Domestic Violence

We see the ads and the campaigns, we wear the ribbons of support for those living it or for those that it killed. 

If you were reading my posts back in 2013/2014 then you are aware of what life was like so I'm not going to recount  it all again here.  I often read facebook posts and see ads on TV aimed to stop Domestic Violence.  This is all fairly well and good.  Here is my take on it all with first hand experience.

I am just going to add that this is not about gender.  Both mothers and fathers are capable of domestic violence.

The pressure and bullying tactics used by the government in my circumstances were traumatic to say the least.  Once I left there was little to no support from these agencies, yet as far as they were concerned there was a course of action I had to take and it was not negotiable.  Now they are the ones that support the abuser.

• Pre-separation they pressured me to leave with threats no mother wants to hear

• Post-separation they now advocate for the abuser

While living in the home with my abusive partner there was no end to the pressure for me to just grab my kids and leave.  With no thought given to how I would put a roof over their heads and keep them feed and clothed.  Just pressure to leave.

Once I left I was on my own to pay the ever mounting legal costs involved in ensuring that the children's well-being and safety were being taken care of.  Family court proceedings that cost me personally in excess of $50k and are still accumulating.  So while I took the steps to put an end to the domestic violence, the violent person in this situation receives financial aid to live ... and to fight me in court against what I had to and was told to do.

The cherry on top came today in the way of a letter from the child support agency advising me that the abuser's application has been granted to pay $0.00 child support. 

I could go on and on and on ... but my point is this; the government and the courts favour the abuser.  Society does condone domestic violence.

Acknowledge the type of people they are and make them accountable for what they have and will continue to do.  Let me be able to talk about the abuse in court when arguing for the safety of my children.  Why are the abusers given so many chances, they have already shown society what they are capable of which is physical and emotional harm to those around them of an insurmountable measure.

Let the history of abuse be discussed and considered in court.

So while morning teas are being held to raise money and people wear the ribbons proudly on their chests all I see is a society that collectively condones domestic violence.  I have seen families look the other way, friends justifying why it was ok, courts ignoring the abusers history and the government financially supporting the abuser with legal aid and grants their applications to not have to pay child support anymore... go figure.

#thisisnotaboutgender  #makethesystemfair #acknowledgetheabuse

 





 

V2.0

Hello world.

It has been approximately 18 months since my last post and this has the potential to be a one off.  Who knows, I can't promise you anything.

So lets just get the OH&S stuff sorted first.  My spelling and grammar will be off, and I am not sorry.  My dream is to one day come back and tidy all these suckers up to a more reader friendly standard ... or not.  But for now this is a brain dump.  I choose to publish my blog to my Facebook page in the hope that my stories may help just one person in a similar situation, to make them realise that they are not alone and through my story they may find a better path. I might swear or might not, it really will depend on my mood.  So if you struggle with some foul language, spelling mistakes and grammar faux pars then the exit is to your top right, the red cross at the top of your web browser.  I wont use names. Not even my own here on the blog but you are most likely reading this through my Facebook page so you know who I am.  So if you have been fortunate enough to been given this link then you can assume that I am somewhat comfortable (never 100%) that you are reading.  I live by an open book policy; I have nothing to hide or to be ashamed about.  That said due to parents and aunt's having access to this blog there are some secrets a girl must keep ;O)  So those stories will be kept to nights of excessive vodka drinking where I can deny all knowledge of things said the next day with no written proof.  I will use humor at the most inappropriate times - it's my coping mechanism.  Don't judge.  And if you are feeling any sort of motion sickness; I'm sorry I can't help you because you are there and I am here.  But that really shouldn't be an issue I am expecting a fairly smooth ride.  DS stands for Dear Son and DD stands for Dear Daughter.  An old online way of referring to your children without using their names. DP believe it or not means Dear Partner not Deep Penetration, so on and so forth ... I think you can figure it from here.

I get anxious and full of self-doubt before hitting the post button but as like other aspects of my life refuse to let these feelings stop me from being and saying what I need to.   I am no longer taking medication for depression and anxiety but rather riding the waves of emotion that come with being a nearly 40 something single parent who works full time and has a mortgage to pay.  I feel I now have the self awareness to see when I am heading down hill and have my own strategies to cope with that.

