Family

Holding ghosts

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

This is always a hard week for Rose, with anniversaries of miscarriages and other losses. In the past she’s grieved alone, with no grave to mourn by and no recognition of her loss. So today I took her to a cemetery.

I had permission from a friend – the mother of a lovely girl who died far too young, to sit under her memorial tree and remember Rose’s little ones and our Tamlorn. We sat in the shade her beautiful tree with Tam’s ashes, shared a birthday cake for the 7 children not with us, and cried.

It hurt. It was hard to do, many kinds of pain are shrouded in shame and a trick of the heart that says don’t look, don’t go, don’t feel it, it’s too big and dark and will destroy you.

It hurt but it was not unbearable darkness.

It eased the loneliness of loss but it was not epiphany or resolution.

It did not cure, but it had meaning.

We left roses beneath the tree. I made an ink painting to remember the day. Then we left to pick up Poppy from daycare, and held her tight, all the rest of the night.

Through the night

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

Poppy is starting to recover. Rose is out at the markets getting us some fresh food, and Poppy and I are resting in the backyard, hoping the morning sun will do us both good.

I still feel horribly ill but the bleakness of a long night with a sick child is behind me for now and the world looks more cheerful and full of possibilities. The pepper tree is humming with bees, our tiny orchard of potted trees are bedraggled after a week of neglect, but still alive. The kitchen is full of dirty dishes I’m ignoring but the used tissues have all been cleaned away from the floors by the couch and bed. Not all the washing was hung out while wet, but we’ll live. The cats have food, I’ve had a hot drink, and no one has thrown up on me in many hours.

I recently discovered the generous online world of Mark Carder, who is the artist behind Draw Mix Paint and Geneva Fine Art supplies. He uses oil paint in wet on wet technique, and his videos are informative, unpretentious, and very accessible. His restricted palette and colour mixing technique is the least intimidating I’ve seen for starting out with colour theory. It was a lovely escape to occupy my mind.

My other recent discovery, which kept me occupied during hospital last weekend with Poppy, is Udemy. Recommended by someone in an Australian freelance support group I’m very glad to have found, Udemy again has highly accessible information and training as videos, this time for a small price. So I’ve been learning more about InDesign and book layout whiling away the small hours in ER.

It’s something I learned from years being sick. I need to do things that keep my mind busy, keep my hope for a loved project alive. Even if I’m barely learning or retaining things, having this whole different internal life helps me to not panic or despair when my day to day world is miserable. Yesterday Poppy and I even did a bit of watercolour brush lettering practice together during a better moment.

I’m booked for a fun workshop next week, zine making with a queer youth group, so I’ve been gathering my collection of zines and handmade books as inspiration. It’s quite wonderful to see them all together. I finally finished one of my own tiny zines (a zine is a handmade magazine, usually black and white, simply printed or photocopied and sold for a couple of dollars. It’s like a short, punk book, DIY, and anyone can do it) and got it to reproduce and fold correctly. It’s about chronic illness and identity. I’m thinking about taking the components of it and remaking it as a handmade book, similar in feel to Mourning the Unborn. Books are becoming more and more a part of my art world. I find them an interesting intersection of my passions, many art books are stunning in form but lacking in content, while cheap mass produced text based books are often entirely the reverse. Handmade books can be a place of harmony in both.

Currently one of my projects has taken me far more into digital than physical media and my heart is breaking being away from my studio for so long. I’m looking into a laptop and internet connection for my studio, so that at least if I’m stuck looking at a screen all day, I can paint in my break. I made it there for a few hours this week between other work and Poppy being ill and the difference in my mental health is tangible. I painted something horrifically dark and unexpected but that’s what I love about my art, not being in charge of it, letting it say what I need it to.

So I’m learning about colour mixing and scale and so many skills necessary for technical competence in oil painting and at the same time there’s questions in the back of my mind: is this what I want? Is this the skill I most want to develop? Is this what I want my art to look like? Does the process speak to me? Is it meaningful, meditative, or tedious?

Do I want to keep developing digital skills? Does it open doors I care about or take time from things I love?

The same kinds of questions about my work: Is this what I want? How do I make it less stressful? Where is the stress coming from? What do I find easiest? What’s reducing my overwhelm? Where are the opportunities? What skills do I need to be developing? What kind of working life do I want to model for my girls? How do I make that happen?

And in all cases I know there’s something else I want to pursue. Not instead of, but perhaps alongside or beneath these other skills.

Why do I want these other skills? Well, I want to earn money without being in so much pain. I want my girls to grow up thinking of work as something that contributes to their mental health, not tears it apart. And the art skills are partly curiosity and wanting to make something better and partly insecurity and wanting to be accepted. The art world has not been a very kind place for those feelings and I suspect no amount of skill on my part would entirely change that.

We only get so much time on this planet and there’s only so many skills you can chase. What I’m truly interested in isn’t a technique, it’s about where the art comes from. The muse, the altered state, the sublime, the creativity and individuality and unconscious mind and how we engage with it. It’s the ‘brownies’ (think ‘fae’) that narrate the novel the writer scribes. There are many different kinds of skills and the ones I’ve developed are perhaps less obvious in some ways, but still the heart of my work. Creatives range across many scales in how they work – Amanda Palmer’s “blender” of how transformed the output is from its inspiration, works that are carefully planned in every detail and those that are intuitive, art where the key is the final result and art where the process is more important… There’s such a huge range.

My art was changed by a single conversation many years ago. I was in an art program for women who had been homeless, and one of the visiting tutors looked at my little note book of ink paintings. I told her they were nothing special, just ideas and sketches so I could later paint them. She told me they were artworks in themselves and didn’t need to be rendered in paint to make them ‘legitimate’. (What is art? What is real art? How profoundly these questions shape us)

One of my favourite artists is Michael Leunig. He is highly skilled in the art of social and political commentary. He expresses his ideas in writing, poetry, ink drawings, and paint. His primary career (as far as I can tell) has been as a political cartoonist with newspapers. His drawings are deceptively simple and yet capture such vulnerability, absurdity, and brutality. They are highly skilled works in an entirely different way. I adore them.

If I shift my technique more towards realism or some other form, what, if anything, will be lost about the way I work now? How can I tell without trying it?

Into this soup is also the image of Stephen King’s desk; “It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around“. Something in that resonates, that’s hard to put my finger on. Something about authenticity and why we make art.

I paint and write because it helps keep me alive. I stop an artwork when I’ve captured enough of the feeling or thought that I can let it go. I loathe most of my own art at least some of the time. I have a collection of art merely because I’ve honed my skills at sitting with that loathing and not destroying the work. For all the randomness about what gets created, when, and how, it’s highly specific about which needs its meeting any I’m doing it.

One of my art tutors at college loathed the trope of the mad artist. As someone who is mad, multiple, queer, disabled, I’ve loved it. It’s my many coloured cloak, my rainbow cape, my book of a thousand faces, my acceptable disguise. It’s a role I can play and a way of fitting in to the world that excuses me a multitude of vulnerabilities and ideosyncracities. It’s a convenient lie.

There’s also a truth to it, somewhere in the muddy foundations. That my madness, my pain, and my art are bound up together in ways I still don’t really understand. That psychosis speaks with the voice of my soul when I’ve forgotten to listen. That the sublime also houses trembling terror. That the world of the interior, the felt sense, imagination, dreams, are just as real, powerful, binding, giving of health and life and death and darkness as our domestic world, consensus reality. That indeed even that binary is too gauche, that there are many millions of worlds, that we are rarely in consensus about our reality.

