The left out bits......

Surprisingly.........ha........with the event of twins in my life, not to mention leaving the community we were living on and witnessing our crushed dreams laying in the mud..........I've neglected to mention some things that have happened in the last year or so.  And I figure that now that I'm pregnant again, and we're about to set off into the wild blue yonder with who knows what adventures on the way, I should tell you about some of those left out bits before I create too much of a backlog.  

The first and most impressive (I think) is that I'm going to be part of a book called Positive Birth Journeys, edited by a really groovy woman with huge dedication and integrity, Leonie MacDonald.  If I'd had the twins before I got accepted in this book, I bet she would have wanted that story, but as it was, she wanted the story of my caesarean with Balthazar....which by all accounts is a pretty groovy one.  Not many people talk about how good their caesarean was.  If you want to know more about the book, you can visit  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/birthjourneys  I'm really looking forward to seeing my name in a real book that people can buy in a bookshop!  Bit of a lifelong dream thata one. 

Another thing that happened about 2 months or so before the babies were born, was that I was part of an exhibition called 'Unravelled' at Red Poles in McLaren Vale.  The trip was that we had to find a jumper in an op shop or somewhere, pull it apart, and make a tea cosy out of it.  I wish I could find the picture of the jumper I bought and pulled apart, but for the life of me I can't!  And of course, me being me, the tea cosy ended up being rather sculptural, and you'd definitely be excused for wondering what the hell it really was, but I liked it:) 

As I made it I thought it looked a lot like one of the trees in The Magic Roundabout - ever watched that as a kid?  So I made 7 flowers to hang around the base of it, and called it Ermintrude's (she was the Friesian cow) Trea Cosy.  I thought I was very clever.  The staff at Red Poles were awesome, and there was one woman who'd had twins herself, and she was incredibly sweet and understanding with me.  And she asked me to just bring everything I'd made and all my clothes along too, and made room for it all, and it looked really groovy. 

And you wanna know the funny thing?  The big irony??  I had a teddy bear that was stuffed with the same fleece it was spun and crocheted from, and a hat on a triangular stand, and another hat called the Tree Hat on a magic puddingesque stand (they're all on the stand on the left), and a big 7 ft stand with sleeves on it that folk call The Uterus, with a big spray of emu feathers off finger like appendages on the top (that one's on the right), and a bird cape with raw fleece needle felted on the bottom, and belly dancing outfits and skirts, and hugs, and all sorts of other designer innovations....all things that I'd put a huge amount of work and inspiration and creativity into......and those three hanging wool bags in the middle on the wall, that I'd made for decorations for Tribal Fibres, that had as much inspiration as...well.....as a decoration that I'd just run off because there was a gap on the stage that needed to be filled......and guess what I sold?  Of all my designer creations, and sculptures, and not to mention the trea cosy.......I sold the wool bags.  I'd thrown them on in with everything else as a last minute thought, called them 'Pendulous', and they did look great, but it made me laugh.  A kinda almost sad wry laugh, but laugh I did.  I think I'll just have to be content with being ahead of my time, and stop expecting so much from my woolly creations from now on:)

And meanwhile, back on the community, the kids were having all sorts of fun, roaming around the gorgeous red gum treed acres, swimming in the dam, playing with the chooks.....

  

Running all sorts of experiments about what happens when you chip rocks and crystals apart, and what happens when you rub mud all over yourself, and what different colours of mud look like dried, and a million other things that I can't remember now, but I'm always suprised and amazed with what they come up with for fun......

And then there were our excursions out and about.....

 



We went on lots of trips to the botanic gardens and spent hours upon hours upon hours wandering round with our nature delighted kids.  They took a lot of these photos.  We spent almost a day just in the cactus garden, and then another whole day sniffing the roses in their huge rose garden. 

If we're ever stuck for something to do, the Museum, Art Gallery, State Library or the Botanic Gardens are alway sure to please everyone.  It's such a blissfull thing to walk amongst such huge, eccentric and amazing living creatures as the plants that reside there.....

