A fifo wife (fifo life: motherhood: remebering me)

This post was going to be some images I have taken over the past week because as you know every blogger does. Then I went on to think about how when I met my husband I loved photography. Then I thought how much I loved design, loved to draw, I loved fashion not always so good at it but loved it all the same. I loved to cook. I loved study, I loved learning, I loved scuba diving, rock climbing, reading and going for drives. I loved all those things and then with one big push or cut of the knife on the 4^th of October 2005 I become a mum and all those things stopped. I vowed they wouldn’t and for a while I resisted determined that being mum wouldn’t change me but then I resented things, people, stuff and it was easier to give in and realise that my time would come again. So through circumstance I didn’t have the time for the things I loved anymore or if I did they became chores and so I had to do them and where is the fun in that?

Dressing was a chore. I barely had time to shower let alone think what I was going to wear and no amount of Trinny and Suzanna helped me. I was that women who walked around in sweat pants and her husband’s over sized t shirts because sometimes it was all I could find that could fit me other times it was because I was too beat and tired to find something pretty to put on. If were to be completely honest and that has the only way to live; I have only just thrown away my maternity bra’s and t shirts. It’s been three years but judging by the number of maternity jeans I still see being worn by mothers whose babies are now in year five, purging my maternity wear after three years I am not doing too badly.

Cooking became a chore. A means to refuel that is all. I brought more cook books hoping to be inspired but when you go from puree pumpkin to then having to bargain with someone who is completely unable to understand why they must eat to survive that too becomes a chore. And so I have eaten more pureed food than necessary because it was sometimes easier than cooking something for myself. And as a FIFO wife there is often no one else to cook for and no one wants to eat alone after you have sat through a battle, a lesson in why they should eat this or physically exhaust yourself with my favourite zooming and parking the air plane.

So I stopped watching the news it interfered with bath time and bedtime. I stopped exercising.  I stopped being creative. There was no time. My children were my priority as they should be but in that time I got really lost. I swore it wouldn’t happen but I got lost somehow. Through being tired, depressed, angry, exhausted and happy all in one I forgot what I liked. I knew I liked coffee but didn’t I use to also like something else? There was something missing about me.

So this past couple of years and through writing my blog I have found that little creative spot of me again and I love it I have missed it. My time slowly but surely is coming back around. I saw it grabbed it and it’s exciting. I knew it would happen but sometime I worried it wouldn’t. That I would be that dull person always. Easily forgotten and never thought of.

My husband saw it slipping but it was easier to ignore it than to fight for the time but here we are. He understood how important not forgetting me was but I held faith it come around and here it is. It was just a matter of getting off the couch and grabbing it. Now my boys are older, more independent requiring me less. Its okay for me now.

I’m rediscovering myself and redefine my role along the way and I couldn’t be happier. Its paying off in every bit of my life and all my relationships are benefiting. I’m no longer FIFO husband’s wife or the B boy’s mother. I am Debbie. That writer girl who has the shop on the corner with the online store who likes her shoes, drinks good coffee and likes lettuce in her soup. That girl. My role as mother is now a joy not a chore, my role as a wife I cant get enough of and my role as me myself and I well I like her a lot; I think if we met we would indeed be friends.

However don’t panic I won’t swamp you with my non artistic shots along the way that’s more for me than you.

Tell me did you get lost along the way? Tell me one of your favourite things?

xx Deb