I once watched artists at work and saw split lives, split studios, split identities. The artist and teacher. The commercial artist and the tiny sacred flame of the art that really ment something to them. Pro Hart walking along the wall in some long forgotten documentary, painting trees on multiple canvases- three here, then three here, then four on the next one. His gallery in Broken Hill is bustling with art styles and subjects I would never recognise as his, passions I never heard of because all the world wanted was that red dirt and blue sky and the stands of scrub trees.

What do we pay artists for? The original? The image? The idea? How do artists live? Leunig by honing to a fine art his ability to draw something every week without fail that’s topical, pithy, insightful, and evokes emotion. Traditionally cartoonists used cheap materials and didn’t even bother to keep the originals. Now with collectors those works have become more valuable and precious. Pro Hart sold his ‘originals’ (my family owned several at one point, an odd payment for an old debt. We used to get paid in strange things at times, cartoons of eggs, once a whole box of fresh, prime cherries) with minor adjustments on the popular theme. What does original mean when the artist is walking along a row of paintings, adding trees with a dash of the brush?

We each try to find a living in an industry that ignores us living and fetishises us dead. An organisation recently purchased some of my artwork. I worried to a friend that I was an Albatross, brought in when hopes were fading, a long bet, and that while I thought I was doing good I merely killed whatever I touched. (such darkness lurking beneath the veneer of success) She laughed to me that I was instead an asset and frankly worth more to some dead than alive and perhaps should make all my chai lattes myself from now on in case of poisoning. I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

So I make art and sell prints and embellished prints and hide my originals safely away for the day I might have customers who value them. I barely let one work brush against the imagery of another, rarely paint series or sets, and get anxious when people tell me my art evokes someone else’s. My madness around ethics is woven through everything, my prints are an ‘honest’ way of reworking a theme or making an artwork more affordable. I wake up the morning after creation and am as surprised as anyone else to find what’s been left on my canvas. I keep the works like treasured relics, I also hate them and can’t bear to look at many of them much of the time. They are pieces of me, talismans from other worlds, my secret keepers and safe places. Glimpses into my mind. Messages from other selves. Things that keep me alive.

Depressingly Romantic and cleche and fitted neatly to an acceptable story about art that has shielded me but also strangles me and hides the reality of my own work and needs from me.

I make most of my money consulting, or painting children’s faces and arms. Being kind, welcoming their creativity, entering their imagination, exploring the power of masks and costumes. It fits so poorly with people’s ideas and the cultural narratives that I actually keep my face painting entirely separate from all the rest of my work : art, training, writing, and community development. I once tried to combine them and lost 2/3 of my customers over half a year. Even in my recent business development classes I was encouraged to cull the face painting as the redundant work that didn’t fit. We could sell the rest as a kind of package that made sense, but a face painter is not an artist, or at least, certainly not my kind of artist, they are a ‘children’s entertainer’. And those who hire face painters are not comfortable with people who work in mental health, share troubled inner worlds, or make art on dark topics. So I’ve just redone my face paint website to be simpler, more beautiful, answer all the common questions, and link to everything needed. This website is next but with the huge blog, it’s a much bigger task. And separate the two stay. You would think being multiple would make me more comfortable with this, but actually it makes me more uneasy. It’s been the work of my life to bring home keepsakes from other worlds and selves, to keep them safe, collect them, rearrange them, learn to bear to look at them, and try to understand what it all means. Who are we? What is this world?

Art as self reflection, investigation, meaning making, myth making, storytelling, catharsis, therapy, navigation system. Art as the way into other worlds, the way back from them, and the talisman to remind us it really happened. Art as transformation, changing who I am, how I see myself, how I live in this world.

This perhaps, is what’s beneath the myth of the artist as mad genius, troubled soul, person-who-still-feels. The artist as a philosopher who tests their beliefs in their life, and shows us the work in progress, the inner world, the little man behind the curtain. Art as vulnerability and the personal in public, coded and locked and hidden to greater or lesser extents depending on their ability to communicate and ambivalence about being seen. It is confessional poetry, and intimate sharing in blogs, it is painting the woman you love over as over again, it is mutilated self portraits. It is breaking the taboos about what we do not say, do not look at, and do not share. It is driven by altruism, ego, vanity, loneliness, love, pride, despair, hope. It is an investigation of what it is to be human. And to me, it sits perfectly comfortably alongside painting kids.

This is not the only kind of artist, nor is it superior to any other. But if we see types of artists as a range of archetypal roles, falling in and out of cultural favour, this is one. And in the same way, we are all, all of them, in some way; the craftsman, the artisan, the hobbyist, the maker, the storyteller, the witness… Most of us need to create in some way, have an artist of some kind within us. The mad artist, full of passion and prone to self destruction is real, in a way. And what’s interesting is that few of them make it as artists. I’ve met very interesting mad people who make incredibly interesting art, but unless someone validates it as real and keeps originals and opens galleries, few of them will be remembered as artists or known in the art world. Few of my favourite artists were respected or revered at college.

I wonder if we would know of the abuses of war if those artworks were made by someone other than Goya, someone with perhaps less technical skill, no name as an artist? Would we still care about them? All those split lives the artists were living, at least one had to be validated or have income for their artwork to count as real. Goya’s horror of war is validated by his career painting portraits of the rich. He was a real artist. The works we love him for most did not sell or were not publicly shared in his lifetime.

I found a different way to split my own work – I layer it instead. I don’t paint anything for the punters. I don’t have my commercial work and my personal work. I have my personal work, printed, embellished, framed or packaged, and sold to those it speaks to. It passes through my hands many times, physically and digitally, literally processed across half my system before it touches another person. Layers, each protecting the work of the other. The madman who splatters ink at midnight leaves a gift for the artisan who carefully applies gold leaf without a breathe of air to disturb it. Self destructiveness is honed instead into a pattern of embellishment, a willingness to see value even in what we don’t understand. Polished by much handling, what were scrawlings in the backs of journals attain life of a kind, are validated by own treatment of them. (art is whatever someone who calls themselves an artist claims as art)

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the splits. They are the diversification of a healthy small business in a difficult industry. They are a way to bring what your heart needs into the world without starving. They are a way to keep the market that thinks if it pays you, it owns you out of your inner sanctum, your mind, your creating space. We all need a way to not be driven mad by the pressures, to hold onto whatever is authentic and find a market for it. To define for ourselves what means, or original, or art. To get out of our own way without being crushed by the values and expectations of others.

I am growing something. Dreaming a new dream of work, what it looks like, feels like, its role in my life. Naming and untangling from the brutal sense of debt and worthlessness half a lifetime in receipt of welfare has left me with. Where to from here? I’ve spent the week sick, dreaming of my studio, afraid that I’d pushed myself too hard and lost my health, lost my chance at work. Work was a harsh master for many of my ancestors. I want something better for my children. I will dream of something better for us.

Fresh start

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I cut all my hair today and I’m feeling much lighter. It’s been a hell of a week. Poppy got sick out of nowhere. I woke at 3am to find her spiking a huge fever and having convulsions. One ambulance trip and a day in hospital later the conclusion was it’s an unknown virus but nothing dangerous and we all went home. It’s taken a number of days for her to kick and in the meantime, Rose and I have come down too. It’s such a non specific thing (headache, stiffness, aches, tiredness) it’s been hard to tell if we’re sick, sleep deprived, or depressed.

Hospital involved taking Poppy’s temperature, checking her pulse and oxygen saturation, and wearing an ID bracelet, all of which she found extremely upsetting. So we brought home her used pulse ox set and ID bracelet to add to her toys for play, and Rose brought a new under arm thermometer that lights up green for normal temp, orange for elevated and red for very high. Since then we’ve been playing ‘What colour are you?’ with Poppy, Mummy, Mama, and sister, and Poppy is now quite happy to have her temperature taken and check out what colour she is. Hopefully if she needs a stay in hospital again these things won’t be so traumatic. Rose is the mastermind behind this, she’s a genius.