And onetime we found an amazing tree that was an awesome backdrop for my incredibly photogenic family... 

And then there was the day when they were all fighting and yelling at each other, and there were heaps of people around on the community, and I was aware that one of the community members thought that the amount of noise they made meant they had no 'internal furniture'.....still can't work out what that meant...so they had no internal lounges and wardrobes??  Do they need them??  Anyway, I wanted them to be a bit quieter, so I called them all to me and asked them what we could make on the property, from things that we could find on the ground........it took them a bit of conjecture to work out what they wanted to do, which was another part of the collective problem solving to yelling at each other, and before they all knew it, they'd hatched a plan, and we spent a blissfull day in the sun creating a village.

First off, the ever pragmatic Lilly made a garden right in the centre, and Griff started making roads and creating dwellings, while Spiral-Moon got a plastic plant pot and sunk it in the ground for the water tank.  Then she made a composting toilet, while Lilly moved onto making tee pee like structures from bark.

There's a bit of Spiral-Moon near one of them......



And Griff behind the same one.  I was so incredibly impressed with their creativity, and the sensibleness of their village plan!  Garden, then water, then a toilet, THEN the houses....love it.  And it was so groovy for all of us to be involved in the creativity.....Griff in particular took a big part in creating awesome buildings.  And the challenge of making it from what we could find on the ground was awesome. 

Here's Griff making a roof on sticks, a house without walls, and off to the right was a big half circle of stone that he'd used to make the front of a house for the elders and the magicians to live in.

And I know it's not showing a house or anything, but I loved this photo of Lilly, in her inimitable Lilly style of skirt wearing.....

Here's an overview of the town, with the garden in the middle, two tee pees on either side, and the stone is the elders house, and above the garden and to the left is a sunken house with a bark roof that Griff created, and actually became a real idea for a design of building a house into a hill....he was so wrapped that an idea he'd had was picked up by us adults as a 'legitimate' idea for a dwelling.

Here's a clearer picture of that elders house I was telling you about....on the right....

And here's the bay that was made later, and a little boat that Griff made and sailed on the dam, resting on the plank....bit hard to see.....and it's a shame we didn't get a proper photo of it, but way over behind the village was a bush with a small hole at the bottom, and we decided a bunyip lived there, and Griff made a sign that said 'Please respect the Bunyip', and we also built it a pool......
 

 And here's me sitting in the general site, with twins in my belly, in love with my beautiful creative children, and generally pleased with myself that I'd turned yelling into such an amazingly productive and learning filled day:)

So that's just a snippet of some of the things that were happening around my twin pregnancy, and that didn't quite make it to my blog.  Next up I'm gonna try and make a video to put on here and give you all a tour of the van that I've been busily redecorating.  And the swags that I've made.  Or something like that anyway.......



 Oh!  And I just remembered!  I also played cello on a cd that was produced by a friend of mine!!   Got my name on that one too:)  Might start getting addicted to this sort of thing......

Every good relationship needs lots of time for personal space doesn't it?

 

After all, there’s so much accepted wisdom from so many different camps about how parents, lovers, children, even pets, need some time to themselves, to spend some ‘me’ time, to work on the individuals goals, spirituality, hobbies, meditate or whatever.  An ex girlfriend of mine gave me a beautiful piece of writing, about how every great love relationship needs some time for the ‘winds of heaven to dance between them’.  Currawong and I have been told by so many people, from so many different paths and spiritualities, and in so many different ways, that we should spend some time apart.  Have some space.  Get some perspective.  Give each other room.  And that’s not all, the same goes for our relationship with our kids.  They all need more space and time away, and we should be sending them off to all the other mandatory and standardized forms of child care that other people do, and inflict many other children of their same age on them, whether they like each other or not, but that’s what we all have to get used to, because you’re always gonna come across people you don’t like at work, and you have to start working out how to get along with them as soon as possible.  Infancy in fact.  

