From Selma Blair's Instagram

Everyone is talking about Selma Blair at the Oscars.

Everyone.

A woman walked down the red carpet, looking like a majestic goddess, with a cane in her hand and it's made worldwide headlines. I can't tell you how happy and disappointed this makes me all rolled into one.

Happy because two amazing, strong women with disabling illnesses were at the Oscars - one of them even won an Oscar! Yet, disappointed that this happens so rarely that it's made worldwide headlines.

1 in 5 people in Australia have a disability, so why is it such a big deal to see it on the telly? It should be commonplace. Representation of people with disabilities - both visible and invisible, is woefully inadequate. So inadequate that, as someone who has been diagnosed with two invisible illnesses that are disabling at times, I burst into tears to see Lady Gaga win an Oscar, and again at the photos of Selma Blair walking the red carpet.

Why? Because it's the first time since my diagnosis in 2011 that I have seen a disabled celebrity other than Selena Gomez win an award of this calibre, or walk down the red carpet looking disabled.

Picture from here

I was a couple of weeks shy of 18 when I got diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Fibromyalgia (which Lady Gaga has too), and at the time I was a very sick person. Getting that diagnosis felt like my whole world was crumbling around me. I felt that I would never be able to work full time, never be able to have a family, never be able to even enjoy nights out with friends again. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety 12 months later, feeling isolated and unseen because of my illness. There was a time when I seriously considered getting a cane, and had my pride not won out, I would have had a much easier time getting around with one when I was at my sickest. To this day, I struggle to accept my illness, I struggle with my mental health in association with my illness, and my ideas of success are all wrapped up in a standard set by able-bodied people, which often feels unattainable for me. To see people like me on the TV, doing amazing things - living out their dreams! It gives me hope. It makes me feel seen.


I don't think that it should be such a big deal that people like me are at the Oscars. Maybe if I had seen someone walk down the red carpet with a cane that wasn't being used as as a quirky accessory 8 years ago, I would have got one for myself, used it and had better mental health from getting out of the house more. But I don't want to see headlines proclaiming how inspirational Selma Blair is, or putting her on a pedestal. I just want to see the 1 in 5 disabled people in the world represented on our TVs so often that it is normalised, and young women being diagnosed with disabilities or invisible illnesses won't have to feel as alone, afraid and ashamed as I did when I was diagnosed - with or without need of a mobility aid.

Nerding out at the Evans Head Aviation Museum

Today, Jake and I made the most of the rainy day with a trip to the Evans Head Aviation Museum. Jake was surprised to know, given that before I was a midwife I actually studied history and literature at University with the hopes of becoming a museum curator, or (more realistically) a teacher, that I had never been to the aviation museum. I told him quite honestly that this was because, being in Evans Head, I had just assumed that it would be a bit crap. I was very happily proven wrong!

Evans Head has a long standing relationship with the Air Force, and was home to one of Australia's largest RAAF bases during WWII. Apparently this puts a town in good stead for receiving ex-air force aircraft to display in beautifully restored condition in an original WWII aircraft hangar. While the main attraction of the museum is the F1-11, I actually didn't take a single photo of it! Oops. I was much more interested in the shiny, red Canberra and the Caribou light cargo carrier, which we were able to actually go inside on a guided tour by the extremely knowledgeable volunteer, Shane.

Not really dressed to impress, but this is one of my most comfortable outfits. I LOVE my Nobody jeans so much. 

I'm so glad that Jake convinced me to go to the museum. It was absolutely amazing walking in and around, and even under the wings of the amazing planes and other aircraft on display. Seeing where the gunners had to lie in the older, WWII planes was pretty amazing, and we are very lucky to have such a great museum in our tiny, seaside town. Every year, the Museum hosts The Great Eastern Fly In, which we usually watch for free from the beach like the cheapskates we are, but after visiting the museum and seeing all that it has to offer, I'd definitely consider paying to go to the fly in some time (haha). 

If you're ever in the Northern Rivers, this museum is well worth checking out. For $5, it's worth every dollar if you're into history, engineering, or just want to see some cool planes. Kids would absolutely love it! There was a little boy there today with his parents and his wowed exclamations as he looked up at the big wings of the F1-11 were the cutest thing!

