General News

I’m really good at moving house

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

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Right? Obviously. One does however, downsize collections when trying to move a girlfriend, her cat, and hopefully a baby into one’s two bedroom unit. I’m making great progress, this is what I’ve culled so far:
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Rose for her part is trying to bring with her an additional two cat trees (I’ve already got her largest one here; apparently cats need a climbing tree each), a massive 8 seater couch, and a really impressive 12 seater dining table set in solid wood with rainbow coloured chairs.

Yep, this is all going to work fine.

I’m alive

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

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Rose has just left for the night. I’ve come through the surgery! My lovely visitors have bought beautiful gifts and made me smile far too much for someone with stitches in their face. The pain meds have stopped working very well which probably means my liver has had enough for now but it’s tolerable. I’m full of lines which keep blocking up but a new approach to the needle phobia is keeping things reasonably quiet inside. All in all, I’ve felt better, but I’ve also felt a lot worse.

Buoyed and touched and grateful for all the mad lovely people in my life wishing me well or reaching out to support Rose (who has been AMAZING). Rocking the orange eyebrows and tampon-on-face/world’s weirdest mustache.

Off to surgery!

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I’m off to hospital at 9am tomorrow morning, for several hours of surgery on my sinuses and removing what’s regrown of my tonsils. At least, that’s the story at the moment. Apparently some people are being cancelled even after waiting in the hospital in a gown and slippers for several hours, so I won’t really know it’s going ahead until I’m wheeled into theatre.

I’m nervous. We’ve got the best ‘coping in hospitals’ part around, ready. Anaesthetics scare us, always afraid one day we won’t wake up. Resisting the urge to write wills and try to have all Christmas presents prepared, just in case…

I’ve scheduled a few posts for the week here, so there’ll be content happening, but maybe not updates for a little while.

I keep remembering things I meant to do before hand. 😦 I have been feeling a bit better today, and I’ve been able to sweep, mop, clean the bathroom and toilet, and finish some hand made gifts. I started the day playing with Tonks in bed, this is her favourite toy, it’s a tiny turkey on a string. Rose often does this, and it’s a cool idea. Ever since doing some intense processing around attachment, things have improved and I’m connected to and enjoying the company of my pets at last. 🙂

2014-10-07 08.51.45-1There’s so much I want to do. Art projects are calling to me and the garden needs some fertiliser and I want to finish a business project and the essay that’s due next week… and I want to snuggle up in bed with Rose and talk about our family and tell her how much I love and admire her and how glad I am to be with her.

Hope I’m home again soon!

 

 

Fear, grief, & chronic illness

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

I’m scared. I’m really sick, again, or still, depending on where we draw the increasingly fuzzy lines between one sinus infection and the next. The doctor I saw today confirmed I have laryngitis as well, and was worried I will not be well enough for my scheduled surgery this Wednesday. We’ve added steroids to the antibiotics and prescription for rest and fluids. With a present infection I’m also running a much greater chance of post op infection. I’ve experienced that before, severe secondary infection after having my tonsils removed at 10. I’d prefer not to do a repeat!

It’s hard to keep my spirits up. This week was set aside to get everything ready for my recovery period post surgery. I wanted to mop and clean and make sure there was blended food in the fridge and take as much of the load off Rose as I could. I also wanted to get my library books back, and finalise the essay and tutorial due next term in case recovery knocks me off my feet for longer than expected… So much for those plans.

I’m in a vulnerable place with my business. I’ve just emptied out the beautiful studio we had to close. I let a good friend down. I never even put a launch together for it. Everyone was really enthusiastic about it, but not enough to visit. I was sick and busy. Another learning curve, another failure. Something else to keep me up at nights. I’m so sick all the time. How am I ever going to make any business work? I keep trying. I’m working so hard and it’s just not enough. ‘I hate myself’ is a constant quiet drone in my head. There’s always so much fodder for it. There’s too much against me.

I’ve added mental health to all my promotional material but not had a chance to launch that side of the business yet to generate some work. In the meantime, my face painting business which was getting really busy has gone frighteningly quiet. The booked and cancelled surgeries are costing me work with long term clients, my bread and butter relationships. And maybe I’ve made a terrible mistake and people are too frightened by the new marketing to hire me. It’s too early to tell what’s costing me the most, I have to wait for surgery to be done then reassess, because the illness and hospital will keep destroying anything I set up in the meantime. A small business like mine is so vulnerable to any perception of unreliability. I’m so replaceable. My sickness is tearing apart everything I build.

So, hopefully, after I recover, I’ll find that place of hope again and keep building, and something worthwhile will come from all this hard work and heartache. And if I keep being sick, I’ll have to change it all again. Move to product creation instead of service delivery, something I can do even if my health keeps crashing. I’m so tired and so discouraged. 😦 I’m doing everything right and it’s not enough. If I could just disentangle the grief and self hate and overwhelming sense of failure and the gap maybe then I could breathe.

This really hurts. It’s like being down the bottom of a deep pit. It’s so painfully lonely. I know other people handle their pits with positivity, or that other people have deeper pits, but somewhere in claiming the right to my own pain and fear, to name it and call it what it is, to express some of the bitter disappointment at how things work out, I find strength. It’s my story. I don’t need to compare it to anyone else’s, I don’t need to win some ‘tragedy of the year’ competition to feel hurt, I don’t need to handle it in some publicly approved way to have the right to be hurting in public or to reach out.

The funny is, when I let myself own my pain, the loneliness eases a little. The gap becomes a thing I can navigate again. I can find humour, wear the loss a little more lightly, present the face of disability the world tolerates better – articulate, insightful, optimistic, discrete. Carve myself some space to grieve. There’s so much grieving in sickness.

Toe kisses

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

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I’ve been waking at around 5 – 6am every morning for the past few months, which is incredibly frustrating. I’ve started using phenergan on nights when I don’t have to be very awake the next morning, which is helping although often leaving me feeling drowsy and dazed the next day. If Rose is sleeping over that night I’ll roll over and carefully snuggle up without waking her. If it’s warm or she’s already only lightly sleeping, I’ll usually gently put out a foot until we’re touching toes. The contact often reduces my anxiety about not sleeping and helps me get back to sleep.