In being so obviously different to mainstream society, as well as being a big family that does everything together in a very ‘life as art’ way, we tend to bump into a vast amount of varied people who want to let us know that they get us or they don’t, or ask us how we do it, or say “Didn’t your lot die out in the 70’s?” and the like, and there are some common things we get as feedback from a lot-a-lot of people.  Like I’ve mentioned before, many people feel inspired by our smiles and love and colourful selves, but in the conversations, a lot of people want to justify their own choices in life, or why they don’t live a life more similar to ours even though they wish they could.  And some of the things we commonly hear are things like “I’d go crazy if he didn’t work and was underfoot in my house all day”, and “I’d love to be the sort of mum who could do homeschooling, but spending every day with my kids would drive us ALL mad” and “Do you ever get some time to yourself?” and “I’d love to stay home with my woman and my kids all day and do what they do, but SOMEBODY has to pay for it all” and “I don’t know how you stay sane with all those kids” and “I’d homeschool too but I’m on my own, and it’s not something that one person can do solo” and the like.  And sadly for me, a lot of women mainly, and men, make the judgement that I’m a domineering, bossy, pussy whipping, harridan, who has Currawong firmly tied to my apron strings (if I wore an apron that is), because there’s NO WAY a man left to his own devices would choose to spend time with his lover and family doing domestic things.  No way at all.  Surely he’d rather be off watching sports, or down at the front bar, or doing blokey things with other blokes, and busily suppressing his emotions like all (Australian in particular) men do.  He needs to be off hunting and gathering, and being a warrior, and bringing home the bacon and the eggs and everything else too, to fulfill his male, lion-like pride.  And me, I should be fine cause I’m a woman afterall, and as a lot of people have decided, also a bit of an ‘earth mother’, so I’ll be okay, but what about poor Currawong?  How is he going to fulfill himself apart from all this ‘women’s business’ he’s trapped in, by my deadly spider like ways and arts??  (Is there a bit of bitterness starting to seep in at this point do you think?  Maybe I should get to the uplifting bit sooner rather than later….)  But just before I move on, there’s been some funny times as well in all this.  Especially when other men have tried to ‘rescue’ Currawong to go and do something ‘manly’, and not noticed his panic stricken face behind them as he mouths to me ‘rescue me!’ Or the time when a big alpha male was talking to me at the market we ran about how there were womens’ places and men’s places, and he thought Currawong needed to come along to his men’s group.  I was just in the process of telling him that we didn’t really do gender roles in our house, and if we did, Currawong performed many of the more traditionally female roles, and I could definitely sometimes be described as wearing the pants in the house.  We were in the middle of talking about this, when Currawong walked up to us and had a huge hissy fit about something or another, then stalked off with the Alpha male looking a bit bewildered, and quick as a whip I turned to him and said….”His time of the month”, with a shrug of the shoulder, and he went from bewildered to totally confused.  HA!  It may be a result of our early sexualisation, or our same sex relationships from the past, but we prove to each other that men and women aren’t so very different after all.  I like to call Currawong my ‘chick with a dick’, and he truly enjoys hanging out with all my women friends, you just try and stop him!

And now the preamble.  I’m only just starting to really get how very different us mob are in how we run our lives and our family compared to a lot of other folk.  You may laugh, but being a freak show isn’t something that’s happened over night you know!  It’s taken a long time full of baby steps for us all to get where we’re at, and it’s like I’ve all of a sudden woken up and realized that to a lot of folk, we’re radical extremists living a really different reality.  And I’m also getting that a lot more people than are brave enough to engage us on the street, are really curious about that life style.  And what it’s like on a day to day basis, and how it works, and what we do and all that stuff.  I’ve come from an extremely conservative and sheltered background, and Currawong’s come from a rough childhood partially on the streets, and identifying for most of that time as a punk, and through each other and our relationship, we’ve morphed/osmosed into colourful, homebirthing, home educating, self taught artisan hippies with a big family………………for want of a better description.  And on that journey, we’ve come across so many different lifestyles, spiritualities, approaches and the like, and we’ve met them all with respect, honoured them for what they are, and accepted other folks versions of reality for being as true as they believe they are.  And I guess I’m at the point where I want to respect, honour, and accept my own version of reality as much as I do other people’s, and give it voice as much as other folk do about their brands of reality.  Cause mine is really different.  And unique.  And largely self created from experience.  And also liable to piss a lot of people off if they take it personally, as in thinking that I’m trying to tell people what they should think or do, and judging them by my particular set of values.  I really want to stress right here and now, that everything I talk about is my experience and reality only, and I totally respect EVERYONE else’s right to their own beliefs and reality.  Sometime’s to levels that other people get all moral at me about, but that’s another story. 

