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!

On having a big family.....

So now that we’re expecting our 7th child together, and my 8th child all up, I’m really starting to notice the big balls of juicy judgement that come bouncing down the street towards us from folks eyes, as well as getting reactions from people when we tell them like “Oh, I’m so sorry” (?????????), and similar sentiments from people who look like we’ve just announced one of us is dying. Not to mention the odd snide comments from acquaintances about how many we have already, and the direct approach from ‘friends’ like I talked about in my last blog post.

As it is, I’ve developed a radar over the years for all sorts of reasons, for people on the street to look at and smile with, and people to avoid looking at, especially not making eye contact with, cause it’s likely to not be pretty. And basically, that radar picks out all indigenous folk from the world around, any ‘differently abled’ folk, any kooky folk, and people who look like refugee’s, as being safe to look at and smile with – essentially the other fringe dwellers in the world – and any mainstream looking one’s are the one’s my radar avoids. More often than not, these are the folk looking at me with ‘deadbeat parents’ and ‘she must do that for the baby bonus’ and ‘those poor grubby children’ and the like coming like daggers from their eyes.

And after spending a day sewing and constructing arguments for the rabidly anti-big-family-people who have already made their opinions clear in my life……..I figure it’s time for me to tell you, the universe, and anyone who cares to listen, our reasons for having so many children.

• First and foremost is that they’re utterly gorgeous, vibrant, envigorating, life enhancing, funny, cuddly, and the best people I’ve ever known, and we’re both honoured that they live in our family, and we get to know them for the rest of our lives. Every day is an adventure, and their unique takes on the world are pure gold. They teach us more than anything in our lives has ever done before. They are the reason to constantly strive to be better, and to make the world a better place. They are the motivation for nearly everything we do. They are friends and teachers and people that bring out our fierce protective and guiding instincts, and mirror ourselves and our behaviours in a way that means we have to deal with them, to make our combined world a better and healthier place to be.

• It took me three babies to realize that they’re nothing to do with me. Apart from the obvious of course, they’re completely their own people, born with their internal natures and distinct fate and destiny intact. With my first baby, I was convinced that my continuum parenting was the reason she was so funky, and if anything, my judgement about other parents increased……”If I can produce such perfect progeny, then it’s obvious that if everyone in the world would just do like I said, we’d have perfect people and perfect harmony forevermore….” My second baby perfomed just as well, as well as the third, but the fourth and fifth have blown that theory completely out of the water. All my tried and tested tricks and parental lore completely failed with these two. They are the ungovernable forces of nature that are best just to leave alone. And not take personally. And appreciate for their own unique contributions to the world. (We were warned about lotus babies…) And then there were the sixth and seventh that provided a whopper of a birth story, and rolled on just about all the other tried and true methods I had left for my parenting approach. All my other smug assumptions and judgements have been thoroughly discarded after they came into my life. Children, (people), are who they are, and can’t be expected to be certain things just because of who their parents are. I reckon Kahil Gibran puts it best…….

”Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

--Kahlil Gibran

It’s taken me this many kids and pregnancies to really get the great mystery of conception, birth, and the individual journey of the soul. And to just get out of the way and surrender into trust for my own life as well as theirs. I reckon I’m lucky, cause I’ve been enabled to discover that birth and all of it’s surrounding energies can truly be a path of spiritual transformation and enlightenment.

• Between all my births, (and there’s still one to come) I’ve experienced just about everything. I’ve had a disempowered, interventionist hospital birth, an empowered, almost unassisted hospital birth, a beautiful homebirth with disempowering after experiences and mismanaged bonding, an almost unassisted homebirth (with a sage, midwife observer) with a hugely empowering and transformative bonding experience, an attempt at a homebirth that became an emergency caesarean, that was respectful, empowering, and positive, an amazing homebirth of twins two days apart, and the intense experience of early life with twins, and the story is yet unwritten for the next one. I’ve learnt so much about birth. And have developed a healthy love and respect for both homebirthing and hospital birthing, and how important both of them are. And also have a unique perspective on how you can transform your birthing self, and are not just lumbered with a birthing self that can’t change. And I’ve borne witness to many other birthing women, who have had the great rewards of birth kept from them, by disempowerment by both the hospital birthing scene and the homebirthing one. I believe I have a valuable contribution to make to birthing lore from all of my experiences, and some suggestions about how we can all approach birth in a more empowered way. I really like having such a wholistic toolkit about birth within me.

