“So it is possible then! To be a mother, and to have your dreams?!”
“YES!” I smiled to my young Finnish backpacker friend. I came across Sami upriver in the bush in the middle of nowhere, when I had gone looking for a treasured knife I had left behind on a recent solo kayaking expedition. Sami gave me a lift back to my car and we exchanged life stories in about 20 mins as we bumped along the dirt road in his van. His second-language-summation of my offering made me smile.
In my family, everyone’s dreams are valid. Everyone’s dreams are worthy of equal support. When I gave birth to my sons nearly seven and four years ago, my vision wasn’t vanquished, it slowly began to crystallise. In my journey of identity I realised I didn’t trade my life for each of theirs. I brought life, and it added to mine exponentially. The key I have found, is to dream together, but to take turns bringing individual dreams to fruition. To take turns in the lights, and on the cheer squad.
I’ve been back on the cheer squad supporting my husband and sons for four months now since I completed my personal goal, a 400km solo kayaking expedition navigating one of Australia’s most powerful waterways, the Clarence River. From its source high in the Great Diving Range in QLD to where it empties into the Coral Sea inside the South Pacific Ocean in Northern NSW. For 14 days I sustained my life from the river and the land, and although I didn’t plan it, the kindness of strangers who wanted to give what they could to be a part of my journey. I overcame many challenges to paddle in to the waiting arms of my family, including a fractured arm suffered in an accident on day two of the expedition. The physical and mental challenges were ever present but it was the spiritual and emotional revelations that proved the refining kiln as a woman and mother.
In preparing for this trip I undertook bush survival and navigation courses, spent time learning with indigenous elders and locals, and clocked up countless kilometres on the water kayaking. For two years I grew into the person I needed to be to achieve my dream and my sons were with me almost every step of the way, learning as I was learning, growing as I was growing. It took careful planning, commitment and discipline to create the faith and trust in myself and in the hearts of my family, to make it safely home. I was dropped off in the middle of nowhere in the mountains with very little food and water and fought my way back through some of the thickest, toughest and harshest country Australia has to offer to my home, the sea. While I sat under the stars by my fire every night I wrote in my journal. Among the many reflections and revelations that flowed, several salient lessons came to me which I hope in sharing, are helpfully resonant. Here are 10 things Mother Nature taught me about motherhood:
