Fuck Luck

I live a good life. 

Though not for everyone, I recognise that it’s an enviable life for many and that many people think that I am lucky. I know this because I’m told, often. Like it’s a compliment. But it’s not.

I am a first generation Australian. I was born to two European immigrants. My French father and my Dutch-Indonesian mother met in a migrant hostel in South Australia, fell in love and something, something… had two healthy, smart and able kids.

So I AM lucky to be born in Australia. Lucky and grateful. I am lucky to be born healthy, of mind, body and spirit. Lucky and grateful. I am lucky that I was born to a family that held ‘family’ in high regard so that I was raised with love. I’m lucky that the role models in my life were good and strong. I am lucky that my mum is the woman she is and therefore the parent she is. I am lucky that the next man she chose to be her husband would turn out to be the perfect step-father.

I am also lucky that I made it to womanhood, largely unscathed and now have two healthy, smart and able sons. I thank the universe for that good fortune every day.

I do feel lucky for all these incredibly positive things in my life because I had no impact on them. They were bestowed upon me thanks to genetics and thanks to the decisions and choices of my parents, their parents and the generations before them.

What I am not lucky for is everything else that people see in my life today. And be fucked if I’m going to smile and ‘yes, you’re right’ when someone suggests that I am.

Especially about the following ‘compliments’.

You’re so lucky you have a good husband.

My husband is a great partner. He is kind and loyal and reliable. He is loving and respectful. He is generous and supportive. He is strong and present and generally shares the same values as I do. He encourages me to follow my dreams and stands strong whenever I need to weather a personal storm.

But it is not an accident that we are together. Our marriage wasn’t arranged by a third party. At the time of meeting my [now] husband I was dating several other blokes… with an indecent amount of ex-boyfriends in my wake. I was trying before I did any buying. In the time that we have known each other we have dated each other, lived together, broken up, dated other people and got back together. When I said ‘yes’ to his proposal, I already KNEW he would be a good husband. That’s WHY I said ‘yes’. In the fifteen years that we have been married we have struggled, grown, aged, argued, weathered hard times and very nearly and irrevocably separated. Luck has not kept us together. Hard work has.

When we brought our first baby home we were CLUELESS. So we carved out a plan for how we wanted our family’s life to look and we stuck to the plan together. Accountable to each other and encouraging of each other. We headed in the same direction, side by side. He decided he wanted to be the best father he could be and I wanted to be the best mother I could be. So I spend every day doing what I can to achieve that goal. He does the same. He CHOOSES to be present and engaged and invested in his sons. We fuck up a lot but we hold each other accountable to those aspirations every day. 

No luck. No accident. No magic.

You’re so lucky you live in a beautiful home.

I have a beautiful home. It’s GORGEOUS. I am illogically and unreasonably emotionally attached to it. I actually love my home. With real feelings in my heart. It’s what I call my ‘forever home’ and if I had my way I would spend the rest of my days here. After renting for years, the last home I had I built with my husband. We worked crazy hard to build it for as little as possible so we could sell it making the maximum, honest profit… which we then used as a deposit on my ‘forever home’ which we substantially renovated.

We have sacrificed holidays, new cars and extravagant life choices to live in this house. There are many days when we reevaluate and question whether it’s worth it. My answer, every time, is “it is.” Those choices are not for everyone, we know, and we have many friends who prioritise other things like international travel with their family higher than a massive real estate commitment… and we have both been envious of each other’s choices at various times of our lives. Are they lucky to be able to travel regularly? Or have they engineered their life’s decisions around their priorities?

You’re lucky you can stay home with your kids and not have to work.

When I was ‘surprised’ by the arrival of a new life in my womb I had my own menswear boutique where I sold my own-label, imported men’s shirts ties and cufflinks. Before then I had worked full-time since the age of sixteen.

Once we got over the shock of being pregnant we had many candid talks about what we thought our family would look like and we both agreed that we didn’t want our child/children to go into childcare. One of us had to stay home with them and I chose to be the one. Which meant that I had to close my business and give up earning an income to do so.

My husband also has his own business selling wine [now online] that he started when we were first together. We have both worked hard to support each other in our professional lives.

