Life, Love and the Everyday

    After a lovely morning outing with my friend Aileen to see Mama Mia: Here We Go Again, I felt this need to get back out into nature. I went in search of something. Something that connected me to my spirit. I was thinking of going a little further out but my gut was telling me to stay a little closer to home, to take a different route than my usual one. It was a lovely surprise when I arrived at my destination to find what I was looking for. Tucked away on the corner of a quiet suburb was a clearing with an empty, solitary bench with a small pocket of trees nestled behind it. Walking through those trees made me think of Mary, the mother of Jesus and how it may have been somewhere like this that an Archangel appeared to her and told her that her life would soon change in the most unexpected, miraculous way. Though Mary had her doubts about her suitability for this God-given task due to her youth and status of a recently engaged woman, she agreed to ...

Every now and then, I lie awake through the night and don't get to sleep until the early hours of the morning. Having had experience as a midnight worrier, I would would like to share what I have learnt from my own experience in hope that it may help people get a better good night's sleep. Here are a few things that I have found that contribute to sleepless nights.  1) Stress/Anxiety  You may slip under your comfy duvet and may still be thinking about something that happened at work, you may be worried about the health of a loved one, words you may have had with someone or if you just sat there and listened while someone steam-rolled over you and you're obsessing over five different greetings you're going to say next time you see them.  (Only two out of five are polite.) What Worked For Me: I have found that lying awake and obsessing over things does not change the outcome of what is meant to happen. I find that writing about my day in a journal before bed h...

Burdens can be heavy. They can take their toll on your bank balance, your thoughts and energy. They can take form as knowledge and secrets or a dark tunnel where you do not know what lies ahead, but its dark and you cannot go back to where you were. All you know is that where ever you are going has to be better than what you have left behind. And if it's not, theres hope because you can see possibilites. I had a revelation about burdens a few weeks ago. At the beginning of that day I felt awful, there was a yucky and sludgy feeling in my gut. I felt burdened with my own feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. There was this audio transcribing job that I really wanted and I was knocked back. Mix that with unpaid bills and its been a rough couple of months financially. I have only had one interview and my applications kept getting politely declined or put on a slush pile to be reconsidered - even the jobs that required common-sense, courtesy, a phone and a  internet connection neede...

Fears are like pebbles. You can carry one or two in your hands and feel comfortable with carrying them. Over time when faced with situations you can feel them press against your hands. You remember a fear you have carried since childhood that you have never grown out of, or you are remembering a situation where you felt frightened and incompetent to deal with. Last year I realised I was carrying a lot of pebbles that weighed me down. Fear of darkness. Fear of failure. Fear of standing on my own. Fear of public speaking. Last year I was thrown to my fears, like Daniel to the lions. I had two choices. I could cower and let the fears consume me. Or I could tame them. I did cower a little before my fears, I tried to hide from them and outrun them. If my fears were lions, I would have thrown them the chunkiest hunks of meat everyday so they would leave me alone! Thankfully, I made a friend called Morgan at a Hens Picnic last year and aside from introducing me to Herbalife, she a...

I watched the Disney movies, I read and hoard romance novels (I still do). But nothing could have prepared me for what true love is - until I met my husband Alan. That first night that I met Alan on a couch at a birthday party back in November 2011 - I heard a voice in my heart say that this man would be a big part in my life. I couldn't believe it then. I was dazzled by the fact that this gorgeous, down-to-earth guy had sat down a few centimetres down from me and struck up a conversation. I was really shy and unsure of myself back then, but being in Alan's presence I felt safe and happy. Fast forward seven years and we have been through a lot of things together. We have had fun and laughed, we've cried and mourned. We've moved through moments of uncertainty, frustration and petty annoyances and we apologise when one of us have unintentionally hurt the other. We grew in trust and faith, we've looked after each other in times of feast and famine, in health and s...