sublime faltering

The path of life isn't always straight. August 2004.

If we are willing to let go of our past over and over again,
we will experience growth and change.
Then we can evolve out of the space we are in and move forward.
We may feel like we are going backwards for a time
but beyond the fire of uncomfortable emotions
comes more space with more love and peace.
~ From the Daily Guru

I find myself berating myself over taking so long to heal over things
i think to myself ~ gawd, i thought we'd DEALT with this ALREADY

why is it still coming back
why haven't i learnt my lesson yet
why am i not over it yet
why am i still learning to let go
i think to myself: god, i must be a really slow learner.

and this quote makes me realise that it's a choice, every moment, of every day,
to let go of our past.

it's not something that automatically gets ticked off the list the first time we let it go.

it's a gradual process ~ making the choice each day to let go.
some days it will be harder than others, and some days i've already let the past go before i open my eyes.

this quote opens its arms to me, hushes my fears, tells me:
you're doing just fine Leonie. just as you are.
moving through these things as best you can.

i felt like i was going backwards, and now i just see there's so much space around me now that distances seem longer.

so much space opening for peace and love.

sometimes backwards,
sometimes forwards,
sometimes faltering,
but always sublimely.

love,
leonie

everything there is to know

tidbinbilla wetlands. jan 05.


"Sometimes, if you stand on the
bottom rail of a bridge and lean
over to watch the river slipping
slowly away beneath you, you will
suddenly know everything there
is to be known."

~ Alan Alexander Milne


gorgeous illustrations ~ amanda's sketchbook
scrummy doodles ~ espana circus
reading lovely lisa marie's blog
and came across her friend tenaya darlington's writings...
in particular, you can preview her book "Maybe Baby"
I was entrigued and enthralled after the first page!

come along on a mini adventure!

woke early

found our first ever chilli growing!



went for a bushwalk along the wetlands in tidbinbilla national park

haven't been there before, so it was a lovely adventure



there was a boardwalk across the lake



there were swans in the lake, that came right up to say hello!



purple flowers lived on the tops of the waving reeds



the scenery was beautiful



there were flowers which smelled so much of honey that i wanted to lick them



there was a strangely shaped rock that i like to call the rocking rock.



on the way back, chris grabbed my hand and said RUN!
so we did. i looked back. a rather large red belly black snake had been laying on the path, asleep... and we had awoken him. tee hee hee! nothing like a hasty escape to get the heart started!

two happy adventurers!


may your days be filled with little adventures.

Doodle gratitude diary for Jan 29th...

Reasons I really love him

Lovers, chalk pastels, 2000.

I look like my dog

photos by the other furry boy in my life.

healing in love

Always Friends, acrylic watercolour for Lisa Marie. 2004.


"Any feeling, other than peace and love, awakens all of your senses to remind you that there is something blocking the way to your peace.

Peace is the fountain of youth …..let go of your emotional heaviness and connect with the peace in your open heart.

Your Peace is the pathway to the love in you.
LOVE HEALS EVERYTHING."

From The Daily Guru


this really speaks to me, on so many levels.

i've been going through a bit of a change of late.

whenever i find myself unhappy or angry or disgruntled with others, or just life in general...
i see the mirror in front of me.

i am recognising that my own unhappiness is just that - my own unhappiness.

any fudgy feelings about others, I CLAIM AS MY OWN.

they are my own fudgy feelings - those people didn't cause them.
i created them out of my own experience, vantage point, baggage, and perspective.


yesterday i found myself still with this gnawing hurt about a friendship lost, how angry i still felt about it.

"Each of us makes his own weather,
determines the color of the skies
in the emotional universe which
he inhabits."
~ Fulton J. Sheen

i was holding on to that hurt. it was forming a part of my emotional landscape.
and this took so much courage for me to do - but i wrote on a piece of paper

"I want this to be healed."

It wasn't "I want this friend to know how hurt I am."

It was ~ I want this to be healed.

That was a big step for me ~ walking OUT of old patterns of warring, scarring with words, unforgiving.

I am a Scorpio ~ a loyal a friend as they come. I would stand in the desert protecting a friend from hungry lions with only piercing eyes as a weapon and a sting in my tail.