This morning I reached out a foot and then realised Rose wasn’t sleeping over. Tonks however, was snuggled at the foot of my bed, and more than happy to kiss toes until I fell back to sleep. 🙂

Absurdity is a gift

/ Sarah K Reece / 11 Comments

It’s been an exhausting week. Far too much bad news, challenging situations, and friends and loved ones under massive stress. Today, Rose and I were both fragile and depressed, with little left for each other. I collected her from work after a day of discouraging medical appointments and dull errands, and we drove home both in tears, at the end of our tether. We had friends visiting for dinner, so before they arrived we took a moment to touch base. Either we were going to reconnect and pull off a wonderful evening, or snap at each other and deepen the strain. We were able to sit with the triggers and hear each other and found as the tension lifted that our natural crazy sense of humour returned. We spent a wonderful evening playing board games, making jokes, and pulling silly faces at each other. In bed that evening we mused- we’d somewhat lost our humour lately. We had times of deep & meaningful conversation, or companionable connection, or heavy duty trauma territory, but it felt like it had been ages since we’d made each other laugh. What a gift it is, this simple thing. What a miracle that the world that weighs so heavy can be lifted by a laugh. Suddenly the road doesn’t seem so long or the night so dark. It’s the most simple and joyful form of mindfulness I know. It’s not about the destination, it’s all about the journey. There’s no better answer I’ve found to the scream trapped in the throat and the waiting for better years.

When have you last laughed? When have you last felt yourself step sideways out of crushing anguish and found the pain can make the humour sharp and black and driven and surreal but no less funny and no less freeing? I hope you disturb sleeping people and burst stitches and cry from the corners of your eyes and get a stitch in your side and blow chocolate milk out of your nose and gasp for air. I hope the absurdity of life helps you put down big rocks of pain and grief and play for a little while and pretend to be someone who isn’t dying inside, isn’t frozen by terror or crushed by pain or tortured by memory. And if you don’t have someone to play with, don’t forget that phones can record your silly faces and funny voices and baffling walks. Sometimes laughing is the bravest thing we do.

Spring has sprung

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

If nightmares in any way predict reality, I’d like to suggest steering clear of four-wheeler motorbikes, underground earth caverns, and singing ghouls that turn up during storms and if you hear their song it kills you and turns your soul into part of their undead cohort.

In other news, Spring has sprung. My plum tree has dropped its blossoms, my poppies are blooming, the roses have come out in leaves, and the nights are warm enough to change the sheets back to cotton. Transformations are taking place! Yesterday Rose and I packed down the studio and brought it home. A sad, failed venture. Business, like life, is full of so many of these. Rose and I did a lot of talking about the structure of our households and family. I culled half a wheelie bin of worn out clothes, made room for the studio things, and re-organised drawers of clothes and art supplies. I’m eyeing my bookshelves next for a cull. If I’m going to fit Rose, and her preposterously large furniture, into this unit, I’m going to have to make a lot of space. I’ve lived in a caravan and the upgrade to the size of a unit was huge for me. Rose has come from house-sharing massive places with two lounge-rooms, a shed to store things in, and entire rooms set aside for formal dining areas or kids play spaces. o.O Merging households is going to be challenging, to say the least. We’re moving very slowly and doing lots of groundwork.

There’s a shift in me that’s making this process easier. I’m filtering everything through the eyes of a parent. Some things I needed as a single, childless person are not important anymore. Other things are very important, such as having an art studio, but something has to give so I’m having to be creative about the use of space and resources. The psychological and physical preparations are also progressing. I have one more big fertility test to undergo, and I’m waiting on the results of another one I’ve had recently. So far there’s mostly highly positive results, with some questions about a possible condition that’s been missed. That’ll be ruled in or out shortly and I’ll know where to go from here. I’m still waiting to be rescheduled for my sinus surgery and there’s been no news. I chased up the cost to have it done privately, but it’s $7,500. There’s no guarantees when the public system will catch up with the backlog. Rose and I keep brainstorming ways of raising the money to do it privately – there’s no way I can try to get pregnant until I’ve had the surgery, but at the moment it looks like we’re stuck waiting. In the meantime we’re adding to our stocks of baby clothes and supplies. On our recent holiday we collected this little gem – a baby hammock. I used a makeshift one of these with much success when I was caring for a disabled gosling. Crazy as it sounds, the needs of human and goose infants are not that dissimilar. We’re going to have a couple of ceiling hooks put in at strategic places in the unit so we don’t need to set up the stand.

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It’s Spring. It’s a good time for cleaning and clearing out and nesting. 🙂

Wrangling eating disorders

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Wednesday
I’m sick, not, hopefully, with gastro like Rose, but with the pain and misery of too much work on not enough sleep. I hate Wednesdays and I’m under pressure to stay in the morning classes that are so distressing and exhausting me.

Thursday
Today I wrote and worked more on my business site, attended a morning and night class and an apt with my disability employment provider. I’m shattered. I’m in so much pain I’ve been doing that awful gasping breathing for hours. I updated the About Sarah K Reece page on this blog, and suddenly felt over exposed. The thought of business clients coming here is powerfully silencing. Something in me growls and I found myself writing as very dark bio indeed, like marking my territory… All that out there might be brought and cheerful and child friendly but here things are said as they are… Four more edits later and it’s still dark but doesn’t actually bite anyone on the throat.

What the hell am I doing?

And then my business cards turn up in the post, and they’re so beautiful I can’t stop looking at them. To see my own artwork on them, my design that means so much to me, all my skills listed together and unified… This new business model I’ve worked so hard on and that feels like such as risk… It’s so powerful and moving. I get excited on Facebook and people kindly write to me inviting me to send them some. I have no idea what I’m doing but I seem to be muddling through.

Friday
My exercise program is working. My capacity is far improved, I’m building muscle tone and losing weight. Irritatingly I can’t track the latter well as none of the scales at my doctors office work or agree with each other. I’ve been tempted to buy a set for myself, the first I’ll have owned since I really struggled with disordered eating. I’m telling myself I can manage, that I’ll hide them and only check once a month, but the massive emotional high of stepping on them and finding a lower weight is telling me otherwise. The huge low if the number is the same, or higher, is telling me I’m not as far away from trouble as I think.

It takes huge effort to confess this to Rose, to talk honestly about the battle in my mind, how there’s such a desire to restrict food a and how difficult it is at times because it’s so tempting to let that disordered eating self (ED) take over the weight loss and then try to stop it later on… But when I ask myself questions like; how much food should I eat today, ideally, and find the answer is ‘none’; or what my ideal weight should be, and find the answer is ‘less than the last time I weighed myself’, I know there’s nothing more dangerous than letting those ideas take hold. I could look like I’m doing everything right, get all the kudos and compliments, but actually be moving into seriously unhealthy and dangerous territory.

So, I won’t buy the scales. That’s so hard, and the fact that it’s this damn hard tells me it’s the right call. I’ll keep walking and exercising. I’ll keep trying to listen inside and identify the different voices – when it’s my healthy self saying I don’t really want that treat, and when it’s my ED self saying I don’t want to eat at all. Talking with Rose the other night, for the first time it occurred to me that I might have some very healthy impulses wired into my ED self. I want to defy my father, who spent my teenage years telling me I’d get fat as I got older. I want the limberness of a thinner body, able to sit on the floor with little kids more easily. I want to be able to buy nice clothes without having to pay three times the price at specialty stores. Some of these desires have been cross wired into my ED self. For the first time it’s occurred to me that I can work on reclaiming them, that I can undo some of the things that give my ED self such power. Issues like self hate I’m still working on and obviously that plays a role, alongside anxiety and dissociation and shame and having been badly bullied… But where those are vulnerabilities I’m trying to strengthen, these other drives are strengths I want to reclaim, want to guide back into becoming strong, useful, motivating forces for health in my life. That’s a very different perspective for me, and a much more hopeful one.

