What to do?

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Really I feel like I am in a space where I need to just be happy that I am a full time mum and carer of a beautifully intelligent little boy. The truth is that I feel like I am in a slump. I feel like I need a change, like a big holiday away, or overall changing up the scene I’m in, or leaving it altogether with my family of course. Since I’ve been sick for the last week and half it certainly has not helped anything. Topping it off that bub is also sick which means that I’ve had to not really rest myself because I have to make sure my baby is okay. I understand that this is how it goes being a mum.

It just makes me feel a bit overwhelmed and with a thirst for doing something more. When I am healthy again I’ll be returning to the gym and having my son in the kids care area for two hours at a time, and that will help, to get out of my head and into my body. Hopefully clarity will come with sweat and time alone.

I guess that’s it, I don’t have the freedom to just go out and do what I want right now because I chose to be a mom and a full time stay at home one at that. It’s strange because I also want that, but I want freedom too. I want both and I am not balancing it very well right now. It’s like my own ambitions and self care are on a back seat. By self care, I don’t just mean body work and grooming, I mean like spending time alone just being creative not just at home, and not just during nap times because at that moment I just want to rest. Again, all of this is inflamed because I am sick and have been for a week. I know that, I see that, I feel it too.

Also financially things have been very tight this year, even though we did make a trip overseas, our day to day life is limited to an extent of doing more things because there isn’t money to do it. I can’t help but notice a big part of that is that we have another person to look after plus only one income. I get it. I just don’t know how to balance it all out yet.

Location and ReJoining

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Perhaps if you were to return to a location that you had once lived, where you were a different person and you understand that the nostalgic part of it is just that, then it could be successful. Ways to make it successful would be to acknowledge that you are indeed a different person, the place itself, even if it does seem the same at first glance, is also different. There’s no way that any of it is the same as it was, especially if time has passed since living there.

Perhaps taking the stance of embodying the new you, the new role you’ll be playing as you reenter would be helpful. Creating new contacts and a new sense of community could also be very helpful. The thing is anything you create when you return, would be more aligned with who you are and who you are becoming. Of course, feel out the old ways you used to live as well to see if they resonate, but do not get stuck in the slippery slope of nostalgia, and choose based on now.

It would take more will power and probably more discipline, but it’s entirely possible, to rejoin with a location that you had left, and together, make something entirely new and better.

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.

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily

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We are meant for so much more. When things don’t go smoothly and easily, it’s because they aren’t meant to. When things flow smoothly it’s because they are meant to. Absolutely you have to prepare for either stream, but even then, the preparation would be easy. Life is easy if you allow it to be. It doesn’t have to be a constant battle of rowing upstream. It can really be the “merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream” situation, if we allow it. I am so open to allowing that ease into my life. Yes, please. Thank you.

The Nostalgic Point of No Return

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Recently I’ve been having a realisation that I am in a relationship with my family and we as a whole have relationships with other people, family units, and places.

There comes a point in a relationship, when after you have left it, there is a time when you can return and are able to make amends, things can patch back together. However, after that time, say 2 years, if you go back, it’s mostly due to nostalgia of what was, of who the other person was, of who you were, and none of it is based in what is really happening now in your reality. When returning to a place that has already passed its point of nostalgic no return, at first you’ll be fooled by your self of all the great things, you’ll see it all through rose coloured glasses and things will feel almost better than ever before. However, in a week, the reality starts to creep in. You’ll start noticing all the things that made you decide to leave in the first place. You’ll notice that the show of good behaviour fades away and the truth of the situation, of the people, surface showing a reality that you don’t really want to be a part of anymore.

Two years, is a major amount of time when your growth game is strong. In two years, you can grow apart something fierce and still have the nostalgia to make you think that’s what you want, but in moments of clarity you realise that’s exactly what it is. The old place is the old place that entertained the old you. It’s where you grew in that stage of life. It’s a fine place to visit, but you don’t live in nostalgia as it stunts your growth.