If you’ve ever run your own business you’ll know that it is incredibly taxing and I’m not just talking about tax. It takes an enormous level of commitment, sacrifice and lean living. It also takes tenacity. In business, especially, you make your own luck. When you run your own business it becomes part of the family and though I no longer have my own business, I spend many hours every week with my head in my husband’s business.

Contrary to popular belief, I’m not the good little woman at home lucky to have a man bring home the bacon. My man brings home the bacon because he doesn’t have to worry about cooking it. He also doesn’t have to worry about school commitments, sick children, grocery shopping, clean sheets on the bed or jocks in his drawer.

Of course, becoming a single-income household was not without its challenges and it meant that we had to tighten our belts.

We don’t go to stage shows that are touring or attend concerts of any artists other than our kids. We haven’t been to all the new restaurants in town [or even many of the old ones]. We don’t often go to the movies and we usually choose to have our coffee at home instead of in a café. We do A LOT of entertaining at home. In our gorgeous house. We’re prepared to sacrifice lifestyle but we will always invest in our friends and family. And there’s no point in having such a big, beautiful home if you’re not going to fill it, often, with people you love.

You’re lucky that you have such good friends.

You know now that I think about it, I think I only ever hear that from my friends :)

But I’m not alone. I hear people say ‘you’re so lucky’ to women particularly ALL.THE.TIME. And I hear good, strong and capable women take it on the chin far too often. I’ve heard people say ludicrous fucking statements like “Oh you’re LUCKY that you have a husband/partner to BABYSIT your kids” NO. One does not ‘babysit’ one’s own offspring. One parents them. And there’s nothing lucky about that. I know women who have had to defend their ‘fortunate’ lives as though they somehow don’t deserve them. My friends are sick of being called lucky for their life’s choices too. Lucky that they have such a good job, lucky that they drive such a nice car, lucky that they have such a nice partner, lucky that they have a happy family, lucky that they have a good life.

Calling someone ‘lucky’ robs people from owning their decisions. It devalues their own strategic plan and their hard work. It’s condescending and many times demeaning. It’s like the common misconception that new musical artists in the industry are ‘overnight successes’. As if the decade of training and auditions and failures prior to their emergence didn’t exist.

As with many people, the role that luck has played in my life so far is part of the picture.

But the truth is hundreds of little decisions every day and a few really momentous ones are the reasons that I live such a lucky life.

Edenland

http://www.edenriley.com/

If you look up happiness in the dictionary you will see my face in this photo. I'm smiling so hard that my face is about to turn inside out.

Ladies and gentlemen I'd like to introduce you to Eden Riley. For those of you who don't know, Eden writes all the words of all the feelings ever in the world at Edenland. Her blogs are some of the most favourite things I have read in my life and her vulnerability is one of the most powerful expressions of strength that I have seen.

Sometimes reading her stuff is liking taking a round house kick to the guts and other times it's like I'm up the back of the classroom suppressing giggles while we throw rolled up bits of paper at the back of our teachers head and sometimes it's like looking into a mirror but it's never ordinary. When she publishes something new I have to put aside time to read it. Just in case it's one of those ones that makes all the water in my body leak out of my eyes.

Reading Edenland is not for the faint hearted. With raw honesty she shares her scars and the innermost corners of the dark places of her heart. Her posts of her brother Cam who the world lost to suicide have often been the undoing of my day... sometimes my week. Her love and pain is so palpable that I feel like I have loved and lost him myself.

But she's more than that. Through her, at times, debilitating grief she still manages to give something back to the world. Her work with World Vision is so important and the voice she gives them is inspiring. Her heart is generous even though it is crippled.

And if that's not reason enough for me to worship love her, wait until you see her crusade against the sexist bastards who run Wicked Campers.

Am I gushing? Maybe a little bit. But here's the thing. I've got a blog-crush on Eden. She is beautiful and her soul leaps across her words and her heart and shines out of her face. The seven minutes that we chatted (and hugged!) was the highlight of Problogger for me. I don't think it's because I'm star struck 'cause I met lots of other blogging idols of mine while I was there. I think it's because as you get older and wiser you understand the value of honesty and vulnerability and authenticity. 

And Eden, with a capital E, is all of those things all of the time. 