Gently does it, gently does it.

What Do I Do? Booklet

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

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Still working hard on business and marketing… this is the latest project, a laminated flip book of my services. There’s still a few pages to be added, and I’m still tinkering with my website so that everything matches up, but I’m super excited and think it’s looking a lot better than my previous design… this is about the only way I’m actually able to get anything done – not trying to make it perfect, just better than what I was using before. I guess in a small, diverse business like mine, tinkering while I get feedback and a response (if any) from the market is going to be the norm, it’s probably for the best if I’m not massively invested in the idea that my current approach is perfect! 🙂

I really like this. It’s easy to swap out/update a page if I want to, it’s mainly pictures which is always more interesting, and it’s pretty clear. I’ve used a much less professional looking mini photo album without any of the mental health stuff in it for this job before, and people do always pick it up and look at it.

I think it’s also child friendly and shouldn’t freak out any but the most conservative of people, who are not really my client base anyway. Goddamn I hope so! image

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Hills & valleys

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It’s been a wild few days here. Rose and I ran away to Remark for the weekend to celebrate our two year anniversary. We had an awesome time, sleeping in a van, cooking on a BBQ by the river, swimming and reading and talking about the future and investigating second hand shops and eating something approaching our own body weight in delicious dried apricots. I don’t know why we find it so hard to get away at times, once we’re out there everything is awesome and we have a fantastic time. Everything is tinged with the rosy glow of hoping that we’ll come back sometime soon with our kid/s.

Home again was brutal, Rose has gastro. We did a long trek back across the state for a funeral, punctuated by emotional breakdowns and major stress. Last night was vomiting and broken sleep, today was major dizzy spells and exhaustion. I’m not feeling awesome, but I’m definitely the brighter member of this relationship at the moment, so I’m doing the driving.

Business building is still going well. Today I laminated an updated flip book of the services I offer, especially to have on my table during big public events. It’s looking really good. It all links up to my website, one page in the flip book is one page on my business website (in a very condensed form for the book, obviously). I think it looks excellent. I need to add a few more pages but it’s looking really professional and with the lamination it should survive all the handling my stuff gets with kids around at face painting gigs. Making progress, making progress…

With any luck the next few days hold some decent sleep and regaining equilibrium for us both.

It all comes together…

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Tired but happy. Business building continues to go well. I’m a little obsessive, but that’s not the end of the world. My to do list is manageable. Pending a couple of questions to be answered by my accountant, I think I’ve finally finished all my tax paperwork for the past 7 years! This has been a mammoth project that has taken months of work. My filling cabinet is sorted. My computer files are well arranged. Business admin is current and easy. And it’s growing! I feel about 1,000 pounds lighter in spirit. It’s working, at last! I’m figuring it out and it’s becoming easy, even pleasurable.

I’m still terribly anxious about mixing my mental health work with the face painting and accidentally killing off my only current paid work due to stigma… I can’t tell if this is going to work or not until I try it. I’m ecstatic to be pulling my networks together, they are alive and safe and going to keep running… That makes my heart so happy. Hard at work at the moment, growing growing growing it all. Nearly ready to order the new business cards… Putting finishing touches on the first flyer… You can see the website here: sarahkreece.com.au hopefully looking bright and friendly and very child safe, which of course I am.

I’m so happy to see it all coming together. It’s really the culmination of years of work and volunteering. There have so many low points, failed ventures, terrible illness, phobias, and sheer hard work, but this part is just a pleasure. Maybe I’ve finally reached the point where I’ve learned enough and failed enough to pull this one off. I really, really hope so!

I love public speaking

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Wow, what a day. What a week! Today I went off to talk to a bunch of students about my experience of mental health recovery. I do this particular talk about every 6 months to the new group of students, and as I’ve been giving it for a few years now, it’s really interesting to notice the changes. I reworked a lot of it this morning and updated both the artworks used to illustrate it and the poems used. I remember the day I decided to be open about my experiences of DID, instead of talking only about PTSD. I remember deciding to openly discuss the contradictions about my story and experiences that are so easily missed in a snap shot presentation of my life. Today I pulled out my diagnoses as a focus and talked instead about key experiences – dissociation, multiplicity, voice hearing, psychosis, trauma recovery. I am really comfortable with the development I’ve done.

It went down really well. This one’s a long talk, over an hour, and that can be insanely dull, especially if everything’s done in chronological order or read off a power point. No matter how many times I’ve shared, it’s still an intense experience. My hands shake and my heart races. I remember good advice from an amazing public speaking trainer I saw once – ‘don’t interpret those reactions as fear, think of them and speak of them as excitement’. Fear freezes us, but we can ride the adrenaline waves of excitement. It works for me. I concentrate on not talking too fast (I’m so bad at that, especially when the time frames are tight), making eye contact, being present. People watch me avidly. Sometimes they cry. I’m so moved. I want to hug all of them. I want to sit them down and listen to their stories. I want to hear why they’re in this course, where they’ve come from, what they’re scared of, what they’re hoping to do with their lives. They all have stories.

I can’t talk about the past without going there on some level. I read poems about homelessness or loneliness and there’s a cry in my chest and a cold wind that blows through me. I take people there and I walk them back out again. There’s a lot of courage needed for people to be willing to walk down that path with me, a lot of trust that I won’t leave them in the pit with the bodies, that I’ll help them make some sense of the pain. People are amazing.

I’m home now, on a high. This is predictable, there’s a euphoria for me in connecting with a bunch of people like this, in such intimacy with strangers, in sharing what had been the nightmares and the failures of my life and in doing so, transforming them into sources of wisdom and hope and inspiration. It makes meaning for me. 

A crash usually comes later. At some point, there’s the predictable exposure stress, the sense of rawness and loss, the shattering impact of finding that meaning and hope and connection do not erase pain, that I’m still vulnerable and still haunted. I know it might be coming but I’m still flying, soaking up the high for as long as it lasts. 

This time it’s special because I’m working so hard on my business at the moment and talks are a huge part of that. Getting such warm feedback is a huge boost that I’m on the right track and this is possible. I’ve been quiet on the blog this week because I’ve been so busy writing new content for my websites and working on promotional material for my talks. It’s a huge project but I’m well into the zone, working every moment I get on it all and feeling it all flow. It’s coming together in my mind so well, what’s been confused and chaotic is becoming clear and I can see the next steps. That’s amazing, because I’ve felt lost and stuck since I started at NEIS and found myself embroiled back in the admin based assessments of the small business cert 4. Now I’ve hit the wall and put that to one side, I’m flying again and the business is developing daily. 