• Contraception sucks, and in my experience anyway, babies are made from great orgasms. I refuse to do the pill, (synthetic bleeding? You’ve got to be kidding!) because I love my bleeding and what it brings, and IUD’s have problems, and I honestly don’t have the internal discipline to do the mini-pill or a diaphragm, and I’ve never been good at condoms (surprisingly, neither is Currawong). As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have a monogamous, loving relationship for 12 years, and have sex with plastic between you. But more than that, our sex and smell is one of the most important aspects of our relationship. Our deep trust and honesty have led us on a sexual journey that has never yet stopped….it keeps getting better and better, as we keep getting further into each other and deeper into our sexual experience. And there’s a certain animalistic nature to the procreation dance that is absolutely exhilarating. When the time is right in my cycle, and the smell’s align, and the planets with them, sex can become a mind blowing, transformative, and conceptual experience that is the equal to any great spiritual experience or great mystery of life. This is why we’re both loathe to get a vasectomy, and mess with our alchemy. But at some time we may have to face this one…. Other people may remember great holidays, or dance parties, or trips, but we remember our great sexual adventures. And we remember every great session we had that created life. We’re addicted to the danger zone, and prepared to take responsibility for the consequences. As many mystics and spiritual folk have noted during the ages, babies born from and into great love are very special……and we seem to have this particular magic DOWN PAT!!

• And now that I’ve mentioned responsibility……we consider that we take a huge amount of it with our children. We may be income challenged at times, but we always eat mostly local and organic foods gorgeously prepared by the wonderful Currawong, as well as enough sweets to make sure they wont grow up sugar addicts. We give them enough media to do the same thing, but none of the really damaging (in our eyes) stuff that will mess with their unlimited imaginations and natures. You know how lots of adults spend their whole adulthoods trying to unlearn a lot of the shit they learnt from their childhood conditioning, and trying to become themselves?? We’re trying to short track that process, by giving them the freedom and confidence to be who they are from the start…..so maybe they can spend their adult lives doing something else!! And we’re doing our best to give them as many stories and experiences we possibly can, about all the varied ways that a person can do life. As well as having as many adventures as we can along the way. A friend told me there was an article in the local newspaper about a woman who’d reached her 100th year, and was asked about the biggest differences she saw around her now, compared to when she was growing up. And what she said, was that the children today had lost all their freedom. That really sat with me. And on our forays into the city, and to parks, and libraries, and museums, and all the places that children used to inhabit, I notice more and more the great disappearance of unruly kid energy and laughter…… And where have they all gone?? Poor little buggers are stuck in front of televisions, the internet, and DS9’s, getting madly advertised at and conditioned, and desensitized to death and destruction, while losing their freedom to be just what they are…..children. To play, and ride bikes without helmets, and sit on swings without hovering parents, and make up imaginary worlds, and build cubbies, and play dress ups and all the other kooky and possibly dangerous things that the kids of today are being kept from. Our kids are still free…..very free…..in fact I’d have to call them all free range kids. And as we roam around and find people increasingly impatient with their noise and childlike abandon, I feel sad for a generation of kids that are so quiet and entranced by media and the need for ‘stuff’, that they’ve stopped training the adults around them how to accommodate the needs of the free kid.

• As for practicalities…….I’ve got two siblings that never had children, so I figure I can take their quota of two children each, which means I’ve got ‘permission’ for 4 of my kids, and I’ve come across many folk in our travels that have told me directly that they’re not going to have children, so I can have the one’s they never will. So I have obtained enough sanction from the world around me for my liking anyway, about the amount of children we have. And for those people who think that the poor little mites are missing out on the valuable one on one attention that every child deserves……let me tell you a story. For years I’ve been saying that my first and second born babies got the best out of us, and the most attention, and felt slightly guilty at the moments that I don’t have for the young ones, ( which isn’t as much as you may suspect, as I’m rather proud of my recent effort of giving the same amount of attachment parenting care to my twin babies as I did to my single babies )……until Griff, my second born, pulled me up the other day. He reckons, that the young ones actually get MORE attention than he did, because they’ve got all their older siblings to play with, be smiled at by, and to take care of them, as WELL as us big people that try real hard to make sure they all get equal amounts of our love and time. And when I look at my twin boys, and the difference between them hanging out on their own, and the joy and how much they light up when they join the rest of the gang, I reckon he may be right. And Jess, my firstborn, reckons from her perspective, we’re much better parents, and much more patient, and just better at it all the more we have, so this is nice to hear too. I also think there’s a case to be made for the fact that children who are only one or two in a family, feel the weight of expectations from their families far more than kids who can share it with a big mob.

