A Valentines Read: Aphrodite by Isabel Allende

the only truly infallible aphrodisiac... is love At first glance you may expect Aphrodite to be a fictional retelling of the life of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, long associated with love and lust, beauty and passion. I know that I was probably thinking that when I first picked up this book at a Lifeline Bookfest …

REDFEB 2023 – Wearing Red for Heart Disease

February is heart month. Traditionally it is the month for celebrating Valentines Day, which makes it also strangely appropriate for Heart Research Australia’s major fundraising campaign called REDFEB. Both Valentines and REDFEB are concerned with the heart and with love. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Australia and annually takes over 18, …

Twenty Years

Grief is the price we pay for love. Queen Elizabeth II The 31st of January is no ordinary day for us. It is a day of memory and loss, grief and love. On this day, twenty years ago, our lives were changed forever. My husband Rob, the father of Dan and Bec, died suddenly from …

Not the Best of Times

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it …

A Sadder Mothers’ Day This Year

This week our dear mother and grandmother, Joy, passed away in the early hours of Wednesday morning with her lifelong partner and dearly loved husband, Hedley, by her side. It was only just Mothers’ Day last year that I wrote about her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. It seems sadly bittersweet then, that this Mothers’ Day …

Hemingway in Love: His Own Story

Scott said, step easy, I was walking on eggshells. He quoted an old piece of wisdom: ‘A man, torn between two women, will eventually lose ‘em both.’ I said yes I was torn but that I needed both of them and I intended to keep them, somehow. Scott said I was a sad son of …

Family Matters

This weekend many families around Australia will be celebrating Mother's Day. Mums of all ages will be receiving breakfast in bed, bunches of flowers, boxes of chocolates and expressions of undying gratitude for their never-ending love and care. It is a beautiful celebration of gratitude for the important women in our lives. It is also …

#BookSnapSunday – Lady Audley’s Secret

Love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by every one except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is the perfect book for Valentine’s Day - love, deception, conspiracy, …

Hope in the Midst of Pain

 The New Year is just around the corner and I imagine there are many of us who cannot wait to see the end of 2020. The Corona Virus has delivered a major hit to our communities and our way of life during this year and our New Year celebrations will be no different. Large gatherings …

#BookSnapSunday – Recipes from my Grossmutter

Today’s Book Snap is inspired by Rowena from Beyond the Flow, who recently wrote about Christmas Traditions and her grandmother’s Honey Biscuit recipe. Honey Biscuits are a Christmas Tradition in my family too. We both have German ancestry, and quite freakishly, own the same little cookbook pictured above - Recipes from my Grossmutter (grandmother). The …