Josephine Moon's Blog, page 23

The Darkness in the Centre

Spotlight has just won the 2016 Academy Awards Best Picture. And I can’t help but feel grateful for the fellowship of the audience’s embrace of this film,  which covers the exposure of the cover up of abuses in the Catholic Church.

Which leads me to my newest novel… and I want to say this.

Sometimes, a good chocolate will have a dark, bitter centre, but be wrapped in enough sweetness to make the whole thing rich and enjoyable and have you going back for more. This is how I like to think of The Beekeeper’s Secret.

Obviously, I can’t tell you what the secret is. But I do want to talk a bit about the dark centre of the story. And I’m just going to say it straight: The Beekeeper’s Secret contains themes of child sex abuse in the Catholic church.

I’ve been nervous about sharing this because I didn’t want to potentially alienate my many wonderful and loyal readers of The Tea Chest and The Chocolate Promise. Because this book is a little different.

But here’s my promise to you–I have addressed the themes of abuse very carefully, with tremendous sensitivity to my reader’s. The book doesn’t hit the abuse down the centre. Instead, what interests me most are questions like,

How do these ripples of abuse and betrayal of trust resonate outwards through families, over generations (to the secondary and tertiary victims)?

What options did the ‘good’ people have at that time, when they were silenced and bullied into cover up at every turn?

What happens if a ‘good’ person, takes matters into her own hands? Are her actions valid? And how does she live with them?

These are questions that drove the plot for The Beekeeper’s Secret.

There are no graphic scenes of abuse in this book.

“…it seems strange that such an easy to read book could deal with such a serious issue but it does it well… the focus on family, friends and forgiveness makes this story very readable and an enjoyable depiction of life in modern Australia” (Sasha, on ‘The Beekeeper’s Secret’, Goodreads review)

At the heart of this story is a family that has been broken by secrets from the past and the efforts of Tansy to uncover the truth and heal the invisible wounds that have kept her mother and estranged aunt, Maria (and ex Catholic nun), apart.

This is a story of redemption, reunion, reconciliation and forgiveness.

And it’s a story of the wonder of bees.

 

 

 

Filling the Well in 2016

Hungry unicorn

To keep myself accountable to my unicorn for providing her with input from which to draw inspiration for new work, this year, I am keeping a list of everything I’m feeding her. She’s a hungry magical being–an insatiable appetite for creativity–and does tend to get stroppy if I neglect her.

I’m excited about what’s on there already, and looking forward to seeing this grow. If you have any awesome events you know of in the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane or southeast Queensland area, I’m keen to hear them. :)

So far, I have:

Books Read (completed, or at least half way, not including the hundreds I read to my toddler). Don’t be alarmed by the brevity of this list. As I’ve said many times, I’m a very slow reader.

Hester & Harriet, by Hilary Spiers
Fall of the Beasts (Spirit Animals), Immortal Guardians, by Eliot Schaefer
Diamond Spirit, by Karen Wood

Theatre Productions/Music

Australia Day (Noosa Arts Theatre), February
2016 Season of One Act Plays (BATS, Buderim), April
Educating Rita (The Events Centre), April

Speakers

Elizabeth Gilbert, February

Workshops/Courses

Cheesemaking, Brisbane, March

Travel (research, inspiration)

Melbourne, April
Writing Retreat, June
Burdekin Writers Festival, July
Bundaberg Writers Festival, October
Tuscany, September

Movies

Under the Tuscan Sun

Vale, Anastasia

Last week, I said goodbye to Anastasia.

I first met Anastasia six years ago via a Facebook page. She was in a slaughterhouse holding yard and the dogger (horse dealer) was asking $600 for her, or she’d become dog meat. From a market value perspective, $600 was crazy. But the moment I saw her photo, I started crying.

(Now, briefly, I already had five horses, most of them rescues, and I had recently founded and was running a horse rescue charity. So, seeing horses on death row was nothing unusual for me. I had made it a policy for the charity not to associate with horse dealers directly, but more fool me, I checked this site and simply knew I had to rescue this mare for myself. She even ‘told me’ her name: Anastasia. It just popped into my head so clearly, and when I looked up the meaning it meant resurrected, which seemed perfectly fitting for her situation.)

