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ONE LAND – HAITI

The The conclusion of One Land could not have come at a more poignant time in our lives. The messages that emerges from this short “experiment” illustrate what is lacking in the world today and the importance we place on things that are fragile and dispensable. And the need to reignite our relationships with people, even within our own family, and our natural survival skills is reflected directly into the events of HAITI.

The families of ONE LAND have been fortunate enough to experience the real importance of relationships when there is no distractive influences such as televisions, phones, ipods, stereos, nightclubs, the need to go to a work place. These things can be taken away from you in an instant as clearly illustrated in the HAITI disaster. Then what? The significance of relationships with others and your survival skills becomes paramount. In times of disaster, your usefulness will be determined by what you are able to bring to the table in terms of survival. If you take a second to really reflect on this and its implications I am sure many of you will be reaching for a gardening or first aid book. Your flash car, your diamond encrusted cell phone, your Armani suites, your degree in Marketing, will mean absolutely …. NOTHING.

Do you think HAITIAN people would be in such turmoil if they had natural survival skills?? It is sad that they are reliant on the investitures of government and services that are clearly inadequate to serve their needs. Let me just say, we would be no better off in the same circumstances. The closest major hospital to me is an hours drive away. Without modern transport this journey would be near impossible if I had to carry my four year old who might have a broken leg and a fever. What about you? Where would you go for medical treatment if a disaster happened in an hours time? And are you even sure that this facility will be able to serve your needs once you get there??

ONE LAND demonstrates the skills required to survive when services and infrastructure fail. The need for each other and the bartering of skills to trade with are going to become key to your survival. My advice. Everyone should experience a ONE LAND situation for a week to see what it is you lack to survive in a world where you may no longer be able to communicate with the other side of the globe at the touch of a finger. Go bush. Rough it. Skin colour, culture and wealth will mean very little in times of devastation. We like to hide in our little houses and pretend we don’t need anyone because hey..we’ve got SKY! It’s not true. We need each other. ONE LAND and the HAITI DISASTER bring us this message. Let’s listen.

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Family

My babys fathers girlfriend cut my daughters hair.  I am hurt and angry about this.   What gives her the right to do that without consulting me?  My daughter is only 4 yrs old.  Growing her hair has been a real task because it grows so slowly.  And now, this stranger who has no connection what-so-ever, except that she sleeps with my daughters father, feels like she can just go ahead and cut her hair? WTF!!  Okay.  I’ll calm down and examine what’s really happened here.

In the time period of a regular month.. my daughter sees her father for a total of 4 days, 2 nights.  He makes no decisions about her daily life.  He is not there when she gets sick.  He doesn’t take her to ballet.  He doesn’t take her to gym tumblers.  He doesn’t get the bills or daily notices from kohanga or from the hospital for her reflux condition.  However, he is generous paying maintenance.  

I am her mother.  I take care of her day to day care.  I dress and bathe her everyday.  I clean up her toys and other child messes everyday. I buy her clothes, I send her to kohanga with  lunch and extra clothing to play in.  I take her to the dr when she gets sick.  I buy the medicine that makes her well.  I email him about her medical conditions and dr visits so he knows what is going on with her.  I prepare her daily meals.  I organise play dates for her.  I am her taxi to all events.  I ASK her father to take her for a holiday for a week so she gets some quality time with him.  Given all this, I would think that I have a right to be asked before anyone decides to alter the appearance of my child in anyway.  Yes? 

Perhaps I am wrong.  Perhaps paying extra money buys you all the rights that I lovingly work daily to achieve.   Perhaps I am being  “employed” to take care of her like a Nanny and shut my mouth when anyone her father hangs out with decides to mess with her?  Is that how it is?

Man.  I make no secret to him how I feel about his partner.  I think it’s really shitty how he ditched us on so many occassions so he could be with her.  Regardless of how I feel about HER.  I have bit the bullet and worked hard to keep a relationship open between my daughter and her father.   Including asking him to have her for a weeks holiday to bring some quality time into their relationship.  

My efforts are rewarded with the utmost disrespect for the role I play in our daughters life.   I have helped our daughter fill numerous occcassion cards saying ” I love you Daddy.”   This has never been reciprocated.  He once sent me an email that said “..I know you are a good person.”  An icy compliment more suited to a work colleague.   Is it any wonder then that me and other women like me, grow in resentment and venom and relationships such as ours become extremely volatile ending with a court date and the decision of raising a child decided by the governing law of the day?

In my opinion, a few snips of hair is not worth initiating the legal process .. however, her father, who knew this act would hurt me, has openly challenged my role in our daughters life.   And I am left to consider he thinks that cutting her hair is worth courting pain and anger…. and a day in court.

Tonguetiger

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”  ~Elizabeth Stone

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Love Sceptic

Tiger Woods.  The invincible has fallen to his knees because of infidelity.  This event, and the many many others like it.. convince me that my betrothal to being a free spirit; never to be bound to another by a piece of legal paper, a diamond ring and a community blessing; is a good one.  I am sad that I believe in my choice so faithfully.   I wish I had a good reason to break my vows but.. naaah.  

Not so long ago, I remember having this feeling and building my future around this decision and then  .. batta boom batta bang .. the father of my baby shows up!  So I was unfaithful to  my free spirit once.  However, I have a beautiful child as a result but alas … love .. real love like you see in the movies.. alludes me.  Man, I can’t even put myself out there to tempt ‘a situation’.   Or as they say “I can’t get arrested”.  Well no dear.. you can’t get arrested if you don’t commit a crime. 