In two years, from leaving the lovely regional area where I met my husband, we have lived in suburbs outside of Australia’s most populous city, we have had a child together, our whole lives have shifted and we are well and truly different people than we were when we first moved here. How can we ever really go back to what was, because we are not that anymore, that place is not the same either, we have all changed. AND this is all okay.

The better option is to take what you’ve learned and move into the new version of you, of your family, and align it with a location that fits your aspirations best, based on who you are now and who you are becoming. A place that supports your growth, your overall well being and your direction in life. Along with that, all of the right players will come in, at the right time, to help along this path, because it is the right path to take. It will be easy, so easy that we’ll look back at how hard the other path has been to get back to and realise that it was because that other path was never the path we were really meant to travel down together, as a family. It’s heartbreaking and liberating at the same time.

Life is meant to be easy. Life is meant to be joyous and fun. Life is meant to have more laughter than tears. Life is meant to be shared. Life flows along when you are in the path that you are supposed to be in. When aligned with the truth, all things fall into place, it’s that simple, it’s what happens. I have experienced this time and time again in my own personal life. The only time it gets hard is when I am out of sync.

By releasing attachment to the old relationship, the old path, the former town where growth occurred, it gives space for the new opportunities to arise, and they will.

It’s a blessing that things change. I also know it’s a blessing to feel that now I get to change with my family, as a unit. We together get to manifest our new lives together. We together get to build our lives how we want them, letting go of any past expectations, letting go of anyone else’s version of life. We get to forge ahead together and have the blessed life we deserve. <3

Entertainment Holds Emotional Space

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I love how entertainment in pretty much all it’s guises holds space for feeling emotions that aren’t always easy to hold, or for feelings that you want more of. I have been grieving a bit of my old life where I was completely a stay at home mum and the primary carer of my son. It’s been small steps but nonetheless I can feel the heaviness of it all. Along with that I heard some information about myself and my parents from when I was very small which just confirmed that my parents always had another agenda other than being parents, and it hurt me. The combination of all of this has created a very heavy heart. I have cried, I have been a bit distraught. I have sought out music to soothe, and movies to cry along with.

Most recently I have found that the movie Me Before You just makes me bawl, I mean full on sobbing, chin quivering kind of crying. It follows a storyline of a pretty happy go lucky guy who then becomes a paraplegic from the neck down who then gets a carer who wants to convince him not to end his life in six months which is his plan. It’s sad. I mean it’s a really sad story. A good guy who gets hit by a motorcycle while he’s walking around town and his life is changed forever. I know how things can change in an instant and I’m thankful consistently that in my head on collision, I came out relatively unscathed, with just a scar across my face to show of it physically. This poor guy is in pain and doesn’t accept that this is his new life, and I get that, I totally get that and there isn’t a way for him to get better, it’s irreversible. Then comes this lovely, quirky carer who brings another layer of emotion and in the end he still makes his decision. She is so sad that he would choose euthanasia, but I understand his part as well. He talks about how he will never be able to give her the life she deserves, and that he never wants her to ever have a regret that she chose a life caring for him like that. In the end he reminds her via a letter he wrote before, that when she is ever sad, to live well, and just live. Oh it’s so sad and it ends with a feeling of the importance of living life fully right now.

I feel like I have used this movie as a safe space for me to really experience the deep emotions that are surrounding my own life transitions right now. I can feel that I need to let it out, and I really appreciate that I have the option of using media to help me let this go.

From my own experience with grief, after my father passed away last year, I came to realise that all of my emotions are like their own little wells. That each well has a spring and maybe another little pool of water. At first it’s just the top of the spring that is experienced, but as the emotion goes deeper it’s like I come to one of the pools, but if I keep going, I notice that all of the memories where I have experienced that feeling, all seem to be held in that bottom well, that super deep space within myself. It’s almost by accessing one of those memories I can then use that to dive deeper into that feeling and explore more. It’s actually really fascinating.