Fakebook vs The Full Catastrophe

Imagine we’re friends and I’ve invited you to my place for dinner. Because I don’t want to appear fake and life-shame you somehow, the dinner table conversation plays out like this:

“Here’s some snags and some bread. We’ve run out of butter but just put some sauce on it and it should be fine. I was going to buy steak, but we had a really high electricity bill this quarter so we can’t afford it. Excuse my pjs. I’m having a shit day and couldn’t be arsed getting dressed. I know that you won’t mind though – no airs and graces for you! Just keeping it real. Isn’t your son so well behaved? I’d love for him to be able to play with my sons but they’re both in a time-out in their bedroom ‘cause they refused to pick their toys up off the lawn and are now refusing to talk because they hate their family. Oh and my husband was planning to be here but we had a fight this morning and he doesn’t really like you much anyway so he’s gone to Bunnings. Pardon? You’d like to use the toilet? Of course! But don’t sit on the seat. I haven’t had a chance to wipe the piss off.”

When you invite people over for dinner, don’t you clean the house? Don’t you wear something nice and cook something delicious? Do you serve it on a lovely, set table with some matching [or purposely mismatched] serviettes? Haven’t we always shared our ‘highlight reel’?

I’m so tired of hearing people complain about other people only ever sharing their ‘highlight reel’ on social media. What is so wrong with it and why do they care?

Seriously people. Our whole fucking life is a highlight reel. It’s called manners. And discretion. There are only a handful people that see the whole catastrophe of my family life. I have 300 friends on Facebook. I don’t bullshit to them but I also don’t tell them about every shitty part of my life. Nor would I tell someone that I hardly know if I caught up with them at a party. “So nice to see you again Tania! It’s been ages – how are things?” “Oh y’know – pretty shit. Motherhood does my head in. We don’t have enough money to do anything. My kids have got attitude. My husband is stressed all the time and I’ve put on 8 kilos in the last 12 months. But enough about me - how about you?”

I’ve shared before that I, happily, live a very ordinary life. I think that’s cool and I’m authentic in all my online antics but there’s also some stuff that’s not just mine to share. I’m married and, believe it or not, we have our challenges. But whilst I’m a chronic over-sharer, my husband is the complete antithesis. It’s not up to me to air our sometimes dirty laundry to all and sundry in an attempt to share my life ‘warts and all’.  My kids throw tantrums. I argue with my mum. My house is often in disarray which often matches my hair. Sometimes the frypan that I cooked dinner in on Monday is still sitting, dirty on the stove top on Thursday. Sometimes I cook wholesome, organic, from-scratch family meals and sometimes I wipe that dirty fry pan and whip up a sausage sizzle for dinner.

I’m normal. Just like you are. But I’m not obligated to share every ‘normal’ part of my life with everyone I’m connected to, to avoid some sort of social media misconception. I am not responsible for your feelings of guilt. Just as you [or anyone] is responsible for mine. This whole business of people feeling worse about themselves because of the ‘highlight reels’ their social media friends dare to share online drives me nuts. Would these same people be pissed off if every time they were invited to someone’s house that the kids were on their best behavior and the house was tidy and the host couple seemed to genuinely enjoy each other’s company in their new outfits? Would they leave that house believing that their host’s intention was to prove to them how much better they were at ‘life’ than their guests. Would they leave feeling shamed and offended that their hosts had dared to be so ‘fake’?

There just seems to be someone pissed off about someone else’s use of social media every fucking day. What does anybody care? If I only ever show myself looking gorgeous with my gifted and talented children while my flawless husband is off hunting and gathering when he’s not cooking the perfect bbq – who cares? Do they need to see behind the scenes? What makes people think any of that is about them? What makes people think that me showing only the awesome bits of my life is shaming their life? Maybe all us hateful fakebookers are sharing the ‘highlight reel’ as an exercise in gratitude. You know, that there are positive parts of our otherwise normal, boring, messy lives. Or maybe it just doesn’t have anything to do with anyone else at all.

You know what shits me? Breakfast updates and some trending awareness campaign that shows up a million times in my newsfeed and pictures of cats and stupid passive aggressive vague updates and any story about the Kardashians. But do I care?

Nope. I just scroll past and get on with my sometimes awesome life.

And I think that’s what we all should do.

There's nothing wrong with an ordinary life

I loved this video when I saw it. And when I watched it again, I still thought it was good but I’m a little bit over the implication that we must all be doing something more with our lives. I'm over my newsfeed being flooded with non-inspirational quotes like:

What is wrong with living an ordinary life?

