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On the difference between being forged by fire and still being on fire.I'm a disabled woman, and I went to a conference ...
28/05/2026

On the difference between being forged by fire and still being on fire.

I'm a disabled woman, and I went to a conference on the weekend. The last day was the recognitions, the part where people stand and tell the story of where they came from and what they've achieved since.

I want to be careful, because the people telling those stories were not doing anything wrong. They were being brave in the way they'd been taught was brave, and their stories were real, their pain was real. But I sat in that room and didn't go quiet, I sobbed, the kind you can't stop, and it's taken me a good part of a week to understand why.

There's a particular shape these stories take. I was at my lowest. Then I found this thing. Now look at me, I'm thriving. The arc is clean. The hard part is safely in the past tense. The person on stage has crossed to the other side, and the story exists to prove the other side is real. I know the other side exists; I have been there multiple times in my life.

But I've started to notice what that clean arc quietly asks of everyone still listening from the hard part.

It asks them to treat their current pain as a chapter that simply hasn't resolved yet. It frames being still in it as a delay, as though resolution is coming, and the only honest position is the finished one. It's the beautiful story. Everyone wants to be the phoenix.

Here's what I have learned as a disabled person with complex health, and as a carer of someone with profound disabilities and what made me so emotional in that room that day. I am not the phoenix. I am not forged by fire. I have learned to function while I am still burning in the flames.

That is a different thing. It is not a worse thing or a sadder thing. It is just the truth, and the truth deserves a seat in the room as much as the triumphant version does.

Some of us are not telling our story from the other side. We are telling it from inside. We are not “before” anything. We are not a redemption arc in progress. We are people doing extraordinary, unglamorous, uncelebrated work in the actual present tense, and that work counts even though it will never make a good closing speech.

If you are disabled, or chronically ill, or caring for someone who is, and you are tired of feeling like your story is only valid once it has a tidy ending, it is valid now. Mid-fire. No resolution. No moral. Just you, still here, still doing it.

That's not a lesser story. Some weeks, I think it's the only honest one. 🌻

There's a clause in the new NDIS Bill, and I want to tell you what it means, not what to do about it. Just what it means...
27/05/2026

There's a clause in the new NDIS Bill, and I want to tell you what it means, not what to do about it. Just what it means.

The clause says: if the agency can't contact you after “reasonable attempts”, they can suspend your plan. Stay suspended for 90 days, and your participant status can be revoked entirely. No hearing. No tribunal. Ninety days of silence, and you're out.

Here's what that sentence doesn't say out loud. It doesn't define “reasonable attempts”. It doesn't say how many tries. It doesn't say they have to use the contact method you've told them you need. It doesn't say they have to ring your support coordinator, or your provider, or anyone who could actually reach you.

Think about who that catches. Someone hospitalised during a mental health crisis, with no one managing their phone. A carer who works school hours and misses a 2 pm Tuesday call. A person who is hard of hearing, who asked in writing to be contacted by text, and gets phoned anyway. None of them are refusing to engage. They are living the exact disabilities the Scheme exists to support.

Being unable to answer a phone is not the same as being unreachable. Being in hospital is not the same as being uncooperative. A mental health crisis is not non-compliance.

I'm not posting this to tell you what to do. I'm posting it because if you live this life, you deserve to know what's being written about you. And because somewhere there's a disabled person reading the same clause, feeling that specific cold dread, thinking they're the only one who sees the problem.

You're not the only one. We see it. I see it. You are not imagining how wrong this is.

If this is being written about your life: the Senate is taking submissions on the Bill until 29 May 2026. That's all — just telling you the door exists. 🌻

I'm disabled, and last weekend I had to smuggle my own access into a conference.The event had a blanket “no recording” r...
26/05/2026

I'm disabled, and last weekend I had to smuggle my own access into a conference.

The event had a blanket “no recording” rule. No exception for the people who physically cannot take notes (although I was too embarrassed to advocate for myself and ask). So, there I was, a recording device disguised as a phone battery pack, magnetised to the back of my phone, looking for all the world like I was just very anxious about charge.

