👋 Well Hi!
Welcome to my first monthly missive! I don't really want to call it a newsletter. I am not giving you the news...perhaps I will call it the Curiosity Chronicles. How does that sound?
I want to create a space to interact with you, my readers, to learn from you as you maybe learn from me, outside of the hustle and bustle of social media. A place that is ours. I will share material in here that is not shared elsewhere on my social media pages or blogs. Definitely no AI.. just me rambling on, being curious about stuff and asking silly questions. Creativity is an exchange, not just a one way pipe, so I am hoping you will jump into the comments section and say hello, perhaps introduce yourselves! Tell me where you're from and what makes you curious.
The plan is to let out some of the weird stuff trapped in my head, to connect some dots and see if any of it resonates with you.
Thank you for reading!
🤑 About the paid option
I decided to offer voluntary paid subscriptions as a way for you to support my work if you feel like it even if you don't wish to buy my art or anything else I may offer. Both paid and unpaid subscriptions will have access to all content.
Eventually I hope to offer some added special content for paid subscribers, but while I find my feet and we get to know each other everything will remain free. Whatever you choose, I am so happy to have you here!
🤨 Have I told you I'm writing a book?
Some of you will already know that I am married to a Royal Marine, which has meant that I have had to learn how to figure out life and our relationship through the ups and downs of military service and long periods of separation.
Finding help to acclimate to military life isn't easy, and our circumstances meant that I didn't have the benefit of a community of other people in the same situation to call on for advice. Mr Collier was well and truly entrenched and wasn't really in a position to help, aside from being away almost immediately. We were not learning the ins and outs of it all together. I had to figure it out for myself so that I could know which way was up and support him when required. So I did what any self-respecting modern woman would do. I hit the internet...with stunningly poor results. Not quite as bad as consulting Dr Google, but it was not fabulous.
I hunted around for guidance and found there was not a lot available to tell me how to navigate a relationship with a Marine or indeed with the Royal Marines as an organisation. But why would I need to know how to have a relationship with the Royal Marines machine, I hear you ask? I was surprised to discover that when you marry the Marine, you also marry the machine. To bastardise a quote from Princess Diana, there are three of us in this marriage. It is always there, and always takes precedence. They step in an ruin your plans without a second thought. I had to get used to not being the one calling the shots.
I found blogs and businesses that talked about the logistics of moving, how to manage kids and jobs, and how to start your own small enterprise to support your household income when you move around a lot, but that's about it. Everything was within the context of a life role. Mother, worker, household logician. But nothing for the human who loves a Marine and wants to stay that way.
There was a lot from the US perspective, but UK partners seemed more reluctant about sharing their experiences. Was it a keep calm and carry on thing? Was it an ultra cautious approach to security considerations? Perhaps my Australian-ness meant that I was searching for the wrong things? I don't know.
My heart sank, and I felt adrift with no idea where to turn. How on earth would I figure all this out? I was not one to go with the flow back then, I like to know what's going on and eliminate surprises where I can.
There were, of course, the usual guides for how to seek help via official channels and through various charities and support services, but these too seemed to focus on logistics, and the few relationship pointers were for how to manage divorce and domestic abuse. Not great!
A sense of foreboding, deep anxiety and heaviness built up in my chest as I scoured the official sites. What on earth had I got myself in to? What were the chances of our relationship surviving my Marine's career, let alone growing and thriving as we got older? How many marriages had crumbled and dissolved under the pressure of this life of service that they needed to put this type of advice front and centre? Perhaps I was too naive? Anecdotally, the Royal Marines have a lower rate of relationship breakdowns and divorce than other parts of the military, but I didn't find that out until much later. That would have been reassuring to know earlier!
These resources are important, of course, but the again, they were not what I was looking for. There was nothing to help me understand what I was walking into from a partner's perspective. I needed to hear from others who had been there and done that. Someone to help me navigate around and through the emotional potholes. (I had 'dodge' in there in an early draft, but I can tell you, there's no dodging the emotional impacts of being a military spouse.) I wanted to be sure I had the tools required to make this work, after all this was the bloke I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and I knew that he was not going to be serving actively in the Royal Marines forever. We had to make it to the other end in one piece. So where else could I look?
I also found a couple of forums around the place but even those rely on you knowing what questions to ask, which is not at all helpful if you really don't know where to start or what challenges you might face. Perhaps some of these things are spoken about behind closed doors around the world where partners gather, but they certainly weren't accessible to newbies like me. If my experience is anything to go by, I suspect some find it difficult to open up and ask difficult questions for fear of looking silly, or perhaps those we think may reflect badly on us or our partner, particularly in the early days. It's intimidating breaking into the ranks of people who have been there and done that!
So, how are we to manage ourselves and our relationship in all of this? We are told how to manage the household or how to navigate the organisation in a logical sense, or what to do if things go bad in your relationship. How do we manage ourselves so that we can support our partner and our relationship in this unusual circumstance, and perhaps support other partners int he same situation if we can? How do we manage missing him when he's away for months on end? How do we cope with him being hurt when we cannot be there to tend his wounds? How do we know what he will be like when he returns having seen all manner of horrendous things? How do we prepare for the possibility that he may be killed? How do we cope when he's just not behaving or sounding like himself on the other end of the phone? What do we do when our worry spirals out of control?
These are all things that can put pressure on a relationship and indeed break it if you are not prepared or have an innate resilience; so we need to research and learn what we need to do to thrive in this environment.
Being a Royal Marine is not your average job and being the partner of one is certainly not your average relationship. It's no better or worse than any other, of course, it's just very different, and I just had no frame of reference to settle it into.
So.. I decided to write the book that I was in need of in the early days. Tips and tricks for understanding the military life framework as well as my tool box for how to cope with the separation, injuries, minimal communication and the mindset required to not only survive, but to thrive.
I have a super crappy first draft done, and now I am on to the first of the edits. Why am I telling you this? Because I hope that sharing my writing journey with you will give me the accountability that I need to crack on and get it done. Writing is one of those things that I haven't typically made a lot of time for. Why would I when there is art to be made and cats to play with? My goal is to have the whole thing in a state where I can hire an editor by the end of the year. Can I do it? I will try!!!
✍️ Things I hit publish on this month
🌳 My wrap up of last year's word of the year - PRESENCE
🐢 Introducing my word for this year - SLOW
🔟 My favourite art pieces from last year
🦆 Sketching in the city with the Canberra Urban Sketchers
💜 Here are some things I liked this month and thought you might too
Artist With Alzheimer's Drew Self Portraits For 5 Years h/t Danny Gregory
I am reading an essayette each day from this little book, and I am loving it - The book of Delights
Live A Happier, Healthier Life By Embracing Awe (noemamag.com)
Introduce yourselves in the comments and let me know what you think.