Growing into me part 2

I thought I was ready for my kids to leave home. I thought that I would be used to them not being around because after their Dad and I split they were often gone for stretches of time. In fact my eldest moved in with his Dad when he was eleven and then came back to me at 14 so I figured it wouldn't be so hard when they all finally started leaving home.

Turns out I was wrong.

Nothing really prepares you for your kids leaving home.

Sure, after blending our families together and the messiness of that and it never really feeling like it is blended completely, you get to a point where you are just longing for them all to leave home so you can have some time just being a couple. ( although we are not supposed to admit that or worse, say it out loud)You know how in recipes it always says " blend until smooth"  when you are a blended family it's never smooth. There are always the lumps of the other parents. The lumps of the kids not wanting to follow your rules because Mum/Dad does it differently at their house. The lumps of acting out, acting up, the shit storms and the dramas.

And then my last baby flew the nest  four years ago and after 28 years of being a Mum I looked around and wondered what the hell happened? I looked at the man that was my husband and I wondered, quietly to myself if this was all there was now? Just us?  Now, don't get me wrong I love him dearly and he is my best friend but there had always been the buffer of the kids and all their problems and dramas to deal with and then suddenly it was just us.

That moment of being "just us" and as the saying goes "be careful what you wish for- you just might get it"  well it was here now . So what was I going to do with it?

I had already been playing around with blogging and trying, trying, trying to get some kind of business off the ground and so I started writing a book.

I loved it. Writing is cathartic. You can pour everything out onto the page. You can write to your heart's content but putting it out there for someone else to see? That's a different story all together. Well , actually the putting it out there wasn't the problem. Hitting "Publish" on the very first blog post? that took a while. Pacing back and forth from the computer and then finally hitting the button and ohh, the relief once it was done. And the world didn't end.

A few people started reading it. Some left comments on my earlier posts ( thanks so much for that!) I got my first hateful message and survived ( take that trolls!) ( in fact, the one and only message I got like that made me giggle as it was so random and ridiculous).

What has been really scary is putting my first ever book up for sale. I took the "easy"  way ( and yes, those quote marks are on purpose. There is nothing easy about self publishing. It is just a whole lot more technical know how you have to have tucked up your sleeve) and self published

This year has been amazing. A steep learning curve of self publishing, Kindle and soon to be print on demand. And now the marketing kicks in; tweeting, pinning, blogging, facebooking and anything else I can think of. Getting people to find and buy my book all the while creating the program to go with it and working on the next one and making notes on all the other ideas that are now flowing like an unstoppable river and at the same time maintaining the house ( I'm a shocking housewife) and channeling my inner Domestic Goddess to  keep the kombucha flowing, keep the kefir fermenting, make the apple butter, freeze the other fruits that we have coming ripe and make dinner from scratch every night.

And now my youngest is moving back home. He's been living overseas for the past two years and is now faced with a health issue and needs some support. So he'll be living with us for a few months while we get that sorted.

You see kids never completely leave home. They always come back. For a visit. Sometimes to regroup before moving overseas. Sometimes to heal a relationship break up. Sometimes with their family for a long visit.

Home is always home.

If you want to check out my book, The Goddess Guide to Sex, Love and Life on Amazon click the link.

Marriage is ......

Last week Seth Adam Smith wrote  blog post explaining  the advice his father gave him about marriage. That marriage isn't about you , it is about making your partner happy.

Here's an excerpt " My dad giving his response to my concerns was such a moment for me. With a knowing smile he said, “Seth, you’re being totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple: marriage isn’t for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family. Not just for the in-laws and all of that nonsense, but for your future children. Who do you want to help you raise them? Who do you want to influence them? Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.”

And while it made me go "awww sweet" It also got me thinking.

Because marriage is not just about family or making your partner happy or having kids.

No. Marriage is far, far more than that.

Try telling a gay couple that marriage is about the family that they will create. Oh wait, they can't unless they adopt or have a surrogate.

Try telling an infertile couple that they are marrying for a family.


Try telling an older couple that marriage is about creating a family.

Marriage is for sharing your self completely with another human being.

Marriage is about love and commitment.

Marriage is about wanting to spend the rest of  your life with the same person, through all the highs and lows.

Marriage is a declaration, to the world that this person, this person standing next to you is the one that you love with your whole heart.

If you enter into marriage aiming to make the other person happy, regardless of your own happiness you will fail. Marriage , great marriage, is about growing together and supporting each other in your paths.