In the meantime, I’m resting as best I can and nibbling away at work, and hope to be back on my feet for real and less sore very soon.

Poppy is 18 months and Rose and I are dating again

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At first it seems there’s no visible difference from the complete shift in your world from focusing on each other to wrapping yourselves around children. You check in, keep a wary eye out for signs of trouble but everything mostly feels smooth and unchanged. The lack of sleep, lack of adult time, debriefing space, opportunities to not be adult all add up but none of it seems to be costing closeness or connection. The relationship is getting almost no attention yet is still growing just fine, like an old rose bush in the yard.

Then somewhere you find yourselves without warning on the edge of a precipice, watching each other and seeing the pain in the eyes and the numbness in the heart, wondering which of you will let it go first and how many millions of pieces everything will break into when it smashes on the rocks below.

The world wears through the skin into bone and through bone into void. The foundations are strong but they cannot hold forever.

2 years now, Star has been with us, and Poppy is now 18 months old. We are still asking the questions, gently, what does love look like here? What do we each need to thrive, or when that’s out of reach, at least survive?

Rose and I have found ourselves at the raw edges, feeling worn. Parenting is an intense commitment built upon the strength of a relationship we’ve barely tended. So we’ve started up family counseling again, and set aside some hours each week, alone. Date lunch. Once a week soul time. We go someplace and talk, about us, our lives, our dreams, our hearts. Like the old days. We unpick and re-weave ourselves like old shawls. For a couple of hours we are the only people in the world. We sneak out of life and hold hands and talk about love.

Something that had withered, grows new shoots. Soaks up the sun and rain and hearts cracked open. Feels alive again.

How easily we lose one another, side by side in the same bed, working in the same kitchen. Yet how neatly the rift is mended, like a darned sock, the jagged edges drawn back together, the cold pushed at bay.

Darkness is all around us and our souls do not cry loudly as they fade. They speak the quiet language of loss, the ‘failure to thrive’ of the adult who so wants to thrive.

We run far out beyond the horizon, holding hands. And run home, hearts aching for our children, longing to hold them. Always walking both worlds, like selkies. Slipping one skin to show another, knitting our lives from the days and nights, the poems and the tears that lay in our hands, like pearls.

Dearest Star

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

Star, our beautiful teenager is much more difficult for me to share about discretely than it is for me with Poppy, but I don’t like to leave her out entirely, either. It’s been a hard year for her. The injury to her knee saw a huge downturn in her mental health, and a kid who has got back up after so many knock downs before, got knocked off her feet and lost some hope that life was going to work out. Some days she explains to me how unhappy she is and my heart breaks. I remind myself often that my job is not to pressure her to be happy, it’s simply to love her.

She finished school last year with straight A grades, despite many days off and a lot of distress. Anxiety and chronic pain are constant companions, but she is also vibrant when happy, courteous, diligent, and incredibly helpful. She is always gentle with Poppy even when she’s frustrated about her room being raided for interesting things.

She’s in contact with all of her biological family now, an excellent and challenging process. I’ve always firmly believed in the idea that we all need many parents – I remember reading Clarissa Pinkola Este’s Women Who Run with the Wolves many years ago and loving her assertion that all women need at least 5 different mothers to grow to adulthood. So we do not compete, or rank relationships by which are more ‘real’, or dismiss their importance. Star needs all her family to grow, and they are all real, important, and deeply influential. It’s not always easy but when there’s peace, she thrives, and she is patient beyond her years when there’s stress in those relationships.

Some days I feel so inadequate and overwhelmed, parenting a teenager I only met a few years ago. I have to make calls about her best interests and balance the needs of our whole little family and I’m certain I don’t always get that right. Some days the stakes feel high and I’m afraid I’m making the wrong choices.

Other days I see her growing, the kindness in her friendships, the quiet leadership, her blooming communication skills and I’m so incredibly proud. She has worked so hard to be different and she certainly stands out! I love our times in the car together on the way to school in the mornings, when she opens up and tells me about her life. I love being part of first experiences for her, like being there the first day she was taken for a motorbike ride and came home exhilarated. I’m glad to be there on bad days when she needs a hug.

Currently her joy is learning to drive. Many highly intelligent kids are restless to grow older and reap the rewards of adulthood and Star more than most has craved the freedoms of adult life. She’s rarely happier than behind the wheel, gaining hours of driving experience towards getting her licence.

We have been together over 2 years now, and adulthood is approaching so quickly. In the blink of eye this time will be just a memory, the stress of year 12, her first day at uni, the four of us crowded into our little unit. Among all the stress and sadness and difficulty, there’s such love, such joy. She is growing into a wonderful woman and I’m so proud to know her and have played a small role in the end of her childhood.

Endurance

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I have lost my bounce back after too many crises this week. I am tired and angry and depressed. Every member of my family has been in crisis or the ER at least once, and my sleep has been badly interrupted.

Yesterday, Rose was cooking dinner with her broken/damaged ankle and using a chair to sit at the stove. She tipped a pot of boiling water and spaghetti into the sink. Some of the water caught in a bowl in the sink. Poppy climbed the chair like lightning and dunked her hand in the bowl of boiling water.

So, I sat in a cold bath in my underwear for 20 minutes with her, nursing and keeping a hose of cool water running into her burnt hand while she cried and fought me, screaming ‘no’ and trying to hide her hand from the water. It was very hard to hold her still without bruising her wrist or arm, and I found the best approach was to chase her hand with the hose and let the cool water run down her arm over it.

I hate having to do that, holding her down, no time to soothe her into complying, over riding her desperate attempts to protect herself. There’s a ball of pain and rage in me today that has nowhere to go.

Ambulance to the hospital for assessment and then home the same night. We were very lucky. She’d closed her hand so tightly the inside of it was barely burned and the outside was red and a bit swollen but nothing serious.

My nerves are shot. I want to cry, scream, shake, and throw up. I also want some quiet time to myself, maybe in a long bath, and about 6 hours more sleep.

I have nipple thrush again. Nursing feels like stabbing hot needles into my nipple. There was also a bit of a bacterial infection in one, it’s taking a long time to heal.

Some weeks are marathons, endurance tests. Can you get through them without discharging the stress in destructive ways? Eating everything/not eating/starting fights/self harm/insomnia/self medication… Whatever. The stress goes somewhere.

What helps reset when there are no reserve left to draw on, no spoons at the back of the cupboard?

Hand over the baby or walk away. Last night I was at the end of my tether with a worked up baby not sleeping at 1am. I dumped her on Rose’s lap with a movie and went to bed to sleep.

Connection and validation. We feel so alone in our dark hours. My future turns black and depression sets in. I feel trapped, doomed, and too miserable to even cry. I have to force myself to drag my focus away from my future and into now. What do I need right now? What do I need to do right now? Hang the washing. Eat something. Put out the fire.

Humour is an excellent remedy for self pity and taking life too seriously. A comedy or a mad friend are balm.

Sex or masturbation at the right moment can signal the end of crisis and a calming back to yourself or your relationship. Like a ship coming back to harbor or a bird to the nest.

Finding a way to scream. In my old life I would sometimes park somewhere undisturbed, wind up the windows, and scream. I’m crowded now and rarely have that chance. Finding a balance between discharging emotion without frightening the family – big feeling are normal. Write, draw, paint. Cry in the shower. Explain what’s going on and why, don’t make it a secret and don’t make them feel frightened or responsible for it. We feel the intensity of the horror ending whether it happened or not. Our bodies and minds react similarly to tragedy as they do to a near miss. Culturally we have less support for the time we need to process, but the feelings are the just the same. Denied, we will have to numb and discharge then in covert ways that often do harm. Set them a place at the table.

Yesterday I was calm, nurturing, pragmatic, and focused. Today I am rattled, angry, scared and despairing. It won’t last forever. This is not the future, not the new normal. Stay present in the moment. Listen to the pain. Be part of it.

Darling Poppy

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Her unblemished newborn skin is now a tapestry of grazes as she explores her world. She’s cheerful, fearless, and affectionate. Currently she loves throw things, climb heights, push a small trolley around the house, and swim short distances unaided. She has a terrifying habit of climbing up furniture then hurtling herself off it to be caught by unsuspecting people who walk past. She likes to try to stand on the handlebars of her little bike, and can climb a ladder with rungs spaced over a foot apart. 

She’s intensely social and becomes distressed and destructive if stuck home or with not enough people for too long. Awake at 10pm at a friend’s wedding she’s still exploring with excitement and charming the guests. 

She’s discovered she can scream and shriek so car trips can be interesting and we’re all suffering some degree of hearing loss when she’s unhappy. She frets when people cry and comes over to pat them on an arm. When she needs contact she follows us around the house tugging on clothes and asking for a ‘tuddle?’ or brings us a favourite board book to be read to her. 

She adores music and often sings to herself or us. The Pussycat song, a medly of mews, is very popular. Dancing is also her thing. 

The three of us, myself, Rose, and Star, are all tuned in to different things and care for her in different ways. Star still has the magic touch and can often help her to sleep within a few minutes. Star will pick up on a particular wiggle that means she needs a nappy change. Rose is so aware of her capacities with swimming and able to judge so well the limits of what she can do physically. I pick up on her sense of cabin fever, when she’s reached the limits of amusing herself and needs something new. 

Mornings in bed together are still my favourite time. She is very busy little person and mornings are quiet and content and precious. 

She is magic and I adore her. 

Hanging out with my girls

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Our gruelling Christmas preparations include walks to the park and episodes of Trollhunter on Netflix. 

A few weeks ago I asked everyone in my family to name one thing they find really special about Christmas so we could make sure it happened. I wanted to bake something that made the house smell nice. Star wanted to see Christmas lights, and Rose wanted to decorate a gingerbread house. 

Last night we roamed the lights of Lobethal and came home with fresh cherries, delicious baked goods and pot-plants. Today is baking and gingerbread decorating, and wrapping the last of the gifts while watching The Nightmare Before Xmas. It’s all very low key and low stress and I’m having a ball. Yesterday everyone in the house had an afternoon nap! 

We have no decorations up this year because Poppy would just tear a tree apart at this age, but we had some last minute pay come through so we could buy a bit more food and plump up the gifts, so there’s loads of Christmas cheer and we’re looking forward to some lovely shared meals with friends, bio family, and extended family over the next few days. It doesn’t get better than this, really. ❤

My sweet loves

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

We have been so lucky with our family. Mornings are still my favourite time, curled in bed together, pale milky light coming through the big bedroom windows. Poppy sleeps beside us, legs resting on mine, cheeks flushed pink after nursing. Lately I’ve been waking early and wanting to go to bed early. Twenty years ago this was my sleeping pattern, I don’t know why it’s returned now. But lying here in the dark beside her, she smells of sweet rain in my arms. Her hair is a mop of thistledown, her breath smells of milk. I love her so much my heart aches. I’ve waited my whole life to be a parent, and now I am it’s such a comfortable fit. It’s incredibly hard work, but there’s an anguish and emptiness I used to just live with that’s full of contentment now. Both my girls are beautiful and perplexing, brilliant and challenging and so very loved. 

Life as a working parent is exhausting, delightful, sad, and a wonderful privilege. Driving away from Poppy in tears is a sorrow that’s hard to let myself feel. Coming home to a bundle of excitement who wraps around my legs and shrieks “tuddle!” While I try to unload my arms to cuddle her is sheer inconvenient, ebullient joy. Earlier this week I went to several meetings with orange marker scrawled down one leg from where she had decorated me the night before. I was delighted. 

I have new clients, new projects, and good prospects for my business. The business development course continues to be an intense rollercoaster of emotions, as I unpick the mess and touch on deep connections – identity, place in the world, worth, and old traumas. From stuckness confusion and overwhelm a new model is emerging with a new clarity. The clarity is wonderful and painful in equal measure, opening some doors and closing others. My system is in upheaval, each of us mourning the compromises we make, that none of us can be entirely who we are on this world, but share our work between us. We mourn the days not spent in the studio, the days not available for collaborating on projects, the time we don’t have for further study, the hours spend away from our children. The clarity heals and hurts. We find new languages: you are a community development consultant, she tells us. And we feel whole. And we feel sad. Oh, this is who I am in the world. I’ll never be a psychologist now, or a doula, or a manager, or an art historian. I’ll never run a clinical mental health service or be part of the army or work as a naturopath. I won’t finish my arts degree or go for that curating doctorate or join that post graduate group. So much sadness and it’s hard to let go. Wrenching. 

But also a system coming into joy. Yes, we are community developers. We are a community! It’s in the bones of us; multiplicity, plurality, duality, polyphony. We are artists. We are writers. We are educators. This we do, paid or unpaid, thanked or unrecognised, on display or hidden. This is who and how we are in the world, gravitating to the meaningful, creative, authentic, and communal. Seeking to ease suffering and loneliness, to promote compassion and diversity. 

There’s no guide for me for multiples and work. No mentor, few peers anywhere in the world. It’s lonely at times. We explore, trying to figure out who thrives where. Learning different outfits are needed at studio and office, for grounding the best parts and being able to function. Meltdowns, behind the scenes, are frequent. Overwhelm and exhaustion are constant questions to self: do you have a viable model yet? Do you know how to thrive? 

The Dissociative Initiative was our baby before Poppy and Star. The business has been my love, my great passion, since Rose. Trying to find a place in the world. Learning to unpick the traps I got stuck in along the way. An alternative mental health community full of brilliance and rage who attack as exploiters those who make money from their work. Clients who think you work only for the money. A welfare system that hides how it works and treats you as a cheat, a thief, and scammer if you ask for details and try to understand or predict the money. How am I supposed to develop literacy? It’s still almost unbearably shameful to set up a budget to track spending. Years of grinding poverty have left me toxic with needless shame and afraid to look, unable to control what I do not believe I deserve. The triggers and feelings mimic eating disorder stress. Just as invisible to the outside, just as deceptively simple to solve (‘just eat a steak, you’ll be fine’), and just as paralysing and destructive. 

It’s okay to look at it. It’s okay to understand exactly what I’m earning, how it impacts welfare, how my rent is recalculated based on income, how much I would need for a house deposit and how many years that would take. It’s okay to look at what my art costs me to make, how long it takes, at how many unpaid hours I spend on the road to do training and workshops. It’s okay to rejig an approach that was about charity and covering costs to be about income and supporting a family. It’s not predatory or manipulative. I feel like a young adult who has known only rape trying to believe in the idea of sex. Kissing my first lover and then shaking and howling as my body panics with dark memories and shame. And yet holding them. Seizing them. 

Seizing this beautiful thing and holding onto it while feelings shake me from ecstacy to despair. Just holding on. From all the wounds and grief and tangled sorrow, I believe something amazing will emerge. So many have midwived this with me, believed in me, held hope for me, paid bills for me, fed me. Piece by piece I have crawled away from a life and a belief system utterly destructive to me. And I’ve dragged with me courage, and joy, and honesty. The kind of wisdom you get from screaming yourself hoarse at 3am. The poverty and my own wedding to it, is just as self destructive as taking a knife to my skin. The way it became safe, a haven from fears of my own greed, of exploitation, manipulation, slick deception. Self preservation until I could see a different way and believe in a different path, just like the knife was. 

