Grief

On Sunday it is father's day and it will be the third one without my dad. It is also my birthday. I never thought much about father's day or birthdays while both my parents were alive, I never thought about what it would be like after they passed away.

I feel a lot of grief on special occasions, mother's day, father's day. birthdays, christmas. I look at my kids, at the presents they have made for special people in their lives and the inevitable thoughts creep into my mind: dad would love that, mum would be so proud, I wish dad could see this, I wish mum could hear what they just said, I wish my parents were here.

I know I am not the only one to feel this, I have spoken to friends who have lost one or both of their parents. I see the statuses they put on social media and I know they feel the same as I do. My heart goes out to them you cannot know what it feels like to lose someone close to you until it happens to you.

I know that I will miss my parents a little bit more on special occasions. I know that I will wish I could call my dad on Sunday, I know that I will wish I could take my kids shopping for presents for my parents, I know this. It happens every year but every year I will wake up and the shock of the grief will wash over me. No matter how prepared I think I am, no matter how many times in the days leading up to it I remind myself, it doesn't matter. I still feel the grief and I am shocked by how much I feel it.

When my mum died, almost 11 years ago, I was told that it would get easier over time. It doesn't. It changes. It feels different over time and some anniversaries are harder than others. The first anniversaries of my parents deaths were incredibly hard, last year, on the tenth anniversary of my mum's death was extremely challenging. It is surreal to think that it has been a decade since she died, and a lot has happened in that decade. It has been years since both my parents died, my mum very suddenly and my dad after a long illness, and I still hear a song or see something on TV or Facebook and immediately want to tell my parents about it but then I remember I can't and you feel that sense of loss all over again.

Sunday will be no different than the past few years. I will miss both my parents. I will wish I could call my dad to say 'happy father's day' and I will wish I could tell them about what the kids have done for my birthday. I will miss them and take a few moments to think about them and all they did for me while growing up.

I hope all the fathers have a wonderful fathers day and to everyone who has lost their father, be kind to yourself and allow yourself to miss them.

Why we need to talk about mental illness

I have anxiety. I used to be ashamed of it and would attempt to hide it from everyone, only my nearest and dearest knew. I didn't want people to know because I was scared of what people would think or say. I was worried for being judged for something I cannot help.

I shudder when I see articles online about a suicide or mental illness, don't get me wrong, I am glad these issues are in the public sphere and people are taking notice because mental illness is something we do need to talk about but I hate to see the comments on the likes of Facebook about it. There are supportive comments, and I love reading them but you also have the ignorant comments. Comments that are dangerous and stereotypical. Comments that can make people with a mental illness not speak up.

Mental health needs to be understood. It is a topic that many people do not understand. I have anxiety and I have been told that I only go to the doctor 'to get high' when I get anti - anxiety medication and I can 'pull myself out'. It is not that simple. People with a mental illness be it anxiety, depression, bipolar or schizophrenia want nothing more than their illness to disappear, much like a cancer patient or a diabetic. I have never seen anyone tell those people to 'pull themselves out of it' or that they are weak or attention seekers. If it is not okay for physical illness, why is it okay for mental illness? To put it simply it's not.

We really need to normalise mental illness. We need to see it for what it is - an illness. We need to support anyone with any sort of mental health condition to enable them to live as well as they can. We need to support community centres offering mental health support and most importantly, not judge someone for having a mental health condition. We need to keep the conversation going so that anyone with a mental health condition feels like they are not alone. I have recently read some blog posts on mental illness - in particular anxiety - and it has helped immeasurably. How much better would people with a mental illness feel if the stigma was taken away? If they saw people talking about it? If it was treated as any other illness?

Yesterday was a bad day for my anxiety. It happens and I push through and know that I will come out the other side. Twitter can be marvellous for that. I had some good conversations with people about what we can all do to improve our mental health. Yesterday may have been bad, today may also be bad but do you know what? It will end. The bad days will end. The anxiety will disappear and all will be good again. Is the anxiety always going to be an issue? maybe. Maybe not. Is anxiety part of me? yes Is anxiety all who I am? Absolutely not.

