HW : What drives you to keep going ? It ’ s a certainty , knowing that we move towards our dream each day ; I couldn ’ t move back to Australia now . I love our life here in Italy , not knowing what each day will bring , sharing with guests and readers of the blog , having people tell me that we inspire them to follow their own dream – all of these and more keep me passionate , keep me going through the tough times .
HW : Who do you admire ? What motivates you ? Why ? Without question the person who I admire most in the world is my Mum . She has such an inner strength , and is fiercely independent . My Dad died very suddenly just before Christmas when I was four years old ; he was only thirty-eight . He left a widow with three children ; myself , my brother then eight , and my older brother aged twelve .
Many years later she married again , to a man who had a gambling problem . We lost our house , our pets and our innocence , and my Mum was forced to declare bankruptcy . Once she took a quiz in a magazine related to things that are stressful and she had been through them all including the death of my brother five years ago and the death of our son in 2000 .
HW : How do you re-energise when you feel yourself slipping ? For me it ’ s all in the small moments ; to re-energise I like to wander , to notice the world , the people , the daily little things going on around me . Often if I ’ m feeling down I ’ ll sit in my favourite café and just people-watch and write , creating little stories about the people that catch my eye . Connection is my way to re-energise ; connection with nature , with life , with the little moments of my life , to be outside in
Carina , Sam and Flume the dog .
the sunshine , to slow down , to sit back and quietly watch life going on around me .
HW : What have you shed from your life that you were happy to see go ? How did you do that ? Looking back on our life in Australia I see how tied up we all were with ‘ the system ’. I spent much of my time in large shopping centres , and I could wander for hours window shopping ( we never had any spare money ). My husband had a nine-to-five job that he wanted to escape ; our children were slipping away into the school system that I felt had no interest in their unique talents . In fact when I asked one of our son ’ s teachers how he was doing at school her reply was that “ he is going steadily backwards ”. After that I knew our move to Italy was the right thing to do .
HW : What gives you the greatest satisfaction now ? My greatest satisfaction would be watching
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