On being the friend who shows up

This media crazy, text happy world we live in is wonderful, and the internet is such a powerful, connective force that I am so grateful for. I've made friends through blogging, and through Instagram and even through Facebook groups, who I am so grateful for having in my life, and with whom the connection runs as deep as with those who I have met in my day to day life sans screen. It is also amazing that I can pick up my phone, in the palm of my hand, at any given moment and send a quick text to a friend. I can read a facebook status and immediately respond with condolences, with compliments or with candour. I can send through snaps of my day and receive the same in kind. We are so connected to one another through social media and texting these days, which is great! I know I rely so much on being able to send a quick text to my handful of close friends on a daily basis for the connection and support I need in my life. But is texting and social media becoming a substitute for actually showing up for our friends when they need us in real life?

Laura Jane Williams explored this idea on her Instagram stories this week when she drove a 100 mile round trip to visit a friend who needed support, and it made me stop and think - am I the kind of friend who shows up? Or am I one who thinks a quick text does the job of showing support?

Being self-reflective is something which is really encouraged and supported in my profession, and I like to think I extend that to other areas of my life, so I'll be the first to admit I felt a sudden rush of guilt at the prospect of these text interactions replacing really meaningful displays of support for my friends, then a second rush of guilt at the immediate need for comparison I felt with Laura upon google-converting 100 miles to kilometres, and finding that it is 160 kilometres - a-ha! I go further than that on pretty much a monthly basis to visit my friend Shannon, and her baby Mila. I win. 

The guilt was warranted. Using the internet to compare friendship prowess is a shitty thing to do. It's not a competition, and as I dug deeper on this topic I realised this amongst other things.

Shannon and Mila showing up for me last month

I am the friend who shows up, but sometimes it comes at a cost. As I mentioned, ever since my best friend Shannon has had her baby, I've driven to the Gold Coast regularly to see her and support her through the postpartum period, and this huge transition her life is going through. At times, I've put the fuel on my credit card to show up for her. I've driven up after births at the cost of sleep, and I've spent my last $20 on coffees for the two of us to lift our spirits on particularly rough days for either of us. It takes me an hour and a half to get to her house, and sometimes the last thing I feel like doing when I get home from Grafton is drive 130 kilometres but I always put the effort in, and it is always 100% worth it. She's given me a bed or a couch multiple times when I've needed it, always answers the phone even if her baby is screaming and basically kept me sane at the end of our degree, to the point where I believe there is nothing that half an hour with her and a chicken schnitty sanga can't fix in life.

Another friend of mine I see at least weekly. She lives much closer to me and although our friendship is young - we only met last March, we barely go a day without talking. Actually talking, not texting. She got a babysitter and came and helped me pack my kitchen when we moved a few weeks ago, and when she messaged this week to say she was having a tough time, I went to her without giving it a second thought.

A third friend and I have a standing market coffee and cake date, and she gave me free life coaching at the start of last year when I felt completely disorganised and was struggling to get my head around subcontracting, studying and maintaining creative outlets in my life. Jake and I drove 14 hours to Bermagui with a farting dog in the backseat of the car to spend her 30th birthday with her in September. You can't really put in much more of an effort to show up for someone than that!

But am I showing up for all of my friends in this way? I wish I could say yes, but no. I'm not. It would be physically mentally and emotionally exhausting to show up for all of your friends in this way all of the time. There are friends who I have shown up for in the past in this way, but I don't anymore. Reflecting deeper, I wondered what is it about these women that makes me want to go the extra mile to show up for them, when I've maybe given up on showing up for others in this way in the past? And I realised... it's because these are the women who do it in return. Friendship is a two way street, and overwhelmingly, in almost every relationship I have ever had, I love hard, fast and long and have wound up being the one who puts in the extra measure of effort to keep the friendship going, but it's not like that with these women I have in my life. I don't feel like it's any effort at all to show up for them when they need me, because when I need them most they're there for me as well.

It's taken 25 years to reach this point in my life, but I finally feel like I've found the women with which I will have lifelong bonds. True friendships that will stand the test of time. Friends with whom a text is not enough, and who show up for me just as much as I show up for them, despite distance and despite us all having busy lives. On my birthday, as I looked around the table in my favourite Thai restaurant, and read the beautiful cards the four friends I invited wrote, a tear came to my eye. I felt completely content with my life in that moment, and yet I was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed that it had taken me 25 years to find this tribe of people who I've come to love so much.