There is nothing extraordinary about my life. If I go by family history I’m almost exactly middle-aged. I’m married to a nice man with whom I have had two healthy children who share a bedroom and walk to school. We eat home almost every night. We live in a beautiful home which we owe a mortgage on so have very little spare cash to travel which means our holidays are almost always local. We own two average cars, quarrel with our extended family and have at least one piece of Ikea in every room of the house. We raise money for charity, we recycle, we grow our own veggies and we never have enough sleep. 

At least once a month I despair that I have nothing to wear and my husband threatens to give away the kids toys that they’ve left outside overnight. We rarely go to concerts or new restaurants but have friends over regularly. We aim for a couple of alcohol-free days a week and I choose to accept my body for what it is rather than hit the workout circuit. My boys exclaim ‘that’s not fair!’ about something totally fair almost every day and still struggle to aim into the toilet bowl without pissing on the floor. I wash my hair on Wednesdays and make spaghetti Bolognese at least once a week. I get unreasonably annoyed when the television channels randomly change the days and times of my favourite shows [currently Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy] and have put my hand up to be the class parent rep for the 4^th year in a row. My boys still hug and kiss me every day and if my husband is at work, he’ll call at least once to ‘check in’ on our day.

Seizing the day for me often means making a good, strong cup of coffee, changing the sheets on the beds and cooking up a few meals for the freezer. I’m not sure that’s very ‘carpe diem’ but that’s what an ordinary life is. And what is so wrong with that? The constant message to live a greater life is a crazy amount of pressure. If you’re not using your jellybeans wisely, you’re wasting your days. Wasting your days. What the fuck does that actually mean? And who’s going to measure the waste? Me?? I don’t really feel like I’m wasting anything. But then there’ll be another article about living an extraordinary life that makes me think – fuck, I’m doing this wrong. If I don’t have a desire for a greater life, am I just lazy? I should be doing things. Having adventures. Impacting the world. Leaving a legacy.

Wait... what? Isn’t that what I’m doing? 

Some days my sons do something so impressive that I feel I am part of an extraordinary journey. I teach them things. And they learn right before my eyes. Their brain fills up with things I tell them. We go to the zoo and I see it through their eyes and it’s a wonderful adventure. I get dragged through the nocturnal section which has never interested me and delight in seeing the baby bilby and my boys and I whisper so we don’t scare it and it’s so exciting. I tell them stories of their grandparents. Stories that are so foreign and removed from life today that they seem like fairytales. They ask for more and I realise I am my family’s memory and the tapestry of my family lives in me and that is extraordinary. I reach out to my gorgeous sons and hold them to me and I feel their heart, that I MADE, beat against my own chest. I made people. And now I’m growing people. And that is fucking extraordinary.  

Warring Women versus The Sisterhood

Image source: www.ketzali.com

We are one bitchy, judgemental lot aren’t we?

Every day I read social media updates about mummy wars and women criticising each other for choices made and clothes worn and parenting decisions and food choices. Blogs and articles are constantly being written by women imploring other women to stop judging each other. To give a sister a break. To stop being such bitches. Our own focus on women as crap people is relentless. The negativity that we are imposing on ourselves is endless. It feels like we are all beating the same self-deprecating drum in an effort to show how evolved we are.

And it is true that we are judgemental. Many of us measure our own performance and, sadly, self worth by how we see everyone else is performing or coping or falling apart. It’s not new. We’ve always done it only now, in the information era, everyone knows about it. We used to just bitch behind each other’s backs. Now we post status updates and share articles in a passive aggressive attempt at saying “I’m doing a better job than she is.”

So now that I’ve got that out of the way, let me remind you of something very important about us 'warring women'.

We are a sisterhood. And just like sisters, we are able to bitch and insult and fight and disagree until one of us loses our shit and then we’ve got each other’s back.

Yesterday, I saw three separate women unexpectedly and spontaneously burst in to tears. They all went from smiles to sobs in less than 60 seconds. Each time they were surrounded by women they knew. Each time they succumbed to their emotions because they felt they could. And each time the women in their vicinity moved in with a speed and purpose that only other women understand... because for all our bitchiness and comparisons, we get it. We are all struggling. When we see a sister crumple under her own pressure we are fundamentally compelled to support her. When we see another woman struggle to fight her demons we stand behind her, next to her and many times in front of her. I see women rally for each other all the time. I see it online even more than I see the apparent war of women.