If you want to check out my works in progress they are all linked to from this hub site: sarahkreece.com

  • My Business Site – I’m taking a leap here. This is the site for all my face painting and custom art, I’m planning to properly add all my mental health/queer/community sector talks and workshops here. At the moment that aspect is undeveloped because I’m still working on the final draft of my master version of the pdf that will be used to advertise my talks. Once it’s more complete, I think I’ll make this my official hub site and close the other page down, or redirect it there.
  • The Dissociative Initiative – many of you are familiar with this, but it’s been in stasis since my board collapsed. I’m updating it and linking it to everything else I do.
  • The Hearing Voices Network of SA. I’ve wanted to start this resource for years, and tried to pull together interest from local people without success. So I’ve decided to host it myself and then liaise with the interested parties. Why not? There’s nothing to stop me, and we need it!
  • Homeless Care – This one is actually my partner Rose’s fault lol. She got inspired and started a facebook group then picked up lots of work and got too overwhelmed to do anything about it. I’ve decided I’ll take it on as I’m feeling pretty comfortable about being able to hold the space – assemble the website and start some gatherings to work on resources and projects. 

Feedback is very welcomed, as is any assistance for the free networks. Or passing on my details to anyone who might want to hire me. 🙂 I don’t know if I’m going to be able to achieve my goal of self sufficiency, but I’m going to work on it. At the very least, I now have the dignity that comes with having a public identity – an answer to the question ‘What do you do?’ that doesn’t involve talking to strangers about chronic pain and illness. (I try to never ask this question, it always hurt me so much. I try to ask about people’s interests/passions/hobbies instead. Sick people still have those.) And at last, I can see how to support my free resources, keep them alive and gather support for them. I’ve had so much trouble feeling uncomfortable about marketing myself, about asking for money and moving into a ‘small business’ mindset, but I’m starting to see that for someone who is disabled and dependent on welfare, this is also about dignity. I have a right to use all the skills I have to make myself as independent as possible, to care for my family and prepare for my child. It’s not greedy or grasping, I’m not cheating anyone or looking for pity. It’s not my fault that industrialisation has changed the nature of ‘work’ in ways that are extremely difficult for ill or disabled people to fit. In a different time I would live in a family or tribe and help out as and when I was able to, and give my all when I was well. (assuming I didn’t just die of course) In my own way, I’m doing my best to be part of good changes in the world. I will do what I can, and what I can do will be enough. 

Sarsaparilla online

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Wednesday’s are currently my crazy day. I start the day online at 9.30am for my Cert IV in Business, and finish it at 8.30pm at College for a Drawing class. Inevitably by then I am exhausted, sick, and in awful pain and very sad that I’m not enjoying a class I would usually love. I’ve been working hard on making Tuesday evenings restful and taking time off between my classes on the Wednesday to reduce the impact. Being able to borrow a car to get to my evening class, or beg a lift from someone kind also helps. Today is extra challenging as I’d cancelled both classes expecting to be in surgery! But it’s going well so far. The morning class is over. I went for a walk to the Post Office with Zoe and a friend. I’ve received a package of items for my face painting business that must have been held up for weeks in customs – they were so delayed I was sure they’d been lost or stolen. Given that it cost $150 I’m pretty ecstatic they’ve arrived! I went for out for coffee and a chat, ordered a tablet online to replace my smartphone, and signed up the SA Writer’s Centre to see if I can get some help laying out my book ideas. I’m a little bit excited about that. I’ve got dinner sorted out, and I’m about to have a bath and a rest (nap if I’m lucky) before heading out for the evening again. The dishwasher is unpacked, and life feels more under control again.

A friend posted this cute link about cats on dating sites and I thought I’d join in. If my cat Sarsaparilla had an honest online profile, I think it would read something like this:

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  • 7 Year Old Male 
  • Seeking occasional companion for warm naps 
  • Spayed 
  • Body type – fit and muscular
  • Breed – domestic shorthair
  • Hair colour – Black & White Tuxedo
  • Catnip – not interested, can’t detect it. Don’t like any cat toys at all, or cat beds, cat scratchers, and so on. Will sleep on books, newspapers, homework, keyboards, laptops, and sleeping people.

More about me: I live a peaceful life of roaming. Can’t tie me down! I come and go as I please and eat the best of the treats on offer from any family who’ll give them out. I love sleeping in the sun, separating the other neighbouring tomcat from a decent amount of his fur. When I’m super happy I purr and dribble at the same time. I can be skittish. I do not recognise my own humans if they are wearing new shoes, jumpers, or a hat I haven’t seen in a while. I loathe and avoid dogs and pretend they do not exist. All cat doors in any houses are a personal invitation. I love pigeons, rats and mice, particularly the middle bits. I leave the end bits like feet, tail, feathers, and beak, for my humans. I am adept at hiding my gifts beneath the middle of the queensize bed where they cannot be reached. I love to sit on sleeping people’s chests. If extra happy, I will paw their faces and dribble onto their necks. I’m not sure why they don’t enjoy this. I lead a simple, happy life, with the occasional dog chase over a fence to keep me in good shape. 

Seeking: You must not be clingy or nervous, or I will panic. I can mewl for 12 hours straight if I’m upset about something. I do not adjust to being kept indoors. I can be upset about something for 4 months straight without adjusting to it. I have a very small, high pitched squeak for such a large cat – you should never draw attention to this! You will allow me to enjoy my wayfaring lifestyle, and never ask for cuddles unless I initiate. You will not pick me up, you will not put me in cat boxes, you will never take me to the vet, you will not give me tablets or pastes or treatments of any kind. You should keep a towel handy to put over your lap for cuddles or I will add a complex poem in Braille punctures on your thighs. You should understand a guys need to dribble with happiness from time to time. You will not own a dog. Other cats are okay provided I am given lots of treats and a couple of months to adjust. They should be smaller than me. If you really love me, you will let me eat rats in the bed and piss on your clothes and/or curtains. As you can see, I am fairly poorly treated by my current humans who do not appreciate any of these things. They are lucky I still choose to visit.

Medicine for a bad day

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

It’s not been a good day. Robin Williams has died, and my online world is flooded with unbearable sadness. People are asking what hope there is when someone so inspirational, wise, and successful, couldn’t find a way to make it through the night. I shared a post I wrote in the wake of the loss of a friend of mine to suicide, with my thoughts about grief and loss.