I implore you to think critically about the friends you have in your life, and where the majority of your interactions with them lie. Do you show up for them physically when they need you most? And do they do the same for you? Go deeper than a text or a social media comment with the people you love - the rewards of doing so for those true and meaningful friendships are boundless. But choose wisely who you go deeper with - question, would they do the same for you?

The Graduate Midwife Road Less Travelled: Reflecting on the year that was

On the way home from the hospital I started working in in October.

The town is absolutely stunning in spring!

If you haven't read them yet, click for part 1, part 2 and part 3. 

It's the end of an era! Almost 14 months has passed since my midwifery registration came through and I attended my first birth as a registered midwife. I have so much to say about my experience choosing a non-traditional graduate year, and working in private practice directly from uni, but now I have sat down to write, I feel a little bit choked up and it's hard to get the words to flow as they usually do when I write. I think this is because it has been such a big year for me, and  it's hard to get my thoughts and experiences to behave themselves in my head so that I can make sense of them on paper.

I will start simply with this - I have had the absolute best graduate year that anyone could possibly have.

I feel so wonderfully privileged to work with women, to support them fully and wholeheartedly in their choices, to have physiological birth totally cemented in my practice as "the norm", with no fear of physiology. I've learned so much about women's bodies - the incredible feats they endure to bring their babies earthside and the incredible range of "normal" experiences. From the women who I didn't make it to in time because they birthed so fast, to the one that had a 4 four third stage and the one that had an 8 hour second stage with mum and baby totally fine clinically the whole way throughout. The women who love birthing, to the women who fight each contraction. The women who roar, and the women who breathe baby out quiet as a mouse. The women who have a tribe of support people around them when they birth, and that one woman who asked me for privacy and then pushed her baby out into her husband's loving arms.

Maggie the Midwifemobile all packed for a birth

Working in private practice in my graduate year has totally cemented physiological birth in my practice, and taught me to trust the birthing process with all of my heart and soul, but it's also taught me to use my critical thinking skills and clinical decision making skills wisely. When you're faced with normal all the time, the abnormal sticks out like a sore thumb. I've done a fair few hospital transfers this year, for many different reasons (the 8 hour second stage being one of them), and in almost every case I felt absolutely confident we as midwives had made a good and timely decision. Even after transfer, many of these women had vaginal births, just needing increased monitoring or pain relief that we couldn't provide at home.

Bron and I have been creative in the roles I take on at The Birth House to try to maximise my experience and knowledge while staying within the legal parameters of our current system, which requires Medicare endorsement for antenatal and postnatal care. Aside from attending births as a second midwife, I have done administration, reviewed pathology and ultrasound results and flagged anything abnormal, used the ACM Guidelines for Consultation and Referral to carry out risk assessments at different gestations and written referrals to obstetricians and paediatricians. I've contributed to collaborative care plans, done extensive antenatal education, debriefing and facilitated postnatal support groups. I've written policies, marketed, collated and published our statistics, communicated with women, doulas, photographers and other people who contact us through The Birth House. I've written articles and appeared on radio, and even took part in a documentary being made about home birth in our area, all as a apart of my role as a midwife at The Birth House. I've also been facilitating student placements from the UK and running student study days, whioch I've found incredibly rewarding.

With Manchester Uni student, Abby, at the Byron Lighthouse

In October, I started working in a small, country hospital on a permanent, 24 hour a fortnight contract to build up my hours towards endorsement and expand my skills as a midwife. The unit I'm working in has a truly lovely bunch of midwives, and low birth numbers mean that we are able to give the women so much one to one time, and support with breastfeeding and mothercrafting that I know we wouldn't have time for in a bigger and busier hospital. We also often care for the same women days in a row, giving a sense of continuity in an otherwise fragmented system. However, this particular hospital relies on locum obstetric and paediatric staff, and has high rates of intervention. It's been a challenging transition for me, from an 89% normal vaginal birth rate to a 35-ish% normal vaginal birth rate. I wanted to expand my skills while I'm there, but there are few births, so few opportunities to get better at suturing, cannulating and the likes, and while I've been performing these skills at home births (except suturing - I've only done that twice), and have the theory of the health district's learning packages done, I'm yet to sign off a single skill completely, which is frustratingly narrowing my scope of practice.

