The Barefoot Healer

Yesterday was my 50th birthday... And it was pretty bad, (My facebook page doesn't have my real birthdate on it, in case your wondering why you didn't see it....) Its such a weird thing this facebook...millions of people reaching out to connect and posting about their daily lives to do so...yet what we share is such a filtered edited version of what we really feel and think. Happy bright photos of accomplishments, anniversary presents from caring spouses, clever things our kids have done and for the main part, the only dark bits we share are of wars in Syria and political disasters. Pain a few times removed from the personal. Facebook, the ultimate social network, is ironically full of clever memes about the importance of learning to love yourself and your own company.  And personally, I think it's a crock of shit. I've been posting about my wonderful adventures as a traveling perfumer and artist for months...and it dawned on my last night that I've

Like many women, I have children to two different men. And I have dated and been in relationships with men who have children with previous partners. It seems to be the modern pattern, and the older we get, the more you can pretty much guarantee that blended families are going to be part of any dating scenario, with all the potential pittfalls and challenges that brings. One of the pittfalls is that, in Australia, the men get screwed in the scenarios. Its one of the few areas in our misogynistic society that seems to be totally rigged towards the mothers. Yes, I hear many you out there crying out about deadbeat Dads who don't pay child support or spend any time with their children. But there is a whole side to the story. And a whole group of caring loyal men who really love their kids and want to be part of their lives. I've seen it happen to two of my partners now, as well as to other close male friends. All of these guys are basically decent, caring human beings. An

Back in the outback to work as a remote area nurse....This time in Papunya Central Australia. Due to the usual communication fuck up between the agency and the clinics, I've ended up being driven out on a friday morning, to do a few hours of orientation tot he new clinic and then sit in my little 1950's broken motel style flat behind the barbed wire fence twiddling my thumbs for the weekend. It started the usual way. The agency rang me and asked if I'd be willing to go out to Mt Liebig to work for 10 days, to replace one of the RAN's who needed to come into town for a courtcase. So I said, yeah sure! Cool, the agency rep said, I'll just send you a little bit of paI spent the next 2 days filling out this paperwork. And packing. Including 2 big boxes of staples and two freezer bags full of meat and fruit and veges. And 12 large bottles of filtered water. The food because though each community has a small local shop, the range available and the prices ar

I hate mourning. I hate hurting and feeling vulnerable and a year later still feeling like the walking dead. A hundred years ago, when you lost someone from your family, you were expected to grieve. You wore black for a year and were expected to wander around sobbing wretchedly and generally being pretty useless to society for that whole period of time. No one expected you to cope. No one expected you to function. And no one expected you to be happy. Nowadays it's different. There's no real space for grieving. You have maybe a few days off work, have a decent funeral and wake, and then basically, that's it. You go back to work, wearing the same clothes as before, and are expected to pretty much get on with it. Your close friends will probably be supportive at first, listen to you tell stories about your lost person, let you cry on their shoulder...but after a few months they begin to get sick of it. And you're left trying to function feeling like the walking

flying across the desert Another trip into the unknown...this time another tropical island a bit further east...or is it west? My sense of geography is a bit sketchy at the best of times....Warruwi community on Goulburn island. I got the job offer just last week right in the middle of relationship..well, difficulties is the best way of putting it I guess... New relationships in your mid 40's are challenging it seems. And since I am not at all stubborn, or set in my ways, OR high maintenance thank you very much, and neither is he, a short trip away to work in another remote clinic for a week sounded like a good idea.... So I simply said yes without asking any real details, and here I am. It took 3 days to get here. One to get to Brisbane by car and stay in a hotel overnight and continue the “relationship discussion” while catching up with my old friend Goblin who I hadn't seen in over a year, which was awesome! He agreed that relationships at our ages are compli

coming to the island Well, nursing up here in the Torres Straight has been educational. The job itself involves the usual looking after patients on the ward, about 2 thirds of which are nursing home pt's awaiting placement, interspersed by the occasional harrowing time of interest when something interesting wanders into the tiny ED. There's a whole host of really interesting nurses here, mainly ED and theatre specialists who are all annoyed and disgusted at having to spend most of their shifts doing showers and moving patients in lifters, after being told by their agencies that the job was in their speciality. But realistically, in any setting like this you do need to have skilled people on hand for when the shit hits the fan. But they also need to staff the ward the rest of the time. Max, a local boy and Brian the MSF guy The range of experience the travelling nurses bring with them is pretty impressive. I've met Brian, who works for doctors without bord

flying over the ocean The journey started with the usual agency hiccups. The lass in the office had a really hard time understanding where I was and how difficult it was to get to anywhere else. After a few days of back and forth, I ended up with a one and a half hour drive in a hire car, (which I ended up paying for myself due to more mis-comunications), a 2 hour flight to Cairns, an overnight stay in a hotel there (with taxis rides I paid for there and back), another 2 hour flight up to Horne Island and a 15 minute ferry ride to Thursday Island (which I again paid for.) It was all pretty exciting....and expensive. Sigh...somehow this often seems to happen with agency work...you can claim these expenses back from the agency, but it always means you have to have the cash to fork out first...and as I'm usually down to my last penny before I leave, it gets a bit scary...then of course you have to keep track of receipts and send originals into the agency...and then th