My surgery was cancelled at the last minute, so all the plans Rose and I have made, gigs cancelled, days taken off work, study arrangements and so on have become moot. I’m back on the wait list and told I’ll be mailed a new date sometime in the next several months. I’ll have to cancel a whole new round of my work, and go in again for another 3 hours of pre-op tests and appointments. I’ve called the private hospital this afternoon where my surgeon works, but apparently they are taking weeks to months to get back to prospective patients with a quote for the surgery. The wind has been taken right out of my sails. I’ve mucked up my week, Rose’s week, friends and family who were making soup or picking me up from hospital, and all the clients I’ve pointlessly cancelled on. The careful effort to  have my system in the right place to cope with the surgery and the anxiety around my allergies goes up in smoke and is replaced with massive stress and upset. A couple of hours of crying later, and reading the entire amazing Hyperbole and a Half book, which was being saved for post-surgery depression, and I’m feeling less overwhelmed.

My car isn’t running. My phone has suddenly died. My home phone only works erratically. My caseworker is away sick, I’m two weeks behind on homework, the house is messy, and all the plans are awry. I’ve bought a new season of Flashpoint online, because nothing puts a bad day in perspective like watching someone else’s really bad day handled with care, and I’m trying to navigate options for phone and selling the car.

Into all this, a friend contacted me to offer commiserations, and in the course of the conversation asked me for some blog posts on a particular topic. I’ve spent a happy half hour looking a collection up and improving their backlinks. How wonderful to feel that something I do matters. It takes so much of the bite out of a bad day. I feel so much calmer and able to cope. Meaning and purpose and connection – how much they can ease our pain.

Happy Birthday to Rose

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

It’s the birthday of my beautiful girlfriend Rose. 🙂 What a wonderful opportunity to appreciate this lovely woman! She’s worked so hard to be here, lived such a complex and challenging life. It’s left some scars, but it’s also brought out such wonderful traits. She’s kind, loyal, brave, fun, generous, and complex. I’m so fortunate to have her in my life. So much has changed since I met her. I’ve found whole new directions, doors opened that had been closed, deeper understandings of worlds I’d not been to before. Sometimes we go and sit by trees she once slept in when she was homeless. At night we take turns reading Harry Potter to each other. Some nights she talks to me in her sleep. My inner children trust and love her. They play with her, cuddle up to her, cry in her arms when they’re scared or sick. She knows us, she picks switches, uses our names, knows the right pronouns. We’re so different! She loves Hilltop Hoods, I’m into David Bowie. She struggles to get her motor running for work. I struggle to turn mine off. I’m into anime and foreign films, she’s… coming around ha haa. We’re so similar too, both with our dark, wild sides, longing for the domestic but also needing to run free under the stars, to remember that we’re strong.

It’s not always been easy to build a relationship between us. We’ve both worked hard, paid attention, learned a lot. We’ve come through a few ‘shall we call this off?’ conversations. Building a relationship is complex. It’s like a whole additional person, separate from each of us, that we’re both constructing. The dynamics have a life of their own. We each bring ghosts with us. At times we can barely see each other because our memories are in the way. At times words are too hard, or closeness is unbearable. But we’ve kept building, because it’s been worth it for both of us, our connection makes our lives better. We’ve made something that works, that shelters us, that brings out our best, that gives us the freedom to keep rebuilding it as times and needs change. We’re a good team, and that’s a precious thing. We’re family, and I adore her.

I’ve changed. She’s made my heart bigger. I’m gentler than I used to be, more careful. I’m angrier too, more protective. My life is so different, full of all her networks too, the people she loves and the children dear to her. We can’t go anywhere without running into someone she knows some how. In my tiny art class at college, 2 of the 7 other members know her – from different times and places. Her networks are as vast as my own – but where mine are often online, hers are local and often part of her long work history. She teaches me too – her passion for all things child related is without rival. Where my knowledge was abstract and book based, she has shown me how to baby wear a child, check if a nappy is dry, keep a restless young one entertained in the car without taking your eyes off the road. We’ve each been the foundation for each other. I help with lunches and early morning starts with her job. She drives me to far away gigs and washes out my brushes afterwards. We each play supporting roles in each other’s lives, no one person the sun around which the other orbits, but an exchange of energies. We watch and try to tend the change which bringing our lives together creates for all our other relationships. We nurture those who are loving and allow to fall back a step those who cause pain and chaos. Everything changes with the start of a new family. Our friends rejoice in it and become part of it.

I’m a small part of Rose’s story, but I hope to be a good one. She deserves such devotion and care, a safe place to be vulnerable, to be flawed and human, to make mistakes and learn and have your best efforts and good intentions count. She deserves the things I’ve been seeking, real attachment, empathy, honesty, a place to be real, to know and be known, a place to grow love. I’m not good enough. Sometimes I’m mean. Sometimes I’m intrusive, or demanding. Sometimes I’m exhausted and have little to offer. It’s been a journey to process her grace in the face of my flaws, in her love I find moments of being able to accept them in myself, to draws lines between intent and effect, to be humbled without being debased. To be able to accept my failures and own them, and say sorry without collapsing into terror and self loathing. I find I have to accept the limits of my role. I am a partner, I cannot make up for the tragedies of the past. I cannot make her happy. I should not fight her battles for her. I am on her side, on her team, a retreat from the world, and I can love her and do my best to meet her needs and bring out the best in her. I can let go of the rescue fantasies and help us both to be a great team. I can help us to navigate the disastrous risks of the roles of carer and caree when one or the other of us is sick. I can accept that she too is human, that she cannot take away my pain or erase my past or meet all my needs. Sometimes that’s laughably easy. Some times, at 3am, when reason has fled and the world is dark, and our partner it cast in the role of the only fire at which we can warm our hands, that’s difficult.

How fortunate I’ve been! To get so close and spend so much time with such an incredible person! How wonderful to be able to spoil her a little, to know enough about her to be able to put together good gifts, and gentle care for the sadness of a day that’s also an anniversary of pregnancy loss, so often forgotten about in the excitement. I love her tremendously and can’t wait to be by her side for another year. 🙂

Surgery coming up

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

I have a date for my surgery now – this Wednesday. They didn’t give us very much notice so I’m scrambling to get everything organised. Yesterday, between my Cert 4 in small business class that morning, and my night class for the Visual Arts degree, I was at the RAH going through several hours of pre-op tests and appointments. It’s exhausting. I’m constantly sick with this sinus infection, my weeks are full of medical tests and specialists appointments, I’m falling behind on all my homework, and the short notice has forced me to let down customers and cancel long standing bookings for work. I hate it when my schedule falls apart like this. 😦 I can’t wait for it all to be over.

It’s not helped by various other things not working. My car isn’t running properly and I need to sell it. My phone is dying and needs replacing. My beloved Rose has her birthday and an anniversary of pregnancy loss this weekend. One of my test results didn’t come back quite normal and I’m now booked to see a gynaecologist after this surgery, with a possible exploratory surgery and biopsy on the cards. I can feel the rest of this year slipping away from me.