Compounding the difficulty of the transition, the hospital is a few hours away from where I live, so I travel down and stay in the accommodation centre, which is the original old nursing quarters of the hospital, where I often feel socially isolated, and miss home. Disrupting the natural rhythm of my weeks in this way has been huge. It feels as though it takes me days to recover. When I get home there is laundry to do, a house to clean and tidy, missed time with Jake and Lou to catch up on, and then before I know it it's time to go back again and I'm packing, bulk cooking and preparing to say goodbye again. Working away has meant missing home births with women that I've build trusting relationships with, which has been tough. Missed home births also mean missing a huge chunk of my regular income, which has meant needing to pick up more hospital shifts, and the cycle continues.

One of the rooms in the accommodation centre. Not the most homely!

Financially, the last few months have been tough, and sometimes I have wished I took a salaried graduate position with a regular income, but when it all boils down to it, there are more important things than money, and doing it a bit tough this year has all been worth it for the wonderful experience I now have under my belt. Every day I am a midwife the fire in my belly for working with women burns brighter. When I look within myself, I know who I am as a midwife. I know how to support and nurture women. How to make them feel safe and strong at the same time. To find the power within them that helps them bring forth new life and builds their capacity as mothers. Midwifery isn't just a job - it's my calling. Money can't buy that level of satisfaction with life.

At the Lismore Art Gallery, admiring an exhibition of belly casts painted by local Bundjalung women

A day at the beach in my new, sustainable swimwear

Recently, I've sparked renewed interest in learning to surf (maybe this time I'll stick it out?), and I've also started learning how to kite surf, which is my partner, Jake's passion. Now, I'm not sure if you've ever kite surfed before, but one of the key steps when you're learning is body dragging through the water, which essentially is like jigging for bait, but your body is the jig and you're praying to god almighty that nothing big enough to swallow you wants to play the part of bait (there are videos of me doing this on Instagram if you want the visual and have never been fishing before). Now, as you can imagine, this is not an ideal thing to be doing in a bikini, as the water often catches on your swimmers and pulls as your body lifts out of the water, resulting in a little bit more flesh baring than is desirable. Surfing is also not something I particularly enjoy doing in a bikini, because it tends to result in both sunburn and board rash - ouch! 

So when these new interests surfaced, or resurfaced, I decided to invest in some new, more appropriate swimmers. I wanted something full piece with sleeves to protect my arms from the sun (they get quite enough), that was feminine, still sexy and sustainable. Cue a long internet search over a period of about a week, and an instagram poll to help me choose between two different suits, and I finally settled on the Soulti Surf La Mar Onezie. I loved that Soulti is a local to me small business run by a woman who surfs, because I knew the swimmers would be appropriate for my climate and the activities I wanted to do in them. They're 75% recycled nylon, made from nylon spun from discarded fishing nets fabric offcuts. I love our ocean so much, and so it's incredibly important to me that my actions in it and outside of it contribute to it's health, which is why I have decided to only buy sustainable clothing this year. I also love that even though I'm far more covered than I typically am at the beach, especially once a kite surfing harness covers my lower back, I still feel super sexy in them.

Yesterday the wind was blowing hard and Jake was keen to get out in it for a kite surf. I originally intended on having a session too, but when we got to the beach it was actually too windy to be safe for a beginner on the size of kite that I had with me, so I ended up just taking photos and videos of Jake instead. We drove onto the beach at Evans Head and went down to Salty Lake, which is a tidal tea tree lake that joins up with the ocean on the high tide. Jake loves flat water kiting and was up for the challenge of the narrow lake, and the wind was perfect to try it. We went between the lake and the ocean to swim in the morning, and then when the afternoon wind picked up, Jake hit the lake on his kite. Lou had a ball chasing him through the shallows, and I had fun watching, playing with my camera and swimming and playing with Lou in the lake and the surf. Considering that we were on the beach all day, I'm so glad I had the foresight to put my new swimmers on, or I'm sure I'd be in a world of pain, burnt to a crisp right now. The long sleeves also provided a buffer from the wind while I sat on the shore and Jake kite surfed. My only regret about the day is that we left the beach for lunch. I wish we had packed a picnic to enjoy in the shade by the lake. I can already guess that we will be spending a lot more time down there before the end of summer though, so there is always next time for that!

