Imaginif...the spirit of Christmas lasted.

A  Kangaroo cursed me the day I was born. The curse  makes me hopping mad because it jumps my life around, punches me to the ground and kicks pens from my hand. Obviously that Kangaroo is illiterate and is jealous of those who write. I’ve had enough so take a jump away, Joey!

When I was in Grade 3, I wrote a story that filled one whole exercise book and spilled its way onto countless loose pieces of paper. The teacher had me read my story to the class. I LOVED the audience and got a taste for live readings.

In Grade 7, I wrote a play for an English assignment. The teacher announced that my play would be our Christmas concert act.  The kids hated me, I LOVED that my play was best. I got a taste for diversity of taste.

I soooo wanted to be a famous writer when I grew up. In my imagination, I saw my name everywhere and heard people discussing my words. But, I wanted to be so many things when I grew up: a Doctor, a mother, a traveller, a singer, a diplomat, my list grew on. I kept writing, privately and for fun, but I turned my thoughts to doing Medicine and working in a third world country. I was HOPELESS at Home Economics (yuk…..house duties!) and art so I took straight academics at school and had a great time clowning around….and still I wrote.

I never became a Doctor. The thought of going away to Medical School was way too scary. I got married at 18 instead, had two babies, played the guitar, sang and went into business for myself. My marriage ended, badly. I moved town, enrolled at University and did Social Work….and English Literature for a while. Still I wrote, I wrote and wrote and wrote. It was my private dream and I was famous in my own world. In traditional reality though, writers don’t make money. Writers can’t support a family, especially a family like mine: a female single headed household. Hence, after being invited into the English Literature Honours program, I declined it and concentrated solely on working social science as a growth industry. I worked and was way too busy for pursuing writing as a hobby.

I got married again. I was in lurvvvvve. Another two babies, much study, work and heaps of writing: professional and report based. The stressful job and the additional children pulled strongly on my fatigue levels and my creativity waned. My free writing ended up as boring letters, notes and cards, saying sorry for always being so tired and grumpy. My writing, my private world and feelings, ended up used against me in court when second husband divorced me. I was shattered. I was over. I would never commit to writing again because writing was dangerous.

Never one to give up on love, I got married a third time (there were many years and heart aches in between marriages, mind you). I married a wonderfully supportive and intelligent professional man who knew not to tell me I couldn’t do something. I finally began free writing again, at first therapeutic letters but then memoirs and short stories. Eventually husband emotionally supported me through publishing my children’s chapter book, Bitss of Caramel Marmalade on Toast, and he helped me celebrate as smaller pieces of my writing were accepted. I had the taste, I was in heaven, I was writing again.

I quit my emotionally arduous day job in sexual assault counselling and went into business for my self - counselling, supervision, court reports, training and writing. I LOVED what I was doing and I did it for years. I was happy and I was writing creatively again. I had a second children’s chapter book in the process.

Then that damn curse caught me up again, like a Kangaroo coming back for a fight, and my world fell apart for the third time. Husband became very sick, lost his job and we had insufficient money to pay the mortgage. We ran out of savings and I had to go back to work, for a regular weekly pay cheque and to an industry I knew would poison me again. Thank fully, I walked straight into a very well paid position, with a great company, and for 12 months I have devoted my life to working long hours. Husband is still sick, not working and we live pay to pay: no savings, no safety net.

But, the twitch in my forearms twitched stronger and longer, all the way down to my writing fingers. I needed, had to, write on a daily basis. I was unhappy because I wasn’t doing what was write (pun intended) for me. My long days meant that I had no time to write, I was gone before youngest child was even out of bed in the morning and rarely home before 6.30pm.

I could have stayed punched down by the Kangaroo curse of my life but that would hardly fit my nature. I instead enrolled in a Masters degree (in writing), thinking that it would force me to restructure time and to create a necessary avenue for writing. All it did was create more stress! Something clearly had to give so I did what any other completely insane person would do. I quit my job so that I could have time to write! Yes sir, I kid you not. I have just quit a $90,000.00 a year job, with NO savings behind me, to write.

I am so happy. I finish my Management job in 4 weeks time and am going backwards to working for myself as a freelance writer and trainer. It has been six years since I was living in London and I so want to travel and write again. My aim is to travel my trainings so that all my trips are tax deductions and I get paid while I am doing what I want to do. I have no savings and am operating a business plan solely on trust, faith, passion and drive. I have a car payment, credit card payments, rent and a child to support. I am about to become a grand mother for the second time and I aim to help my daughter with the children.

I am happy because I am doing what is right for me: I write, I talk, I teach, I learn and I socialise. Best of all, I survive and I love because I know who I am.

Book me for a key note speaker or to deliver a training. I am an entertaining and energetic speaker with so much women’s business behind me that I could open a bra shop for women bursting out of their constraints. My areas of expertise are community child protection, sexual assault and how to get married multiple times yet stay sane.