So I’m working hard to stay present. I’m asking for help with the things that are wiping me out into massive anxiety, like my car. I’m plodding through the most important admin on my better health days. I’m exploring options to reduce my workload. I’m spending an hour here and there crying hysterically on the couch when it all gets too much. I’m eating and drinking and remembering my meds and touching base with friends and enjoying my pets. I’m not as prepared as I’d like – usually I’d have a bunch of blended soups frozen for recovery, but nothing is going to fall apart either. I have some new movies I’m looking forward to watching, and lots of books to read. Rose is preparing to support us to keep our most hospital friendly part present. We’re talking through the anxiety and sense of helplessness that being a patient in the public system creates. I don’t even know who will be performing the surgery as the surgeon who ordered it will be away. But, curled up at night reading Harry Potter with Rose, or walking with Zoe in the golden sunshine, everything is okay. There are better times ahead, and there are still good times now. Riding it out.

Looking for a donor

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Not since I once sat in a church, covered in rat piss and hoping desperately to fit in with my new lesbian friends, have I felt so damn awkward. Searching for a donor is an astonishingly strange process. It involves using the word ‘sperm’ in conversation more frequently than I have in the entire rest of my life. It’s nerve wracking and vulnerable and exciting and sad and weirdly similar to dating, if dating involved no sex and unusually frequent references to sperm.

Let me take you through the process so far. Rose and I need a donor as neither of us produce sperm. Plenty of couples find themselves in this boat for many reasons. Our first idea was to cross the genetic lines of our families – as we are both keen to carry a child, to ask for support from male relatives on both sides. Sadly that hasn’t worked out for us. Our second idea is to find a known donor that we are already friends with, or whom we become friends with, to help us have a child – maybe more than one with the same guy if that works out. Anonymous donation doesn’t appeal to us. There’s upsides, for sure! A total lack of drama for one. Less anxiety about relationships fragmenting. But Rose has never known her father. We know what it feels like to have a big empty space in your biological history. We don’t want that for for our kids. We’d love someone who we can point to and say ‘that’s the guy’. This is your donor. He’s not your parent, he’s not responsible for you, he doesn’t pay your medical bills or sit up with you when an assignment is due the next morning, but he’s a family friend. You can ask him questions. You can figure out how you want to relate to each other over the years. We’re not scared of him or threatened by him and we don’t want to hide him or pretend he didn’t exist. He’s part of the story of how you came into the world. There’s no shame in that. In fact, he’s a pretty awesome guy. We chose him, just like we chose to have you.

Being a known donor is a big ask. It’s a weird role. The closest parallel I’ve been able to come up with is that of an uncle. You’re involved in the child’s life to some extent, there’s a recognised relationship that may be closer or distant. There’s a biological tie. There’s no legal or social responsibility or rights. A fight with the parents could see you on the out. You’re kind of invested but also in a vulnerable position. If things go wildly wrong you may one day be asked to see if you’re a match for bone marrow for a kid that’s not yours. For many guys this role is a really poor fit. They want to become a donor anonymously and stay distant, or they really want to be a father, not a donor, and they’ll be intrusive and suffer greatly if their access to the child or their desire to relate as a parent is limited in any way. It’s a pretty unique kind of situation and it doesn’t fit everyone.

So Rose and I have been casting our net wider, so to speak. We’ve put up profiles on local dating websites, and we’re sharing our search with friends and contacts. We’re moving slowly and seeking to have a good foundation of friendship in place before we start trying to conceive. Talking with strangers on the net about donors has been… Illuminating, entertaining, bizarre, funny, and creepy. We’ve met some really lovely guys. We’ve deleted a lot of wildly unsuitable ones. We’ve explained that sex is not involved in being a donor, a LOT.

As I said, it’s oddly similar to dating. You get neurotic easily (am I talking too much? Too little? Am I mentioning the donor thing too often? Not often enough?). You get excited quickly and dream a whole future that dies a deeply disappointing death when things derail. You’re flooring the accelerator with excitement and hitting the brakes with anxiety at the same time. You’re keen for no one person to feel under pressure, so you’re still talking to other new possible guys, but that also feels weirdly like cheating or snubbing the ones you do like who have expressed interest in being involved. Communication is a challenge. Them reading this blog and having to process a whole bunch of stuff about someone fairly out of the norm is a challenge. Them worrying about being exposed when interacting with someone who lives a very public life is a challenge. The whole process is rather strange and fragile.

So, this is our online profile:

About Me

Female 31 Australia

We are 2 awesome ladies who have been together for nearly 2 years and are looking for someone fantastic to help us to have kids. We’re 29/31 and looking at starting within the next couple of years. We work in Youth Work/Alternative Education, Mental Health, and do face painting work on the weekends at kids parties. We’re smart, creative, silly, and a bit nerdy. Love reading, cooking, camping, card nights, and hanging out with our mates.

Seeking Criteria

  • Members anywhere in South Australia.
  • Friendship with a man or a woman.
  • Between 25 and 40 years of age.
  • Members who speak English.

What I’m Looking For

Someone awesome to be a sperm donor and help us start our family. We don’t mind what nationality, sexuality, or gender identity you are but you do need to be between 25 and 40. Single or part of a couple is welcome. What’s important to us is that you don’t carry any known major genetic illnesses, that you’re happy to be tested so we all know that everything is safe, and that you’re a great person with similar values to us and excellent communication skills. We’d love to have a long friendship with our donor, and to have our kids know you and know their genetic history, so our first preference is to go down the DIY road rather than anonymous donation.We are also open to talking about supporting you to have children if you are gay or your partner is unable to bear children. We’re not in a rush, we’d love to meet up, get to know each other, talk things through, and make sure everyone is comfortable and on the same page.

Also happy just to make some new friends. 🙂

The process of donation involves coordinating with each other to pass along a sperm sample during the most fertile time of the month. Happy to talk about that in more detail. 🙂 Sex is not involved!

It can be a little awkward to start conversations about being a donor dad, so we’ll leave the first move to you. It just feels a little odd to say to a stranger – hey you seem nice, can we have your sperm? Feel free to strike up a conversation if you’d like to chat! 🙂

I’ve also taken to having the following spiel saved in a word document so I can copy and paste, seeing as it comes up in every conversation. It’s the basic run down of the process for when you’re using artificial insemination (AI) at home.

The first step is making friends. Donating can be a bit of a process and it’s best if everyone gets along and feels comfortable with each other.

The next step is getting tested. Sperm samples can contain STI’s such as HIV, so it’s super important to know no one will get sick.

So once everyone has the all clear, some paperwork is signed to say that this is a donor relationship, and no sex is happening. That protects the guy from being sought after for child support, and allows us to try and get both of us legally recognised as parents on the birth certificate.