Introducing....The Electrician

I have mentioned my partner a few times in passing in blog posts over the past 18 months. I mentioned I had a new partner and that was about it. I have decided he really should have a post in his honour. To do this I needed to come up with a name for him, I do not use other people's real names in my blog posts unless they are some random famous person I am talking about or a fictional character although I guess then I am not really using their real names either but I digress.

I had to come up with a name so I sat and thought about it, what could I call him? I could think of plenty of wildly inappropriate names, He is a tradie so he could have been called Hot Tradie or The Tradie, there was always The Booklover but I am a booklover too and if he was to be called that then I would also want to be called that and that could get confusing very quickly. I decided on The Electrician because, well, I am not particularly creative and that is what he does for a living so it works.

The Electrician and I met many years ago at primary school. We became friends and then in high school we dated for, well, not long at all because I dumped him. I wrote him a letter explaining that I could not be his girlfriend anymore for reasons I now do not clearly remember, it had something to do with my friends not approving or something along those lines. The Electrician loves to constantly torture remind me of this letter. He tells me I broke his heart. I remind him that we were young teenagers and had no idea what a relationship was, let alone what love was. After I left the school we were both at we lost contact for a few years and found each other on Facebook again. We spoke occasionally and liked statuses and photos and then we met up again and became good friends.

We had gone out for The Electrician's birthday in December 2015 and we got a bit drunk tipsy. That night, completely unexpectedly he decided to kiss me despite us having a conversation earlier that day about me not wanting to be with anyone and we were 'unofficially' together from then on. We officially decided to be together in March 2016 and we have been happy ever since. He is kind and loving and generous. The Electrician took on my kids as his own and supported me through some hard times and celebrated during the happy times.

The Electrician also, well, annoys me. He likes to move closer and closer to me in bed so I am right at the edge, at risk of falling out and sometimes he elbows me in the back when he is asleep but I am sure I annoy him too. I make him watch chick flicks and give a vague answer when he asks when I will get my drivers' licence. He can consume his body weight in pizza which I guess doesn't annoy me, I just don't like pizza that much.

We have an ongoing argument that will probably never end. He is wrong and I am right. He loves white chocolate and white chocolate just isn't chocolate. We will never agree. I fear that we will be 80 and still having this argument.

So there you have it, that is The Electrician. I am showing him this post before I publish it so hopefully he likes it, even though I did say he was wrong.

A Letter to my Mum

Dear Mum,
Last December it had been ten years since you have been gone. Ten years. A decade. I have found myself thinking about that day in December a lot lately. I remember thinking I wasn't going to get through the first hours and days, let alone years. In the past ten years there are been incredible highs and incredible lows and not a day goes by where I don't think of you.

I was pregnant with Tinkerbell when you died, you were so excited to become an Oma. She is ten now and you would be so proud of her, she definitely has the dutch temper and loves anything to do with the dutch. I wish you were here to tell her all the stories you told me of your parents and how they came from the Netherlands, I wish you could tell her about the Netherlands and make her dutch meals, just like you did with me.

You never met Tinkerbell or the boys and I wish you had. They love hearing about their Oma and I know you would have all had many happy times, playing together and you spoiling them with ice cream and lollies. You always did love kids. You would love Tinkerbell's stubbornness and the way Pirate Monkey is so laid back and imaginative. You would love the way Mate just bursts into song randomly, with or without music and you would love the passion that is in Bubba.

I miss you every day. I miss our conversations and our nightly 7:30 pm phone call. I miss the mornings where we would have a coffee and a biscuit and talk. I miss going to the movies with you and shopping with you. I miss volunteering at animal shelters with you. You always did love animals.