• If you want to talk about the impact on the environment, I’ll paraphrase Currawong, (without the swearwords). Look at the ridiculous amount of money we spend on warfare and western society in general, (V8 super cars, rampant consumerism, housing estates, mass media, tabloids, etc, etc, etc, etc,) and just try and tell us that our children are going to harm the planet. In the time it’s taken you to read this, there have been millions of dollars spent on weaponry and earth destroying practices. I’ve often thought that all those conscious and earth aware people that vow not to have children for the sake of the planet, are the very one’s who SHOULD be having them. Our kids are amazing people that are going to do amazing things with their lives, and the one thing they all have in common, is a deep love and respect for the natural world and it’s creatures. They pick up rubbish wherever we go, and we can all be stopped in our tracks on busy streets by an amazing spider, or bird, or cloud formation. They may not have Santa Clause and the Bunny Rabbit and all the other trappings of western capitalist life, but they have huge imaginations and a vast repository of knowledge about animals and the natural world. We all value handmade with love creations above that of two dollar shops. And our kids are aware of the impact on the planet that many of our consumables take. Which is not to say that it’s not possible that one of them will become the CEO of Coca Cola one day, but if they do, they’ll do it with style. And we’ll still love em.

• And quite simply…..I came from a big family and loved it, and due to great sadnesses and misunderstandings we none of us talk to each other anymore, and I’m really glad to be part of another big family in this lifetime. Which will hopefully and most likely be a big family that I get to keep, and holiday with, and love for the rest of my life. The hubbub of a big family is awesome. Going out with the family pack is a hoot. Watching them stream along through the central markets, and leap and bound and skip, and the amazement of people as they wonder when the stream of kids will end, is a real crack up. Having endless energy, and ideas, and playfulness, and kid aura’s all around us is just one of the most amazing, liberating, funny, and loving things I’ve ever done in my life. Birth and all it’s inherent attendants can truly be a transformative and enlightening journey worthy of any spiritual quest. I’m doing so much more with my life with them than I ever did without them. The lessons I’m learning about tolerance, compassion, selflessness, and destiny are incomparable. And I wouldn’t give any of it or them up for quids.

So next time you see us on the streets, and maybe next time you see a big family, CELEBRATE with us!! Don’t think about how we do it, and how you couldn’t do it, and put a whole heap of judgements on us about our choices……if we weren’t coping and didn’t like it, we wouldn’t be doing it!! Just say ‘yee ha!!’ and soak up some of that increasingly rare big family energy. And give the parents a shock by giving them a really positive reaction to the way they’ve chosen to do their lives.

On the road again.......

Well. Community life came to a complete and abrupt halt. Probably not a surprise to anyone that’s tried living on a community before. Like I was saying in my two posts about the ‘survival skills’ we learnt from our parents, that we apply with the same imperative as all the other mammals and animals performing the survival skills they learnt………I don’t think us white fella’s have actually learnt much about sharing, honesty, relationship skills, taking responsibility, and living as part of a community, from our parents and society these days…..and it was a long long time ago that we did. Instead, on the community we lived on, we learnt more about what is usually taught to our younglings these days. In my perspective anyway, that can often be about criticism, emotional hierarchies that you can never work out the rules for, people saying one thing and being lovely to your face while they’re busily bitching and stabbing you behind your back, and everyone jumping on a bandwagon to attack ‘the other’, whoever that may be, glad that ‘the other’ is getting a drubbing instead of the people guiltily joining in. But life is what you make of it, and I choose to try and make everything a learning experience, rather than relegate it to ‘good’ or ‘bad’, so I can tell you right now, that it was the perfect place for us to be while we were there, and we also left at the perfect time to continue on our life path. I reckon it was the only place I can think of anyway, where a large family could live surrounded by 7 other adults, and we went through 2 pregnancies, 3 births, major surgery in the form of an emergency caesarean and it’s recovery, Post Natal Depression, whooping cough for 3 months with all the younguns, relationship hassles from all the stress, and the birth of twins to add to four other young children……….and receive absolutely no support, not a meal, not an offer of shopping and dish doing, or a vacuum, or a conversation about it all, or ANYTHING! With some lashings of criticism on top. I faced every parent of a large family’s nightmare, of being bailed up by a friend, and told about how they had chosen to not have children, to be a vegetarian, and to live on a community to be a friend to the planet, and they knew that I loved my children and had learnt from them, but did I REALLY need to have that many? How could I justify my impact on the planet and the community? And why wasn’t she consulted? To which I instantly replied that yes, each and every one of them was a gift to me and our family and my learning, but more importantly a gift to the planet, with their completely unique set of traits and dispositions and their beautiful life embracing souls. It feels almost sacrilegious to me to talk about who I should ‘allow’ to live, and who I shouldn’t. I reckon that’s about it for the whinge…….