The process of donating is quite simple. A couple of times a month the donor and we arrange a time that suits everyone on the days we know the biological mum is most fertile. The donor puts a sperm sample into a sterile cup that we provide. Then within one hour we arrange a handover – he drops it off or we pick it up.

Sperm dies really fast outside of the body, so that bit can be tricky to arrange, especially if the donor and us don’t live close.

But basically that’s it. This goes on every month until a pregnancy occurs, then if we’re lucky, all goes well and a baby is born. 

Please be aware if you’re thinking of going down this road yourself that there’s some important considerations to keep in mind! Firstly, someone can have HIV but not show up as HIV positive in testing for a couple of months. So a clear STI test doesn’t always mean you are safe. When you’re using donor sperm and a clinic, the usual practice is for the clinic to freeze the donor sperm for 3 months or longer, with an HIV test for the donor at the start and end of that time. If both are clean, then the sperm is considered safe to use. Obviously you can’t do this at home, so you need good, honest conversations with a donor you trust about their risk of contracting HIV. Despite popular belief, the health of the donor is also very relevant to the chance of conception and a healthy pregnancy. It’s probably far more important to look at factors such as current drug use rather than education level or eye colour when you’re choosing a donor.

Another important thing to consider is the laws where you live about donors and parental rights. Everywhere is different. Don’t assume that just because you’ve used AI instead of had sex that you’re all safe and legally protected. Not all the laws recognise donors outside of a clinic, and not all the laws recognise that a same sex couple can both be parents. There are occasional horror stories about donors being pursued by the state to pay child support, or a non-biological partner being denied access to their own children following the death of the biological parent, or breakdown of their relationship. Do your homework! You may need to lodge forms, sign stat decs, and jump through various bureaucratic hoops to make sure your relationships are all legally recognised the ways you’re setting them up. If you are trying to set up a poly relationship or clan with more than two parents being recognised legally, you need advice from a specialist lawyer because this is extraordinarily difficult to pull off within current legal frameworks. It’s also important to mention that, all jokes aside, please don’t use regular household items such as your kitchen baster for DIY insemination. You can buy single use, sterile medical supplies online discretely through sites like DIY Baby. The last thing anyone needs is infection at early stages of pregnancy.

Another consideration is that around half of all fertilized eggs are lost to very early miscarriage. Women who conceive through sex are often not aware they were even pregnant because it happens so early in the process. But for those us using donors, we’re watching the whole process and often confirming pregnancy very early. So while our chances of miscarriage may not be any higher than anyone else’s, we can be aware of early losses other people aren’t and this can be very painful. It’s worth keeping this in mind and remembering that sadly, losses are to be expected as part of the process. (just as a side note, this is not what has happened with Rose, all her losses have been later, hence our care to go through fertility testing and work on pre-conception care to reduce our risks) There are things you and a donor can do (such as not smoking) to reduce your risks of miscarriage, but the base-line stats even for healthy people with low risk factors are still a lot higher than most people realise, and this can be a shock, both for you and your donor.

Lastly, even with the best of care in tracking your fertile window each month, it can take a while before conception and pregnancy result. When you’re inexperienced and excited it’s easy to think of a sperm sample as being a magic ticket to a baby – especially so if you have friends who’ve been more fertile than they wanted and had pregnancies on the pill, or when you’ve all spent your whole adult lives being super careful to avoid getting pregnant and worrying that the smallest mishap will inevitably result in an unwanted pregnancy. Both you and your donor need to be prepared that this could take a little while, and that’s normal. You may be lucky, so be ready, but you may also spend months arranging collection of samples with a donor who needs to remain a low HIV & miscarriage risk throughout that time. It can be a lot more drawn out and inconvenient than anyone was expecting. It may be worth having conversations at the outset about how you will approach things if someone’s circumstances changes and they want to stop. Donors have lives, sometimes their kid gets sick, or they get an interstate work offer, or start a new relationship, and what was a wonderful idea six months ago has become a stressful imposition. Sometimes too, your circumstances change and you change your timetable, perhaps you need time to grieve after losses, or you suddenly have to move house, or find yourself caring for a sick parent. Putting this on the table at the outset can help those important conversations to happen early and calmly if they need to. This is doubly important if you have a reciprocal arrangement with a donor – ie two families assisting each other to have children via sperm donation and surrogacy. There’s a lot of opportunity for heartbreak and hurt in these situations, as well as connection and joy.

If you’re curious to learn more about different family structures, including families with a known donor, I recommend (and own) the book Baby Makes More. There’s a wonderful range of families who have shared the good, bad, and ugly of their choices, their struggles for acceptance, and their efforts to find a language to communicate about their relationships. The legal trend is gearing generally in the direction of known donors after many years of anonymous donation. Some children born with the help of an anonymous donor experience the kind of dislocation that children born in closed, secret adoptions do, and go searching for information and history as they get older. In recognition of this, legislation is beginning to change in places and enforce that more information needs to be disclosed for secret donor arrangements, and that adult children conceived with a donor should be able to access identifying information. This is not to shame or judge those who have chosen to use an anonymous donor, merely to point out that we are moving in this direction culturally and we need to find more comfortable language for families and relationships like this. Where once it was thought that secrecy helped people, that children were more secure if they didn’t know their ‘big sister’ was really their biological mother, or that people would cope better with sickness if they were not told how bad it was, things are swinging more in the direction of disclosure and openness being essential to trust and a healthy sense of self. It’s no guarantee, and there’s certainly downsides, but we are starting to embrace that family comes in many forms, and that these complex ties of love and blood are part of all our lives – for good and ill.

Holding my childhood to ransom turns 3!

/ Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

Wow, three years of blogging. I love it. Writing used to be private and solitary. I adore the interaction of a blog (admittedly, most of my interactions still happen over at facebook or via email, but it’s still awesome to get feedback, critiques, or opinions straight away for something I’ve written or shared). I follow a many other blogs and enjoy the sense of connection and sharing of information. I continue to try and make the leap from blog writing to book writing, but I struggle with the impulse to share my thoughts straight away, with the concern that someone somewhere might be looking for help, and with the change in format from posts to chapters… I think in blog posts now! It’s been a year now since I moved from blogger to wordpress and I’m still happy with that change. I still don’t make any money from my writing, which is a little sad considering how passionate I am about it, and how much time I devote it… and that it’s one of my few skills that doesn’t generate joint pain for me. I still haven’t figured out how to get google analytics to work on here so I’m only guessing about my site stats.