My husband and I scraped together the money, paid the dealer, and my friend Jane offered to drive over and pick up Anastasia. When she got there, Anastasia was standing in a yard and body parts of other horses lay on the ground around her.

As is the case in these situations, we didn’t know anything about her history. She appeared to be about 20 at the time, and the dealer claimed she’d been a ‘clerk of the course’ horse (those white/grey horses you see following racehorses around the track). That may or may not have been true. What was obvious immediately, after she’d shakily backed down the ramp off the float, was that she was very gentle and had had a lot of life experience, that she hadn’t eaten for quite some time (no manure for a long time and she was dehydrated), and that she had tendon issues in her back legs, and it was possibly for that reason that she’d been thrown away to the slaughter yard.

Despite her weakened back legs, she embraced her second chance at life. I had to lock her up in a yard by herself at night so she could eat (she was an excruciatingly slow eater and was so gentle that she was bullied by the other horses). But every morning, when I went to let her out, she’d be banging on the gate to get out, making a terrible commotion, whinnying and grunting at me to hurry up. She still climbed hills and took herself off on adventures through the paddocks. More than once, when she didn’t come back for dinner with the others, I set off across fields to find her and make sure she was okay, and when I found her I would tell her she had to come home, and she would walk back with me, side by side, with no halter or lead, taking her time and stopping occasionally on the steepest parts to have a rest.

After my son was born, it was Anastasia (along with my shetland pony, Sparky) who became his teacher. And she was the most most gentle, safe, patient, beautiful friend for him. What a blessing and gift she has been. With deep love and reverence, I watched him walking under her belly and between her legs, or laughing wildly as he threw hay up in the air and it landed in her hair, and more recently, going up to her as she lay on the ground and resting his body across hers, telling her that It’s okay, Anastasia. I never had a second’s fear that she would hurt him. Not one. She was trustworthy to a fault.

A couple of weeks ago, she had an eye ulcer and I had to put ointment in her eye three times a day. I didn’t even need a halter or rope on her. I would stand in front of her and lift her head and place it over my left shoulder while I opened her eyelids and squeezed in ointment. She never complained. Stoic till the end.

But it was those tendons in her back legs that were her literal downfall.

A couple of months ago I looked out to the yards at the house and she was lying down. Nothing too unusual in that, except I saw her do it three times in quick succession. I went out to check on her and she’d blown another tendon, probably having fallen down one of the hills she so loved to climb. I got the vet out and we bandaged and iced and gave her pain medication. But a couple of weeks later, just as it was starting to heal, it rained. Really rained. With mud under her feet, she had difficulty standing and the other leg (the “good leg”) suffered the same fate. Another blown tendon. Both legs went into bandages. The vet came again. She had cellulitis. We gave her antibiotics. We x-rayed to make sure nothing was broken. I realised that rain would be the ultimate undoing so in quick time we got out an earthmover to flatten earth and a hustled a builder into coming out urgently to build her a shelter. Some more rain came and she stood in her shelter knowing she couldn’t step outside on those wobbly legs. We filled the shelter with a deep pile of wood shavings so she could lie down, which she loved, and rolled in it till golden shavings filled her white mane like glitter.

My barefoot trimmer came to trim her feet, as she did every six weeks. Anastasia lay down for her to do it — a unicorn getting a pedicure.

Twice daily, I dosed her with pain medication (bute). But she wouldn’t eat it in food. She wouldn’t have it with molasses and bread. I tried honey, apple sauce, peanut paste. But she refused it all until I discovered that she loved organic brown rice syrup on fresh fluffy white bread. That was the trick. :) Then I had to cut the sandwiches into rectangles so she could eat them, as she only had “three working teeth” left, according to the vet.

On we battled until ‘the good leg’ dropped further. Now, she was walking on her fetlock joint on the ground. It was a complete rupture of the suspensory ligament in that joint, one that would never recover. Still, the vet hesitated. We put her in big bandages again and waited to see.