I am a Scorpio ~ who doesn't forget when a certain level of loyalty is not returned. I have a rather black-white view of the world and how it should be. When things are grey, I do not cope. My tendency is to withdraw into my shell, and set bridges aflame to protect myself. Not conducive to a healing journey.

I am a Scorpio yes ~ and I respect and value the Scorpian qualities of me. Those ones which serve this journey in my life ~ the energy, passion, clarity, strength, loyalty.
But that doesn't mean I have to choose to honour all Scorpian values. I can choose to diminish the strength of those which don't serve me to create a peaceful, joyous life.

I guess what I'm saying is that we are all predisposed to react a certain way. Whether as an effect of the alignment of the planets at your birth, your upbringing, or your personality.
But I do believe we have a choice on how much we retain that disposition.

If it isn't worthy of the life you want to live now, why keep it?
It seems to me I'm dragging an awful lot of baggage with me when I don't need it anymore. I thought I would keep it "just incase" I needed it. My arms are growing tired from it. I long to run, to fly, to soar. To walk on roads too slippery, too rocky, too joyously adventuous to carry much heavy stuff with me.
So I wrote on a piece of paper~
I want this to be healed.
I am giving up my fight to be seen, to be heard, to be RIGHT.

I want this to be healed.
I want to be healed.
I am healing.

In the words of a shampoo commercial...
it won't happen over night, but it will happen.

the path of healing is long, but i have begun.

~

just chose myself a Healing with the Angels card.
Guess what chose me?
HEALING.

ha ha ha!

Have just been looking where people come from when they visit me...
and i found the most amusing thing!

someone was searching on ninemsn for:

pics nude cartoon women
hugh jackman screensaver
and...
hot nude cartoon pics

and LeonieLife shows up in the Top Ten listings for ALL these searches!

BOOOO~YAAAAAAAAAH!

And, even more amusing...
the searcher came here.
I hope they found what they were looking for :D

~

excellent time.

emailed around today:

"am offering free unsolicited advice for the next five minutes if you are interested."

Had very few replies back, funnily enough.
There's something about unsolicited advice that makes people a bit queasy :)

~

and i keep giggling over this creative project.

Welcome to my Gratitude Journal

Over on the Simple Abundance forum on the LeonieLife message boards, the ever gorgeous Melissa asked me to share a page from my journal.

I thought I'd share it here too :)

This is what my gratitude journal looks like:



Every day I write in it the things I am grateful for about that day.
I aim for five. Some days I write much much more as joys spill forth, other days I barely manage to find the clarity to see two.



Then I usually draw a big heart on a page, and fill it with people I have been thinking of or am grateful for. Sort of like a visual, silent prayer.



It's not easy to write in it everyday.
But, like good food or stretching, I feel much better for doing it.

How to celebrate Australia Day

Lanyon in winter, 2002. Taken with super crappy $80 digital camera. :)


I don't often write silly/humorous posts...
but Bus Friends and I (forthwith called Team 85) compiled a list yesterday on the bus ride home (where else?) on how to celebrate Australia Day.

1. Get in touch with my "Inner Slack."
2. Drink beer before 10am.
3. BBQ and burn to a crisper some snags, then possibly consume a few beers. Perhaps incorporate the two.
4. "Drink beer, watch sport on TV and hurl abuse @ minority groups."
5. Throw beer cans, after consumption of, at TV when Prime Minister makes his National Address.
6. Two fashion words people: Flanellette and Uggs.
7. Behave in otherwise slovenly manner.
8. Scratch and wrangle private parts in public.
9. Say everyone and everything is "UnAustralian"
10. Learn second verse in national anthem. Or google for the words of the rather unpopular and now defunct third verse.
11. Extract last half of your name and add "zza" to make it more Australian. Eg: I shall henceforth be called Lozza.
12. When asked how she would be celebrating Aus Day, one unnamed female bus friend send "Masturbate, after doing some chores. You need to reward yourself somehow. Then of course I'll need to wash the sheets. It's always important to self love before you can love another."
13. Start an insect rehabilitation centre, like Paris. Have a five legged spider named Ralph and a cricket named Some Other Name.
14. Strut around nude.
15. Then strut around nude some more.. in front of the neighbours.

silence and music

tuggeranong lake watercolour

Got a really delightful email forward from my dad~in~law today...
He's sent it a few times now, but I always read it because it simply, succinctly tells truth of the world and living gracefully in it.

