Home At Last
Without Prejudice
Maslows heirarchy of needs states safe shelter first. For it's only when we are safe and well housed do we feel safe from threat, the outside worlds harried troubles no longer knocking at our ribs. When we are safe we allow ourselves to be ourselves.
And every one should have that. I make my daughter and grand children feel safer as they know from the past I can be woken and arm myself against trouble or strife.
And I know Yvette will protect me with words and a certain mood that comes over her and she will tell neighbours to shut the F*** up and they end up apologising to her, after she has called them a bunch of F***. And we have no more trouble.
I have a unit, one bed room in my daughters large back garden and it's mine for life. Its affordable and moveable and only took a week to put up. I have a double bedroom, a lounge, a kitchen and huge bathroom and I love it.
I've had big houses in the past but found them lonely and sad. I wanted so much to have another family to fuss over. But if I lived under the same roof as my girls we would be fighting within days. Every woman likes her own kitchen and heaven help you if you intrude.
I decorate the unit in my style, all the things I love, the 50s' , 60's and 70's retro objects that comfort and inspire me. Above my lap top is a huge Ken Done print of the beach 85. To my right a three picture hanging of Lauren, my daughter who died aged 12. And next to the that a huge print of a dolphin swimming, a tiny figure in the water leaping in the wake of a slice of a huge tanker.
It's called "In the Wake Of Evolution"
The vast tanker mostly unseen and the dolphin frolicking in it's wake. Everything has a purpose it says. To my left is a fully dressed Christmas tree and I have left the lights on full time for weeks now, wanting the loveliness of Christmas to be long this year.
It's my haven and shelter amd most importantly it;s mine and no one can take it off me. I am sure everyone has been homeless at some stage in their lives and it is not a good place to be, ever.
The girls and I helped a lady to be housed safely once and her gratitude at our help makes us smile whenever we think of it. A nudge in the right direction by us to her meant she was safely housed in 5 weeks.
She cried when we helped her move from the unsafe place she had been living in to her new home. A top floor apartment in a lovely complex with huge trees all around and she cried as the trees reminded her of her birth country.
It was one bedroom and large and spacious and the kind powers that be gave her a cheque for a Fridge. Her rent was nominal and included power and we were so delighted for her. And as we left her to enjoy her safe haven, I looked at her and said,
"Everyone has the right to lock that door behind them and feel safe in the world", and she kissed my hand and I was overwhelmed but so glad for her. At that time I was still home hopping myself and could not seem to settle anywhere.
I had the old itch from when I was a child, an itch I didn't like, being pulled from pillar to post after my brother James died and I was 5, was the old itch I felt. And though I didn't want to be so restless and rootless I was and that was a fact I had to deal with.
I didn't seem to be happy anywhere and after I tried to emergency house my foster daughter I learned a severe lesson. No agency could help ny daughter who had worked full time for the previous 10 years, through pregnancies and toddlers and yet refugees were in front of us.
She got not an ounce of help and I realised how unfair that was. So my daughter and I had discussed years before about sharing her property. And she said go ahead, so I applied for a unit, was lucky enough to get it and I sit in it now.
It looms large in the backyard, far enough away from the brick four bedroom house for me not to hear what goes on and vice versa. We have a common ground in between, full of trampoline and swing set, lots of toys and a vast barrel like Husky, a female, who sheds fur in Summer like snow.
I came here 18 months ago and since then I hear of so many older women sharing the same property as their kids and grandkids. Not wanting to be alone and needing that family link. It's called cocooning and it's a fabulous idea.
My unit looks trendy, and is 8m by 5m in total. It has brand new paint and carpet and a gas heater with a dinky little remote. There is a seat in the large shower and I keep it up against it's wall, I don't want it to look like a geriatric lives here. Well not yet anyway.
My bedroom is domnated by a brass double (Not Queen Or king, an old fashioned double) bed. Thats the land of CounterPain as against Robert Louis Stevenson's "Land Of Counterpane". He was an invalid and spent a lot of time in bed, hence the "Land of Counterpane", meaning bedspread, from where he wrote his novels.
I have to be upright and hard backed, seated at my desk and facing the window underneath which our old German Sheperd, Bonnie lies in her final sleep. then and only then can I write.
My "Land of CounterPain" bed room is a pretty haven, smells lovely, is cool and relaxing and is where I crash at nights. And in the morning naughty elves have flung clothes my clothes and shoes on the floor, can't be me.