Why so long between posts?  I sort of forgot that I can do this and that it feels good to unleash here sending my woes out into the universe rather than selfishly keeping them inside my head where they get to reek havoc on my mental state.  Also I have lacked a decent laptop, a very important tool for blogging.  But I am back up and running with a new one with the battery capacity to allow me to lie in bed, listen to music and type to my hearts content or until sleep deprivation finally kicks in and I can no longer keep my eyes open.  Also in comparison to NZ our life has become relatively boring but in the best way possible.  I still spend some of my life in court fighting for what is best for DS (dear son) but compared to three day Family Court trials and High Court appeals we are doing just fine.  Also I am sure I have explained before my uncanny ability to procrastinate,  So yep I have more important things I should be doing but here I am.  I think another reason I'm back is that in the past couple of weeks I have had to retell my story over and over again.  It has brought the ugliness back to the service and when I am in my head alone I can't sort it out.

Why have I had to tell my story repeatedly over the last couple of weeks?  Because DS is broken and the team trying to help us need to know all the ugly. And by team I mean we currently have two child psychologists, two pediatricians, one GP and a handful of teachers and aides working with us daily to keep him emotionally and socially functional.  They need to diagnose him so that we can get funding so that he can have the resources available to him to get through each day.  Depending on which one you talk to you will get a different theory on what is wrong.  From Autism to high functioning Asperger to ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) to just plain old broken.  At this point I'll take whatever he needs to be so that he gets the help that he needs.  I spend a lot of time lately having long conversations with strangers about all he can't do or all that he is doing wrong.  Like he can't recognise facial expressions or empathise/sympathies with others.  That he can't stand loud noises and often spends his days at school with his head on the floor spinning in circles.  He has tent in his classroom and that is where he spends most of his time alone.  Anyhow I'll probably go into more detail in coming posts on all of this.

And I'm scared.  My new job frightens me; the idea of a new routine and working further away from DS.  The job itself is exciting but it changes our life.  And routine is important DS and this means new people in his life doing things for him that I can't because I will be at work.  Before school care and other mums helping with after school drop offs.  Getting home later with the flow on affect of a later bedtime routine for him. More responsibility for DD (dear daughter).  I think I can do you a whole post on our new teenager and the trials and tribulations of her first year at High School and how all this (the above) impacts her life too.  As a dear friend said she is a good egg and I am forever grateful for the amazing human she has turned out to be so far and I have no doubt that this kid will succeed in her life albeit while doing life as an interpretive dance routine.

The more important thing I should be doing right now is typing up my latest court application to change the visitation of DS with his father.  I look back to the NZ days where I held down a full time job, studied and mostly represented myself in court for 18 months.  I don't know how I did that.  I have stopped studying, I just can't find the motivation at the moment and as you can see will do anything other than fill out another court application which really should have been done weeks ago.  But I do believe that my best work is done at the last minute, with the help of a close friend!  So that means that I will do it on Sunday night for a Monday morning submission.

And success, I am tired and ready for bed which will hopefully also result in sleep.  And if it doesn't I am sure that I can get myself through tomorrow with the right amount of caffeine.

You can't touch this

It's been a while since my last post.  Life has been happily calm, quite and blissful.

We arrived back in Melbourne at the end of September, and I had one week to get everybody organised to start school, kindy and work on the following Monday.

I was more emotional than I thought I would be but happy that I think I kept it together pretty well.  I under estimated the sadness I would feel leaving all my gorgeous friends in NZ, as I was so focused on escaping and getting the children back to Melbourne.

It felt strange to all of a sudden have my parents there to help me with the children and support they offered in other ways.  I was so entrenched in having to survive on my own that it felt strange to have another four hands helping out, with discipline, entertainment and bedtimes.

The kids have transitioned amazingly  well.  DS is like a new little man.  From being so angry and hard work to an absolute pleasure to be with.  No anger, eating and going to bed on time, doing what is asked of him without having a complete melt down and especially becoming his Poppy's number one fan.