Take into account that great love and great achievements include great risk.

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

Spend some time alone every day.

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

Live a good, honourable life.

Open your arms to change, but don't get go of your values.

In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

Be gentle with the earth.

Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.

Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

~
Me and Lile went for a walk at lunch time today,
and we ended up at canberra museum and gallery
we saw the most amazing exhibition of jeannie baker's work...
found a brilliant photo blog today ~ filled with warm words and tasty everyday imagery.

~
And guess who we are going to see in concert?
My first ever concert! Argggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
(Apart from that unmentionable one hit wonder aussie boy band I saw in year 7 (CBD for those playing at home)...


Sarah McLachlan!

Romance on a Monday night

After a rather severe case of MondayMorning~itis earlier today,
the afternoon mellowed with some retail therapy at lunch with the rocking Lile,
and some cruisy music playing through my earphones at work.
The moment of crabbiness, not enough~ness, jaded~ness always passes.
The moment always passes.
It's just hard to remember that when you are in the moment.
:)

Thought today about the Women/Venus/Men/Mars equation today.
And I realised that each of us ~ man, woman, dog, beetle ~ each of us has the beat of a drum within us. We must all live our life according to how we want to. Nobody else's way is the same as ours, and that's okay.
We can only dance to the beat of our own drum.

Sometimes people feel like the way their drum beats is the right way ~ and they are right, to some degree. The beat of their own drum is right for them. Not necessarily for others though.
Others can't hear it, can't listen to its gentle thump thump... for they hear the beat which resonates FOR THEM.

You have your own drum, and it is beating to sounds of your own heart, your own dreams, the way the world looks through your eyes. And that's a beautiful thing... don't forsake that to be anything but you.

When it comes to Menus/Vars (hee hee hee) visualise this. You both have your own drum beats. You both have your own dances, your own steps. And that doesn't stop you from dancing together. It makes for an even more intoxicating dance when two people dance to their own steps.

~
So tonight I made Chris a surprise romantic dinner ~
crumbed barramundi fish with roast vegetables.
He wasn't expecting dinner... which made it all the better!
I got out our best cutlery ~ and brilliant wooden placemats my parents bought us for christmas, and the candles that we had at his thirtieth birthday party.
It was wonderfully lovely to have a surprise romantic dinner on a Monday night.
Here's to surprise dinners every night!
And to our own dancing, and others.

~
And thank you, darling Phoenix Light.

the future might be dark but is cluttered with stars

detail of unfinished mermaid. soon she will be revealed.


had a lovely afternoon painting, painting, painting.
and in between painting, painting, painting, I was reading.
Reading The Red Tent
When I finished it, I was racked with sobs.
It is the story of Dinah ~ Dinah, sister of Joseph (of Technicolour Dreamcoat fame), daughter of Jacob. It is the story of her mothers, her birth, her life filled with tragedy and love, and then her death. And I am immensely grateful for having read the book ~ it has opened new worlds in me, revealed to me the underbelly of being a woman.
And at the same time... I am going to give voice ~
I was struck by so much fear... Fear of growing up, growing old.
Fear of the enormous task of giving birth, being a mother.
Fear of loving, letting go, losing.
Fear of change, of the transience of this life.
And that must be what good books do ~
turn us upside down,
change our perception,
enlighten us to other worlds,
make us feel fear...
and do it anyway.


~
...bought a beautiful moon diary yesterday!
...am putting off going to sleep, because that means when i wake up it means it is monday morning. some days... well most days lately, all I want to do is stay home and chase my dream. Perhaps I'll go and write in my gratitude journal now.
... shout out to sezolas for our rocking chat today. :)
... shout out to, to the beautiful Lisa Marie just because. Strength, courage, love to you.

hot damn

the most incredible necklace sent to me today, by the beautiful Patchouli Princess.

"I have only slipped away into the next room.
Whatever we were to each other - that we are still.
You are you and I am I
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh, as we always laughed together at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me and pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect - without the ghost of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was, there is absolutely unbroken continuity.
What is death but a passing?
Why should I be 'out of mind' because I am out of sight?
I am just waiting for you for an interval -
somewhere very near - just around the corner.
All is well.
Nothing is past.
Nothing is lost."