When I married the love of my life we already had 7 kids between us ( 3 sons, mine, four daughters, his) and we had no intention or possibility of having any more.

Our wedding day with 6 of our kids

Did that make us think that marriage wasn't for us?
No.

Our marriage was a way for us to declare to the world that we were committed, to each other and to the relationship.

You see most second marriages fail.  Especially when there are kids involved. Don't shoot the messenger! I'm merely quoting statistics.

It took us a long time to get to the point of marrying. We were together 17 years before we married.

And it was well worth the wait. Why?

Because we had worked through our baggage and were more committed to each other than ever.

So, yeah marriage is about way, way more than creating a family or  making the other person happy and it definitely is about YOU.

What did you think of Seth's blog? What are your views on what a marriage is? I would love to hear your comments.

Letting Go Part Two

I've been a bit quiet lately. My youngest son moved home for the month of February before he headed off overseas so I have been spending a lot of time connecting with him.

Yesterday I took him to the airport and said good bye. Not entirely sure when I will get to see him again. Any of you who are parents and have experienced this will  know what I'm talking about.

When they move out of home to go flatting  you know that  there will be visits home, whether it's for Christmas or weddings or just because, kids always come home. But when they head off overseas they are off for the adventure of a lifetime.

It has almost become a rite of passage for Kiwi (New Zealand) kids. We are so far from everything that , inevitably, the kids head off overseas. Some come home after a few years and some never do.

My son was an accident. He was the baby I had when I was separated from his father. He has always been my boy as his father and I never got back together. sure he has had contact with his dad. His father was there at his birth and stuck around in NZ for the first few months before heading back to the US. And that has been the pattern throughout my son's  life, Dad would drop in for a few months, the kids would go visit him and then he would return to the US.

My current husband met me when I was pregnant and has been a constant in our lives ever since. He is the man that has raised my youngest son, although my son has always known exactly who his father is, I made sure of that. I took photos of them together and hung them by his bed and every nap time and every bed time we talked about who that man in the picture holding him was, from 5 months onwards.

It is only recently that my son has told me about how much he felt he missed out by never living with me and his Dad together as a family. I always knew that it would be an issue but never realized the full impact on him. He would hear his brothers talk about things we had done as a family and he felt excluded.

I did my best. I gave him a family with my husband and his daughters but it is never the same.

So my son has set off to the US to live with his Dad for a while and sort out his relationship to this man who is his father, who has never fathered him. I know that this is what he needs to do. I know that this is vital for him to fully grow into the man he is meant to be. I have known that this was going to happen at some point from the time he went to visit his Dad for 6 weeks when he was 11. He came home from that trip and told me "I'm a city kid and I want to live over there one day".

I have been mentally preparing myself for this day.

It still takes some adjusting to. as I've said before letting go is never easy.

My embarrassing body

I was a skinny girl and grew into a skinny women. Was I happy? No. I always felt that I was too skinny or, even when I was skinny I somehow felt fat.
I have spent my life, like most women, obsessing over my body. Trying to make it fit some perceived ideal in my mind.

Image by Sue Fitzmaurice

When I lay on the beach I would flip onto my stomach if anyone approached as I felt my ribs and hips stuck out too much.
I wanted my calves to be fatter so they would fill out boots better.

Then I had kids and I still wasn't happy with the way I looked. My tummy was now more squishy and my husband wanted me to look like I had before, even though I was still far from fat. He nagged just as my father had nagged my mother.

We moved to a new town and were now living closer to some old friends of his. He was biker and she was small, blond and petite. Next to her I felt ungainly and huge ( I wasn't). I am tall with broad shoulders, more of an Amazon than a Barbie. It didn't help that my (ex) husband and his mate would constantly make comments on my figure, how hot I would look if only I took better care of myself. It didn't stop his mate from constantly hitting on me though.

I finally left him only to get pregnant to him a couple of years later ( long story!) . Then I had my son, had a tubal ligation ( not letting THAT happen again!), turned thirty, got divorced and started dating the love of my life.
The weight fell off me at this point and I finally felt sexy, hot and fabulous. Although when I look at  photos of me then I was waaaayyyyy too thin. My hair also started falling out from all the stress and I ended up having to bottle feed my boy from about 3 months as my milk dried up.

 Two months later all the weight I lost started piling on. I went to the doctor feeling like my body was out of whack but was told everything was normal. Since then my weight has continued to climb. I have had numerous visits to doctors, always to be told the same thing, everything is normal.