Now, enter stage left my opinion, experience and viewpoint, on the whole space in relationships issue.  I’ll never forget a friend in the midst of the fallout of her long term relationship breaking up, telling me, “We gave each other so much space, that in the end space was all we had…”.  I reckon if the advice of taking space and ‘me time’ was such a good and sound and valid approach, we should be seeing something better in the state of relationships around us.  But I don’t. I see a lot of people in relationships who are busy working and playing and being themselves and bringing up kids and doing all the things you do…..with someone who they used to know and love a lot better, and there’s a kind of sad distance between people supposedly ‘in love’, who don’t have the time or resources to get back to each other.  In fact I see a whole lot of people – men, women and children – who deep down feel very alone, isolated, betrayed by their love and trust in people, and with a whole mess of deep down darks and secrets that they don’t share with anyone for fear of being disliked, and a dream of what they wanted their love to be like, and a rheam of reasons why they can’t or their partner can’t and ultimately why they feel alone in a room full of people.  I think that rather than take space from each other, we need to work out how to step closer to each other, and really let each other in, and teach each other how to truly be emotionally intimate and trusting with ourselves and our loved ones.  There’s an evolution of parenting skills that’s happening in attachment and conscious parenting circles, that I’m finding really interesting.  They suggest rather than punishments and yelling and bribing and all those other vastly outmoded ways of child taming, and even some of the more peaceful ways of trying to get your child to perform, like time out and such tactics……….that you should just hold them close.  That obnoxious, childish behavior that makes you want to rip your hair out, instead of reacting to, you should just hug them.  Hold them.  Keep them close.  Realise that often anti-social behavior comes from the behaver feeling unloved in some way, and break through all the bullshit and prickles, and just swamp em in love. And I reckon inside most of us supposed big people, is a little person in pain wanting some love, for some long ago hurt, and I suspect that deep down we’d all like to be held close, and no matter how many walls we may try to build, have someone knock em all down and give us a hug and love. 

Currawong and I spend nearly all our moments together, and miss each other like crazy when we don’t. I don’t know whether it’s cause our Friesian past connects us like glue, or our miserable childhoods, or the fact that two chameleonic fringe dwellers getting together creates great synchronicity…..but we’re inseperable.  At first we ran our relationship more like other folk – he went off to work sometimes, and went off to the pub on his own sometimes, and I did stuff without him – but it wasn’t long before we fell into wanting to spend all our time together.  We’re both big energy people, and Currawong was in particular very raw in his private inner sanctum, and it took a lot of work between us to let each other in.  We’d both been molested as children, so there were plenty of wounds to heal, and trusts to build, and we were so wrapped up in each other and plumbing each other’s depths, that we soon got into the habit of hanging out together all the time.  Currawong had never really had anyone in that deep before, my poor petal had a lot of acquaintances he thought of as friends before I came along, and I’d been in lot’s of people’s deeps, but never one quite so intricate, who I also got to play sexually with.  And it’s just kept getting closer and deeper and more amazing as we heal and peel off layers.  And now, it’s not a clingy pining thing, but when we’re apart, after an hour or so, we just quietly miss each other.  And usually ring each other to chat.  We make so much sense to each other, and we’re each other’s best mates, and we talk all the time about all sorts of wild and undomesticated things, so that when we’re apart, and when we’re hanging with other people, there’s a big empty space.  Not to mention that the common conversations to be had with acquaintances, can sometimes feel a bit empty and superficial compared to our worlds……  

