my own business as a way to get around having PR, and feeling like they didn’t have the right support in place to help me and me not knowing how to help myself all amidst the craziness of everything going on at the farm and in my body and then as a new mum. And as of late some unknown illness that was pointing to a cyst on my ovary that may or may not have burst and who the hell knows why the ovarian tumour marker really is elevated, it’s all so unknown. and somehow I need to be okay with this. And all the while knowing that my own dad died last year within a month of being diagnosed with cancer, jesus, it’s been a rough last couple of years. It’s been so crazy. I need a win.

Sometimes, I feel like I can only express myself so much, like I’ve just been beaten down and I don’t like that feeling. I play nicely, I am in an area of Sydney where I feel like I need to and it’s in part for companionship but mostly because I need them or I have needed them to help me and support me through this phase of becoming a parent.

I need a win in a major way. I keep having this strong desire to have my own place, our own house that we own so that I can have a sense of permanency, a sense of ownership, and a sense of pride almost. It’s like I need to grab onto the part of making a home so that I can fulfil this sense of feeling incapable, or helpless, or just not able to do what I need to do.

I am not always so blue about this and about what I’ve struggled with, but I really have struggled in the past stretch of time, more than I readily like to admit. I also got a degree in a field that I am both fascinated and horrified by, and don’t want to actually work in it. I feel like my plans are always changing yet nothing really changes. That’s not actually true though, things have been changing, but not at a pace that I want, and I need to be okay with this.

Sometimes I feel like maybe I need to try some antidepressants, and I know that isn’t really the answer, the answer is adjusting my life so that I don’t feel like this. I am not sure exactly how to do that right now, as a mum, as a wife, where I am. I just know how to make the smaller changes, so I do. My biological clock is still ticking and I’m so overtly aware of it it makes me question like every choice right now as well. Do we make another baby, do I go back to school, what do I do? I feel like there are so many choices, so many options, and at the same time, I feel a bit stuck, a big weighted down, a big heavy in it all.