All things want to grow. It is their nature. 6 years ago I was offered this beautiful home, and I slept in it alone. Now it overflows. Now I sleep sideways in the space between my lover and my child, tangled in sleepy limbs and writing about life in the sleepless early morning. It’s beautiful.

Marriage equality vote: yes

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

Australia has returned a majority vote of yes to marriage equality! It doesn’t mean the legislation has changed, it doesn’t currently mean anything for our family. But the cultural change is clear. One day my daughters will live in a world where it is normal that their mothers can be married. We danced and cried and celebrated in the rain in the city after the announcement yesterday. 

Then we spoke with a reporter about how hard this has been and the road yet to come. It was published at InDaily as A bittersweet victory, after months of heartbreak.

 

Rose is recovering

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

The news is good for Rose. Our doctor considers that she has merely been unlucky lately with multiple illnesses and infections, rather than suffering from an underlying problem we haven’t found yet. Irritatingly there was no discharge summary or even a record that she had been in the ER, much less any test results. But she is recovering and rebuilding her strength. 

I am thrilled. I was so worried I nearly threw up in the waiting room before we saw her doctor. She is deeply precious to me, utterly irreplaceable and unique. 

I had a wonderful day in the studio this afternoon, just playing. Then I bought Rose some little gifts and flowers from the city and came home on the bus feeling like I could fly. We recently celebrated 5 years together. She is my home, my family, my safe place. I love her to bits.


My lovely oil painting is progressing and I have begun to work on the colour layer. Some tones such as the pink in her cheeks and yellow in the dress will be added in glazes over the paint. I’ve been learning so much, it’s such a novelty to have instruction, as I’m mostly self taught in my preferred mediums. This class is the first oil painting tution I’ve had and it’s been very enjoyable. Mixing all those skin tones! There’s a great many hours left in this one yet. 

Post TEDx and life is good!

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

TEDx was amazing. One of the most challenging experiences, akin to giving birth (but much quicker and with more laughing). I’d only managed to finalise my script a week beforehand and I knew in my bones that I was too rusty to have a 14 minute monologue memorised in that time. I did my best, but still had embarrassing blanks on the red dot. Fortunately it still went well!

The rehearsal was terrifying. My first time standing on the red dot I spoke the first page of my script until I blanked, then I had to sit down right there because I was about to faint and/or vomit. I felt like a needy, insecure diva, which was not particularly nice. I’m more used to being the person holding things together than the ‘talent’ in the middle and I was very conscious of that different role and found it a bit awkward. 

But it was also wonderful. I gave myself permission to soak up all that extra care and nurturing. I felt like a star! So much love came my way. Friends attending on the day, gift bags and flowers, my family putting up with the talk consuming everything else for the week. It felt extremely special to be in the middle of it all, and I realised that it’s not wrong or bad to be in the spotlight like that, is merely that everyone should get it some of the time. We are all the talent in some way, all experts in something. So I soaked it up and hope to share it around. 

On the night itself, complicated arrangements happened to look after Poppy, and I changed into my new dress, pinned the top shut, ran my lines one more time, got fitted with the mic, and went on stage. 

There’s a moment where you flip from terror to connection, and standing in front of nearly 1,000 people I could feel them all, like a warmth, the weight of their attention and the questions they are asking of me. Can you be trusted? Will you hurt us? Can you show us what you mean? Will you take us somewhere we haven’t been before? Can you bring us home again? And I say to them with word and hand and smile and joke, yes. Come into my world for a little while. And so we did. I talked about sex and being human, and I lost my place and blanked so badly Rose had to rescue me and call my lines out from the audience. We lived what I was sharing about: that it’s possible to be imperfect with grace and humour, that a great partnership can navigate tricky situations. That a sensitive discussion can feel safe. People seemed to really connect with it, nodding and paying close attention. I muddled through and made it safe to muddle.

I had a heckler, which I did not expect! I heard later the people seated around him were angry with him and shut him up quickly. Apparently someone told him people like him where why I was doing a talk like this. I feel so honoured to hear that, there was such a sense of unity, of common ground. 

The messages afterwards from people there or over email have been very affirming. All the way through I’ve done my best to hold tightly to my reasons for doing something so extraordinarily difficult – that it is meaningful and needed. I watched a lot of TED and TEDx talks about sex while preparing and most were what we are used to about this topic- clinical or research based. That’s valuable for sure, but when I’m sitting in a bed in my underpants there’s a big gap between that knowledge base and the conversation and experience I’m about to have. I could have written that talk and it’s a lot more removed and protected, a lot less intimate and exposing. But I have found there’s value in sharing and talking about this on a personal level, and it seems I’m not alone in that.

Poppy and I went off on a bus adventure yesterday! Here we are nibbling on plum leather from Grandma’s garden, and life is good.

I haven’t yet hit my anticipated post performance crash. I’m not sure why, I have some guesses…

  • It’s on its way but I’m still too excited currently. Maybe after the videos go up online? It doesn’t really feel over for me yet. 
  • I outsourced it. Rose had a couple of intense tired anxious feel awful days afterwards.
  • I did it before the performance. That sounds ridiculous, but to be honest the lead up was so difficult and since doing it my overwhelming emotion is relief. Intense, delightful relief! I did not enjoy the preparation much, but having gone through it I’m extremely glad and happy to have done it. I feel very fortunate and privileged. 

    We’ll have to wait and see what happens next! My awesome Office Manager suggested that I write down all the projects I could do next so I can start exploring my options, and it’s making my heart incredibly happy. I’ve had so many dreams for so many years and they all feel suddenly tangible and possible.

    I’ve so enjoyed taking the last few days off completely and absolutely soaking up my lovely family. Extra support and scheduling are making so much difference to my life. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the next projects. And I can’t wait to share the TEDx video with you all. 

    Rethinking Money

    / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

    For my Studio Opening last weekend, I created a goody bag of treasures. This was partly to deal with my anxiety about charging tickets for the first time. I was charging tickets to deal with my anxiety about catering for an event when numbers were unknown. I also like to use small events like this to test run tools or things I want to offer such as my point of sale system, ticketing, or catering. There’s always glitches to iron out and skills to learn, and I like to figure this stuff out small scale first. The irony in this instance is that selling tickets created such severe anxiety for me it nearly completely incapacitated me to actually run the event. I’m working on this. I’ve been reading and exploring about Abundance through a book The Abundance Code and video by Julie Ann Cairns.

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    Julie explores the things that block us around money. Anyone who has been following me here on this blog knows I have some big ones. At first I was embarrassed to even be seen reading a book like this. The word ‘money’ on the cover was bad enough, the word ‘rich’ was unbearable for someone who has been choked by the idea that being a decent person and earning money was frankly incompatible… that intentionally seeking money was vulgar and repulsive. I’ve also been pinned by an intense sense of responsibility to support my family and give my kids opportunities. Crushed between these ideas my anxiety has been extreme and I’ve been grappling for a path I can walk.

    So I’ve been reading in small doses and journaling, and my thinking is shifting. I’m exposing myself to people who are ethical about money, people who want to make money but without exploiting or harming others, and people who care deeply about social justice and vulnerable people. I’m digging into my history and pulling out the stories I’ve been told or telling myself. With the tickets for my opening – $4 each to help me nail the catering and not get caught running an open tab in case a million TEDx people turned up unexpectedly (numbers are more likely to be accurate when people spend even a small amount on a ticket) – I finally found the thorn in my heel. That it was okay for others to value my work but not for me to assign it value of even the smallest amount. I wrote on my heart that day ‘You do not have to like, value, understand, or pay for what I do. However, I’m allowed to’. And finally, after 4 huge meltdowns, I’d named the distress and the panic drained away so I could breathe again.

