Unworthiness: This is How It Starts

Unworthiness: This is How It Starts

Earlier this year, my friend Denise Mills asked me if I'd write something for her blog about feeling 'unworthy'. The topic is something I've spent a lot of time thinking and writing about, having felt 'unworthy' for much of my life. I sent Denise a piece I wrote...

read more
AN ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT MY MOTHER

AN ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT MY MOTHER

I've tried to avoid doing this, hoping that by ignoring my mother's attempts to intimidate and harass, she would stop. But it's reached the point where I feel I must warn people about her. I also want to stand up for myself:  Nothing I've written about my mother...

read more
The Story Behind the Story: My Great-Grandmother

The Story Behind the Story: My Great-Grandmother

In the lead-up to publication of my novel, I want to write a few posts about the inspiration for my story. Last year, I wrote about my grandfather in 'The Story Behind the Story'. In that post, I talked about how as soon I started writing my novel, my grandparents'...

read more
What I Want to Write About …

What I Want to Write About …

Lately, each time I've sat at my computer the words haven't come and I've ended up faffing. Yet my mind is overflowing with ideas and things I want to write about. So, in the end, I pulled out my notebook and pen and made a list of all...

read more
On Not Giving Up

On Not Giving Up

This post could also be called On Failure, or On Working Hard, or On Learning Life's Lessons the Hard Way. When I was young, I spent most of each summer in our above-ground pool, swimming and jumping and tumbling and doing laps of its 20-foot length. I...

read more
Negotiating Puberty—Parenting Reflection #3

Negotiating Puberty—Parenting Reflection #3

When I was growing up, I found puberty difficult. I wasn't keen on the physical changes—I quite liked having a flat chest, hair that didn't get oily, and armpits that were hairless and didn't sweat. As a child, I hadn't felt particularly comfortable within my pale,...

read more
Words I Needed to Write

Words I Needed to Write

I've spent much of this week reading Cardinal Pell's testimony at the Royal Commission. I wasn't going to write about it, but it's taken over my thoughts, and I want to show support for the survivors, who've shown courage and resilience and dignity throughout. I've...

read more
On Not Shaming Kids: Parenting Reflection #1

On Not Shaming Kids: Parenting Reflection #1

This isn't the post I intended for this week, but the original one has turned into an unwieldy epic and I'm still working on it. Our second daughter finished school last year and will turn eighteen next month. This means both of our girls...

read more
The Story Behind the Story

The Story Behind the Story

ON WRITING 'THE SISTERS' SONG'   My novel, ‘The Sisters' Song’, has evolved and that’s the only way to describe how it came into being. It’s nothing at all like what I set out to write, and this draft, Final Draft 3.0, is very different to Final Drafts 1.0 and...

read more
For Fathers’ Day

For Fathers’ Day

I wrote this piece a couple of years' ago. It's some of my early writing so please forgive the errors and simplicity! It was one of the first pieces I wrote in my own 'voice' and was published in the OOTA anthology, 'Jukebox', in 2013. In Memory of My Father...

read more
Rewriting Mothers’ Day

Rewriting Mothers’ Day

  I wrote and published Monday's Mothers' Day post  in record time—it was done and dusted in under thirty minutes. I wrote the thoughts as they came and published it with little editing. I knew it was raw, but I knew if I thought about it too long, I might baulk....

read more
(Un)Happy Mothers’ Day

(Un)Happy Mothers’ Day

What do you do when you dread 'Mothers' Day' coming around each year? When those words cause your insides to shrivel because all they do is remind you of the Mothers' Days of your childhood, when you hid in your bedroom, while your mother stood at the kitchen sink...

read more
Why I Chose to Be Motherless—Part 6

Why I Chose to Be Motherless—Part 6

This is the final instalment in this series. The first post, which is about my childhood, can be found here. You can click the links at the end of each post to follow the series to here. It seems that September is my month for writing about the...

read more