You loved all animals, from spiders to elephants. You would love our dog. She is friendly and cute and playful. You would talk to any animal you came across and stop to pat them. Animals loved you and would trust you straight away, even if you were a stranger. You taught me to love animals and respect them, a lesson I have always remembered.

I was very angry at you for taking your own life, for a long time. I was 17 when you died and I needed you more than ever. How could you leave me this way? How could you do that to me? I was angry for years. I was angry when Tinkerbell was born, wishing you could meet your granddaughter. I was angry when she first slept through the night because you were the one I wanted to tell first, I was angry when she first crawled, ate her first solids and first started walking. I was angry when she had her first day of kinder and school, when she said her first words, when she asked about you because I wanted to share all of this with you. I wanted you to be able to see her do these things. I wanted her to know her Oma and have a close bond with you, just like I had with Oma. I got angry again when the boys all reached their milestones.

A few years ago I spoke to a psychologist and the anger went away. I understood you and understood why you chose to do what you did. It may not have been the right choice but finally I understood and what I felt was compassion. Compassion for what you had been through in your life, compassion for the utter despair you felt. I cried for a week straight when the anger left.

I think about you every day, I think about you multiple times a day. I think about you when the kids do something funny or cute or achieve something in their life. I think about you when I am sad or happy or angry. You were one of the few people who could calm me down when I was angry. You never judged me for choices I made or mistakes that happened. You would give me advice, I would quite often ignore it and then you would be waiting to help fix it when the time came.

I didn't show you how grateful I was to you, how I appreciated everything you did for me. I didn't tell you I loved you enough. I didn't hug you enough, I thought I had decades left to do that. I am sorry for that. I wish I told you how much you meant to me.

I wish you were there when dad died. You would have known exactly what to say throughout his illness and in death too. I know you had been divorced for many many years but I know you still cared and he did too. He came to your funeral and cried.

Mum you will be forever in my heart and I will remember you every day just as I have for the past 10 years. I love you.
Lynette

I Am Exhausted

I am exhausted. I am not talking about tiredness as such (although I am tired). I am exhausted from, well, having opinions. It seems I have had an opinion on everything lately and it is exhausting. It is exhausting when you feel very passionately about something so you argue your point multiple times, on multiple social networks, over multiple days that turn into multiple weeks.

It will be obvious what the first issue I have passionately argued about these past few weeks. It is the issue that everyone is talking about in Australia right now, it is the issue that has divided the whole of Australia into either the YES camp or NO camp. It is the issue that has made Magda Szubanski tirelessly campaign for the YES camp. I am, of course, talking about marriage equality and the stupid amount of money the government is spending on a non - legally binding vote. I have written countless Facebook statuses and Twitter updates on this matter, I also wrote a blog post, which you can read here. It has caused many heated debates in the last few weeks.

I have also gotten into debates with the group that call themselves the Australian Brotherhood of Fathers. This has been ongoing for months and while the issues are not as well known as marriage equality, it has been exhausting listening to misogynistic, abusive men abuse and demean anyone who does not agree with them. I wrote a blog post on them, which you can read here. After I wrote that blog post it got a lot worse, including members threatening to bash lawyers. I will not go into what else they have said because a) it sickens me and b) as previously mentioned, I am exhausted.

That may only be two issues and you may be thinking that's not too bad, I would be able to deal with that and perhaps, dear reader, you are right. The problem is that I seem to have an opinion on everything. It could be the weather, or the latest news or even what I think about what someone is wearing but the opinions will not stop.

I grew up in a family where women and children were not encouraged to have their own opinions so I stayed quiet, in my past relationships I was expected not to have an opinion so I stayed quiet. Then I met my partner (actually I met him in primary school) and he encouraged me to have an opinion. This of course, in theory was a wonderful thing, I am just not sure he, or I, were expecting me to have so many opinions. My loving partner has patiently listened to my opinions and assures me he likes that I have opinions, which is good because I have many but I digress.