My sisterhood is strong and incredibly valuable to me. It is rich and full of women who represent so many different walks of life. It is diverse in age, culture, politics, religion, sexuality and geography. 

It is my anchor. It is my constant. 

I was raised by a single mum who had an amazing sisterhood. It is in her battlefield that I learnt the lessons of womanhood. It is through her and her friends that I learnt to gather my own army. Watching my mum and her friends navigate life together is where my awe of women began. In fact, from my view point, watching them around the dining room table making cups of tea and smoking cigarettes as they swapped stories and ear-rings, it was almost magical. 

To this day, I find magic in my friendships. My sisters have single-handedly healed gaping holes in my heart. They have saved me a million times from a million different tragedies. They have stood by me through fist fights [real and metaphoric] and I have seen my joy reflected in their eyes and heart  time and time again. I have a friend that calls me crying often and by the end of the conversation, which is sometimes only 5 minutes long, she’s laughing. 

That’s magic. That’s powerful. THAT'S what women do.

And if you’re reading this and thinking to yourself “What are you talking about? I don’t have a sisterhood!” then you’re probably a man OR you haven’t met the right women yet. 

Do not despair, sister. Start close to home and gather your army and in the meantime stick around... 

I’ve always got room for more in mine x

My brilliant body and the Stretch-mark Swagger

Do not be fooled by this photo... it's all about the angles and the filter x

I swaggered a little

As I walked to the water’s edge

The sweet sting of the morning sun

On my shoulders

My ponytail tickling the nape of my neck

I readjusted my bikini as I sauntered

Making sure it covered as much breast

As the scant triangles could

Tucking in a few wayward pubes that I missed

In my dry-razor touch up before I left home

Families flanked my sandy path

Mums, dads, babies

Pop-up sun shelters, deck chairs, eskies

I can hear a baby screaming, a young child laughing and a helicopter overhead

I held my head high as I made my way to the shoreline

I looked down at my belly, soft and protruding

So I sucked it in... just a little bit

But then I saw my thighs

Wider than my hips, lined with stretch marks, dimpled with cellulite

And let my breath out

I stood taller as I noticed my varicose vein

Which is more like a rope, snake its way down the length of my left leg

Knowing it will be there as a reminder of my second pregnancy

Until a time in my life that will permit me to have

The 7 days off my feet

Required for the operation to remove it

When I reached the water

And the waves lapped against my calves

I realised I could see my reflection

In the joy of my sons’ faces as they laughed

At my wincing against the cold of the ocean

Through their eyes I see my body

Is soft and warm and strong and protecting

I scowled at my husband as he joked

That I was being precious

And I could see that when he looks at me

He sees a body that created his family

His legacy

A body that has grown with him

A body he still loves

I smiled as I paraded

Proud to be me

In all my womanly glory

And I remembered a time when my body

Was younger

Firmer

Tighter

I remembered when my breasts were higher

And my arse stuck out and the only lines on my thighs

Were tan lines

And for a moment I became sad

Because when my body looked its best

I did not swagger

I did not saunter

I saw no glory

When my body looked its best

I focussed on the faults and trivialised the beauty

I saw only what it wasn’t and failed to see what it was

It’s only now that my body is older

and tired

and loose

and dimpled

and plump

and spotted with age

and striped with stretch marks

and mapped with veins

and creased with laugh lines

I see brilliance

I am woman. Hear me raw.

Today

I am a working mum. My days follow a strict routine which involves ‘just another 10 minutes’ in bed every morning, regardless of what time I wake up. Those 10 minutes feel like those delicious stolen moments with a lover... but better because I’m alone in the bed and I can stretch out and remember my days when I didn’t have ‘a side’. In those 10 minutes I lament the too few hours sleep preceding them and dread the rat-race following them. I mentally check through my wardrobe and decide what I’m going to wear and hope to god that I’ve washed it and if I have, hope that I have hung it up and not left it in the washing basket. It is the only quiet time I will have to myself all day.

There are boys to be dressed and teeth to be brushed. Bags to be packed and lunches to be made. Husbands to send off and make-up to be slapped on. School to be walked to and teachers to touch base with. Meat to defrost and washing to be put on. Emails to answer and coffee to make. Traffic to negotiate and cars to be parked.