    The model I’ve run my networks in is one of charity, which is brilliant in some ways but problematic in others. Not being included in a community with something of your own to offer – only being the recipient of care – carries a cost and a distress I’m all too familiar with. 

    The model I’ve been running my business on, where I scatter myself across many skills and let clients set the price and value of my work also needs rethinking. With good clients it doesn’t work so badly, with some it leaves me vulnerable to exploitation. Either way it’s an irritating unexpected hassle to deal with when hiring me should be simple, comfortable, and create confidence that of course I will do, to a high standard, what I’ve been contracted to do. 

    Rose and I have transitioned from her working and I run the household to the reverse, which has been a huge goal for many years! I am thrilled. Now I want to grow my business with the goal of moving us out of public housing into a secure, larger home. But I’m also taking the pressure off myself. I’ve realised the brutal imperative I’ve been experiencing to be financially independent now, is really not borne out of my values, but a parasite that’s attached itself to me from other’s beliefs. Right now it’s most important for my family to have a parent who is somewhat sane, connected, and nurturing. Burning myself out costs all of us too dearly.

    Not so many years ago I was homeless, profoundly ill, isolated, and struggling to survive. My business has been a passion for many years and it is growing well. It’s okay that it’s not supporting us yet. It’s okay that I still have skills to hone and tools to develop. It’s okay that I’ve mistakes the way. And it’s okay for me to explore my values around money and deliberately set out to create a sustainable business. To find my own elegant and ethical way to blend my passions for creativity and meaning with income. 

    Gastro for everyone

    / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

    It’s been a rough couple of days after a really wonderful week. We’ve all caught a particularly nasty strain of gastro. Poppy came down first and has recovered, Rose and I have been hit hard. Star has just come down today. It’s played havoc with Rose’s other health challenges. I managed to get her through the echocardiogram she’s been waiting for several months to have. Then all hell broke loose that night. It got me while I was walking Poppy to the shops to buy groceries, I struggled home. The world’s most useless home doctor visited for Rose who had been violently ill for hours, took no vitals and gave her an anti nausea med to pointlessly vomit up. With Star in the kitchen and me on the couch vomiting into a bag with Poppy on my lap, Rose got up and passed out, crashing to the floor. It was terrifying. I called my Mum and an ambulance. We were all really stressed, and Star wasn’t sick yet so I couldn’t even give her a hug.

    The sadness of missing out on the marriage equality rally in town with so many friends and beautiful families.

    Rose is still in hospital but slowly on the mend. It looks like she fractured her kneecap in the fall, but although she smacked her head she’s got away with a lump and a nasty headache. It’s taken a long time to rehydrate her and weird and worrying test results which are slowly coming right. It’s horrible not being well enough to go be with her.

    So I’ve stayed home in an angry agitated state of helplessness, sickness and anxiety. Star looked after Poppy all yesterday, thankfully. I dealt with the nights, a cycle of vomiting, crying, nursing, and napping. I put out a call for help but the few kind souls who offered I told to keep away, they had important reasons not to be exposed. Families are so vulnerable in times like this, we have so few formal supports. If I was employed in child care no one sane would ever put a child in my care but there I am putting out the rubbish and vomiting into the driveway, and sorting out my meds and water bottle while a one year old screams and  hangs onto my trousers. We are very lucky to have such good informal supports. My Mum came and cleaned for us, Rose’s Mum did some shopping and took Poppy to hospital to visit her. 

    Hopefully we will all be together again and recovered very soon, because that has been a tough couple of days and I could sure use a hug!

    5 years with Rose

    / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

    Yesterday was our anniversary. ❤ I’m so proud of us. It’s strange and a bit painful to be celebrating our relationship at the same time that the marriage equality plebiscite (a postal vote about same sex marriage) is going ahead here. It’s stressful and consuming a lot of emotional resources. We hate it. 

    But here we are, 5 years in love. My tiny unit is stuffed to the seams. My once solitary and lonely life is unrecognisable. Through thick and thin, Rose and I have woven something beautiful; dark, bright, strong, and precious. We’ve kept believing in each other, in ourselves, and in our family. Not all the time, sometimes only a little bit, small scraps of hope in dark and painful times. But enough. In the good times we are so strong, so complimentary in our skills, so similar in our values. In the bad times we are strong enough to hold on. Not perfect but not trying to be. We’ve both escaped enough utopias to know that there magic in muddling through. 

    Rose and I have now been together, unbroken, for longer than any other family she’s ever been part of. The sheer amount of work she does to have made that possible is hard for people to comprehend. All the times she doesn’t run when that voice deep inside tells her to go. All the ways she’s learned to share and explain and connect so she can function the way she needs to without tearing at our relationship. She’s amazing. 

    We are struggling to balance our family, to nurture ourselves and each other along with our children. They are such a joy, so adored and long awaited and we pour ourselves out. There’s little left for each other at times, guilt and exhaustion. But here we are, celebrating us as Spring drips with honey blossoms and rain. We keep holding on, we keep learning. 

    Rose sees so much of me, sees me so real. She believes in me, so unwaveringly, and walks with me whatever the path. Her kindness is her shining heart. She’s my safe place to come home to, somewhere where they speak my language and dream my dreams. 

    I’ve been incredibly lucky in so many ways. Every year with her is a blessing. She’s absolutely unique and I love living with her, sharing all that we share, waking beside her every morning. She is my beloved and I am hers. 

    Nesting under critters

    / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

    I’m doing a great deal of reflecting at the moment on my work and career and how I’ve got to where I am now and what’s next. 

    One thing I’ve resolved to change is the way my imposter experience makes me relate to others. When people value my work I can become overwhelmed and avoidant. At my first solo art exhibition, several people approached me wanting to buy work. I took their email addresses and promised to get in touch the following week. Instead, I froze up and didn’t speak to most of them for 3 years! 

    It’s difficult to run a business with this approach. 😉 So I’ve been making time to meet and touch base with others lately, to hear about their projects, discuss potential collaborations, and gather skills and find resources. It’s been quite wonderful. 

    Today was a bit exhausting driving all over for appointments and meetings, but this evening has been wonderful – talking to long distance friends and being nested under critters. I’ve got a lot of good people around me and they make me feel that the blocks in front of me are not so high, and the dreams not so out of reach. ❤

    Happy first birthday, Poppy

    / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

    Cake is in the oven, baking. I have backup sponge cake in case of emergency. I’m nursing her to sleep then I’ll make chocolate popping candy spiders for treats, and whip a white chocolate ganache for the cake. Nothing is essential and if anything doesn’t get done, everything will be fine. Nothing needs to be perfect. I can’t quite believe I’m making my daughter’s first birthday cake! I’ve been waiting for this a long time. 🙂

    Reflections on the past year:

    When Poppy was about 6 months old, I baked peanut cookies. I was gifted a second hand Kenwood mixer for Christmas and I love it. I learned to bake using my Mum’s mixer and I feel very at home, delighted, familiar. Our baker comes out and hums happily around the kitchen, thinking of Grandma. Flour sprinkles into the floor like the lightest snow.
    A few months ago was bin night. As we dragged out the bins Rose and I started pulling weeds from the front yard on impulse. It was dark and starry and the garden had been soaked so the earth was soft and wet. In about 20 minutes we filled our green compost bin. We had mud on our feet. Grasping nettles firmly in the dark, fingers fumbling around thorns. A dark joy rising, to be in the earth, in the night, hands in soil, the scent of roses.

    Changing Poppy first thing in the morning. She wakes with a sleepy smile and stares into my eyes. Milk runs down my body and spatters like rain on the linoleum. Poppy is so alert and so focused on the world around her but in moments like these it’s just her and I alone and something wordless between us. I have to watch for them or they are easy to miss. It’s a kind of knowing, quiet and strong.