But later that afternoon, she lay down. And barely got up again. The next morning when I checked on her, she lifted her head to greet me, before flopping it down once more. The light was gone from her eyes. She’d let go. I called the vet, he agreed it was time, and we let her go on the spot where she’d loved to sleep in the morning sun. I wove sprigs of yellow wildflowers into her mane and tail, and wedged lavender down into the bandages around her legs. And we buried her there.

I kissed her and let her go, saying, You don’t need legs when you’ve got wings.

Fly free, beautiful girl. The honour and privilege has been all ours.

__________

** I also wrote a book called Horse Rescue. It is published under the name Joanne Schoenwald. If you are interested, you will find more of Anastasia’s story in that book.**

 

 

 

Are you in a reading rut?

While setting my 2016 yearly goals and aspirations, and reviewing 2015, I discovered something horrible. I finished reading just four novels last year. FOUR! I’m an author, for goodness sake. It’s my JOB to read. Cue various levels of silent shame–that is, until I thought, hey, maybe it’s not just me. Maybe some of you have fallen into a reading rut too?

I will qualify that I started reading dozens of novels. (And, not to be dismissed, I read hundreds of children’s books to my son… I know this, because I recently counted how many books were on his book shelf and it was over 200, all of which I have read many times over.) It’s just that I couldn’t finish them. There are many reasons for this, one of which is that I long ago let go of the idea that I had to finish a book just because I’d started it, whether or not I was enjoying it. I realised that I am a slow reader by nature, that I only had a certain number of years left in my life, and I could only read a certain number of books a year, and that life was to short to read bad books (or, at the very least, ones I didn’t love). See, I like a lot of books. But there are very few that I love. Passionately. Whole heartedly. Fan stalkerish crazy.

Also, motherhood. And exhaustion. I know I’m not alone here. Enough said.

But I digress. The thing here is that we need to keep reading. So if you’ve fallen off the reading wagon, as I clearly did in 2015, it can be awkward to get back on it.

I see a number of online ‘reading challenges’ going around right now. I considered joining one, but the numbers people were pledging were intimidating. Fifty books? Really? My self-esteem plummeted.

So here’s my advice for you if you need to get back on the reading wagon.

Set the bar really low.

There are occasions in life where it’s great to aim for the moon and work doggedly until you achieve your goal. I wouldn’t be an author now if I didn’t and couldn’t do that. But there are other times where it helps to set the bar low and give yourself a chance to surprise yourself.

Leonie Dawson, in her daily habit list, commits to moving her body for 5 minutes a day. Five minutes. That’s it. She knows that if she makes it any higher, she won’t do it. And of course if she can move for five minutes, she’ll likely move for more.

In 2015, I set a number of intentions that I not only met but surpassed. And this year already, I have surpassed my goal of ‘go swimming 6 times’. I’ve already been 12 times and have bought another 20-visit pass. I’ve quite unexpectedly fallen in love with swimming.

And as for books, I’ve set the bar low at reading (and finishing) just 6 books. I might do more. I might not. But if I finish those 6 books I’ll still be better off than I was last year. But I’m betting I’ll do more.

So for 2016, I wish you fabulous books and engrossing reading! Just start and keep going.

p.s. I’ve already finished my first book, Hester and Harriet by Hilary Spiers. I LOVED it!!! I can’t say enough fabulous things about this book. Hilary has a new fan girl in me.

How to Write a Book (for those who want to, but have a hundred excuses not to).

Consider this post both a gentle, supportive hug, and also a loving butt kick. I’ve had too many conversations in the past month with beautiful, talented, creative women that go something like this:

“Yeah, I’d love to write a book but I don’t want to do it and have it be bad.”
“I don’t want to write a book and have people criticise it.”
“I’d love to write a book but I know it’s so hard to get anything published [and therefore why would I bother].”
“I really want to write a book but I know hardly anyone makes money out of it and I need to be able to support myself… I can’t give up my day job.”

Look, to be blunt, none of this is new. All of this has been said before, by me and every other person with a creative wish. As Elizabeth Gilbert says, “your fears are boring”.

People get so messed up in their heads thinking about the outcome of their creative project that they fail to even start it.