I have debates with my kids over Harry Potter, songs, games, toys and Star Wars. I am asked my opinion on a range of social issues and Dr McDreamy by my partner and friends. I see statuses on Twitter and Facebook and can't help but have an opinion. I am on forums where the sole purpose is for someone to write their problems and you give an opinion on what they should do about it.

When I was thinking about what my next blog post should be about I realised something, I have no more opinions left to give, I have given to many opinions lately and now I am opinionated out. So this blog post is specifically about not giving an opinion.

I am sure my opinions will come back, with the next political issue, or if spandex comes back or well if I see something I either passionately agree or disagree with.

Magnus Bane..........

I have always loved Dr. McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy and fantasised about him regularly. I have always loved Grey's Anatomy too (Seriously, I have a Grey's clock). Lately however Dr. McDreamy has taken a backseat, and not only because he is no longer in Grey's. I have come to love another character, a character just as if not more dreamy than Dr. McDreamy himself. Who am I talking about you ask? Who am I fantasy cheating on with Dr. McDreamy? Magnus Bane, of course.

Magnus Bane is a character in the Netflix show Shadowhunters. I came across it after signing up for Netflix a few months ago. It is based on one of my favourite book series, The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare. I had been reading the books for years (Seriously, so worth the read), so I was familiar with the character of Magnus Bane. Magnus is a warlock and a wonderfully funny one at that (I suppose being immortal you need a sense of humour), he was one of my favourite characters in the book because of his wonderful one liners but, well, the actor who plays Magnus is HOT!!!

Harry Shum Jr plays Magnus Bane, he was also in Glee but he was more of a background character. Magnus smells like sandalwood according to the books, a smell which I love and is a funny and charming character. He has everything I need in a fantasy man and Tuesday nights were the nights I watched Shadowhunters and would drool over watch Magnus Bane. I would be incredibly happy when he took his shirt off and wished he would do it more.

This post was originally just going to be full of gushing compliments to Magnus Bane, he really does deserve them but then it got me to thinking about fantasy men and women in general. Everyone I know has at least one fantasy man or woman, quite often several. Mine have been, in no particular order, Magnus Bane, Dr. McDreamy, Channing Tatum and Vin Diesel. Many women I know have also had multiple fantasy men. In my friendship group, fantasy men and women seem to be celebrities so there is no fear of the person leaving their spouse for their fantasy man/woman. Out of curiosity I asked my partner what he would do if Magnus Bane was here and we were in the throes of some amorous activity (yes, we quite often have conversations like this). He looked at me and said well, there would be no more Magnus Bane.

I am not worried about Magnus Bane after my partner said this for quite obvious reasons: I don't live in the US where he is so I am never going to walk past him on the street, Magnus Bane is a fictional character and lastly, I love my partner so amorous activities will happen with no-one but him.

The season 2 finale of Shadowhunters was last Tuesday so now I will be watching re-runs of the show until the new season starts next year. Now if only Magnus Bane were real and here...............

Choices and Change

I really did not know what I was going to title this blog post. I really do not know what I am going to say as I am writing it but that is okay. Much like this blog post, my life for the past few years has been uncertain, a lot has changed and it will continue to change and be uncertain for the foreseeable future.

I am not working at the moment and I have a lot going on. I cannot go into some aspects of my life right now but at the moment I am waiting on some decisions and perhaps, after those decisions have been made, my life will be a little more certain. Because of what has been happening in my life I have thought about choices as well as change. I will first talk about choices.

I suppose we make choices from the time we are young children. We choose who our friends are, we choose if we will listen to our parents and we choose if we will do our homework. The choices as a young child are quite often simple and there are generally no long term consequences for our choices. As we get older, our choices become more important and the consequences become more serious. We may not get the mark we want in year 12 or we may meddle with drugs and alcohol or crime and the consequences from that can be far reaching. We may take dangerous and foolish risks and many teenagers do this without thinking. Then there are other choices, a big one we have to make as we finish high school, what career do we want?