Then a day of work which, most days, is good but some days is not.

Followed by errands to be run and calls to be made. Appointments to squeeze in and dinner to be cooked. Washing to be hung out and coffee to make. School to be walked to and bags to unpack. After school snacks to prepare and homework to be helped with. Sports to be driven to and tables to be set. Baths to be run and stories to read. Dishes to be done and washing to put away. Uniforms to lay out and beds to collapse in.

It is gruelling and draining and gratifying and real.

Yesterday

I was a stay at home mum. My days didn’t follow any routine and I was almost totally at the mercy of my sons’ needs. Breastfeeding on demand. Tiptoeing around the house at nap-time. Scraping soggy teething rusks off the carpet. Rinsing off poo on sheets/clothes/cushion covers. Throwing out bibs that had mashed banana on them ‘cause that shit just does not come out in the wash. Toilet training. Manners training. Sleep training. Rich play. Fine motor skill development. Gross motor skill development. Socialisation. 

Some days time would stand still and I would wait, desperately for the husband to come home so I could turn myself off for 10 minutes. Just 10 minutes to not be the one who had to pick up the crying baby. Just 10 minutes to be alone and not feel guilty for the pleasure that would fill my bones to be quiet. And still. Other days time would steal my life away and I would despair that I didn’t have longer to float in the wonder of seeing the world through the new eyes of my baby. I would feel it slip through my fingers as I traced ‘round and round the garden’ on chubby little hands. I would watch it run away as I delighted in seeing those first, wobbly steps. I would look up, after feeling like I had only just sent the husband off to work to see him return and watch my son run to his arms. Happy to see another face. Eager to tell fresh ears about his day. And I would wish for just another 10 minutes to be alone with my boy.

It was exhausting and demanding and rewarding and real.

Long ago

Before I was any kind of mum I was a girl. Those days were all about me. They were about finding my place in the world and deciding where my world was. It was about working and partying and loving and earning and yearning. It was about learning. And the only real way to learn is to fail. So it was about failing too. It was about heartache. It was about self doubt. And it was about wonder. There were no 10 minute increments in those days. Going out for coffee lasted for hours. There was no grocery shopping. If I needed anything, I picked it up on the way home from work. There was only clothes shopping. Phone calls lasted all night on a phone with an extra long cord which would reach all the corners of my unit and never ran out of battery. Friendships were the most important relationships in my world. Other people’s children were to be seen, not heard. Mothers were to be ignored. Boys were to be toyed with. Washing was to be done in the middle of the night and hung out on the backs of chairs. Dancing was to be done. All night.

It was arduous and confronting and fulfilling and real.

Every day

Throughout it all I have been me. I have not always known who I am but I have been defiantly ‘me’ nonetheless. All my life stages are real. All my chapters are fulfilling. All my dreams are valid. All my pains are confronting. Being single and childless was tough. Being a stay at home mum was demanding. Being a working mum is challenging. The next path I travel down will also test me.  Each life stage presents something new to learn and overcome and enjoy. 

My journey is not unique. My lessons are not new. You may relate. You may disagree. You may learn. You may cringe. You may just quietly be thankful that someone else is struggling to get it all right too.

I will laugh. I will sob. I will exalt. I will grieve. I will succeed. I will fail. 

I will live.

It’s my story and I will share.

I am woman. Hear me raw.

Sister from another mister

I have a little sister. And when I say she’s little I mean she’s 20 years littler than me. I can hear you screaming ‘ACCIDENT!’ but she was planned and the reason is simpler than you may think. My dad died young. My mum remarried. Enter Little Miss PIMA [pain in my arse].

I was the same age as my mum when she had me when Pima was born so my role in her life is one part sister, one part friend and two parts mum. Oh, and twenty seven parts exasperation.

Pima is about to turn 20 which means that as well as having two young sons, I have also spent the last 7 years with a teenage girl under my wing. In my every-day thoughts. Front of mind and under my skin. And I have had the joy of NOT being her mum.

We talk a lot. Sometimes too much. We talk on the phone. We text. We Facebook. We hang out. It’s a relationship high in maintenance, for sure, but rich in reward. Which is not altogether limited to having an amazing, trustworthy and reliable babysitter on hand.