And in my experience, what happens to your book  after it is finished is largely out of your hands. You have very little control over it after it leaves your laptop and flies off into the world.

Maybe it will sell, maybe it won’t. Maybe it will start a revolution across the world, or maybe it will change a single person’s life and help them through a difficult time in their life. Maybe it will make you really rich, or maybe it will pay a phone bill, or maybe you’ll end up in debt.

Like bringing a child into the world, there is only so much you can do to protect, shepherd and guide her where you want her to go. She has her own journey.

Is this poking at your deepest fears? Can you feel your stomach knotting and your breathing constrict?

Here is something terrifying.

That fear never goes away.

I emailed my lovely fairy godmother, Monica McInerney, not long after getting my contract for The Tea Chest and The Chocolate Promise and asked her how to deal with the paralysing fear that was stopping me writing. She laughed (lovingly) and told me it wouldn’t ever go away and she was going through it right then too, on her tenth novel.

Julia Cameron, master of living a creative life (and famed author of The Artist’s Way) confesses in her book, The Creative Life, that as time goes on, the mind’s tricks, which it plays to stop us from writing, only get trickier.

Please, beautiful people with creative dreams, don’t be a slave to the ego’s fear.

You are stronger than that. You are wiser.

Accept it.

Name it, if you like. (My creative monster, my ever present fear, is called Maureen. Julia Cameron’s is called Nigel.) It is like an unwanted relative. You can’t get rid of it. It will always be at the table, eating your food.

Give it a job if you like. Many years ago, I listened to my saboteur tell me that everything I wrote was crap, turned to the corner of the room and said, ‘Really? Thanks for that feedback. Now go do something useful and find me a book contract.’

But please, write.

Please write.

Write.

Write for the sake of writing. Write because you want to. Write because in this hour, this day, that is what your soul calls you do to. Write because you love it. Write because you have something to say.

What happens to it after that?

It’s irrelevant. The important thing is that you wrote.

Much love,

Jo x

 

 

A Writer’s Year Plan

It’s been a great year for me and it hasn’t been by accident. At the end of last year, I wrote down my reflections of the year, I pinpointed the things that went wrong and wrote strategies for how to avoid them or deal with them if it happened again. I wrote down all the great things that did happen and all the things I wanted to change. And I mapped it all out, both personally and professionally and then I executed it, month by month. And I did it all in Leonie Dawson’s Create Your Shining Year workbook.

You know how they always say that when you write something down it’s more likely to come true?

That is the value in year planning.

In my last post, I introduced you to the year planner that changed my life in 2015. In this post, I want to tell you about some of the things I wrote down in my year planner that came true, even when I thought they were just fanciful, fun dreams.

The funny thing about writing these things down was that, for the most part, I completely forgot about them. And then months later, when checking in, I stopped and went, wait a minute! I just did that! Better than that, often what I wrote down came true, yes, but in a way that was even BIGGER and BETTER than what I’d written.

Here’s some:

Get new author pics. I was lining up a friend or my sister to do this for me and then about two weeks after I wrote this, my publisher emailed out of then blue me asking if Allen & Unwin could organise this for me, with a professional photographer and a makeup and hair person. Whoa! Yes please! Thank you, A&U, you are generous and wonderful and make me look much better than I feel.
Do yoga. I wrote this down, thinking I’d like to do a class. But you know what? We did better. My husband and I decided we needed a private yoga teacher and it was possibly one of the best things we’ve ever done for ourselves.
Fly to Sydney to see my publisher and agent (for no other reason than to see them). I did this and it was great not only to catch up when things weren’t so hectic but because EXTRA things came directly out of the fact that I did that: (1) totally unexpectedly, I was invited to submit a manuscript for a children’s book that I’d been scribbling away on; (2) I got a new title for my next book, The Beekeeper’s Secret (thanks, Tom); and (3) I booked a flight to the UK! (see next point)
Fly to the UK. I did it! That one was totally a ‘wish list’/ ‘in your dreams’ thing and yet… it came true!
Pay off the mortgage. Okay, this one was also an ‘in your dreams’ thing. But the thing with this one is that I didn’t specify which house to pay off. In my head, I was thinking our family home. But what has happened is that our beautiful tenant has left our other property (our family home before this one), so we put it on the market and we’ve just got a contract for it and that will pay it off. So it’s all good.