~

so i came home tonight,
with the wind whipping and the sky threatening to storm again...
and there sitting on our table was the mail that my male brought in...
and in that mail... was a sunflower yellow envelope.
a bulky one.
it was like my birthday all over again!
it was such a surprise ~ I had no idea that I would be getting a letter... much less a gift!
and i opened it softly,
unthreaded the blue ribbon wrapping a beautiful rainbow handmade paper giftwrapping...
holding my breath...
and there, sitting there,
was the most perfect necklace anyone has ever made for me.
it almost brought me to tears ~
dearest patches had made me the most incredible necklace, with four blue stones, and the most divine silver pendant...
look! just LOOK!



and just today, i was thinking to myself...
this really isn't a bad world at all. it's really filled with beings bursting with love.
and some of them are like fireworks, showering the world with colour.
Patchouli Princess is one of those people.

I am so very grateful for being thought of so fondly, and being sent such a gift of love so unexpectedly.

~

Me and Lile have been having "Share your Photos" days at work.
Today I brought in my old old photo albums, and I showed her my teenage years.
And you know what?
I realised how many people I did know. How many friends I have had.
How many people gleefully entered my life, and danced with me for a while.
Or just dressed up with me.
Because, oh yes, there was a lot of dressing up.
Dressing in drag, in heritage, in flamenco, in retro.
Anything we could make up from my mum's trusty boxes of dress-up clothes.
So many succulent guys fill photos too in their resplendent dress ups.
For my older sister's eighteenth birthday eight of us dressed in drag, my cousin Andrew in women's lingerie,
and we went and sat on huge bales of hay by the side of our deserted country road. And every hour or so when a car went pass, we'd jump up, and wave frantically, laugh outrageously.

And I just thought.
Hot damn I have had a blessed life.
All the time I thought I was plain and weird, introverted and strange,
when really I was, and am, remarkable, with remarkable friends.

We are all made of Stardust

Wild flowers, wild inside and out. 2003

I would like to believe when I die that I
have given myself away like a tree that
sows seed every spring and never counts
the loss, because it is not loss, it is
adding to future life. It is the tree's way
of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but
spilling out its treasure on the wind.
~ May Sarton

Have been reading Sarah Ban Breathnach's Simple Abundance book.
Incredible, just incredible.
Today I went out and found myself a sublime blank journal, as instructed by the book...
and I'm taking my own advice, and that of the books, and I am starting a gratitude journal.
As small as that, and as simple as that... but the effects are profound.
Get Simple Abundance, people.

Here's the entry in Simple Abundance for January 14.

"The Gratitude Journal

"Gratitude unlockes the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, cahos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." ~ Melody Beattie.

There are several tools that I'm going to suggest you use as you begin your inner exploration. While all of them will help you become happier and more content and will nurture your creativity, this first tool could change the quality of your life beyond belief; it's what I call a daily gratitude journal. I have a beautiful blank book and each night before I go to bed, I write down five things that I can be grateful about that day. Some days my list will be filled with amazing things, most days just simple joys. "Mikey got lost in a fierce storm but I found him shivering, wet but unharmed. I listened to Puccini while cleaning and remembered how much I love the opera."

Other days - rough ones - I might think that I don't have five things to be grateful for, so I'll write down my basics: my health, my husband and daughter, their health, my animals, my home, my friends, and the comfortable bed that I'm about to get into, as well as the fact that the day's over. That's okay. Real life isn't always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only survive but surmount our difficulties.

The gratitude journal has to be the first step on the Simple Abundance path or it just won't work for you. Simplicity, order, harmony, beauty and joy ~ all the other principles that can transform your life will not blossom and flourism without gratitude. If you want to travel this journey with me, the gratitude journal is not an option.

Why? Because you simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.

Let's begin today with gratitude. Select the prettiest, most inviting blank book you can find for your gratitude journal. Make a pleasant outing for its selection. Note the fabric or design of the cover. The look and feel of the paper. Do you prefer ruled pages or blank? Perhaps you can find one with a ribbon clasp. One of the most valuable lessons Simple Abundance has taught me is that it is in the smallest details that the flavour of life is savoured.