    Sick with gastro. Wracked with pain and vomiting. Crying quietly so as not to wake my family. Poppy needs milk. I lie on my side too exhausted to weep and Rose brings Poppy to nurse. I have to hold both her hands or she is like a kitten and folds her sharp little nails deep into my breast, kneading. Her hair is fine and soft as down. I fall in and out of sleep. In my mind I am alone, unloved, unlovable. I have no tribe and no one is coming. The world is dark and cold and everything hurts. It passes.

    Zoe has a new passion for escape. She jumps our 6 foot fences and escapes when frightened of fireworks. New Year’s Day I call everywhere and Rose visits the local pound looking for her. I’m a tangled mess of grief, guilt, fear, relief, and shame. She comes home herself, exhausted and sleeps for 2 days. She whines and wakes everyone up several times a night to investigate the back yard for possums. I sleep her in the laundry with access to the back. For one night she is content. The second night she gets into our neighbors yard and then panics and can’t get back into ours. She’s hysterical by the time I find out and go over to bring her home.

    Zoe guards our home and barks at passers-by. Each time Poppy is startled she bites me when nursing. One nipple is bloody and mauled. It won’t heal until I get a cream to treat infection. I rest it for days and pump on that side. The air conditioner floods the bedroom. It rains on the nappies that were drying on the line. Poppy loves Zoe and plays with her tail. Zoe kicks Poppy in the face. It’s all too hard. I’m pinned between love, responsibility, and fear. Fear of judgement from others paralyzes me. I can’t find a way through. I spend the morning in bed crying. I’m rescued, family takes Zoe in and cares for her. 

    I miss her every moment. My home is so peaceful. People walk past our house and Poppy nurses unaware. I go from 15 bites a day to 1 bite every 3 days. The guilt is like a tidal river that comes up and down. The stress eases away like floodwaters draining, leaving mud and debris and wide open blue skies.

    A friend we haven’t seen often visits. I cook pancakes. We watch cute animal videos on YouTube. Poppy loves cats but bursts into tears at the video of a hedgehog taking a bath. Star plays the guitar in her room and my heart melts.

    Rose has a tooth extraction. It’s a difficult procedure and there’s a lot of pain. Five days later she’s still hurting. At 4am she’s overwhelmed by it. I hold her. We can’t tell if it’s infected or just slow to heal. There’s only the ER open. We talk through options. I push for hospital but she’s demoralized and afraid. What if there’s nothing wrong and they are mean? Hospitals are not safe places for Rose. I stroke her hand. She falls asleep with an ice pack nested under her ear like a little red and white bird.

    Rose is napping and I am cooking dinner. Star has cuddled Poppy to sleep. Frying chicken sets off the smoke alarm. I run out to it and clip our esky  (cool box) on the way, breaking my little toe. Rose races out of bed to help me. “Poor love!” she cries, “I’m so sorry I slept, I can do the rest of dinner.” I push her out of the kitchen, hopping. Snarl at her “Go away! I’m being nice to you! I’m cooking while you nap, don’t wreck it!” Rose wisely decides not to argue. Poppy sleeps through the whole thing.

    Poppy shows the developmental signs she’s ready to start trying food. Strawberries, nectarines, and watermelon are big favorites. Banana and mashed potato not so much. As she gets older she discovers the pleasure of dropping food then stomping on it until it’s squished into her toes. She giggles madly.

    I crave bed with a single-mindedness that’s embarrassing. The sheets are changed far too infrequently but I’m so tired by the end of the day I never care. Crawling under my blankets is a kind of bliss. My evenings are spent anchored by one nipple to a small person. I learn I can download books onto an app on my phone. If I turn down the screen brightness and add a blue light filter, it’s almost like reading a book but can be done one handed in the dark. I’m thrilled.

    Poppy discovers she can squirt milk by suckling then coming off the breast and leaning on it with her hands. She shoots milk up her own nose and giggles. I spend half my life damp. She hates the breast pump with intensity. I pump milk for day care and she stands at my knee howling with despair that I insist on sharing her milk with this mechanical baby. If she can reach it she pulls the plug or runs away with the hose. 

    Poppy gets older and doesn’t coo at me like a little dove anymore. But she does sometimes talk to me in soft little hoots like an owl. She lays beside me in bed, kneeding her sharp little toes into the soft skin of my belly. Her eyes are night sky blue and dusted with stars.

    Rose takes Poppy on adventures to gardens or the zoo. She comes home full of joy and exhausted and falls asleep on the couch after dinner. Poppy hurls all her belongings over the loungeroom and sits in her toy box. 

    I pick Poppy up from daycare. She runs towards me and we snuggle. My heart explodes. She touched a chicken today, I’m told. Or licked a fence. Or carefully piled dirt on a doll. I wish I could book myself into daycare. It’s been a long time since I touched a chicken. She cries for exactly 1 minute, then falls asleep on the drive home, every time. 

    Birthday mornings are presents in the big bed. Rose wakes is all for the minute Poppy was born. Star tears a little corner on the gifts so Poppy can unwrap them herself. Poppy tears apart the wrapping with a huge smile. She gets duplo, a wooden toy, an octopus bath toy, a frog book, wooden whistle, small trampoline, and baby bike. Everyone decides 7am is too early and goes back to bed for more sleep. It’s a good day. 

    Happy first year, little love. You are my bright and shining joy. 

    Birth Workshop

    / Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

    I had a beautiful, and traumatic birth with Poppy. It’s complex. I was glad to have the opportunity recently to attend a birth workshop with Rose and unpack some of my experience. If you’re in Adelaide you’re welcome to attend the presentation of our group’s reflections this Wednesday. Details here.

    Poppy fell asleep in my arms in our last workshop. Rose snapped this shot of me while we were meditating. She is the most beautiful, joyful, tender heart of my world. It was precious to reconnect with that sense of the sacred that was so present when she was born. 

    Star needs surgery

    / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

    Our lovely Star has badly injured her knee while sparring in her Taekwondo class. A black belt student accidentally kicked her with so much force it’s ruptured the ACL, torn cartilage, bruised the bones, and sprained another ligament. She’s spent a week in a splint from her hip to her ankle, another week going around to medical appointments, and is now in the care of a physio and walking short distances. The knee has begun to seize so she’s on a program of gentle exercise, rest, and ice to squeeze the fluid out of the joint and regain some of her range of motion in preparation for surgery. 

    She will need a reconstruction of the ACL, which is done by harvesting from her hamstring muscle/s. Until then she is not able to do any sports or other activities apart from walking. 

    This would be tough for any young person but there’s an extra dimension for Star. She’s been struggling with back pain since she came into our family, and we found a gentle and skilled osteopath to support her. Her assessment was that the pain was being caused by chronic muscle tension – related to trauma and anxiety. (On a small level we all do this when stressed – grind our teeth or get tension headaches. Some of us hold more tension through all our body and unless we take care to tune back in and ease the muscles, we can suffer terrible pain as a result) Star’s osteopath eased the pain with massage and recommended a regular exercise program. 

    It took a long time for Star to find something she felt comfortable with and we were surprised to discover she turned out to love and excel at Taekwondo. She’d recently graded, getting 94% and progressing to yellow belt. She was in the process of arranging to train an extra day a week, as well as taking on a yoga class with me every fortnight, and with the regular exercise was no longer needing to see the osteopath.

    I can’t emphasize how essential care of your body is when there’s trauma or anxiety. I didn’t know this when I was young and went on to develop fibromyalgia and suffer intense pain for many years. Posttraumatic stress is a risk factor for fibromyalgia. I’ve been thrilled to see Star’s back pain reduce and her sleeping improve, and I’m daunted by how we’re going to manage now she’s only able to walk.

