Journey

2019 Was About Receiving Stability

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Receive. This was my chosen word of the year for 2019. I set the intention that I would be open to receiving and allowing this year, and my oh my it has been an incredible year.

In 2019…

We bought our very own house!

We Bought a House!

This is the very first time I’ve ever owned a house, and the sense of stability and permanence it has brought with me is incredible. Just to know that we don’t have to vacate in six months, or that we can change the house around and add nails into walls if we choose, and paint, has been so freeing. We bought a house that is within our means, with plenty of space, in a tight knit community, walking distance to school for my oldest son who is starting kindergarten, it’s a reasonable commute time for my husband to go into the office, and it has expansive views.

Citizenship is Granted

I was granted citizenship in Australia after being in the country for nine years and ten months, being married here, having children here, owning a business here, owning a home here, graduating from university here, essentially creating my entire world to be here in Australia. The day I shook hands with the Mayor and accepted my citizenship was full of joy and relief. I applied for my passport and received it a couple of weeks later, and I feel so official. Having the right to stay in the country where my life is based is beyond measure for a sense of security for me.

Stepping Up

This year I also gave a presentation about Customer Marketing to a Mums in Business Group and LOVED being up there guiding and sharing with the business women effective, easy ways to connect and appreciate their customers. That was a huge shift for me, and I would love to do more of that, be on stage with authority sharing something that benefits everyone so that we all rise together. I am such a supporter of women supporting women, and I feel so happy that I got to do it in such an influential way. Prior to that I had done stopped in with a few businesses and discussed marketing tactics that they might use and that felt great to use my problem solving skills, business knowledge, and pattern matching skills to help them, it was highly fun for me.

Appreciation and Self Love Habits

I kept a nightly appreciation journal all year which felt so good. At the end of each night I would take the time to write out a page of the highlights of my day, a little habit that makes a huge impact.

Earlier in the year I did a 40 day challenge with myself and two other women that involved a nightly mirror work session of saying “I Love You’ to myself, which also felt so nourishing.

Entertainment

Had the absolute pleasure of seeing Tash Sultana perform live and I LOVED dancing so freely!

Loved laughing at a Comedy Show with my good friend.

Travel

We enjoyed an awesome holiday at Jervis Bay with it’s crystal clear water and white sand. We also enjoyed a holiday in Ballina with the gentle Shaw’s Bay. We had our very first family solo camping trip in the South Coast of New South Wales in a tiny coastal village called Gerroa where Abraham looked under rocks for crabs and Ari monkey crawled all over!

Lots of Great Books!

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg was an eye opener for me. The understanding that we do so much of what we do without thinking about it, and reading that backed up with evidence was mind blowing.

Atomic Habits by James Clear was an excellent practical follow on from Duhigg’s book, and I appreciated the notion that it takes just one tiny step right now to create the change. I appreciated how he explained the cue/trigger, craving, routine, reward loop so well and that what is rewarded is repeated. To create change in habits make things obvious, attractive, and rewarded, and to minimise a habit make things obscure, unattractive, and without reward.

Influence by Robert Cialdini

 

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Online Coaching

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It’s a mixture of feelings, of disgust, guilt, and feeling like I may have missed the boat. There are so many other life coaches, and business coaches, and health coaches, and parenting coaches, and every other kind of coach imaginable now online. I see them in my news feed every single day. I see their stories of how they were broke and look at them now all tanned in a holiday location living the mobile lifestyle. Otherwise I see the ones that are just starting out who are still in their office slash bedroom telling you how they can help you change your life. I don’t believe them all. I can’t.

I mean, how do you know who to trust afterall? I paid ten grand for a program that wasn’t actually ready to be taken, by a couple of coaches who had incredible marketing skills and a fast talking salesperson who boasted that she was great at NLP, which I now know is basically the ability to use words and ideas to convince you that you made the choice yourself. It’s all kinda bullshit. I took the course as it was being developed, and I got in on the “discount” early bird price because I was told it was going to double in price, even though they had just started out. Now when I look at their website, nothing has changed, and their social media presence pretty much stopped at the same time I had to stop to have my baby. Perhaps none of us were ready. However, if I am going to spend that much money, I expect that they know what they are doing, what they are talking about, and are able to actually help me along.

