Fourteen years ago, I awoke in my childhood bedroom … well got up anyway … I was too excited to sleep much. My bridesmaid, my Mum and I quickly ate breakfast and took ourselves down to the salon for ‘hair and makeup’. We emerged hours later, coiffed and painted, but still recognisable. Everyone ate lunch … not me … I couldn’t eat for the…
Security
Last week, I fell. Emotionally. Too many stressors on top of an already stressful life. …and then the person who keeps work flowing my way resigned. and I panicked.Because she is the only person in admin who gets it. But I met with her, and while she isn’t able to give me more long-term certainty, she moved mountains to keep me employed for…
RUOK?
Its “RUOK?” day in Australia today. I wrote this on my blog as an initial gut response to some facebook “friends” who flippantly asked me the question in a facebook message….. RUOK is a great concept … for other people. But if someone asks me today, I may slap them.I. Am. Not. OK. And asking me will not make me OK. and if I am not OK I will not…
Scared
This past week has been tough. Really tough. I was doing OK for a long while, surviving birthdays, parties and mother’s day … but this past week has brought me crashing down with a thud.There are many reasons for this – my son’s upcoming “procedure” and the worry over his ongoing health, my sister-in-law having some very scary health…
They just don’t get it…
I make no secret of the fact that I want a permanent teaching gig at the kids’ school. I changed career a couple of years ago so that I could spend more time with my kids, and my aim has always been to work in a primary school, preferably the same one that the kids attend. But those jobs are hard to come by. So I took a position teaching maths…
Nine years ago today…..
…. I became a mother. I had finally achieved my life’s ambition – to be a wife and mother and have my very own perfect family. Seriously. That’s always what I wanted to be, despite my prizes and academic awards and the push from every direction to focus on my career and climb that fickle beast known as “the ladder”.…and I achieved…
I get by with a little help from my friends
As I write this, hundreds of widows and widowers are half a world away at Camp Widow. Finding others who don’t look at them with pity, but with knowing. With love. With friendship…..and while part of me would love to have been able to go, the other part of me knows that it is just not logistically nor financially possible right now (and no,…
The screaming
It started when the policeman told me he was dead. I was still sitting in my car in my parent’s driveway at the time. It was loud. It was hysterical. It was guttural. It was primal. It continued as I was led inside the house, up the stairs. It went on for a long time before I wore myself out.It stopped long enough to listen to the police and the…
A long-term thing.
My daughter is 8 years old. She will be 9 soon. Her Dad died when she was 7. She is a bright, beautiful, thoughtful, intelligent child. My blog name for her is Miss K. … …and Miss K has had a rough day.For Miss K, most days are rough: she misses her Dad. But she copes with her day at school. No….. she does more than that …
My “Mr Right”
I recently heard about another widow I know …widowed after me … she has found someone new. She is quite in love. This makes me sad.Not about her happiness. Just that I am nowhere NEAR being there. I don’t even want to look for someone new, even though I just want to be happily married again Right Now. ….but I want to be happily married to…
My name is Amanda and this is my story…
I met my soul-mate on February 6, 1993: it was love at first sight. Greg was the fun-loving, farm-boy to my shy, inquisitive city-girl. He was an engineer who loved all things mechanical and I was in the midst of my PhD in eco-botany. We just clicked straight away and seemed always to know what the other was thinking.We married in 1997 and after…
You Can’t Fix Me
Sometimes I want to scream at people: “You Can’t Fix Me!” …because sometimes, I get so sick of hearing that I need to “look after myself” or “do something for myself” or “make it happen” or “chin up” or “forge ahead.”Sometimes it’s just too much when friends and colleagues minimize my grief in their misguided belief…