As the months pass and you fill your journal with blessings, and inner shift in your reality will occur. Soon you will be delighted to discover how content and hopeful you are feeling. As you focus on the abundance rather than on the lack in your life, you will be designing a wonderful new blueprint for the future. This sense of fulfillment is gratitude at work, transforming your dreams into reality.

A french proverb reminds us that "Gratitude is the heart's memory." Begin this day to explore and integrate this beautiful life-affirming principle into your life, and the miracle you have been seeking will unfold to your wonder and amazement."

~ Sarah ban Breathnach, "Simple Abundance: a daybook of comfort and joy."


Inverted light shines, 2003.

So, how bout travelling with me on this journey...? Let's share this Simple Abundance path together with our gratitude journals?
We could have a weekly update ~ and people could post in the comments section some of the things they wrote in their gratitude journal that week... or we could hold a talk on it over in the message board... actually, have just started a new forum over on the message board ~ go check it out!
We could share what our journals look like, how we found them!
What do you all think? Let me know :)

~
Happened upon the children's book writer, Jackie French's delightful website today.

on shadows, and the stillness which sings.

The two chairs. Drawing, 2003.

I thank you so much dearhearts, for taking the time to write words, to hold out your hands, to wrap you arms around me after my post on my brother. Even to those who did not write ~ I felt so much the waves of love sent.

I wish to share with you the story of my brother. Last night I grieved his loss, today I celebrate his life.

My brother Clinton was my mother's first born. He was born with brain damage due to complications at birth, as well as some degree of cerebral palsy. My mother left his violent father after my second brother, Brett was born. She left town, and moved hundreds of kilometres north. She met my father a year or so later, at a cattle sale.

Six weeks later, they were engaged (love at first sight) and my brothers grew up on my father's cattle farm. My parents went on to have me and my two sisters. We grew up as one big happy family.

Yes, there were tough times, and we all learnt our lessons, but we never doubted the love and bond shared between us all.

Clinton had more challenges than the rest of us. He had severe learning disabilities which were not realised until he was 6.
My mother would read endlessly to him ~ to all of us.
And he did his best. He always did his best.

After school he was a grocery boy and later became a cowboy. He travelled, and he moved about to find his happiness.

And he did find his happiness.

He came to nest in a house filled with close friends, also with disabilities, and worked at an Endeavour farm ~ a producing farm that employed people with disabilities. My brother loved it there. At the age of 25, he was the most senior staff there, and had more vehicle licences than my dad ~ bobcat, tractor licences. He found his passion there on the land.

He had the most beautiful girlfriend ~ his coach actually...
My brother was an athlete. He was the Northern Queensland Disabled Sports Team captain. The best all~rounder in Queensland. He was ranked number two in high jump in Australia. He was looking to qualify for the 2000 Paralympics. Sometimes he would joke that he wished he was more disabled, so he could enter in more sports.

He met his biological father, Dave that year too. And Dave welcomed him and my brother with open arms. It was Clinton's lifelong wish to meet his father, and he did. And it was wonderful, and they were friends, and he found peace in his life. He and my father healed all rifts they'd had during his teenage years.

My brother found peace ~ real peace ~ that year, and those few years that preceeded it. After so many challenges, he came to find acceptance in himself, and saw all the love that was open to him.

My brother was a fighter ~ he was a champion ~ he was a believer ~ and he was my big brother. He was the guy who would come home from the farm for a weekend just to re~tile my grandmother's floor on her birthday. That was the last time I saw him, actually.
And when he said goodbye to drive back to the farm, he gave me a big big hug, and he smelled his smoky, rusty, musky self. And he tickled me, and he fixed his blue eyes on me and said quite firmly to me ~
"I'll see you later, Bony."

A week or so later, he was killed in a farm accident, on the farm that he loved.

That was seven years ago. I was 14, he was 25.

The only thing I remember from the funeral, is my mother seeing Dave, his father again after 20 odd years. And my mother sitting between my brother's father, and our father, and holding both their hands as the two men sobbed. The tenderness in that moment will stay with me always.