I have always struggled with why society expects a teenager around the age of 18 to know what they want to do with the rest of their life. At 18 I was obsessed with the show Law and Order:SVU and I wanted a career in the criminal justice field, for a long time I considered a career as a criminologist, in fact I started studying it but found, very quickly that it was not something I wanted to do. I have had many jobs since that time and none have even come close to criminal justice. Even now, as I sit here writing this, I have no idea what I am going to do for the rest of my life, there is always writing but it is very hard to make a living out of it, but I digress. Why do we expect 18 year olds to know what career they want? I know very few people who knew what they wanted to do at 18. The majority of people I know have changed career at least once, or are currently working towards a career in a totally different field to what they currently do. I am writing a book at the moment and there was no way I would have thought I would ever do that when I was 18. I guess what I am trying to say is that it is okay not to know what you want to do, it is okay to not know what choice to make.

Now I come to change. I have written about change on my blog before, the last few years has come with a lot of change, both good and bad and sometimes neither, just different. Change can be overwhelming, it can be exhausting and scary, the unknown always is. It can also be exciting, good and exactly what we need.

All the change that has happened in my life in the past few years has been, at times, terrifying. Starting a new relationship was exciting and also terrifying at the same time, changes to the family dynamic, even things as simple as changing houses were exciting, terrifying and at times exhausting but most of the changes have worked out for the better. Some of the changes I wish didn't happen and I am currently working to make better but that is part of life.

I have been thinking of a career, I know I need change and right at this minute I am not in a position to work but hopefully that will change soon. I have spent many hours trawling the internet to think about what career I want going forward. I know that I will never go back to any of the jobs I have had in the past, some I can no longer see myself doing and others just were not right for me. I am very lucky and grateful that I have an amazingly supportive partner who understands what I am going through right now and why I cannot work and works to help support both of us, he reads this blog normally so hopefully he will see this and see how grateful I am to him.

I have struggled a lot with choices I have made in the past and the changes that have happened the last few years a lot recently and then I sat and thought about it properly. Everyone makes mistakes. Some people make bigger mistakes than others but it is part of life and quite often you learn something from them and some mistakes can be made into a positive learning experience. After my last relationship ended I often thought about the choices I had made that led to to that relationship, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I learnt what to look  out for in the future.

The changes that have happened recently I have struggled with even more. I don't like change at the best of times and a lot of these changes were beyond my control, which I liked even less, but some of the changes have worked out to be good, others not so much. The wonderful thing about change is there is always the option of the situation changing again.

Marriage Equality and Australia.

If you live in Australia you will have heard about the same sex marriage plebiscite on TV, Social media, Facebook, Twitter, the radio and maybe from friends or family. It is everywhere and it seems people are either for it or against it. There is no escape.

I passionately believe in Marriage Equality and if you are on my Facebook friends list, that will have been very obvious. The majority of people I surround myself with also want marriage equality but like me, a lot do not want this plebiscite. If we were talking about other issues affecting one group of people in the community such as women's rights would we have this plebiscite? No we would not, so why are we having it for this issue? Why are we asking the public to cast a vote that is not legally binding? Why are we spending $122 million which could be used elsewhere on this plebiscite?

                                          Image from Australian Marriage Equality

Imagine what $122 million dollars could do for Domestic Violence services in Australia? On average one woman a week is killed by a partner or former partner, one in three women will experience physical assault and one in five women will experience sexual assault in her lifetime. This is an epidemic. Surely the money could be better spent on ensuring the safety of women and children escaping domestic violence?