My top 5 most popular posts of all time are:

The most popular search terms that bring people to this blog are about psychosis, empathy, bulling, chronic illness, trauma, multiplicity, dissociation, feeling suicidal, and face painting. I have published 894 posts in 19 categories. As usual for me, it’s been a busy year. I saw Amanda Palmer in concert, then got onto twitter for the first time, talked to Amanda Palmer, and tweeted short poems. I grieved for two lovely friends, Amanda, and Leanne. I celebrated a year with my gorgeous girlfriend Rose. I wrestled with challenges facilitating various groups, delivered a talk at the World Hearing Voices Congress in Melbourne, discovered our cat Tonks is a she, not a he, navigated life and my relationships, and other people’s reactions, when you have chronic illnesses. I had rough nights and used ink on my skin. I had my second experience of psychosis. I graduated and won an award! I figured out to use routines to my advantage. I wrote a lot about triggers, love, dissociation, stigma, recovery, growing up, sex, mindfulness, and crisis. I nailed down my philosophy of multiplicity in a nutshell. I set up my first art studio! I turned 31. I hung out with my goddaughter, Sophie, and shared a lot of art from my bachelor degree. We spent more time getting to know our trans guy parts. I was sick a lot, managed a lot of pain, and did a lot of system work. Rose and I moved into preconception care as we plan for children of our own. It’s been a pretty wild ride!

It all started with this post, on Aug 1st, 2011 – What am I up to at the moment? If you’d like a summary of the blog in development, check out my yearly updates on Holding my childhood to ransom turns One, and Two.

Thankyou to everyone who has visited, read, shared, commented, or emailed me. Your kindness, insights, and willingness to share are a blessing. I’m thrilled to have journeyed with you through the last three years. I hope you’ve learned as much as I have.

I’m not sure how long I’ll keep blogging for. I can see that book writing and blogging may not both fit in my life and I’m sad and unsure about that. On one level I love being here and being so open and I am anticipating sharing the joys and sadness of starting a family. But I’m not wedded to the idea either, it’s been a huge project and I may need my time and passion to go elsewhere. For now though, you’ll be hearing from me soon. 🙂

Deviant

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

So, yesterday Rose and I are hanging out at a medical centre, waiting for an ultrasound. They’re running late and I am starting to worry I’m about to pee on the carpet. I had remembered many years ago going for an ultrasound and being told I must not have drunk enough, so they made me drink another litre and hang about the waiting room for an extra hour and a half. I may have gone a little overboard as a result, it felt like I had a watermelon in my bladder!

They start on the top of my tummy. My bladder looms like a huge black lump on the screen and the technician tells me that I’ve definitely drunk more than enough. Rose and I keep getting the giggles and I have to keep telling her to shut up or this is going to get awkward! The tech, we agree later, is very sensitive and professional, and rather cute in a very straight way. I was surprised that she was taking pictures so close to my pubic bone. After seeing all those images of disembodied reproductive organs, mentally I’d kind of strung mine out and looped them all through my stomach. She said lots of people make that mistake, they’re actually only a couple of inches big. Things you learn!

She has quite a bit of trouble taking some images internally, and I ask if having a retroverted uterus makes that job trickier. At which point she tells me that my uterus isn’t so much retroverted as deviated, and Rose and I get the giggles so badly she can’t take any more pictures for a few minutes. I’m a deviant! Medically confirmed. Septum (bit in your nose) AND uterus.

That’s almost as funny as the graffiti we found scratched into the back of Rose’s car the other day – dyke. Misspelled. ‘Dike’. As if pointing out that she’s into women would surprise, confuse, or shame her! It’s no more offensive than someone writing ‘woman’ on my door, or yelling ‘hey, she has feet!’ when I walk past them. Although a friend pointed out its hard to tell with the barely literate, they may have been going for ‘dick’.

Life is so much better when you have a sense of humour.

Pre-conception Care

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

image

 

It’s been an amazing day. Rose and I have started pre-conception care. We’re buying and borrowing good books, looking for info on SA queer friendly lawyers (there’s paperwork involved with rainbow families!), working on diet and exercise, saving money, starting conversations with possible donors, discussing household and family structures, and starting the process of medical assessments. Today was a very medical day. I’ve had a bunch of tests done, including coping great with my first trans-vaginal ultrasound (to see how my womb health is going, considering that I have endometriosis) and I am so pleased! I was pretty nervous about it, and for the first time Rose and I were together for these tests, so we’re starting down the road of learning how to support each other through them. I’m so glad. Coping with medical touch can be a challenge but lots of hard work I’ve done over the years is fortunately paying off really well. Hurrah! I had to explain to Rose how not to fuss over me too much, because it spooks my inner kids and makes it all a lot harder to cope with. It was a ‘I’ve got my great big boots on and I can laugh anything off’ kind of day, and I’m damn proud of myself and very excited! I’m glad that we’re getting a chance to learn how to look after each other in medical fertility appointments before the really big ones where they’re listening for heartbeats or giving bad news.

We celebrated with chai lattes in my favourite local cafe, and went and bought a bag of 50 jonquils to plant in the garden. Flowers always feel like the perfect way to celebrate hopeful baby events. We have appointments coming up for further tests at Repromed, a local fertility clinic with a good reputation for being welcoming of queer couples. There’s challenges but it’s so exciting to be on the road! Even already, we’ve noticed the sense of vulnerability, how quickly we get excited and then crash when things don’t work out as we hope, a possible donor can’t be involved, or we can’t get test results for weeks. We’re moving quickly but being gentle too, laying lots of groundwork to be able to process events and take good care of each other. This can be really hard on couples! We want to ride it out together.

 

 

Goodbye Kiki

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

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There’s much sadness and heavy hearts in my world. My sister’s darling little cat Kiki was found dead a couple of days ago. A vet was unable to tell us if the cause of death was accident or intentional, only that it was a trauma, and probably mercifully quick.

Every now and then an animal comes into your life at exactly the right moment. Kiki was our cat Tonks’ sister, and she had an incredibly bright spirit, deeply loving and full of mischief. She and my sister shared a deep bond, and the shock of her passing so young and so senselessly is huge. My sister is a wonderful woman who has gone through far too much upheaval. Diligent, loyal, intelligent, fierce and gentle, she has endured much loss and disappointment. Kiki was a constant, a bright spark of warmth and life that cheered flagging spirits and made it easier to lay to rest long days and start new ones with energy. Whatever other changes were happening, there was Kiki. Curled up in bed at night, following her around the house, or riding on her shoulder. In many ways, Kiki was my sister’s home. Without her, everything is wrong, home is not home, there is no anchor holding fast. We all know it, and we’re all reeling.

We shatter apart and come together again, recognising the loss and the changes. Rose and I hold each other in the dark and whisper of her lost babies, of what it will feel like if we lose more. I remember Leanne and Amanda with an aching heart. We talk about grief, about life after death, about family. We feel the shadow of Death upon our lives, the senselessness of it, the sharpness of cut threads, the unknown timing to the ends of our stories. A cold wind blows.

We gather to bury Kiki, talk about good memories of her, honour a rare and special connection between human and animal. We wake to a new world, changed, sadder, grieving. Kiki’s body lies beneath snowdrops blooming. Life goes on, all around us, under us, over us, it hurts, and it is beautiful.