And on the other hand, like I said before, it was perfect, cause it was about the only place I can think of where a large family would not only be completely ignored through their travails, but also criticized, which was so incredibly intense at such a huge time in our lives, especially around the birthing of our twins, that it threw us onto our own resources completely. And we coped. And beautifully. And intact. And with integrity and love. And we learnt a lot. About our patterns that had created the whole situation in the first place, and how we’d never learnt about having a home – and in using that word I’m thinking about a sanctuary, a safe place, a comfort for the soul where family are accepted, respected, and loved for who they are – and in never having experienced it, we were re-creating our own childhoods where home was a place we felt caged and trapped. We also learnt that we’ve also re-created our parents beliefs about having to do everything on your own, and how other people only hurt you. And a whole mess of other stuff that you tend to bring back from the depths when you get pushed so completely into them. So we left very abruptly. And have moved into a studio with my mum and eldest daughter in the interim, doing some loving and healing with them, and filling up the kids with some very important oma and big sister attention. And we’re endeavouring to not take the criticisms from our former home on, and internalize them (after all, the community we were living on was the ONLY place in our lives where we were copping anything but love, respect and appreciation), and not be bitter, and it’s also solidified some of our family goals and visions for the future.

And just a little aside here…… Are you wondering why there’s a large lack of any kind of blog from me about the reality of living with twins?? That’s because it’s so incredibly huge, and intense, and has been such a test of every sort of fortitude and survival skill I’ve ever had, that I really don’t know how to write about it. I think it’s all too close and here and now for me to put it to paper for a while, and I’m going to need a bit of time and perspective to express it in a way that would truly do the experience justice. But for now, I just want to say, (now that the relentless and exhausting early bit is over, and we’re getting to experience some more of the joyous bits of having two babies) that there’s something incredibly special and rare about having arms full of two babies, and when they’re both looking at me at the same time with loving mamma smiles on their faces, and when they chat to each other and put their arms around each other and snuggle up to us and them in sleep. And the huge amount of love between them and their siblings. And the feeling I have knowing that we’ve managed to give two babies at the same time, (and in extreme adversity) the same amount of holding, hugs, and attention that all my other attachment babies got on their own, is a big one. I reckon I’ll give myself a big girly badge for that one, give us all one in fact, and I feel very proud (and amazed) that we managed it. And the huge awe, trust, love and respect I’ve developed for my Griff and Lilly in particular on this journey, has blown me away. And the facets it’s brought out in all the rest of us. Trust me. I’ll have a lot more to say about this all later.

Now. Back to the goals and visions for the future. All that adversity and pattern awareness has really brought our family aims to the fore. I guess sometimes you need some beliefs to be really challenged to realize how important they are to you. And one of our biggest ones is to stay together. It’s an uncommon thing in this day and age for a large family to have their mum and dad around them all the time, in the pursuit of natural learning and mutual respect and admiration. And we want to make our way in life, and a lot more money energy, from doing what we love, rather than giving up on our dreams, and sending one of us off to be a mortgage slave like many other folk do. No judgement here about other folk and their mortgages, I just don’t want us to give up on our dreams unless we really have to. And travelling is an important part of our lifestyle that we want to really use more often as a tool of learning and inspiration. Also as a tool of getting away from the 4 walls of the beliefs and patterns we learnt in our families, taking a holiday from the expectations imbued in us about the nuclear family, and how it lives in a house.

I’ve come to learn for myself that belief and attitude is everything. I could really easily, (and so could a lot of other people – poor old Currawong struggles with this one a lot at the moment) view us and our lives as a bit of a disaster – middle aged with a large family and no home, and a smaller than small income, and not a hell of a lot to show for our lives in the material ways of the world apart from a whole lot of stories. We’ve been called ne’er do wells, dreamers, misfits, hypocrites, neglectfull, and messy, and we’ve called ourselves destitute and losers and a whole lot worse, and in times of stress we take it out on each other and say horrible things to each other, and it would be really easy to take all that on, and be victims, and blame our childhoods and everyone else, and hide our heads in shame…….