I also invested in my business systems.

I changed my focus from social media and began a quarterly newsletter, and when I mentioned it to my publishers, they offered to help out with some prizes for some issues. (Did I mention how great they are?)
I made a book trailer for The Chocolate Promise / The Chocolate Apothecary.
I got a personal assistant. This was also an ‘in your dreams’ thing (almost laughable). But guess what? I did it! Only for a couple of hours a week, sure. But it is a great move and I’m so pleased I’ve done it.
I invested a lot more time into my financial bookkeeping systems, spreadsheets of what contracts are where and when reporting periods happen, actually went and found all my contracts (I know, I know). In other words, I really took the legal/financial stuff a lot more seriously and set up processes to help manage the growing correspondence about this. (Truly, I’ve no idea how authors who have ten or twenty books all published in different regions and with translation rights keep on top of it all. But since I do hope that will be me one day, I guess it’s best I try to figure it out now.)

The other great thing that happens when you start writing down not only what you want to happen, but also what does happen, and what unplanned successes came along, is that you get into the FLOW of synchronicity and more and more good things come your way.

Great surprises and beautiful blessings for the year of 2015

A New York agent took on The Chocolate Promise and is hopeful of selling it.
I have contracts for The Chocolate Promise to be translated for the German market!
Kim Wilkins (Kimberley Freeman) gave the most beautiful speech about me and my book at the launch of The Chocolate Promise this year and it will stay in my heart forever.
I received an ABIA nomination for The Tea Chest and my publishers flew me to Sydney to attend the awards.
I got to take my sister, nephew and Dad with me to the UK, for fantastic family support on my research trip there. Lots of gorgeous memories were made and I even got to tick off another of my year’s ‘fanciful’ things to do… play Canasta!!! (We are Canasta tragics in our house and spent many hours laughing ourselves silly over the cards in the Cotswolds).
I have learned so much about myself as a writer, woman, mother, creative and human being this year (and I’ll get to another post about that soon).

Leonie Dawson’s 2016 Shining Year Workbooks  are on sale now but stocks are already running low. I cannot recommend them enough. You can choose just the personal life book, or the business book, or both, and you can get them in digital and print copies. They are a small investment in what could be a huge return on your dreams.

Leonie’s books get right to the heart of what it means to live, of what it means to have a business (the big ‘why’ of why we do what we do), of what it means to be alive and have dreams, and then grounds that in real visionary activities. I can’t wait for mine to arrive and to dive into planning the next beautiful year of my life.

The 2016 Year Diary and Planner for Life and Business

Have you got your 2016 diary, calendar, and planner yet? No? Then I have a treat for you. Put simply, these books can change your life. That’s a big call, right? Well, I speak from personal experience so please read on :)

Today I am excited to share with you the products I have had on order for months now (yes, I really was a very early bird), that will be in my post box this week, and that I am confident will once again enhance or change my life next year, just as they did this year.

Many of you will know that I follow Leonie Dawson and that I am super energised by her vision, creative products and writing. I’ve followed her for around seven years, but last year was the first time I bought her 2015 workbook, which covered both personal life and business life. I knew from the first pages that the workbook was going to stir deep reflection, poke at hidden tender spots, stoke huge fires of dreams, and get right down the practical heart of running a business and life.

All products are both in print and digital form!

I’m going to do another post soon letting you exactly the things that happened to me this year that I attribute right to having written them down and worked them through in Leonie’s 2015 workbook. But for now, just know that the stocks are already running low. So if you want to take advantage of this great product, I’d advise getting on board today :)

(Disclaimer: Yes I am an affiliate of Leonie’s and damn happy to be! This is the ONLY thing I am currently affiliated with so that should attest to how much I believe in these books! :) )

Halloween As Story

Image from Wikipedia

Halloween: I used to hate it; now I’m for it (sort of… kind of… not really, but… oh, let me explain…)

Right up until midday 31 October last year, I hated Halloween. I could not have been more resentful, bitter and loudly oppositional about it. I hated the crassness of it, the fake spider webs dangling from shop doorways, the sales kids dressed up in witches outfits, the pumpkins and goblin masks. I took particular offence to the notion of trick-or-treating and, especially, to the ghoulishness of it all. I hated the glorified meaninglessness of the commercial machine and the seemingly stubborn inevitableness that all this craziness was well and truly here to stay. Like, forever.