    It’s looking like it will take a couple of years for her surgery on the public system wait list, so we are currently exploring ways of funding it privately. It will cost about $9,000, plus rehabilitation. Unfortunately when I sought private health cover we were unable to include her in our family cover because she is not our biological child, and she was too young to sign herself up independently. So we expect to have a little cover through the sports club insurance, but most of the cost we’ll need to arrange ourselves. We’re still figuring that out. After the surgery she will still be off sports for another year while her knee strengthens. 

    It’s been a big blow for her and us. But we are doing our best to support her through it and scaffold her with the resources she needs to recover. She’s had the most incredible response to it, from using breathing techniques to deal with the initial severe pain while waiting for the ambulance, to her resolution to practice life skills for when things don’t go according to plan. Her willingness to accept and embrace her own real, painful feelings but also look for the positives is admirable. I am so proud of her. We never choose life experiences like this, but we can learn a great deal from them, especially with some support to process and reflect. So that’s what we’re doing!

    In sickness and health

    / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

    Poppy and I yesterday, visiting hospital. Rose had a very long day of health tests, and one of my best friends had a miscarriage. There’s been a lot of sickness and loss in my world lately. I’m heavy with sorrow and doing my best to be with the people I love. No one should have to endure such things alone. Always my heart aches for the people alone in the ED, especially the elderly. I’m struck by how often I’ve done this, on my life. Sat by the side of someone in pain. And how lucky I’ve been to have someone there for me, holding my hand, parking the car, remembering what dates symptoms started. 

    I had a dream the other night that I opened a whole new part of my business, offering personal support for people. I’d done doula training and was there for people in birth or death or at other vulnerable times – at the dentist, getting a pap smear, navigating a psychotic episode, dealing with a severe pain flare… All things I’ve done and learned to do to a high standard in my personal life (although sometimes impaired by my own crises – I’m sick and pretty exhausted this week, I doubt I’ve been at my best in this role). In my dream, I called this work ‘Life Support’ and I could be there myself or teach people how to hold the space for their own loved ones, and of course, themselves. It was very beautiful, hard but very satisfying work.

    Rose and Poppy are recovering from the flu at the moment, and Star and myself have head colds and sinus infections. I spent half of today in bed feeling very sorry for myself. Days like today I’m glad I often work from home, my desk is next to the heater and piled with tissues – I’d certainly not want to bring my bugs into an office. It’s not pretty at the moment, but we’re patient and it will get better again. 

    Together we are stronger

    / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

    It was a good day and at the end of it, I’m snuggled into a warm bed with my daughter. My heart is so happy and so damn proud. My family have been through an awful few weeks. We’ve been really hurting. A great deal of loss and sickness and heartache, one after the other. Yet here we are, holding each other gently. Listening and learning and finding what we need. There’s been a lot of self care, reflection, debriefing, and making space for big, painful feelings going on. We are an amazing team, I’m really so in love with us. My heart is full.

    Robert Oster Inks

    / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

    I received some beautiful new inks by local maker Robert Oster and I’ve found a little time carved from work and family and sleep to paint and play. Aren’t they stunning? I’m thrilled, and it’s very special to have inks made in my own area.

    Lovely Star suffered a bad knee injury at Taekwondo the other night and our whole family spent all night in the hospital with her. We are still such a young family ,(she only came to live with us 18 ago) all the time we encounter new situations and have to decide how we will deal with them. We decided that everyone would come and be together. It was a long night but we kept our spirits up. She’s home now in a splint that goes from her hip to her ankle. She was amazingly tough, using breathing techniques to manage the pain of damaged ligaments and dislocation while waiting a long time for the ambulance. She’s navigating the loss of independence and needing help with everything with good grace. I’ve taken some time off work to help care for her and we’ve borrowed some movies, and friends have been visiting. It’s miserable and painful, we’re waiting for a referral to an orthopedic specialist to find out how badly it’s been damaged and whether it will heal on its own or needs surgery. 

    It’s been a challenging few weeks, Rose is recovering from her heart problems, and Poppy is still getting over an ear infection and tonsillitis. I’m a bit up and down with so much going on. Snatching time here and there for a little art helps keep the lethargy and greyness of depression at bay. On the bad days I cry a lot. On the good days Poppy and I dance to music in our socks. Either way, there’s dishes to be done and nappies to be washed and the ceaseless clockwork of keeping a household functioning. The rage has eased and I’m much more patient still. Rose tries to create time for inks because, she says, when there’s art on my day, I’m my better self for all the rest of it. Kinder, wiser, gentler, more grounded. My heart was green and teal and tranquil and my brush flowed.

    Ink on my fingers

    / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

    Today was lovely. Rose is on the mend. I’ve taken a few days off work for everything not urgent, and rallied the tribe to help keep Rose and Poppy company during the couple of meetings or gigs I needed to attend. I’m feeling better myself after getting a bit more sleep – Poppy seems to have reached her sleep regression a bit early, she’s stopped one of her day time naps and is sometimes up in the small hours too. Last night Rose walked her around the block so I could rest up a bit too after cluster feeding her in bed for several hours, and today Rose slept while I looked after Poppy. 

    My headspace crashed when I got sick too, but today I really enjoyed myself. I am feeling a little obsessive about some new art supplies and enjoying researching them and how to use them. I played with inks and typographies, and got back onto Pinterest. I’ve also been cooking the past few days which I love. I’ve made warm chicken salad, cauliflower soup, warm pumpkin and sweet potato salad, and pear and rhubarb crumble. As much as I love working I really do enjoy some aspects of home life, and I’ve missed cooking. We are now looking at doing a bit of a roster for cooking because Rose appreciates a bit of time off and having a nice meal made for her too. 

    It’s also been really nice to hang out with Poppy all day. She finally fell asleep at 3pm after being grouchy all day and I tucked her up under a blanket and just snuggled her on my chest and smelled her hair for an hour. It was magic. Star and I walked with her to the local playground and we planned parties. Star, Rose, and Poppy all have birthdays within a week of each other! This will be our first year trying to balance them all. I’m determined to make sure all my girls feel special.

    I’m also looking into professional development opportunities, trying to figure out which skills to strengthen for my business. There are some very interesting graphic design, illustration, and media communication courses out there, but so far nothing part time or flexible enough to fit around my work… Doula studies also really interest me but the unpredictable career seems challenging to combine with my other responsibilities. Community consultation has been an incredible joy to be part of, but SA is a small pond for work like that. Extending my skills in service design and evaluation, and organisational culture could be an excellent fit, but again the career is a little uncertain. Certainly there are books calling my name to write them, but only madmen consider writing a viable career. I’d love to add some more skills around arts administration and curating too, and graduate level public health is interesting as is community development and policy writing. I just can’t quite see where my next step is or what my particular career path might look like, so it’s hard to know where to prepare and what skills to strengthen. Hmmmm! 

    I’m ecstatic to be working full time between my various skills, and determined to grow my business. I’d like to be secure enough to move my family into a larger home in private rental, and to wean off welfare as much as possible. Currently I’m supporting Poppy to have swimming lessons and keeping a second vehicle running for Star to have driving lessons in and I can’t tell you how proud that makes me. I went to the chemist when Rose got sick and pulled $100 from savings and spent it all on medications and vitamins and probiotics and didn’t need to go without a basic need to do so. I don’t really recommend adopting a teenager, having a baby, and starting full time work within the same 18 months, it has been brutal at times and the bad days are pretty black. I have never worked so hard in all my life. But it’s also wonderful, so many dreams come true. I endure the bad days with help from friends, and soak up the rest as best I can. Keeping a small person (and the rest of us) alive for a whole year feels like a massive achievement and I’m looking forward to celebrating it!