He has settled into his new kindy as a social, functional member of the class and we are currently preparing him to start school next year.  He is super excited albeit a little concerned that his uniform is too big.  We tried explaining to him yesterday that we got the smallest size available and that the other kids in his class will be in the same boat as him.  If you ask me I think he looks adorable in his over-sized uniform ... just makes me want to gobble him up!

DD is embracing the time she is getting to spend with the rest of her family, and loves the new school she is at.  Telling me it is the best ever.  She has had no problems making new friends.  However we have just entered the tween to teenage years and with the move it has thrown up some new challenges for me as a mother and a whole new attitude I have never had to deal with before.  I presume that this will only get worse before it gets better :o/  But hey, thats what it is all about.

Work = awesome!  Love my new job even though it is a bit of a hike at the moment to get too, but they are being a fantastic support as well.  I have really enjoyed the change in career so far and doing something different with my days.  I took the last semester of from my degree so that is also on the do to list, re-enroll over here.

While we have managed to move home, to Melbourne, unfortunately the drama in the New Zealand Family Court is not over.  There is an appeal to bring DS back to NZ.  While I believe that this will not be granted, it does mean I am still incurring large legal bills while I defend my position for the appeal. This is going to take many more months until it is heard in the High Court.

However that can not take away from how great it feels to be back home ... visiting old friends who I haven't seen in years.  Being apart of my family again on a daily basis. Knowing that this is it, WE WILL NOT MOVE AGAIN!!!

To do list ...

• Get DS off to school early next year
• Find a high school for DD
• Enroll to finish my degree
• BUY A HOUSE OF MY OWN TO LIVE IN FOREVER AND EVER

Doona vs Duvet

Always a debate I end up having with kiwi's, as they call a doona a duvet.

Here is the urban dictionary description of the difference between a doona and a duvet; and I might add right here that I was right, always have been about what kiwis call the duvet is in fact a doona.

The defining feature being that a DOONA has a removable cover to be washed, where as the DUVET does not.

So all my kiwi friends who I love so dearly, if what you have on your bed has a removable cover you are in fact sleeping with a DOONA and not a DUVET ... touche!!

 

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=doona (retrieved 10/09/2014)

 I wish you all a good nights sleep under your doona's ...  feel free to pronounce it with an Aussie accent xxx

Next I will be working on thongs, pavlova and Russel Crowe.


 

Five Mintues

That is how long I allowed myself to feel defeated, worn out and hopeless.


The court decision was that I can relocate DS back to Melbourne and now his father intends to apply to appeal and to stop the current orders from being effective.

Before hearing the news of the intention to appeal, I had gone and spent some time with counselor number 12 at the counselors insistence.  I bought him up to speed on where things were at.  He then took me through his last session with him.  Apparently he is a battered husband, that I would deprive him of food, making him live in hunger;  that I am a terrorist in his life.  I have heard all these things before so no surprises really.

So what now?

I will dispute his application to appeal and the request to stop the current orders.  Best outcome we still return to Melbourne has planned and our tickets are booked and paid for.  If I can't leave yet I have a plan B.

How do I feel?

Tired. I just want a big deep hot bubble bath that will wash all of this away.  To step out and for life to be the way it should  be. 

Indescribable Feeling

An elusive title perhaps, but the best  use of words to express how I feel at the moment., it is indescribable; yet I am going to try.  When I feel this way and I write here I often walk away feeling a little clearer and lighter.

I feel it in my heart and in my tummy, and my brain seems to get on board, over thinking how I feel so as  to try and find a solution to either enjoy it or stop it..

To the likes of a magic potion where a little bit of this and a little bit of that are thrown together, creating feelings that are both euphoric yet also have me feeling melancholy. 

It makes me feel a little like a crazy person, a little whacky.  And it makes me feel tired, it wears me out as I try to stablise my inside emotions with how my outside is behaving.