Which leads me to the question……..which comes first?  The inseperableness or the great relationship?  I’m sure everyone’s heard the stories about dream relationships of people who love each other madly and spend all their time together and spend a lifetime in great love – I know I have – and I never dreamed that I would get to experience it.  And maybe they’re so great because the partners ARE inseperable?  Because they hold each other consciously in their day to day lives and deal with their stuff as it happens?  If attitudes sent towards Currawong and I show a collective attitude towards closeness in relationships, maybe folk are too scared of being consumed by someone else and becoming ‘co-dependant’ (which incidentally is a totally inappropriate term to apply to close relationships, as the term was originally coined to describe the partners of drug addicts who helped their partners to get their fix) to really experience great love. 

To be blunt, I believe our society is so full of ‘space’ between lovers, parents and children, and families in general, that we accept and expect emotional distance as the norm, which allows a lot of us to get away with a whole heap of emotional deceits, inaccuracies, and masks. To hide from ourselves and each other, and just avoid situations that ask for too much emotional authenticity.  There’s all these different compartments – home, school, work, playtime, hobbies, ‘me time’, church and the like, where people can be totally inauthentic.  One person at work, another at home, another at church, another at the pub, another at football, and all the time playing the polite dance of chit chat and social expectations, and declarations of loyalty and honesty, that are all shrugged off as easily as being put on. Situations occur where people build each other up, and almost dare each other into honesty and intimacy, and their dreams and hearts start flying till BANG! One of them changes, or gets scared, or drops the mask, or disappears, or works too hard, and the other is left holding the broken bits and telling themselves that to trust and hope equals pain.  Or they experience great love till they buy into the great western dream of a job and a mortgage and a house and a child or two and all of a sudden that’s all there is.   And there’s no consistent person/observer who is watching us through all the compartments of our lives, and asking us why we said this and meant that, and why we were so different with that person than the other, and how we could live with our lies and hypocrisy, especially to ourselves. 

Except in our family.  And a lot of others too, I know.  We consciously hold each other and our children and our emotional authenticity together all day every day.  We notice when one of us is hiding an emotion, or in need of some extra love, or being inauthentic to who they really are, or doing something amazing that they’re learning.  And it’s not all love and roses, we have humdinger fights that explode all over the place, and we all yell and scream, but we’re always picking over the carcass later on, and apologizing or working out why that happened, and working out how we can do it better afterwards.  And learning from each event that happens and building on what we know and love about each other.  Currawong and I have no secrets from each other.  None at all.  After childhoods filled with secrets, it’s one of the most important elements in our lives to have no secrets at all.  And our kids have followed that tradition, and give us astonishing honesty that we handle with care.   

And I need to take a moment here to speak about money.  We’ve consciously chosen love and family and togetherness over money.  And it’s not all that easy, but is tremendously so all at the same time.  Because we haven’t bought into the mortgage paradigm, or the working one, it’s meant living in other people’s spaces, or travelling a lot, or living in cheap housing which comes with all it’s own compromises.  It’s meant not having enough money for all those entertainment devices that I’m really not sorry we don’t have.  It’s meant living on a lot less than most people in our society are used to having.  And though this paradigm does have it’s challenges, it’s one I can recommend.  A lot of what we can’t afford we wouldn’t want anyway, and our adaptations have made us resourcefull and skilled.  We find joy in the ordinary and each other, and maybe with more money we would have developed more expensive tastes.  It’s funny how often you need a stack of money to make money – to pay for the childcare, clothing, vehicles, entertainments, and foods needed to provide an income. 

And we don’t find it suffocating, or soul squashing in any way.  There’s a huge amount of love between us, and none of it is forced.  When the kids go away for sleepovers we all miss each other, and phone each other to say good morning.  When they get back, the siblings that missed them will tell them, and there’ll be hugs all round.  They’re surrounded by a big family of people that love them best, and are with them through most situations to hold them consciously and look out for each other.  And we’re also all very different and unique, and supported in being ourselves by all of us, and enjoy our social interactions with everyone, knowing that if it ever gets intense, scary, or intimidating, that there’s a bubble of family to escape to and debrief with.