So by having a safe guided experience, that is totally normal in society, like sitting in the dark watching something like a dream on the big screen while we feel everything, I am allowed to fully express my emotions there. I can scream if I feel scared, I can cover my eyes and my ears, I can laugh a hearty laugh with my head tiled back, I can cry and cry like a big baby, and it’s all so very okay.

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.

Sixth of August

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Five years ago today, my now husband and I had a very important conversation that changed both of our lives forever. We gently and vulnerably spoke about being exclusive in our relationship, being just with one another. This was a huge deal, we had been dating for a couple of months, and it was a wild first stretch. The thing is I knew from the moment I saw him at that little community theatre, that he was someone I had to know more, that I knew I would love, I just knew it.

So having the conversion, is almost like putting yourself out there big time, it could have gone another way. Sometimes people are not ready, sometimes it’s just not the right time, and that opportunity is missed. It would have been tragic and I would have been heartbroken if it went the other way. I knew if we verbally committed to one another right then, that he would be my partner for life. I just knew it. I hadn’t thought about marriage and having a child, that was the furthest from my mind, I just knew I needed to be with him and that we had exploring within ourselves and with each other that needed to happen, together.

How lucky that we both were open to the possibility and open to being committed, and open to taking that next step. To me, at that stage, it was essentially like getting married, or at minimum getting engaged if we were to put it in mainstream terms. To me, to commit my love, my attention, my life with him all started on that day, that evening rather. Such a big deal. So life changing. I am so lucky.

So when people count their marriage anniversary, sure I’ll celebrate that too, but this day, to me, is the most important one. The sixth of August is the day that changed my life forever, and I am so amazingly grateful.

How could they?

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My stomach is turning, my throat is tight, my brow is furrowed. I have blocked out the majority of my childhood, only a glimpse or two remain from before I was in my teens. Recently, as in about 20 minutes ago, I learned from a close relative, whom I trust, that when I was 4 or 6 weeks old, that my parents asked this relative to look after me for a couple of hours, so they could go on a motorcycle ride, and did not come back for 3 days. THREE DAYS! Three days they left me, their premature baby of 6 weeks, with someone else.

My relative only brought this up after asking if I had put my own child into preschool or daycare yet. I said I hadn’t, and that I honestly didn’t really trust it, at least not until he is old enough to speak. This is a deep untrusting level I have, and maybe this is where it comes from. She said that I was so different, like the opposite of my own parents, and told me that story jokingly. She of course didn’t realise how it would effect me, neither did I.

I feel so disappointed. I feel so sad. I feel so very angry and pissed off. How could they do this to me? Why have children if you aren’t going to take care of them? Really, and me? How selfish of them, it really is the opposite of how I am with my own child. No wonder I was reluctant to have children.

This all shows that even from the beginning they didn’t want to be parents. I had this rosey view now that I have my own child, that maybe in their early days they did care, that we really did have a family atmosphere, but clearly that is a fantasy, and certainly not one based on any memories, just hope.

External, internal talk: I love you Jennifer. I know this is hard for you. It is so very unlike what you would do. Try to have compassion. You are special, you have gone through so very much and look how far you have come. I know it hurts. I know it hurts to feel like someone doesn’t care, I know it must be devastating to feel like your parents didn’t care, but they did their best. You are highly resilient, and no matter what happened as a child, you are not destined to repeat their lives nor their mistakes. You are better than that. You are a beautiful, thoughtful human being, and you get to choose every single day how you operate in the world. Let this be fuel to make you better. Let this be fuel to understand your own self reliance, your own self worth that you have developed because of you.

I really feel gutted right now. NO wonder I’ve had self worth issues. NO wonder I’ve had issues with security. No wonder. Without a solid base, everything else is hard to build. I am so lucky that I have chosen this conscious route and have rebuilt myself as an adult. It still hurts though, uncovering a bit of the truth that is so utterly revealing.

Also just from a baby’s perspective, not having your parents there, for days on end. Not having the security of your parents for days on end. I know that can be overcome, like it has with Abraham after him being in the NICU, something I did not choose. However, it has taken conscious effort to rebuild that trust, no wonder I never really trusted my parents.

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.