Here's why it came to that. By the end of day one, I couldn't close my hand. I'd been writing, that's all it takes, some days, a pen and ninety minutes, and a hand stops being a hand. My disability means notetaking isn't a neutral act. It has a cost, and the cost is function I don't get back that day.

So on day two: the little device. And I had my explanation rehearsed and loaded, it's for my disability, I can't write, I record and let the transcript do the remembering.

Nobody asked. But I want to sit with the fact that I'd already rehearsed defending my own access to a room I had paid to be in.

This is the part non-disabled people miss. Accessibility isn't only ramps and the visible stuff. It's the hundred quiet workarounds disabled people run every single day to take part in spaces built as though we weren't coming. The rule wasn't cruel. It just wasn't written with us in mind, and the cost of that oversight gets quietly transferred onto us. In concealed devices. In rehearsed explanations. In hands that won't close.

I got my transcript. I'd do it again. But I shouldn't have to be sneaky to get what a notebook hands everyone else for free. 🌻

25/05/2026

It's been a week since I got home, and I'm writing this from bed.

Not resting in bed. Working from bed because the work doesn't stop, and the only way I can do any of it is lying down. The pain is bad enough today that I keep losing the thread of my own sentences. When my youngest gets home from school, I'll transfer to the lounge, so I'm somewhere he can find me. That's the range of my world right now: bed, to lounge, and back.

Here's the actual maths, because I'm tired of letting people see only the edited version.

Five days away. Two of them at a conference. That's the part that gets a photo of me upright, smiling, in a room full of people, looking for all the world like someone who simply went to a thing.

Then: two full days asleep. Not napping. Gone. Then two days on the lounge. Then five days and counting, working from bed because sitting up at a desk is not available to me. One week home, and I have not yet had a day that the conference didn't cost me.

That's the payoff. That's always the payoff, and it's the part only my family ever sees. They see the version of me that the smiling photo is hiding. The pain that scrambles my focus. The careful arithmetic of when I can be upright and for how long. The transferring. The not-coping, quietly, in a back room, while the internet sees a woman who “did so well”.

I'm not telling you this for sympathy. I'm telling you because if you also disappear after one good thing, if your body sends an invoice nobody else can see, I need you to know the cost isn't a character flaw. It's a disability. It's real. It just gets paid privately, where it doesn't inconvenience anyone's idea of an inspiring story.

Was the conference worth it? Yes. Genuinely. I'd pay it again.

But “worth it” and “still being paid for, a week later, from bed” are both true at the same time — and I'm done pretending only the first half is the story. 🌻

23/05/2026

A day in my life. The honest version.

5:30am awake. not by choice. A new day, the endless game of charades. ‘meds. where are my meds.’

6am cuddles on the lounge with my boy. waiting for the Dex to kick in.

7am the support worker arrives. Adrian starts the kitchen. sensory checklist. nappy. school uniform. "no eeshirt on. not yet. me Tarzan."

7:30am my turn to get dressed. can I shower? will it cost me the morning OR my entire day? today it cost me the morning.

8:30am School run. hydrotherapy. the only place my body stops arguing with me.

10am medical emails. NDIS correspondence. a follow-up nobody followed up on. I follow up on the follow-up.

12:15pm the phone call I’ve been putting off. I make it anyway. I always make it anyway.

12:30pm psychologist.

1:30pm coffee gone cold, again. thank god for microwaves. “Fk, food? I haven’t eaten. Again.” rest before Hunter gets home.

3pm Hunter home. he runs straight to me. his co-regulation and mine. at the same time.

4pm the day ends for my legs. everything after this is carried by Adrian.

5pm Hunter’s shower. I listen from the lounge for small wet feet.

5:30pm dinner. will I finish my own bowl tonight? it tastes better from mine, apparently.

7:30pm Hunter’s bedtime. Adrian helps me to bed.

1am still going. how am I still going? I wonder if I have any surgeries coming up. hospital as RESPITE. I must be mad.