At that time, my son was two-and-a-half years old. Years and years of Halloween horrors loomed ahead of me. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be asking to join in, be invited to Halloween parties, with all manner of questionable games and violent costumes (call me crazy, but I don’t actually find it funny to see costumes with knives through skulls or blood and gorge hanging from body parts).

Then a good friend of mine (who doesn’t have children) posted a photo on Facebook, with her decorations of hairy spiders in the tree at the front of her home. She was the last person I expected to participate in something as gimmicky as Halloween. (She loves roses and antique teapots!)

Even her? Was I missing something?

I began to seriously mull over this whole Halloween thing, knowing I was running out of time before I would have to make some clear decision on where I stood and to what extent I was happy for my son to participate (or not). I didn’t even know where Halloween came from, so I hit the internet to find out. It’s a bit of a garbled mix of information out there, but my layperson’s understanding is that it seems to have originally stemmed from a custom of honouring the spirits of those who had passed over (on a night called All Hallow’s Eve) and transformed in some countries to people dressing up as evil spirits and monsters to make fun of them and show them that they were not afraid of them. And it was that last part that caused me to reassess the whole Halloween thing.

I suddenly got it–Halloween is STORY and STORY is how we make sense of the world. Myths, archetypes, legends, fairy tales, genres, nursery rhymes, poetry, cinema and all other forms of stories give us LANGUAGE to describe what is going on inside us and around us. Halloween, specifically, deals with monsters and scary things. And monsters are real, so it is natural that we would need a language–even a basic child’s language–to talk about them.

My theory goes like this. Monsters are real. There are monstrous people in the world who do terrifying, unthinkable, heinous things to children. There are monstrous dictators that torture and murder entire ethnic cultures on our planet. There are creative monsters in the world who want to smash our dreams, humiliate, bully and belittle us. There are monsters in our mind that tell us we aren’t good enough and undermine our actions and dreams.

The monster characters in books and movies—ghouls, two-headed creatures, slime-covered bottom-dwellers and so on—are simply the symbolic representation of real-life monsters. To deny they exist does a disservice to our children and to ourselves. Something like Halloween, if handled with sensitivity and care, might just be a wonderful opportunity to help children learn to bring monsters out into the light, to talk about their fears and know that as adults we will listen to them.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting we should deliberately go and frighten our children or go out of our way to bring monsters into their psyche. But I am suggesting that maybe we shouldn’t run away from the darkness. Maybe, when they come running to us in fear, saying, “There’s a monster in my room!” we might use that opportunity to say, “Thank you for telling me; I want to help you; I want you to tell me when you’re afraid; I’m here to protect you; let’s see what we can do about that together”, rather than saying “There’s no such thing as monsters”.

Because we all know that’s not true.

I’m still uneasy with Halloween’s crass commercialisation, the gore, and I’m definitely still anti trick-or-treating. But this year, I will be using the opportunity to sensitively (and with an age-appropriate agenda) help my son start to have language and dialogue around things that are dark and scary and assure him that I’m here to stand beside him to defeat the monsters together.

R U Ok? My life, three years on.

Three years ago, my life was very different.

This photo recently came up on my Facebook page and it floored me. I was speechless, with my mouth actually hanging open as I stared at it. And because this week, it was R U OK day here in Australia, I thought I’d talk about why it had such an effect on me.

R U OK day is about suicide prevention, specifically, about asking us to engage with the people around us with meaningful conversations about life and how we feel about it. I don’t normally write posts like this, but this image, randomly generated by Facebook in a ‘your memories from three years ago’ way, moved me.