This industry of coaching has certainly tapped into the more ambitious self help people out there. Those of us who know we have more to offer but for one reason or another, continue “healing”. I cannot underestimate the power of spending time on yourself and learning what makes you tick. It is important, it does help you understand why you are a maniac when it comes to hearing other people eat, or why you have to have order in your life to feel productive. The thing is that once you are in that healing phase, it’s actually hard to climb out of it and actually use it. So much insecurity arises, so much doubt, so much wanting to be the one who is taking the coddled journey. It’s low risk if you are only helping yourself, and for someone like me who wants to help others and does help others every single day but not in that big grand internet coaching way that I see advertised to me every 8 posts on social media, it can get discouraging.

to be continued…

Everything Matters

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The stance “Everything Matters” and “Nothing Matters” are actually a part of the same polarity. They are each the extreme end on the spectrum of what matters.

After sitting days on end in silent meditation I had come to the conclusion that nothing really mattered in my mind. However, even though in my mind I thought that, I still strove to do my very best in my interactions, I began an open and honest relationship with myself about my emotions, and started really taking better care of my body of what I consumed.

So if the spectrum of nothing matters and everything matters are on the same line, then I can in turn think about the fact that everything matters, as I do live with the underlying idea that indeed, everything that I do, think, say, feel, matters. For some reason though in my mind I defaulted to “nothing matters” even though my actions showed that “everything matters”.

Now that this thought has arisen in my reality again, I am choosing consciously to also align my mind with the thought that I have been practicing that Everything Matters. Everything I do matters. Everything I say matters. Everything I think matters. Everything I feel matters. Everything I am matters. Everything matters. This is how I change the world.

Navigating the Waters

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In the last week, I have turned a corner, a major corner. I have started to allow someone else to look after my child in a maximum of 2 hour increments. This is a big deal. He’s now almost 22 months, and prior to now, I pretty much count on one hand the number of times someone else has looked after him besides my husband or myself.

I have so many feelings that are arising from this. Perhaps this is what primary carers of little people go through with this transition. Simultaneously wanting to have freedom and independence, but at the same time wanting to make sure that my little person is completely taken care of. The feeling of, YES FINALLY, I’m Doing Something For Myself, AND the feeling of guilt that someone else is looking after my most precious being, who is completely defenceless, completely incapable of articulating with words anything that goes on.

Exhale. I am doing that a lot, deep breathing. He is going to the day care option that is available at the gym I have joined. It’s all super new, totally customer oriented, and really top of the line. The classes are incredible, the machines are the newest available, the instructors are top notch, the child care is incredible. Even in the baby area, they have a huge play section that rivals the places you have to pay to go into for $12 for 2 hours where you have to buy an obligatory coffee as well. The carers are so lovely, so friendly, so very obviously kid people with big hearts and huge smiles.

All of this is good, I know it. I do. Me progressing forward by moving my body and getting back into shape, along with allowing the next stage of our lives to happen by me letting go and accepting help with my child. I know all of this, I know it’s truly all good. There is still a fountain of feelings coming up and I can’t ignore them. I even invited a fellow Mum from my mum and bub group to come over and watch a tear jerking movie that left us both sobbing, just so we could let the emotions out in a safe place.

The new chapter is beginning and I am grieving the last one. It’s normal, and it’s okay. I have loads of self compassion for myself and am being as gentle with me as I possibly can in this transition. I am also doing my best to be there for my son while he transitions, because it’s also a major shift for him as well. Such a big deal.

Immigration: The Waiting Place

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Dr. Suess talks about the dreaded Waiting Place in his book “Oh the Places You’ll Go.” I’ve read this book so many times and it really is one of my favourites. I follows the young protagonist through life where the hometown is left behind, where you soar to great heights, and also have the times when you are in a slump but overall, you always get back up and keep going. It’s a great story and one that my therapist gave me after dealing with the head on collision. She even read it out loud to me while I sat on the couch with her chair pulled up closely to me. It was special and I still think fondly about it.

The Waiting Place is this place where you don’t want to be. It’s the place where life is put on hold because you have to wait for something or someone. For the past almost two years, I have been in that dreaded waiting place. It sucks. Honestly it really sucks. Due to being rather independent, and by the advice given through the Immigration hotline, we didn’t apply for a Partner Visa, and subsequent Permanent Residency because if we waited until after the 3 year anniversary of us being exclusive, then the application would pass right through and I’d be granted the PR straight away. So we waited until after that date, which happens to be August, and applied in September, in between my hospital stays just before bub came. Like we didn’t need another thing to go askew at that time, really? It still makes me mad even though I try to let it go.