9pm the work I didn’t finish. the invoices. the tab open for three weeks. administration forms for Lachlan’s appointment.

This is not a complaint. This is documentation.

Because when someone asks me "what do you do all day" — I minimise our lives and say "oh not
much" when this should be my answer.

I don't stop. I can't stop. I just keep going, in whatever form of going is available to me that day.

And sometimes that's a lounge and the weight of a small boy and a bowl of dinner that's half gone
before I've had three bites.

And that's enough. 🌿

Mother's Day is complicated for a lot of us.It's love and exhaustion and grief and gratitude all sitting in the same che...
10/05/2026

Mother's Day is complicated for a lot of us.

It's love and exhaustion and grief and gratitude all sitting in the same chest at the same time.

Today, I'm choosing to sit in the love.

The four of us in the sun today. And a photo of me and my mum from another day — because I
can't be with her this Mother's Day, but I wanted her to know what she means to me anyway.
Two photos that hold the whole story — where I came from, and what I've built since.

To my mum, who has shown up in ways most people will never know about. Her arms are
always around me, even when they can't be. To Adrian, who carries what he can. To Hunter, my
whole heart in a small loud body. To Lachlan, finding his own way and still finding his way back
to me.

And to every mum reading this — when you feel like you're not enough, and it happens more
often than we dare to admit, just remember: to your little people, you are everything.

Thank you for making me a mother. Thank you for mothering me.

Happy Mother's Day to every mum doing the quiet, invisible, sacred work — and to every daughter missing her mum today, in any of the ways we miss them. I see you.

Fat Wombat and Sunshine Honeybee (mum and I) will be at Bell's Park in Emu Park near Yeppoon for the market, Sunday 21s...
20/05/2023

Fat Wombat and Sunshine Honeybee (mum and I) will be at Bell's Park in Emu Park near Yeppoon for the market, Sunday 21st May 8am to 12pm.
We will have lots of goodies from Fat Wombat Hats, hand towels, reusable placemats, bowl buddies, lots of handbags, kids backpacks with baby carriers, kids knickers/jocks (that actually fit and don't show their whoha) and kids water resistant knickers/jocks that still need a little extra help. Houdini bibs, bunny ears, dribble bibs... Omg the list goes on.
Help us sell it all so we make Dad happy and clear out the caravan ready to head back home sometime next week. Until then we are staying at site 15 at the NRMA Capricorn Yeppoon Holiday Park if you miss out at the market tomorrow

Camping with mum and dad...of course mum's first priority was, let's set up a mini market for mother's Day 😆
12/05/2023

Camping with mum and dad...of course mum's first priority was, let's set up a mini market for mother's Day 😆

With mum visiting, I have finally got my butt into gear and got back behind the sewing machine. I can't wait to see how ...
08/04/2023

With mum visiting, I have finally got my butt into gear and got back behind the sewing machine. I can't wait to see how this beauty turns out

05/03/2023

It's been a fabulous 2 years since I decided to open Crafty Creations as a weekend pop up shop to provide a platform to sell Arts and Crafts made by myself and my disabled daughter. I could never have imagined when I opened the doors, that Easter long weekend, that my little store would become so much more than a craft shop. From our Come and Do days, to Workshops, Knitting club, all the many crafts that all our vendors had in the shop and the second hand kids clothes with the proceeds going to charity. The shop became a safe space for like minded people to come and just be themselves.
So it's with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to my shop and all of you as I step away to spend time with my family. I would like to take this opportunity to say Thank you to anyone and everyone who came in to buy something, you made my dream possible. To all the vendors and friends I've made along the way, thank you for supporting me and making me feel welcome. You always made me feel welcome. From Wednesday the new owner, Sheree will be taking over the shop, please pop in and introduce yourselves and say hello.

For now, you will still continue to see all things from Fat Wombat (made by me) or Sunshine Honeybee (made by my daughter Anne-Marie) or you can still contact us directly through our pages.

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Cooroy, QLD
4563

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