This is not me in the photo, it my Friend, holding my son, then three-months old. I remember that day; I remember it so clearly. I remember where we were, what we talked about, the things we said, the anger and sadness and grief we vented, and also the hope we held that the light at the end of the tunnel we were in must surely be coming.

This baby was everything and he was wonderful and I wanted everything to be perfect for him. But right on this day of this photo, I was living in an isolated town with a newborn. I had post-natal depression. I had post-traumatic stress from a birth that went badly and a litany of physical problems for myself and my baby (and what seemed like endless medical appointments and all-day trips from the country to the city) that followed. I had insane levels of sleep deprivation (quite seriously, in hindsight, I should never have been on the road, let alone driving the highway as much as we were). My husband and I had just received notice that an enormous mobile phone tower was to be built right next to our house, something we found very distressing. (We lived on six acres and our neighbour had over 100 acres but still the tower would be right outside our lounge room window.) I was in the middle of a soul-destroying, heartbreaking, messy, bitter breakdown and breakup of relationships with several women I had considered to be close friends. I was losing a significant business/life calling I had created from scratch (my first ‘baby’, with my identity all over it). I was gutted. My heart was in pieces. My world was falling apart.

And of course, I was trying to keep it together so that no one could tell how much pain I was in, especially the women with whom I was ‘breaking up’ and especially from my precious baby. I couldn’t possibly be vulnerable… I had to be strong!

As for my Friend, her life was in a very dark place as well. I won’t speak of her troubles as they are hers to share with the world if she wishes. But they were even greater, and more difficult, and more life-changing than what I was going through. I was so worried about her that day. I could see the stress and the trauma all over her face and body.

But we had tea (and hot chips and probably some cake). Many cups of tea. And we talked for hours while we sipped that tea, and I fed the baby, and we rocked the baby to sleep, and we talked some more. We could be vulnerable in that space. We were each other’s life preservers that day, holding each other’s heads above water for a bit longer so that help could come to us eventually. We trusted Light would come to us somehow. That it had to get better. It just had to.

So the other day, Facebook pulled out this photo and this sea of emotions from the technological ether washed over me. I was viscerally shocked. Why? Because my life is completely different now. And so is my Friend’s. Our lives couldn’t possibly be any more opposite than what they were that day.

And I think this is important to note: neither of us could see it coming. Neither of us could have predicted it. Neither of us had a plan.

All we were doing was getting through each hour of each day, trusting, hoping, trusting, listening, drinking tea and trusting some more.

And it happened. Now, we are both living our dream lives. Three years on.

I have my dream career that I’d worked so hard for and wonderful publishers I am blessed to call my friends. I have published three books in three years, all of them best-sellers, two of them internationally so, and I have contracts for two more. The success of these books has paid for the renovations on the seriously rundown house we took a huge chance on buying. Yes, we moved house and re-located to acreage on the Sunshine Coast, with all of our horses, which had been my childhood dream. My husband’s business has gone from strength to strength, as has our health and our level of joy, creativity and connections to wonderful people. We are happy, every day.

Now, I’m not saying the past three years hasn’t been the most intense and frantic of my life. But I could never have imagined this life on that day three years ago. So I’m thinking you don’t always need to be able to see the Light on the other side. You don’t always need a plan. You don’t always have to know the answer. I think we just need to keep talking to our friends and family, and drinking tea and hugging and laughing and crying and be able to borrow their strength when we don’t have enough for ourselves.

Sometimes, just drinking tea with your best mate (or mum, or neighbour, or aunt, or pastor, or your kid’s teacher) might be all you need to make it through the day. And you only need to make it through this day. If you look too far ahead it gets scary. So just get through this day. And take on tomorrow with fresh eyes.

Wishing you love.

The Light will come. It always does.

Valley Bees Open Day

Some of you may now know that my third novel, due out April 2016, had a foodie fiction theme of honeybees.

(Everyone in the world needs to get passionate about bees right now!)

I’ll be heading to this event at Imbil on the Sunshine Coast, 12 September, to learn as much as I can about bees. I’ve also donated two copies of my books to their raffle. If you can make it, let me know, I’d love to meet you in person :)