What really pisses me off is there is a double irony to the unfaithfulness of men and that is.. we women,.. let them do it.  What?  Are you freaking crazy?  I hear you saying this but here is the reality.  If women weren’t so eager to covet what is not theirs .. the infidelity of men would not be happening.  I think that there is a large community of women who get off on stealing a man from another woman.  To prove my point.. my baby’s Dad has moved on.  God bless him… I don’t care.. about HIM or what he does..but I cannot stand HER.  I have such venom for this woman who I have never met and her single crime against me is she made a mockery and a shipwreck of my family.  I don’t really blame HIM because he is a dumb ass and if a single woman makes herself extremely available, I don’t care if you are superman, you are gonna go for it and if you don’t … you are truly an oddity in this universe.

So where does this leave me?  Well… I’m okay.. I know I am ornery and grumpy about love and the situations it can invoke but what about my daughter?  What is she thinking about love?  This is my Mummy, that is my Daddy.  Daddy loves someone else but doesn’t love my Mummy.  How does that work?  This is painful for me as her mother.  I want her to fall inlove one day.  I want her to trust and find a really good life partner but.. I can’t model that for her and neither can her stupid father.  The very fact that he found love while he should have been with us has set a very rocky foundation for my daughters thoughts and opinions on love right from the get go.

This talk is really me thinking out loud because I have no solutions or words of wisdom to share about my predicament.  I just want to say that it sucks. 

Relationships today are soo defunct.  Or that’s how I feel anyway.  I don’t want to be inlove,, and I am not doing anything to court it.  I am the carer of my daughter.  There for her 24/7 .. that’s my most important job.   I just wish the Tiger Woods’ of this world thought so too.

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Michael Laws

I have a massage therapy qualification and during my training I had to learn to ‘read’ a person by looking at their body map.  Quite honestly you don’t need to have a massage qualification to read the body map of Michael Laws.  His eternal grimace and bottomless black eyes say it all.   Clothed in a scarey armour of hatred for the world .. a smile from him  should strike fear into the hearts of many as it probably comes at the cost of making someone else feel small, inferior and unworthy.

And yet, we all experience wearing different hats for different situations in our lives.  Whilst I will be known for my sharp tongue and its lashing at world events that affect me,  I am also a very spiritual person who preaches about always looking for the good in this world and following the path of good self – development under our revered priestess Oprah Winfrey .. God I love her!!  Michael Laws has a heart for his children as we have all read about in the Womens Magazines.   So before I judge ..let’s have a look at some of the facts I know about the Michael Laws debacle thus far. 1/ He wants the spelling of Whanganui to remain as Wanganui. 2/ He believes he has a historical right to keep the ‘h’ out of the name because he researched it through a body of people who had nothing to do with naming it. 3/ He wrote a really nasty reply to school children who had the courage to show their displeasure at his attitude towards things Maori, particularly that he would not acknowledge the Maori origin of the place name for Whanganui.   Hmmm .. not looking good Michael. 

But you know what .. Michael Laws is passionate about his dislikes.  He doesn’t mince words and is as un PC as they come.  Man after my tonguetiger heart.  Dammit, he commits to his view with so much passion and anger it’s hard to separate the two.  But he lost me when he got all weak by putting out his cold hand to have the children from Otaki School come and visit with him in atonement.  This back fired miserably and now he’s skulking because the same kids received an award for hitting goliath in the head.

In my personal mission to have an opinion about all the injustices of this world I have learnt a lot from Michael Laws about what can be effective and what can’t.   Having a tantrum and throwing myself angrily about the room will only bring attention to my behaviour and not the issue I wish to resolve or throw light on.  And then, as universal karma would have it, I happened to see this quote on a friends website that said

“…. The shortest path to ignorance is contempt before examination.” 

Light bulb moment.    Whilst I luuuuurve attention .. I really do want the issues I talk about on this site to have the limelight.  So thank you Michael, you have turned into my most unlikely mentor.  And I just love you for that.

tongue tiger

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Watch what you say and where you say it

Hi there

I had the misfortune of putting my ‘real name’, first and last, on a television commentary website and now my name is forever embedded  with some pretty ‘heavy’ commentary made about a certain politician and a current political situation being experienced in our country.  It’s okay.  I am happy to stick to my convictions in the face of adversity however, I need to be more careful in future .. hence .. the advent of ‘tongue tiger’.    This is my avenue to express my heartfelt feelings about issues in my world with the passion that democracy should allow me to have without persecution.  However, we all now know the dangers of expressing our true feelings on the net and having your real name attached to it for all in sundry to see .. especially when employers use the net vigorously to scavenge information about you and probably using what they find out of context to make judgements about what sort of a person you are.  I happen to think  that there is a raw honesty to be found in the heat of passion.  Brutal words, expletives even, provide the environment of true conviction for the point you wish to make.  But at some stage we do regret when our ‘tongue tiger’ gets out of control and our passionate words can slay a persons ego beyond the point we wished to make in the first place.  I have done that.  Not because I am a callous insensitive cow but because my feelings and beliefs had been hurt so much, I reached around to fashion a quick word fireball and then threw it as hard as I could without really thinking.   I know this about myself and this is why I have chosen to communicate with my baby’s Dad via emails making us responsible and accountable for all we say.  For the most part we stick to the issues at hand and spare our daughter the vitriol of a relationship gone wrong. 

So .. I will share this site with my friends and if others wonder onto this path then .. welcome.  Have an opinion and say what you like .. use your name or not.. just know that the tongue tiger is always crouching, ready to pounce.