“What a big 3 months you guys have had. Bought a block, sold your house, had a baby and moved house. Are you still married?” I had to laugh at this text our real estate agent sent me yesterday. Because yes, it has been a rather crazy three months and yes, Ant and I did have our moments during the whole ‘moving house’ caper last week. Urgh. Moving house. I can see why it is right near … [Read more...]

The very first time she saw those two lines she cried. She didn’t know why she was crying – they’d been trying to achieve that very outcome for the last seven months after all. But hey, chicks are a bit strange sometimes. What followed was what you would call a ‘textbook pregnancy’. No over-the-top morning sickness, no funny business of any description – just 40 weeks of completely … [Read more...]

As a writer I deal with rejection on a fairly regular basis. Every story idea that gets knocked back. Every ‘this needs a bit more work’ from an editor. Every negative comment on a blog post. They all really really sting. And I have always marvelled at just how much these things would shake my confidence for a solid day. At least! Things improved a bit when I did some editing work for an … [Read more...]

You would think that when you’re writing a book about your adult life*, and said book covers the death of your brother, two close friends and four babies in utero, that grief would feature pretty highly in the pages somewhere. But my experiences with grief are largely absent from my book and many readers have asked me why this is. The major reason is this. As a rule, grief doesn’t … [Read more...]

We are one, but we are many, and from all the lands on Earth we come, we share a dream and sing with one voice – I am, you are, we are Australian. This song never fails to move me to tears. Most likely because it is often sung by angel voiced youth choirs. But also because, for me, it really encapsulates so much of the emotion I feel when I reflect on the fact that I get to live in this … [Read more...]

Just over 18 months ago I walked away from my business and left it in my husband’s hands. At the time I was so burnt out I didn’t care who was in charge of things as long as it wasn’t me. I was also humouring my hubby. I thought it would take about six months for him to work out that running a busy design business with 3.5 staff, two contractors and over 200 active clients was too much … [Read more...]

Last year Ms Maxabella Loves threw down the challenge to her readers to live their years by a single word (rather than making resolutions that fall by the wayside by January 3.) In 2012 that word for me was “No”. And while that might sound a little negative, if you are anything like me (people pleaser, compulsive helper, likes to be liked) then you will have some idea of how easy it is … [Read more...]

Over the course of the day 30 emails were exchanged. Tough questions were asked. And I was getting more and more dismayed. Her: What do you want Kelly? Me: ‘This’ is what I want. Her: Well you have that already. This was not what I wanted to hear – that I was already at the summit. Nothing left to conquer. Goals achieved. So I started to lie. To give the answers I thought … [Read more...]