I’m going to stop now, cause I think I’ve made my point, but I’m only realizing now how very much more I have to say about all this, and maybe I’ll just have to save all that for my book.  And other writings that are going to be available for you to buy soon on a stick in their own little crocheted pouches.  I’ll get there soon……

 And by the way......I know a lot of the photo's don't really make sense compared to the writings, but I just loaded a whole heap of photo's on a removable drive, and have kinda been using only them in this period of using the library internet...photo's will get relevant again soon:)

My Currawong

There’s a lot of stories and events in my past that I haven’t even touched on here in my blog yet, and I reckon there’s a few terms and words that I’ve made up that you might like me to explain at sometime… But that time is not now. I keep getting ideas for things I want to blog about, like all the other births that I’ve experienced and what I learnt from them, and a glossary of all the terms I use that aren’t in common usage (yet), and I’ve written a cute little number about optometrists and another one about space in relationships……but their time is yet to come. But right here and now, I really wanna pay a bit of a tribute to my man. My Currawong. My best mate and co-conspirator. The studly father of my beautiful children. The male at the top of the heap in my circle when it comes to the survival of the fittest……..the male that’s preened and made nests and provided beautiful food, keeps our mechanical wheels running, and puts across the best display’s of human nature that impressed me (and him) so much, that we keep having babies. My muse, inspiration, education, and the most bodacious bed mate that ever sprinkled my life with pure human essence.

We’ve just been through a really hard time. And are only now really realizing how traumatized we’ve both been by recent events…….twins was enough on it’s own, but also my daughter feeling down, and us losing the home that we thought we were gonna live in the rest of our lives, and the betrayal of some of the people in that community home…..not to mention feeling poor and homeless, and staying away from our beloved beach community for a couple of months and finding out about an unexpected pregnancy along the way. It’s been really hard. And we’ve done what most other people would probably do in the same situation……..taken it out on each other. Years ago, I figured that fighting amongst couples is actually quite an honourable and trusting thing. You’re telling each other that you believe you can express and display the worst aspects of your personality (and let’s face it, we all have them), and also believe that the other will still be there at the end of it, and still love you, and accept your nasty self for what it is, at the same time as expressing their own. And it’s a great way for letting off steam in a society obsessed with being ‘good’, and ‘fine’. So we’ve been through the hurly burly of late. And just last weekend went down to the hugely loved Willunga and all the wonderful folk who we love and who love us there, and remembered who we were when we feel loved again, and it kinda put all the past hurts and betrayals into perspective, and helped us realize that we’ve both been a bit off the wall for the last 3 months or so. It wasn’t just him, like I kept trying to tell him it was, afterall. And for the first time, in the middle of a blazing and bitter recrimination that I just HAD to inform him about, I did what I’ve wanted to do for years, and told him how much I hated it when we weren’t getting on, and told him I was going to do my bit for making it better, dropped it all, and gave him a hug. And guess what. It worked. He was so happy that I just dropped it all and hugged him, and we haven’t had a cross word since. And it makes me realize again how very much I love him.

