The entire country was devastated to learn of the abduction, rape and murder of Jill Meagher, a 29-year-old Irish woman, on the streets of Melbourne’s inner-northern Brunswick at around 2am on September 22, 2012. Jill was a beautiful, smart, and confident young woman who was tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jill had made the decision to walk the...

A few months ago, we took the family to dinner at our local Sizzlers restaurant. For those of you who don’t have Sizzlers near you, it’s basically a restaurant that has a great big buffet and salad bar in the middle of the room. It’s a firm favourite for kids, because what child doesn’t love the idea of being able to pick and choose whatever...

Sponsored by Hill’s Pet Nutrition Sometimes I am asked to write about topics that really touch my heart. This is one of them. We have two dogs – both Border Collies. I adopted Jazz, my first dog, in 1997 – so she’s no spring chicken. She was in fact the catalyst for change in a very unhappy time of my life.  When I bought Jazz, I had already decided to...

Yesterday we celebrated Mother’s Day. It has, in recent years, become one of my favourite days of the year. I love al the planning that the children put into their handmade gifts. It makes me laugh when I innocently walk into their rooms to put away washing and suddenly have children flinging themselves in front of me, and body-blocking the cupboard so that I...

Yesterday in the car, where all of our most in-depth conversations seem to happen, my son asked me about ANZAC Day. I have had quite a few changes of heart when it comes to my thoughts on this day. When I was in Primary School I was a trumpet player, and although I never had the honour of playing The Last Post, I remember vividly how it made me feel. I remember the...

At first I thought I was being paranoid. Maybe she just didn’t catch my eye when she passed me. Maybe the group of them didn’t see Lucy running a few steps ahead of me down the aisles. Maybe they don’t realise that today is childcare day and that I am doing my chores on the only child-free day I have. It all became a little clearer one morning when...

They say that you feel most in love with your husband at two significant points in your relationship. One is when you catch his eye as you are walking down the aisle on your wedding day, and the second is when you see him hold your baby for the very first time. And it’s true. Both for very different reasons. On the first occasion, it’s all about you....

Right now I’m teetering on the edge. I don’t do things in halves. I’m an all-in or not-in kinda gal. Which means I tend to have a lot of highs and a lot of lows. So here I am standing on a see-saw (remember them?), only there’s not one plank – there’s like 3 or 4 planks all crossing over the middle like a big super see-saw. And...

You will remember the pain I felt about sending Lucy off to childcare a couple of weeks ago. She is going to childcare one day a week (yes, just ONE day), and yet I felt like someone was ripping my heart out as I walked out the door! I don’t know if it’s because she’s my baby or because she’s so little, but it just felt like it was such a huge...

My eldest daughter is 8 years old. As she gets older, I become more and more concerned about bullying at school. I do think that the term bullying tends to be thrown about willy-nilly sometimes, so for the sake of this post I am going to borrow from the Bullying.NoWay! government website, which explains that: Bullying is repeated verbal, physical, social or...