I don't like not knowing how I feel and why, it makes me feel vulnerable.  Yet most of the time there is not enough time for me to spend trying to figure it out as my attention is needed elsewhere, on children or work, so I then I just simply put up with how it feels.  And it feels uncomfortable.  Sometimes it makes me want to run, sometimes it makes me want to sleep. I feel stuck inside myself scratching to get out, and then stuck on the outside wanting to curl up and hide away on the inside.

Sometimes it is painful, and all I want is to escape from it or to dull the intensity of it ... 

Yet I am patient, I know it will subside and I will gain control again.  Surrounding myself with things that make me happy; my favorite people, music, movies etc.

Per ardua ad astra

~ Through adversity to the stars ~


Gosh where to start with this post. I suppose I never really thought much past the hearing, as I was afraid of not getting the outcome I needed.  Sitting on the fence thinking I had prepared for the good or the bad. The last 48 hours has been full of intensely mixed emotions.  To the point where today all my efforts where on not crying.  I described to a friend that I felt functional, it was more like my eyes were leaking and I just couldn't stop them.

Now, I can dig deep and find some reasons to blame for this like; PMT (always a girls best excuse for anything), that fact that I haven't slept more than two hours a night over the last few days or that I had reduced my medication.  Or perhaps like it was pointed out to me this evening, years of adversity.  

The horizon is beautiful, I get to take my children home, to be back with my friends who I have missed so immensely, spending time with my family again.  I have the most stress-free international move imaginable; the warmest welcome back into our family home with my parents, a job which I am so excited to start and the children are all sorted with school and kindergarten.

So why do my eyes keep leaking?

Some people say to me congratulations , you won.  I don't feel like I won.  Winning would be having had a loving relationship which was a place for children to be nourished and grow with the love of their mum and dad together.  

So while there isn't the sense of winning, there are no regrets.

 I do however know that I have done the best by my children in the situation we are in, but still there are no winners.  There is safety and the hope that I can give them both the up bringing that means that they can go onto to have happy, healthy functional lives; with the ability to maintain positive relationships with others.  That I can bring joy into their lives and that the three of us will go on many adventures creating wonderful memories together.  The judgement was not only for relocation, it was also for primary custody, dramatically reducing the time spent with him by the DS. I am not a dad.  And those are shoes that I can not fill, nor do I want too.  I need to focus on being their mum, hoping that I can bring  balance into their lives so that they know that while we don't live with a dad, he is there.  And within the limits of keeping them safe somehow I will juggle helping them both maintain that connection.


It was a friend who had the privillage yesterday of witnessing the beginning of the meltdown.  Perhaps taken unaware by my news firstly, which I then followed up with a torrent of tears (even though they have tried assure me I wasn't a blubbering mess, it sure felt like I was). I made my head hurt by trying to hold them in (the tears), it was an impossible task at times.  This friend stayed strong, having been through something similar their words of empathy reached me.  Holding me, assuring me that what was happening was the right thing. They knew that while the rest of the world is saying congratulations, you won, that inside I am grieving.  Thank you.

And then today, I was scared to even talk to anyone as I knew my bottom lip could drop at anytime and then that was the sure sign the my eyes were going to start leaking again.  An excuse I have learnt over the years to try and disguise an ugly crying face is hay-fever.  I have no idea if anybody actually believes that but I don't feel like such a dumb-ass for walking around all day with red puffy leaking eyes.  I thought about not going to work but knew that I would just lie on the couch and cry all day. So being the sharing caring type I decided to go in and  inflict my emotions on everybody else in the office!  And while physically present at my desk, I wil admit that not much work actually got completed.  I tired ,I really did.  But feeling slithgy dehydrated and sleep deprived there was no amount of caffeine that was going to bring me back today.  All I can hope for tonight is sleep and hours of it.

So to conclude so that no-one is left worried or concerned; I am back on my full dose of meds, I pride myself on the self awareness that I have about how I feel and I will not hesitate to to ask for help.  And while I complain about the amount of tears at the moment you know that I can still smile and laugh.  

I am mentally preparing for tomorrow by visualising getting up tomorrow morning, putting my big girls knickers on, listening to Edith Piaf  and getting ready for the day ahead. Whatever it plans to throw at me, through tears and possibly snot running down my face, I will kick its arse.