Why is it that I'm always getting brilliant, candid shots of Jake and he never gets any of me? I'm starting a pact with him - I'll only sit in the wind to take kitesurfing pictures for hours on end if he takes cute candid shots of me when we are hanging around and out and about. 

What's in a blog?

For the past year I've been subcontracting to private midwives, so essentially run my own business, and I wanted to add in a creative aspect to that to increase my reputation as a midwife, satisfy the creative itch and better serve the birthing community. I started wondering what that might look like and experimenting with a few ideas - blogging, instagramming, belly casting. In choosing a direction to go in, I started listening to Jen Carrington and Sara Tasker's Letters From A Hopeful Creative podcast, and in doing so, came to quite a few lightbulb moments for incorporating a creative aspect into my midwifery work, as well as for this blog.

8 years ago when I started my first blog, Little Foal,  blogging as a business didn't exist. Bloggers were just creative people who talked from the heart about things they loved and what was happening in their lives. Blogger templates were about the only templates you could get, everyone did blog hops and guest posts and built up a community, and some very real, deep and authentic friendships came out of that time in my life. I was still blogging when blogs became profitable. I've watched as some of my friends have risen up in the world of blogging and created whole careers out of social media, sponsored posts and their "little" voice on the internet, and I am so happy for them!

I started being offered sponsored posts a couple of years into blogging, and I took on the work for a while and relished in earning money from this beautiful, creative outlet I had started as a hobby in a difficult time in my life. Pretty soon though, the hobby began to feel like a chore, and I got too caught up in comparing myself to other people and lost sight of where the joy was in putting my voice out into the world. I decided to step away from my blog at that point, and it was probably the best decision I could have made at the time. A lot of my friends did the same. The blogging landscape was changing and I was embarking on my career as a midwife. I focused my energy there, and it paid off. I have an amazing job, which I really love, and I couldn't have put as much focus and dedication into my midwifery journey if I was still caught up in blogging, and the unhealthy cycle of comparison I was in at the time.

For a while now though, I've felt as though a creative outlet was missing in my life. I crochet, embroider, sew, macrame, paint and work creatively with any medium I can get my hands on, but writing is a huge part of my creative identity that I haven't been giving a voice to lately. I'm writing a bit of fiction, but at the time that I started this blog, I hadn't put anything out into the world for a long time. I started this blog out with an outfit post, and intention of just sharing my life, my outfits, my food and my craft like I did in "the good old days", but then I felt the pull to write about my journey as a midwife - arguably the biggest journey I've embarked on in my life, and a piece of content that I felt could really serve others, as well. Since writing my "Graduate Road Less Travelled" series (in which there will definitely be a new instalment soon, exploring my journey one year on), I have ummed and ahhed, tossed and turned over the kind of writing I want to put out into the world on this blog. Do I want to write about being a midwife? About fashion? About coastal living? Do I want to share information with women to help them in their fertility, pregnancy and postpartum journeys? What about sharing recipes? I love to cook! DIY projects? Tutorials? Right before I stopped blogging last time, I struggled with the same problem. At the time, there was a real push in blogging to "find your niche", to be an expert in one field, or one type of writing, and to create a "brand" that was very specific, and dare-I-say, pigeonholed bloggers into sharing just one facet of their lives.

As a creative jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, this did not work for me. I can not pigeonhole my creativity. I'm not a one dimensional person, and I didn't feel like there was space for me to be all that I am and all that I feel on the internet, which was becoming increasingly uniform in my eyes. The pressure started mounting when I tossed and turned over what direction I want this blog to go in. I had a creative itch and I needed to scratch it, but i was holding myself back with all this thinking and worrying over what topic to write about and how to fit the many facets of myself into one blog. Then I heard Sara and Jen's podcast on just this topic - To Niche Or Not To Niche? and it was honestly like a weight lifted off my shoulders! This blog isn't a business for me, it's a creative hobby, but regardless of whether it's a business or a hobby, it's mine and it's a reflection of my creativity! Creativity doesn't need to fit neatly into a box - the fact that it doesn't is exactly what inherently makes it creative! There is space here on this blog for all aspects of my life, and whether or not anyone reads it doesn't really matter. Those who do will stick around regardless of the variety of topics I choose to write about, because they're here for who I am, which is injected into every bit of writing that I do, published or unpublished, and that is something pretty wonderful!