But I can also just as easily view us and our lives as a triumphant success of dreamers dreaming the dream of freedom and passion and bigger lives than we’re conditioned to expect, with toolkits of stories and experiences from life on the fringe and travelling the path less travelled, and a huge amount of love and respect between us all, and lots of stories and first hand tales between us, of working on our relationships with each other and the world, trying to work out who we really are, and what we want to do, and also trying to change the parts of ourselves that don’t really work, or that we don’t really like. The closeness and love between our children is pure gold, and the fun we have on our daily adventures is immense. Our family is a living art of performance wherever we go, from shopping to driving new places to trips in the city to visits to galleries and museums, we engage folk everywhere we go with our sociable, playful selves. When we don’t take up the societally expected role of ‘parents’ at the top of the hierarchy, it’s amazing how much we can learn from our kids, and learn all together, and teach each other, and infect the lives of nearly everyone whose live’s we touch – even in the smallest way – with smiles and giggles and warm gushy feelings, and if we engage in conversation, they usually hear something from one of us that they wouldn’t hear from many other places. One of the most common things people say as feedback to us is that we inspire them…..to try and truly be themselves and to experience the joy and wonderment in the everyday, and try chasing those loving relationships they’ve been dreaming about more.

I much prefer the second version. And I’m convinced that if we keep the flame of our dreams alive, and keep treading our paths no matter how much against the mainstream our flow may be, that our lives will keep increasing in love, and we will find our home somewhere and somehow, and the sanctuary we all desire as a base to spring into our futures from. And I’ll finally publish those books…….

So here’s the plan gang. I’m gonna borrow from a few cultural metaphors to do my bit for crafting our future. The first is that of the Mongolian mother. Living in her beautiful handmade yurt and home, she moves with the seasons and her animals and cares for her family in a nomadic way. Everything has it’s place and home and beautiful chests and pouches and carrying vessels for all the artifacts of life, that get packed away everytime they’re on the move, easy to keep safe and close. I’m busy sewing my nut off, making mattresses stuffed with alpaca, and putting them together in a swag like way so all the kids have a bed they can unroll in both the van and in our beautiful soul pad. Believe it or not, we’ve swung it so all our kids and us can sleep in comfort in our Toyota Hi-Ace Commuter van. It involves one sleeping across the front seat, one in the padded foot bay, one in front of the back seats, one on a board on top of the baby seats, us in the big bed at the back, with the twins in their swag in the bottom corner. I’m really enjoying the mattress making, and the fitted sheets and doona covers and groovy little trappings to personalize them. And I’m making clothes bags out of material that have three sections and look like a bedroll, and can hang three down with buttoned flaps that cover the holes, or lay on the bed as an added cushion. They’re funky too. And carseat covers and curtains, and pockets on the carseats for nappies and washers and water bottles and shoes, and bags for books and toys, and some really funky and warm hoodies and pants and crocheted sheepskin slippers for everyone, cause we’re heading off on the road in winter……..with no destination.

The other cultural metaphor is that of the journeywoman, or journeyman. When her apprenticeship is done, the journeywoman is sent on the road armed only with her tools, to make her living, and eat, and drink, and comfortably sleep, from what she can craft only. I’m combining this one with a traditional element of the Frisian woman’s costume, a belt from which she hung her favourite tools – a sewing needle, some scissors, her purse, and her threads. I’m gonna make myself a kick arse hippy Friesian belt, and hang my hooks and some knitting needles and some of my favourite other tools (might make hugging a dangerous pursuit), and set ourselves in the flow on the road, in a funky Mongolian style van, with my belt strapped on, and craft ourselves a beautiful future from our dreams and the alchemy of trust, love, faith and thoughts……..

I’m thinking we’ll just get somewhere and set up our soulpad with my big spiderweb inside, and a whole heap of hangy dangly crocheted things and clothes to dress up in and books to look at, and Currawongs drums for when he feels inspired to drum and tell stories (which is this funky little improvised spontaneous thing that he gets going on, that can drum out the wildest storylines), and I’ll tell stories of how to crochet and spin and knit by finding your own way, and about birth and what I’ve learnt about the great mysteries of life, and my perspective on the bachelor gods and all sorts of other things, and I’ll have hats and odd bits and books on memory sticks that people can trade or obtain by donation…… And we’ll roll our performance arted life out for others to observe and imbibe, and like all great buskers make a honest and tax free living from our skills and arts, and just set that all up at festivals and by roadsides, and in city parks and on beaches until something happens. And maybe the story will be in the journey rather than the destination.

Wish us luck. Oh. And another thing. Just to add to the spicy mix of trying to create better patterns and positive futures, it seems that another child wants to become part of our family. I’m pregnant with my eighth child. It seems that the natural birth control method of psychic protection doesn’t work for me. Who would have thought it. And with all the love and learnings of my past births and children, I couldn’t even fathom saying no. I welcome another divine creature into our family, and am aware that we’ve got a bit of a time limit on creating those new patterns and a home in particular………

And will only be near to and able to use an internet connection sporadically, so stay tuned for intermittent updates.