The day after the apocalypse

Well here we are in the post Rudd, post Gillard world with Tony Abbott as our Prime Minister.  This blog is for those people who feel a sense of despair about this and wonder how they will get through the next 3 years.  My concern is that this man has said and done whatever he thinks will get him to the position he is in now with little regard for the truth and with no respect at all for the Australian population.  I acknowledge that Labor stuffed up badly and am not into recriminations about this but do want to acknowledge the leadership, resilience and dignity showed by our first woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard who faced continual attacks from the Opposition, the media and from within her own party.  Sure she made  mistakes but what PM has not?  She balanced a minority government and achieved real democracy by successfully negotiating a hefty package of reform through the Parliament which we will enjoy the benefits of.  Her legacy will be celebrated for years to come.

However, now we have the mad monk and many of my family and my Facebook and Twitter firends are in despair.  So I want to offer some tips that I will use to survive the next three years. 

1. Is to say thank you to Van Badham for this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5tnjPa8D7s&feature=share which certainly helped lift my spirits this morning.

2. Celebrate the people in  life that bring  joy and ground me, including my dog, my family and my friends.I will try to be kinder to them, to let them know how important they are to me and  acknowledge and celebrate the ways in which they contribute to the world being a better place.

3. Find ways to get involved in more grassroots political movements like this one http://earthwiseharmony.com/CONNECT/EH-Transition-Towns-Australia.html and in my local community so I know I can work towards making a difference no matter who is in power.

4.  Work towards creating a smaller footprint.  Now this is a hard one for me, I drive to work, I have a beach house which I drive to whenever I can, I sometimes even am so lazy I drive the dog to the park when I take her for a walk!  So more solar panels, less driving, less reliance on power driven gadgets (but not giving up my Ipad).

5. Eat well and drink well.  Use fresh vegetables from my garden or local market gardeners to give goodness and nourishment.  Hang out for free range meats like chicken and bacon.  So if pay a little more, I'll eat a little less.  Buy organic when I can, yes I know you can't always trust the labelling, but at least if it's labelled organic there is more likelihood that it will be than if it's not.  Drink good wine (and the occasional spirits like Gin and Tonic) when I can afford it and if I can't afford the good stuff then go without.  Savour tastes, smells and the look of the food I put on my table.  Take time to prepare meals properly and appreciate the work that I and others have put into it.

6. Feel the sunshine on my skin, the feeling of the water when I swim, the joy of the wind when I cycle, the breeze blowing up from the sea.  Take time to smell and feel close to the roses, the native flowers, the fuschias that grow wild along the coast in spring.  Have fresh flowers in the house all the time.  Listen to and savor the birdsongs, the possums playing on the roof, the laughter of children and create and listen to music.

7. Take a stand, get angry - remember that 'the behaviour you walk past is the behaviour you accept'.  So whenever someone says or does something that I find offensive or disagree with, I'll let them know.  Politely if I can, with humour when I can, but I will try not to just listen and nod or let it go past.  Respect others have a right to their opinions but I have a right to mine and have a right to express those opinions without harming or causing offense to others. (unless they are right wing, bigotted, conservatives who will be offended by anyone just having an opinion different to theirs, never mind expressing it)

8. Avoid shock jocks and the right wing bigotted conservatives -(does that mean left wing bigotted conservatives are okay - probably not!) avoid bigotted people in general and dont; liten to or read their rants.  My stance is not to pay for newspapers anymore, though I admit to reading them at work and in cafes where I don't have to pay, so I can stay in touch with the world around me.  Turn off people like Jon Faine or The Drum when they annoy me and I'll let them know I am doing that. Don't get sucked in to behaving like the trolls and use personal or obscene insults.

9. Find political analysts and commentators that I can respect and read and listen to them.  That doesn't mean looking for people who say only what I want to hear but people who provide a reasoned position, don't resort to personal attacks or insults and can support what they say with an argument that makes sense even if, in the end, I don't agree.

10.  Live life with joy and vigor - get out there and talk and dance and listen to and play music.  Go to places where there are like minded people.  Shout and cry and laugh and enjoy the quiet when it's appropriate.  Find places that ground me and lift my spirit and go there frequently.  For you it might be a tree in a nearby park or a magnificent waterfall, or a good cafe, or a spot in your home, whatever it is, find it and enjoy it and seek solace when you need it.  Take time to watch the sunrise (or if you are a late riser like me, the sunset).  But look at up at the sky whenever you can.

 

 

 

And hopefully in 3 years time if we all work at saying what we think and encouraging others around us to think and argue and look at what's on offer we can vote for a positive change and someone like Tanya Plibersek or Kate Ellis can be a Prime Minister that we can be proud of again. 

saying goodbye to a good woman

If you don't like reading about death or dying don't read this post.  This post is a tribute to my mum who died a little over a month ago.  She died after lying in hospital unconscious for just over a week, after having a cerebral haemorrage.  Her life was hard, she was one of twelve children in a family that was far from comfortable, her mother died when she was 18, she helped look afer her younger sisters and brothers, she was attacked by a man with an axe on her 22nd birthday and sustained injuries so serious she had to learn to talk all over again.  But she went on to get married, and had me and my two older brothers, travelled overseas for the first time by herself in her 70s and generally had a full life full of love, joy and hardship until she died at 90 .

We  recently had a celebration of her life, where her remaining brothers and sisters gathered with our extended family of grandhcildren, great grandchildren and assorted family and friends to say goodbye.  We made speeches, drank champagne and danced the Pride of Erin.

Mum (wearing the hat) with some of her brothers and sisters

So as I was sitting in the hospital with Mum and watching every one of her grandchildren visit her and talk and share memories of her with each other and share memories of their times together, it made me think of the stuff that binds us together as family, as friends, as part of a community.

Mum with my grandchildren

And I thought that family is about those threads that connect us, that are made up of shared memories, of stories, of times of sadness and loss, times of frustration and sometimes anger, times of great joy and celebration.  I thought that the threads are created by love, by friendship,  by shared activites, by caring, or just by being a friendly face when you walk down the street.

Sometimes those threads hold us tightly and warmly, sometimes they feel like chains that we want to break free of, sometimes they fray a little bit and the connection is lost for a while, but what is important, is that the threads are always there, waiting for us to pick them up.  They are the memories that are woven into our lives. 

For me mum was the start of the thread, the one that gave me and Frank and Harold and Patrick life.  She was, for our family, for the grandchildren, the great grandchildren, the one that bound us together, that would wrap around us when we were sad or lost and that would be a bit looser when we needed to move out or on, that would wave up and down with us when we were celebrating and that would just lie quietly around when we were all okay.  

Mum's remaining brothers and sisters

The threads of Mum’s life brought people together to celebrate her life, whether that connection was as a sister, a brother, a daughter, a son, a grandchild or great grandchild, a niece or nephew or a friend or carer.  And those threads extended out to those who were not with us for the celebration – her grandchildren, Emily, Simone and Rhowena, to the lovely Michelle who should still be with us but who is maybe now sitting with Mum and Norm, my dad, with Christine, with Patrick the child they lost and all Mum’s brothers and sisters who have gone before, Lil, Glen, Stan and Bell.

Maybe it's worthwhile to stop and refelct about the threads in your life, to think about the ones that you want to hold tightly and remember the ones that you may have let go of for a while. I know that wherever we go and whatever we do, the threads that connect us to the people who are still here and the ones who have gone, continue to weave themselves through our lives so that no-one is ever truly not with us, they live on in what we do, in how we think, they live on in our hearts and our memories and they help make us who we are…..

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