We’ve got one of the best love stories I’ve ever heard of. When we first clapped eyes on each other, I was a black leather wearing recent dyke with short hair, and he had a purple Mohawk, and wore black and shades of grey. Our eyes met across a crowded pub, and we stared into each others souls…….which neither of us had ever done before (or since). And then we met on the busy Katoomba street, went for a coffee, and within minutes were telling each other our deepest and darkest secrets. That night he was palming off his mistress, after having left his partner at home, so we could go upstairs to really meet each other…….and you can think what you like about such a meeting, but that’s how it was. 6 hours later we came back to the pub to cheers from observers, and parted, sure that we’d never meet again. He had a whole life that entrenched him, and I lived in another state, and I decided I wanted one just like him, but not him, because he was far too damaged. (I thought) But no-one of the male persuasion had ever treated me with such respect and equality before…….so I wanted to remember all the details. I got home to South Australia and decided to write it all out. And became a woman obsessed. Within 3 months of wondering whether I was writing the book, or it was writing me, I had a tome that I’d written, that began with a recounting of our meeting, and then became a visualization of what I wanted and wished would happen, as well as an autobiography, science fiction novel, and self help manual. It’s written in the most amazing poetic style, and as I wrote it, I’d read back over what I’d written in amazement, wondering where it was all coming from! I reckon I could almost call it a channeled book. I finished it just before Saturn Return and decided to take a trip through the desert and let it go, and take on the changes that would happen, and face my fears, and that trip is a whole other story in and of itself……but on the way home, I stopped in at Katoomba again, and just when I was about to leave and come home, Currawong walked into the pub, and we sank into each other again. I told him I’d written a book about him, and he told me he’d written a song about me, and our hearts melted together. But he was still entangled, so we parted again, a bit sadder this time, and went our own ways again. Till I got a phone call a year or so later, and he’d left his partner, and moved to Melbourne, and wondered if I wanted to come to a party at his house. I drove there straight away, and we spent the weekend drinking large amounts of Stones Green Ginger Wine, and had 7 people traipsing through his bedroom as we kept telling each other that we weren’t into a relationship, and we wanted our freedom, and all sorts of other pretty lies. Till the last moments, when we’d kicked the last person out of his bed, and he said ‘But is that all there is? Can’t there be more between us?’

I was so touched at the role reversal, and he was so soft hearted, that we entered into a period of a long distance relationship. I’d catch the train to visit him in Melbourne, and he’d hitch-hike to visit me. I was in such an amazing place of feeling my connection to the entire world, and understanding that everyone I met WAS me, that we had all these cute moments, like when he met me at the train, and I introduced the 6 people I’d met in the smoking carriage to him, after telling them all about our romance. He was really into being a debonair but angry punk at that time, and was a bit blown away being met by all these people….the toothless prostitute, the ex-con, the psychologist, the speed dealer and the rest… And eventually he decided to leave his punk band and come and see how good it could get with me. And we’ve never stopped the joy ride since. We’ve gone from both wearing black and shades of grey to wearing lots of bright colours, he’s gone from being virulently anti-child to being the best dad I’ve ever seen, I taught myself to spin and crochet and have done it all my own way, and he’s taught himself to drum in his own unique way, despite being told many times by big-egoe’d drummers that he didn’t know what he was doing and to stop. We ran a market together that was one of the most amazing social experiments I’ve ever been a part of – with the complete absence of all forms of hierarchy – and we learnt a lot about ourselves, our community, the environment, and other ways in which we could be activists for change. We travelled all around the country in our hi-ace commuter van, bought a house to have a baby (Spiral-Moon) in, up north in a town that time forgot, sold it after she was born, and then relocated to the hills around Melbourne for a short stint, before coming back to the Adelaide hills to have Balthazar, join a community, avoid the horrendous Melbourne fires, learn through Post Natal Depression and whooping cough, get pregnant with twins, and get to here where you find us now, wondering where our path will take us next.

But that’s just the external journey. The internal journey has been huge. We are both incest survivors and had traumatic childhoods, so we’ve had a lot of barriers and trust issues that needed dealing with in a gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) way. We’ve always had a huge love and lust for each other, but had to learn how to express it to each other in ways that allowed for each other’s particular foibles and scars. Currawong had so many barricades to his heart, that it really took the first five years of our being together, for him to truly believe that I was here to stay, and really loved him. And I needed equal time to believe that I really deserved love too. It was only last year that I really got that he didn’t put other people first, like I’d been accusing him of for years, and was obviously in every part of his being, choosing me and supporting me above all others. A lot of the things we’ve accused each other of over the years have been nothing to do with each other really, and are more to do with the treatment we experienced as children, and our issues with our families of birth. The untangling of family wounds and barriers we’ve built was tumultuous at first, and is getting easier and easier the more we do it, motivated by wanting to give our children as much healthy stuff as we can.