I use fashion as art and hang clothes that I love on a curtain rail and the dresses billow gently in the warm breeze from the window they hang above. Above my bed is a huge black and white print of a "Beach Pash" and its irreverent and gorgeous all at the same time.
There is a tiny print of "Gypsy Girl". which is the old me, and a giant tub of shoes that I love, a wardrobe full of good and classic clothes that fit me. In the lounge is an old Freedom couch, that my Sister Jackie gave me and in it's former life lived in her "Tara" mansion in Brisbane. Its old and squishy and is blue and is perfect for stretching out on with a good book.
I can remember it being the perfect length when I lay on it at Jackies and read Maggie Tabberers book, placed in the sunniest spot in the family room. And here it is now in my place in Melbourne. Scrubbed and covers washed. I have a giant timber "glory Box" that used to belong to my Sister In Law, Kerrie Hancock. And above that the TV, favourite lamps and the most important picture of all. Laurens; dream House.
Holly Cooper her old friend brought home her art portfolio from school after Lauren died and I grabbed it greedily from her, looking for sonething of her in her art. And of course there was, and the Dream House was the biggest and I frame it in glass and she is there in the edges of the drawing.
Her dream house has stables and property and a babies room and a theatre, paddocks for riding and pools for swimming in. All her loves coming together.
She was the first person I met that had already "Self Actualised" and was happy and comfortable to be herself, always. She neither noticed or cared what people wore or looked like, they were all fine to Lauren. And she lived in a world of love, her love for everything, ants, bugs, dead flies were put in match boxes lined with cotton wool.
She kept skinks in Queensland naming them Sam and Samantha, and was horrified when they shed their tails and escaped. She kept mice and a white rat, had a kitten called mushy who she had a christening for.
As Mush grew she wrestled him into grow suits and she would wheel him around the neighbourhood in a pusher, his four legs jutting out stiffly and he never wriggled or complained. And when we bought Grunt as a puppy she gleefully told all the neighbours how the pup had wet all over her Fathers chest.
She ticked all the boxes of a Self Actualised person and she was just 12. Awesome girl.
So I remain content in my place and want for others to have the same. It really is true, there is no where like home
Love Janette
Maslows heirarchy of needs states safe shelter first. For it's only when we are safe and well housed do we feel safe from threat, the outside worlds harried troubles no longer knocking at our ribs. When we are safe we allow ourselves to be ourselves.
And every one should have that. I make my daughter and grand children feel safer as they know from the past I can be woken and arm myself against trouble or strife.
And I know Yvette will protect me with words and a certain mood that comes over her and she will tell neighbours to shut the F*** up and they end up apologising to her, after she has called them a bunch of F***. And we have no more trouble.
I have a unit, one bed room in my daughters large back garden and it's mine for life. Its affordable and moveable and only took a week to put up. I have a double bedroom, a lounge, a kitchen and huge bathroom and I love it.
I've had big houses in the past but found them lonely and sad. I wanted so much to have another family to fuss over. But if I lived under the same roof as my girls we would be fighting within days. Every woman likes her own kitchen and heaven help you if you intrude.
I decorate the unit in my style, all the things I love, the 50s' , 60's and 70's retro objects that comfort and inspire me. Above my lap top is a huge Ken Done print of the beach 85. To my right a three picture hanging of Lauren, my daughter who died aged 12. And next to the that a huge print of a dolphin swimming, a tiny figure in the water leaping in the wake of a slice of a huge tanker.
It's called "In the Wake Of Evolution"
The vast tanker mostly unseen and the dolphin frolicking in it's wake. Everything has a purpose it says. To my left is a fully dressed Christmas tree and I have left the lights on full time for weeks now, wanting the loveliness of Christmas to be long this year.
It's my haven and shelter amd most importantly it;s mine and no one can take it off me. I am sure everyone has been homeless at some stage in their lives and it is not a good place to be, ever.
The girls and I helped a lady to be housed safely once and her gratitude at our help makes us smile whenever we think of it. A nudge in the right direction by us to her meant she was safely housed in 5 weeks.
She cried when we helped her move from the unsafe place she had been living in to her new home. A top floor apartment in a lovely complex with huge trees all around and she cried as the trees reminded her of her birth country.