It took me a long time to adjust to being a fat girl after years of being underweight, the image in my head was still a skinny girl.

My husband loves me regardless of my size. He has seen me fat and thin and everything in between. What he loves about me has nothing to do with the way I look and everything to do with who I am. When I see myself through his eyes I realize that I am beautiful, talented, loving and compassionate.

Quote by J K Rowling

I am much more than my body, My size is irrelevant, what matters most is what comes from my heart.

I am learning to love my body. Some days are easier than others. When I take the time to remember all that my body does for me it is far easier to love it.

Every day we are bombarded with images of stick thin models and actresses. They are photoshopped to within an inch of their live so that it no longer even resembles the person in real life.The actresses are on constant diets and exercise regimes to maintain their image and are mocked for looking anything less than stellar in any photos, whether they are walking the red carpet or hanging out at the beach. Julia Roberts is famous for saying even she doesn't look like Julia Roberts when she wakes up in the morning.

I would like to start a love your body revolution. For the next month make a pledge to greet yourself each morning as you look in the mirror by saying "Good morning Gorgeous. I Love you. Have a great day." It will seem strange at first but stick with it and say it like you mean it. Leave me a comment to let me know how you get on and to say you have taken the pledge.

Things I've learned about domestic violence

Things I learned before I was 7:

(1) Keep your head down

As far as anyone knows we are a nice, normal family ( that's me on the end)

(2) Don't make eye contact

(3) Be a good girl

(4) Beatings happen at school too so it must be normal

(5) How to read body language so you can gauge the mood of everyone in a room

(6)  How to read the vibration in the home so you know whether to venture out of your room

(7) Be quiet

(8) Make yourself small

(9) The house feels different when dad is not around

(10) Anger is not ok

Things I learned in in my teens:

(1) Leave home as soon as you can ( my brother left when I was 13 and he never had much to do with the rest of us after that)

(2)  Leaving can be dangerous (when my eldest sister tried to leave home Dad broke her boyfriends nose - she left anyway)

(3) Even if the guy looks and seems nothing like you father, he might be exactly the same

(4) Emotional and psychological abuse leave no physical marks

(5) Being called a "whore"by your father never really leaves you

(6) Marrying a guy covered in tattoos, wears leathers and chains probably not the smartest decision you'll ever make.

Things I learned in my twenties: 

First child before I was 21

(1) Moving away from home is still not far enough

(2) Moving to be near his family not a great idea

(3) Isolation means you have no escape

(4) Being called a "bitch"often enough bounces off you after awhile

(5) Just because he married you doesn't mean he will stand up for you against (a) his family or (b) his friends. You really are on your own

(6)  When you finally leave him  your father will say "I never liked him anyway" and "All (insert husbands surname here) are bastards anyway" in front of your children who bear that name and when you point this out replies "Well we'll  just have to see how they turn out"

(7) You are stronger than you realise

(8) You are  more like your father than you realise

(9) Apologising to your kids when you yell to loud or (still makes me cringe) when you hit them (only once but still makes me feel ill) means you are actually better and more loving than your father ever was

Things I learned in my thirties:
 (1) even after you leave he will make you feel small and useless as a mother

Me with my three sons

(2) All the justifications that you have made for the violence when you were young are not true - it wasn't just until I was8, it affected all of us and lots of fathers work hard but aren't violent

(3) All the anger you have stored inside you will start to leak out and your kids will say you are an angry person

(4) Your kids will also know how much that they  are loved because you will tell them daily and hug them too

(5) You can find love again , with a great man

Things I learned in my forties:
(1) Healing takes time

(2) Embracing your shadow, realising that you are angry too takes all the power away from it

(3) Letting go of anger and resentment and forgiving yourself is a lifetime of work and is totally worth it

(4) Facing up to your family and letting them know how the violence affected you will mean that you lose your family of birth because they are still totally immersed in denial. Getting ok with that will take time.

(5) Finding your soul family will be the most healing of all

(6) Loving yourself is vital

My wedding, with all of our kids (one missing)

(7) Blending a family together takes time but is worth it.

(8) Seeing your kids grow into awesome men and beautiful women means the cycle can be broken and that LOVE wins






Things I know: 

(1) - (10) Violence is never ok.

If you are experiencing violence in your home please take action. Talk to someone, anyone because it is more common than you realise and people will help you if you let them. There is no shame involved, it happens in all walks of life and it can be life threatening. Nobody deserves it, no matter what the perpetrator says.