For the past week I have spent many hours reading articles and watching debates on Marriage Equality and I ended up on the Australian Christian Lobby's website and I was shocked by what they claimed will happen if Australia has marriage equality. I will list what they say below, along with my thoughts on their reasoning:

Redefining marriage will threaten free speech
 I am not sure how having marriage equality will do this to be honest. Marriage does not affect            free speech now and I cannot see that changing. The only thing I can think of is they are                      worried that they may be charged with discrimination but the thing is, discrimination laws,                  including laws of discrimination against sexual orientation already exist. I was a bit worried that          they only said that redefining marriage will threaten free speech and did not explain how. It                  seems to be fear mongering to me.

Redefining marriage can take away your religious freedom
Again, this is not explained. Having marriage equality is not taking away anyone's rights to practice their chosen religion. Religion should not be coming into marriage equality, it is not a religious issue, it is a human rights issue. Every consenting adult should have the right to marry who they want, no matter if the person they love is the opposite gender or the same. Love is love.

Redefining marriage is the step before redefining gender itself
I had to reread this sentence when I first read through the reasons to vote no. I have no idea what they mean by this because, yet again, no explanation was given. Transgender people deserve love, compassion and support to be who they are. Transgender people deserve protection from bullying and deserve to have rights along with every other person on this planet. I have spoken to transgender people before and not one of them have wanted anything but acceptance. The bullying and persecution transgender people face is devastating, suicide rates are high and depression is rampant and for the Australian Christian Lobby to use them as a reason to vote no is down right disgusting. Transgender rights are a different matter entirely and it is not fair to bring that into the marriage equality debate. This statement is also rather presumptuous.

Redefining marriage takes away children's rights - all children deserve a mum and a dad
By the time I got to their last point I was quite angry. Marriage equality does not take away children's' rights, it actually gives children of same sex couples equal rights to their peers. Same sex couples can adopt and foster. These children have been given up for adoption because the birth mother felt it was best for the child. Social workers and the courts have assessed that these same sex couples are suitable for adoption, they have the training and knowledge to make this decision more than an organisation like the Australian Christian Lobby.  I will fix the last eight words of their sentence. All children deserve loving parents. This point that they make could then go on to attack single parents, widowed parents or families where one parent travels for work for months at a time. Where does it stop? Should we not be protecting all children by teaching them that there are many different types of family?

I had a look around the Australian Christian Lobby's website and on no page does it explain their reasoning for objecting to marriage equality. This concerns me as it does come across as fear mongering, whether they mean it to or not. I cannot take their views seriously if they cannot at least explain why they have made these statements.

Another reason I have heard from christians is that marriage is to start a family. I have many problems with this statement. This is not always the case, there are plenty of married couples who choose not to have children or cannot have children. Marriage is supposed to be about committing your life to the person you love, promising them to love them through sickness and health, to support them and cherish them. In traditional marriage vows, it does not cover the topic of children.

I have gay and lesbian friends and nothing would make me happier than to see them have the legal right to marry their partners. These people do not want to take over the church or force people into same sex marriage, they just want to be equal. They want to be able to model a loving relationship for their children, they want to be able to show that legal commitment to each other. Why would anyone, christian or otherwise want to stop a loving couple from marrying?

If you are not in a same sex relationship then marriage equality will not affect you, so why try and stop it? Why try and stop loving couples from marrying? Why try to keep same sex couples unequal? Why get in the way of their happiness?

Marriage equality will not ruin the institution of marriage. Reality TV shows like married at first sight is more of a threat, husbands acting like they own their wives is more of a threat, women being encouraged to stay with abusive husbands for the sake of their marriage is more of a threat to the institution of marriage.

I will be voting yes to marriage equality, along with my partner and many of my friends and I encourage you to do the same. You still have time to enrol to vote or update your details. Tell the government it is time to have marriage equality. It is time to say yes. It is time to come into the future.

I have thought about this topic a lot lately. I have often found myself wondering if in ten years, twenty years, fifty years, will we look back on this the way we do when we look back to when women could not vote? Indigenous Australians could not walk into a pub? The stolen generation? slavery? I have a feeling future generations will be ashamed of how long it took us to achieve marriage equality.