The real reward is in my opportunity to mentor a young woman in today’s world.

It keeps me aware and relevant and stretches my thinking and challenges my knee jerk compulsion to judge. I draw on my own life experiences. My own mistakes. My own successes, fears, dreams and ideals. And from there – I counsel.

Stay at University little sister

No, you cannot have a gap year. No, you cannot defer. No, you cannot change direction mid degree. You will finish. You will pass. You will thank me later.

Stay away from anything you can smoke, little sister

Keep your lungs fresh and your mind healthy. That's all.

Keep your legs crossed, little sister

My generation got all confused about sexual empowerment. We thought it was cool and grown up and enlightened to sleep with who we wanted, when we wanted. We thought it would make us grow and show how liberated we were. We didn’t give enough thought to how that would play out once we actually did meet the ‘love of our life’ or when we became mums or when we joined the parent community of our son’s private catholic school... or so I’ve heard. Anyway, there’s no hurry. Hold off. Don't compromise. Don't believe that 'friends with benefits' is anything other than a crappy Hollywood movie. Wait for a while when you meet someone new. Maybe he's 'the one' in which case you can wait and if he's not, then don't bother. You’ll have plenty of years and plenty of options and just quietly you won’t reach your prime ‘til you’re in your  thirties anyway.

Don’t ink your body yet, little sister

Wait, wait. Wait until you know what you believe in and know who you are. Live in your body a bit longer before you stain it with a cliché that means more to your friends on instagram than you.

Love yourself, little sister

You are bright and gorgeous and smart and honest. You sparkle when you smile and you snort when you laugh. You are healthy. You are a woman. Your body is beautiful. Now. When you were skinnier. When you get fatter. It’s YOUR body. If you love it, taking care of it will be easy. Be comfortable in your gorgeous skin. Be true to your earnest heart. And for fucks sake, pluck your eyebrows.

Be proud to be a woman, little sister

Remember when you were so excited to find your first pubic hair [or was that me?]. It was exciting because it heralded the beginning of your journey into womanhood. Women have pubic hair. Prepubescent girls don’t. Strippers don’t. Sex workers don’t. Real men like their women to look like women. Don’t be sucked into this craze that makes you feel dirty or unclean to look like a woman. I read somewhere that there are some boys of your generation who have never seen a woman with pubic hair and feel ‘repulsed’ at the mere thought of it. Do not date those boys. I will be forced to hold them down and wax their balls and arse myself. Keep your hair down there.

Love your Mum, little sister

I know she’s annoying. I know she doesn’t seem to ‘get it’. I know she doesn’t let you sleep in or have boys in your room or like you drinking. I know. She’s my Mum too. The thing is, when you get older, you’ll realise she was right about sooooo many things. Boys, friends, fashion mistakes, husbands. Your Mum is cool. When she’s not being embarrassing.

Be yourself always, little sister

I know that’s hard. I know you struggle. It comes with the territory. I know you don’t know who you are yet. That’s ok. Be yourself today. And tomorrow be yourself then. If you get confused, come to me. I will remind you of who you are. I will help you see who I see.

Be grateful, little sister

The world does not owe you, despite what your generation thinks. Be grateful for your gifts of health and intellect and freedom and love. Use your gifts to make a difference. To matter. Start with your family. When you’ve got that right, move on to your friends. Once you’ve got the hang of it, the world is yours to make a change. Do not waste your youth and opportunity in a life unlived, unexplored or unappreciated.

Stop using hashtags, little sister

We have a language. It’s called English. Use it. Spell out the words. Use a pen and write the words. Send someone a real card in the mail one day. Words are beautiful. They’re long and descriptive and evoke emotion. Stop abbreviating. It drives me nuts.

Laugh out loud, little sister

Actually live in the moment. You do only live once. Make it worth it. And don’t fuck your life.

Listen to me, little sister

I’ve lived your years. I’ve known your struggles. I recognise your fears. I’ve made [some of] your mistakes. Learn from me. Lean on me. I love you more than you love yourself at the moment. It’s just the way it is with girls. Let me guide you. All I ask in return is that when you become an amazing, love-yourself, authentic woman... you pay it forward.

Oh, and I still need you to babysit.

Love your totes awesome sister and #bff in the whole world,

Tan x