Mel Of Bacchus

I have learned a lot over my 36 years on this earth and there are a few things I know for certain. Here are my top 10..

1. You are who you hang around with. This is a statement my father would say to me when I was around 13 years old. He would then say, “You hang around with shit, you will be shit” and “You will be tarnished with the same brush as the shit you hang around”. This statement always stuck with me and in different parts of my life I would really check myself in who I would hang around with. I tried to surround myself with good people with good morals, principles and values but there were times like when I was on the streets when I did hang around with “shit” and was tarnished with the same brush by police and people in the community.
2. Who you think are your friends are not always your friends. This statement first came from my Mother when I was around 15 and I was still figuring out whom my true friends were in high school. But this stayed with me into adulthood and sure enough I was absolutely effed over by people I considered more than friends, people who became like family to me. How wrong I was to trust these people as much as I did.
3. Life is lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. This was told to me by the father of one of my foster mothers when I was 14 years old. I never understood what that fully meant at the time as I was young. But now I get it.. As I try and make sense of the things I’ve been through in not just my own life but the lives of my parents, and grandparents, things are finally becoming clearer in the reasons why they did the things they did and why I do the things I do.
4. I am an overcomer. When I was in year 10 I started attending a Bible study group and when sharing with the group of girls bits about my life at that time, my youth leader told me that I was an overcomer. This was relayed again to me by her when she attended my wedding in 2012. I can now confirm this statement, I’m not a victim of everything I’ve been through. I am an overcomer!
5. My happiness is my responsibility. This was said to me by one of my housing workers when I was 17yo. I mean I get it, we all get stuck sometimes feeling negative, thinking negative, I call it a “funk”. Sometimes we feel so sad that nothing and no one can cheer us up! But what I’ve learned is that my happiness is my responsibility and I can change the way I feel at any time. I can sit in a funk, hating myself, my situation, people around me and whinge and whine about it all.. or.. I can start by recognising the good in my life, the blessings, the people I make proud and lift myself out of the things that are painful and hard to deal with and direct my life into a more positive direction and mindset. I truly believe that I am and always will be the creator of my own happiness.
6. Love conquers all. And I’m not just meaning the Bible version they taught us in Sunday school, I mean that’s true too, but I’m talking about the kind of love we give ourselves and the love found in that special someone whom allows us the ability to experience peace and comfort in their presence. I mean yes, we were taught that love is patient, love is kind etc. but I think I would have learned quicker had the Bible stated something like “love doesn’t start an argument when your just trying to express how you’re feeling and leave you sitting alone for hours while they leave and switch their phone off” or “love will always look at ways to improve and work on a difficult situation, not make it harder and force you to deal with it on your own”. Had these two lines been in the Bible I probably would have never had my first two children or got married. But that all can’t be changed now. Finding David later in life really has shown me that the Bible verse about love can and is able for to be carried out in a relationship. No matter how hard life has got for us in our nearing 5 years together, love has actually conquered all.
7. Kids come first. This was another saying that my Mum used to say growing up, that kids should always come first and for many years, we did.. until we didn’t. Although Mum and Dad both become selfish in putting their wants and needs before those of us kids, I have always lived by this rule. My kids have always come first. My job as a mother came under two rules.. “I am to give my kids what they need not what they want” and “my job as a mother is to prepare my kids for the next stage of their life.” Both of these probably came from either Dr Phil or Super Nanny Jo Frost, but have been paramount in the way I have raised my kids thus far. I am proud to say that to date, I am proud to be a part of every aspect of my children’s upbringing and have enjoyed watching them grow and reach all their achievements and milestones. Motherhood for me was about ensuring my kids had a better upbringing than me. Tick ✔️
8. Death is Inevitable. I bet everyone listing their answers today have written something about death as we all know it is inevitable.
9. Where there is deep grief there was deep love. This sentence came to me one day in a quote on Instagram not long after I lost my Dad. This comforted me in so many ways. My heart was still so raw with heartbreak and I still found myself crying at the thought of never seeing or hearing him again. I still needed him, his advice and wisdom. But coming to terms that he was just one day here and the next day completely gone just shattered me again and again. I realised that my pain was the love that had no where to go now. As I comforted my children that their grandfather now lives on in them, I felt like I lost everything I was the day I lost my Dad. I’ll elaborate on that in a future post.
10. No matter where God puts us, it’s up to us how we choose to live. This is my most favourite quote to date! It came from an old Amish movie I watched in my 20s and it really resonated with me. In every part of my life whether I was on the streets, in foster homes, group homes or living with or without parters or parents, it’s been ultimately my choice on how I have chosen to carry myself. I am lucky to have had good people to support and care for me in my times of need and share and show me a different way of life than what I was raised in. I will always be thankful for them. But through life’s hardest of times I have always done what I think is right for me and those around me (aka my brother or children). I live by all the decisions I’ve made, at the time choices had to be made and I made them.. I did so with the purest of intentions and only with the knowledge I had at the time but to this day I regret nothing! No matter where God put me, it was up to me how I chose to live..