We didn’t get a pass because there wasn’t an official document, such as a real estate form, or a joint bank account opened literally from the day we declared our exclusivity to one another. I would be really suspicious if someone I was dating from another country did say something like “hey let’s be together AND let’s open a joint bank account today”. I would be so suspicious. I don’t think that normal people think of things like that, we certainly didn’t. So even though there is a huge record of everything else, including newspaper articles, lots of statutory declarations by friends and David’s family, we were still put on hold… and back to the Waiting Place for another year.

The 2 year mark of applying is coming up, so I am hopeful that PR will finally be granted. The thing is that, unless you’ve ever been in a situation like this, you have no idea how much stress it actually causes. Really, at this point because I am on a Partner Visa (which was only granted after a year of being on a Bridging Visa, that I can literally be asked to leave the country where my entire life is now, where my husband and my child are. I try not to get all doomsday about it, but it really sucks to not have that feeling of security in life. It makes me teary eyed just thinking about how fragile it all is. It also makes me angry, or upset rather, that we have done every single thing correctly, we truly are in love and committed to one another, we are married, we do have a child, I even went to University here so it’s not like I’m a fly by night person, and we still haven’t been granted the okay to permanently reside here, or rather I haven’t. The thing is that it does effect my husband too. We’ve had to have the conversation of what if… and if we would move to America, which would cause all kinds of upheaval. It’s such a challenge and it really feels unfair.

When looking at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, at the very bottom is your shelter, the place where you live. Now for the first few years here, I was here on a working holiday visa, and then a medical treatment visa and I accepted that I didn’t have that foundation set, and still worked with it, I mean I kind of had to since I needed to stay in the country to recover from the accident, which was a long and challenging process. My soon to be husband and I met during my medical treatment visa, and even when we decided to be exclusive, I knew that the foundation was still not there and didn’t want to apply for a partner visa straight away because unfortunately I have had relationships that have not worked out and I wanted our love to grow as it would with me being independent, and us not having to think about anything else like but to just be romantic, and enjoy one another. So when I was on a student visa for a couple of years, we continued to develop our relationship, became engaged, all of life was really starting to flourish, the way that true love does, organically, authentically, nicely, and without any pressure of government or any outside agency. I accepted at that time that I was still not setting my foundation in my hierarchy of needs, but I we were solid in our relationship and we knew the next steps would come.

After I graduated it was suggested time and again when I would call to immigration, and when i would look online, that for time and money sake, it would be most efficient to apply after that magical 3 year mark of our anniversary. So instead of applying for Partner Visa, I went for the Post Graduate Work Stream visa, and we had projected to apply for the PR in the next stage, again after the 3 years. Well during my Work Visa, we got married, fell pregnant on our wedding day, and then had a crazy difficult pregnancy. At the very beginning of the third trimester, I was in hospital, and it wasn’t looking so good. So in between hospital stays, we went and applied for PR. It had been after the 3 years, and it should just go on through, as it was suggested strongly by so many people from Immigration.

For the next almost 2 years, the lack of foundation has been so apparent and something I cannot help but think about, specifically because it isn’t just myself and my husband who we need to be concerned with, we have a child and that child is completely dependent upon the two of us, not just one if I have to leave. It’s such a horrible position to be in. The lack of foundation when I have a family to think about and care for, is really heavy on my heart, a lot, consistently. I try my best to not let it get to me and just trust that it will all be okay, I will get PR and my family and I can actually live life like we really do live here, all of us, all of us. This is making me cry right now as I type this. It really sucks. It’s so unnecessary to have to go through this, especially with a small child.

I am so ready to move out of the Waiting Place and move on with our lives. I don’t want this to continue taking up mental headspace. I want to really build my life with my husband and our child with a firm solid foundation in place.

I’ve come a long way

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Recently someone friended me on Facebook. They sent a personal message saying that they knew me when I was little and that they are so proud that I made it out. Yes, made it out, because that is what people say where I am from. She also said she doesn’t keep in contact with anyone else from my family. Along with asking if I remember her. Honestly I didn’t remember her and I told her that. Then she tried to jog my memory and it’s vague, it’s really vague actually, and that’s fine. She said she didn’t want to bring up old stuff that I’ve probably blocked out. Well, she is right. I have blocked out a lot of things in my life, likely as a survival tactic. I think leaving the place where I grew up was also a deep inbuilt survival tactic for me.

I often forget about this crazy upbringing in the way that I really did have a drastically different starting point that most people. I forget how far I have come, and how much I have had to overcome in order to move forward in my life and to progress in the ways that I have. I forget all of this and when I do, I am hard on myself for not achieving more, for not realising my potential yet. Really though, it’s because I continue to set new and bigger goals for myself, and I stretch myself time and again to new heights. I need not forget this when I start feeling down about what i have or have not been accomplishing as of late in regards to business and financial endeavours.

It really is like I have been taking a huge flight of stairs in my life, and I stop at each landing along the way for a moment and I can look back at all of the flights I’ve already climbed, but also see how many more I have to go. Looking back to gain perspective of my growth can be super helpful and very grounding for me. From an outsider perspective, I’ve already made it, I’ve already become so much more than the life I started out in had projected for me. I am really fucking resilient and I always get back up and always keep moving forward. Always.

Now I need to give myself credit regularly so I know how worthy, how capable, how strong, how I am more than enough and of course how resilient I am.

Why do I think it needs to be hard?

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Somewhere deep inside of my programming there is something that has encoded that in order for me to justify what i am doing, it has to be hard, it has to be hard earned, it cannot be easy, it has to be something that I overcome in order to succeed at.

It’s like I stifle myself in the chapter I am in by making it harder than it needs to be. Even when I was healing after the head on collision, sure it was a challenge, but I probably made it harder than it needed to be. I do look to the bright side and maybe it’s because I put myself into places that need that outlook? It’s an interesting thought to dive into.

Even when I was travelling like a nomad, I wasn’t happy in it, not really, yeah there were moments, but overall, there was a sadness about me, I notice it looking back. I even made that foot loose and fancy free stage of my life harder than it needed to be searching for a place to settle down and create a new version of my life, when of course in hindsight, that stage was just a nomadic stage that wasn’t meant for roots, or at least I didn’t allow those roots to form.

I wonder if it also has to do with my ambitious nature, of wanting to be someone who is recognised, of wanting to be someone who is making a positive difference in the world, of wanting to be someone who really is helping others be their best selves. I wonder if all along I’ve been doing that, but have overlooked it because it didn’t fit what my version of success based on other people’s version of success, looked like. I wonder if my grass is always greener approach has actually taken away from the life I have been in, in favour of the life I have been searching for, or have been aiming to create.

Even now, living in the Western Suburbs of Sydney, I make it harder on myself that it has to be. I look at bad side of this area like the crime, graffiti, the fast food eating people not taking care of themselves culture. I do focus a lot on the Mum and Bubs that I have become close to here, and that is the bright spot, along with living not too far from the Blue Mountains, but beyond that I have been having this strong feeling for almost two years since being here, that this is not where I belong, this isn’t where my family belongs, and have been pinning for a move back to the lush land of the Northern Rivers where we were living. It’s like I have made this stage harder because of that, because up until recently I wasn’t as grateful as I could have been about being here, and that definitely tainted my view and my experience.

Now as a stay at home mum with my son, I know I have made that harder than it needs to be based on the feedback loop of sharing how challenging it was. I’m still sitting with that because it was liberating to say that it was challenging and that it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies. I wonder now if it’s also part of the fact that I was feeling a bit helpless in it all, that I hadn’t taken a job and done that route and put bub in daycare, or had a live in demi pair the whole time. It’s almost like at this stage of life, I really really should have only focused on being a mum. Not focused on trying to start a business, trying to do anything other than learn how to be a mother, and learn how to be a wife and a mother. It’s a big deal, a really big deal, and like anything I want to do my very best at it, and by side tracking with these other things, it hasn’t helped me along. It was me trying to grab at things to help save myself from myself or something, I’m not really sure, but it didn’t stick, so there must’ve been a reason behind it all.

As long as I ease into being a stay at home mum with my bub, life is good. I am happier, I am more content in my life, I am a better partner, I am more creative, all of life is better. When I try to add on too many things, I get out of balance, and that makes me frustrated and those feelings come out in various ways that aren’t so great and that sucks. I want an easy flowing life. I also want to have all the resources to have an easy flowing life so that my husband isn’t worked to the bone. I know in time, it will all be okay and I will do other things, but for now, I really do want to focus on being a mother and being the best woman I can possibly be. The rest will work itself out, I know it will.

This all feels very revelatory for me. It feels like I am uncovering truths about myself and how I operate and they can make a difference in my overall happiness and the happiness of my family, which is highly important to me. I really hadn’t planned to have a life like this when I was younger, so I really am learning a lot as I go, in every moment. Plus my growth game is strong and I value that I am always evolving into a better version of myself.

So what can I do now? Be easier on myself. Allow the flow. Really focus on the goodness in life, right here, right now. Be grateful. Create. Rest. Love. Allow things to happen as they will. Be present. It’s all happening now.