And I am incredibly blessed to have had him in my life.
He taught me so many lessons of achieving, no matter what challenges faced us.

And most days I am grateful for everything ~ every perfect sublime piece of his life, and his death... he connects me with a deeper knowing... an understand that love is a vagabond traveller across barriers of love and death.

And some days, I'm just a sister who wants to hug her big brother again.

It is healing for me to share his story, to honour his life, to speak those words which revive memories.

~

I was thinking this morning about life, about death.
This day, two years ago, my city of Canberra was ravaged by a massive bushfire, killing four people, burning down 400 houses.
The CEO of MacDonalds, an Australian, passed away at the age of 44 yesterday.
And twenty eight years ago, the Grangeville train disaster occured.
We are still blinking our eyes, startled, comprehending the lives lost in a swirl of Mother Ocean.

And for each of these, there was memorial ceremonies.
Driving in to work, I wondered why it is we still had memorial ceremonies, even years after the event has occurred.

Maybe death helps us to reconnect with life itself.
Death shows us the divinity in life.
It whispers to us: the moments you have here are precious.

one of the girls from the SARK message board, tender ~ Tym, wrote exactly what I was feeling in response to my post about my brother.

She said ~

"It is in the presence of death that we mortal humans find we are more alive than we ever dreamed. It is both horrifying, and harrowing.

We learn not to take our precious moments for granted. We learn how to love with a kind of humility, knowing we have no power over death, we must strive to live more while we are able.

Love of life is a defiance to death. Love of life a beautiful way of behaving as though we are immortal. "

Amen to that.
And amen, brother.

Love, lyrically, with laughter,
Leonie

sublime cupcakes and words

Cupcakes drawn today for my sister Bex's cake decorating business.


"The world is evolving from imperfection to perfection.
It needs all love and sympathy; great tenderness and watchfulness are required from each one of us."
~ Hazrat Inayat Khan "A Bowl of Saki"

Was so touched today by all the touching, beautiful responses I got on a SARK message board post about my brother. I sit in wonder at the everyday love and outpourings that are given and received on this board.

And I was just so so so touched by the words of the amazing Leigh, on comforting others:

"I have never failed to be genuine
....not once
I have not lied, or spoken even the smallest untruth...

As I have spread love, and offered kindness
As I have held hands and dried tears
And told others they are worthy, they are valuable, they are heard
As I have consoled and listened
And as I have allowed others to learn their lessons, without judging them
And as I have put trust in the rightness of all our paths, and allowed others to grow at their own pace
And as I have protected my own Self from situations that would not serve my highest good
And as I have let go of the need to have others believe a single word I say... for I believe it

I have spoken my truth
and it simply IS nice
and it IS easy, for the truth always is"

Leigh inspires me everyday with her poems on living life gracefully.
She reminds me so much of the poet Nan Whitcomb ~ author of Thoughts of Nanushka.

thanks to the ever rocking bus friend paris, found this beautiful website of Canberra artist Kim Nelson.

Doodle diary for Monday, 17 January 2005

Doodle Diary for Sunday, 16 January 2005

Old photos

Sorting through old photos... ones I haven't seen in years.

And this one made me cry.

To see my family whole, as the Family of Seven Blue Eyed People...

And I miss that we can't have another photo like that taken again, not in this life.
And I miss my big brother Clinty.
I miss his silly smile,
and his blue blue eyes.

The pain doesn't ever really leave you when you grieve over someone.
It becomes diluted over time by the washings of everyday life, but every so often a really concentrated blast of grief hits like a rainstorm, and leaves me soaking in its wetness.
And I cradle the feeling, sitting at my desk, wracked in sobs.
Chris happens upon me, takes me out into the light of the living room, holds my hand, and tells me we'll buy a frame for the picture.


L-R: My brother Brett, little sister Maryanne, big sister Rebekah, Dad, a very young me, Mum and my brother Clinton.

It is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all ~
yes, this is true,
and I remember this through all the tears, the snotty face, the pain of separation, the grief of it all.
I was incredibly blessed to have a family like mine,
and incredibly blessed to have my brother.

Sitting softly in my grief,
Leonie

Me and my horse, Rebble.

Rebble was my soul mate.
A soul mate in a horse.