And I still pinch myself regularly, to make sure that I really am here, experiencing one of those epic love stories that I so wished for as a child and teen. He blends in wherever he goes just like me. He can get on with anyone, anywhere, anyhow, just like me. He can skip and jump through any intellectual hoop or concept you care to name, and he’s always growing and learning. He’s Friesian just like me. A bit less than me actually, but it doesn’t really matter, when you consider the coincidence of us having met and bonded at all. He’s the most awesome mirror I’ve ever known. And there’s not a single thing about him I’d change. He’s spontaneous, never boring, romantic in a totally uncommercial way, challenging, compassionate, and a huge amount of fun. We are so similar it’s mindblowing, and we truly have absolutely no secrets from each other. I’m so greatfull we found each other……..

Which is why we’re trying so hard to stay together. Without sacrificing one of us to a job and a mortgage. To keep travelling even sporadically, and make an income from our passions and talents. To keep our family close knit and dedicated to the path of natural learning for us all. To keep carving out our own reality, our own way, without compromising our dreams. And we’re both stubborn, and both resolutely freedom loving, so I reckon we can do it. I’m going to help Currawong get a vlog (that’s a video blog) together, cause his performance is so audio-visual, that I reckon it’s the only medium that will do him justice. His wild talent is so outstanding, I want the world to see what he does. He can drum on anything from glass jars, to computer parts, to play equipment in parks, to preserving kits, to plastic seats, to bodies, while creating the wildest threads of rhythm that keep forming a continuous multilayered soundscape. And he tells stories and plays with kids rhymes and makes up the most amazing lyrics on the spot. Everything he does is improvised genius, and I’m certainly not the only person that thinks so! My man needs the audience he deserves, and as well as busking on our journey, I reckon he could find an international love for what he does via the internet. Which will be easier on our family time than doing the band and gig trip that so many other musicians do.

And I’m going to flog my blog. Remember that book I was just telling you about? Very soon you’ll be able to buy it off me via the internet, either in PDF format, or printed in a hard copy if that way goes easy. I’ve got this idea of selling the articles I’ve written, theories, books, patterns, and creative writing pieces, with lots of pictures added, on memory sticks, and then crocheting pouches for the sticks to live in, as a connection from me to the recipient. And I’m going to revive my etsy site and start selling some of my crocheted creations that are just sitting around. And write more about birth and tell the rest of my amazing birthing stories. I’m even thinking about writing kids books about how we learn together, with photo’s of our gorgeous kids and examples of natural learning and how it occurs. And maybe one day we’ll end up on land and start community supported agriculture and other community hubs, cause that’s what we’re all about.

Cause I’ve decided I want a café income. After doing 6 years of cloth nappies, when I found out there were biodegradable disposable nappies, I decided I wanted a disposable nappy income, and it happened. I was so excited by disposable nappies after 6 years of stringing up prayer flags of colourful nappies everywhere we went, that I could hardly sleep!! And now I want a café income, so we can regularly go to gorgeous organic café’s for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, depending on the mood. And I reckon if you’d ever experienced thinking up, cooking for, and cleaning up after 6 young children on a daily basis, you’d totally understand my desire!!! And it’s even Currawong who does most of the cooking!! And we want a big purple 40ft bus to trip around in, with beds that we don’t have to pack up every morning, and lay out every night, and a kitchen on wheels!! Cups of tea whenever we need them. And a home…….where we belong to the land more than it belongs to us. And where we can grow food and family and love and community. Did you catch all that universe??

But first, the search to find where we’ll birth this next one……..

So if you’re into what I write about, and think what we’re doing is a worthwhile pursuit to support, I’d really dig it if you helped me get my blog ‘out there’ in whatever way you can think of, and maybe buy my wares when they come online. And check out my beautiful Currawong’s vlog when we get it happening. And I might even try and add one of those donate buttons I’ve seen around to my blog, for the altruistic philanthropists among you. And hopefully it will all come around for all of us, to live our true and authentic lives, and dream our dreams, and support each other to be all that we want and need to be. Love, respect, peace and freedom to you all!