It was one bedroom and large and spacious and the kind powers that be gave her a cheque for a Fridge. Her rent was nominal and included power and we were so delighted for her. And as we left her to enjoy her safe haven, I looked at her and said,
"Everyone has the right to lock that door behind them and feel safe in the world", and she kissed my hand and I was overwhelmed but so glad for her. At that time I was still home hopping myself and could not seem to settle anywhere.
I had the old itch from when I was a child, an itch I didn't like, being pulled from pillar to post after my brother James died and I was 5, was the old itch I felt. And though I didn't want to be so restless and rootless I was and that was a fact I had to deal with.
I didn't seem to be happy anywhere and after I tried to emergency house my foster daughter I learned a severe lesson. No agency could help ny daughter who had worked full time for the previous 10 years, through pregnancies and toddlers and yet refugees were in front of us.
She got not an ounce of help and I realised how unfair that was. So my daughter and I had discussed years before about sharing her property. And she said go ahead, so I applied for a unit, was lucky enough to get it and I sit in it now.
It looms large in the backyard, far enough away from the brick four bedroom house for me not to hear what goes on and vice versa. We have a common ground in between, full of trampoline and swing set, lots of toys and a vast barrel like Husky, a female, who sheds fur in Summer like snow.
I came here 18 months ago and since then I hear of so many older women sharing the same property as their kids and grandkids. Not wanting to be alone and needing that family link. It's called cocooning and it's a fabulous idea.
My unit looks trendy, and is 8m by 5m in total. It has brand new paint and carpet and a gas heater with a dinky little remote. There is a seat in the large shower and I keep it up against it's wall, I don't want it to look like a geriatric lives here. Well not yet anyway.
My bedroom is domnated by a brass double (Not Queen Or king, an old fashioned double) bed. Thats the land of CounterPain as against Robert Louis Stevenson's "Land Of Counterpane". He was an invalid and spent a lot of time in bed, hence the "Land of Counterpane", meaning bedspread, from where he wrote his novels.
I have to be upright and hard backed, seated at my desk and facing the window underneath which our old German Sheperd, Bonnie lies in her final sleep. then and only then can I write.
My "Land of CounterPain" bed room is a pretty haven, smells lovely, is cool and relaxing and is where I crash at nights. And in the morning naughty elves have flung clothes my clothes and shoes on the floor, can't be me.
I use fashion as art and hang clothes that I love on a curtain rail and the dresses billow gently in the warm breeze from the window they hang above. Above my bed is a huge black and white print of a "Beach Pash" and its irreverent and gorgeous all at the same time.
There is a tiny print of "Gypsy Girl". which is the old me, and a giant tub of shoes that I love, a wardrobe full of good and classic clothes that fit me. In the lounge is an old Freedom couch, that my Sister Jackie gave me and in it's former life lived in her "Tara" mansion in Brisbane. Its old and squishy and is blue and is perfect for stretching out on with a good book.
I can remember it being the perfect length when I lay on it at Jackies and read Maggie Tabberers book, placed in the sunniest spot in the family room. And here it is now in my place in Melbourne. Scrubbed and covers washed. I have a giant timber "glory Box" that used to belong to my Sister In Law, Kerrie Hancock. And above that the TV, favourite lamps and the most important picture of all. Laurens; dream House.
Holly Cooper her old friend brought home her art portfolio from school after Lauren died and I grabbed it greedily from her, looking for sonething of her in her art. And of course there was, and the Dream House was the biggest and I frame it in glass and she is there in the edges of the drawing.
Her dream house has stables and property and a babies room and a theatre, paddocks for riding and pools for swimming in. All her loves coming together.
She was the first person I met that had already "Self Actualised" and was happy and comfortable to be herself, always. She neither noticed or cared what people wore or looked like, they were all fine to Lauren. And she lived in a world of love, her love for everything, ants, bugs, dead flies were put in match boxes lined with cotton wool.
She kept skinks in Queensland naming them Sam and Samantha, and was horrified when they shed their tails and escaped. She kept mice and a white rat, had a kitten called mushy who she had a christening for.
As Mush grew she wrestled him into grow suits and she would wheel him around the neighbourhood in a pusher, his four legs jutting out stiffly and he never wriggled or complained. And when we bought Grunt as a puppy she gleefully told all the neighbours how the pup had wet all over her Fathers chest.
She ticked all the boxes of a Self Actualised person and she was just 12. Awesome girl.
So I remain content in my place and want for others to have the same. It really is true, there is no where like home
Love Janette
