Ok, Let Me Start Somewhere Around the Middle…

So, what I’ve told you all so far is that I’m about to embark on a life changing expedition. Not so much a journey of “self discovery”, I’m pretty sure I’ve already travelled that path. In fact, I’m pretty sure that was the path that led me to where I am today.

I don’t feel I need to go back to the beginning to tell you about my childhood, my awkward and ugly teenage years or to tell you my entire life history. Mostly because I don’t think it’s relevant. Sure our childhood has an impact on who we become as adults, but we also make choices as adults every single day on who we choose to be and how we allow our pasts to shape us. I also believe there’s a lot of danger in allowing ourselves to excuse certain behaviours and crutches we develop as adults, because X or Y happened at a tender age and scarred us irreparably (nonsense!).

I’m allowing myself the luxury of sharing only this millennium which is convenient – because that’s where the real story starts. Around the dawn of the new millennium I had recently moved to Victoria. I was working as a prison officer at Melbourne’s notorious Custody Centre. Situated under the Melbourne Magistrates Court, underground, with no natural light and painted throughout a nauseous shade of yellow – hence acquiring the moniker of “the yellow submarine”.

I could easily write an entire book of what goes on in that place, and if you think criminals are corrupt you ain’t seen nothing until you’re a female working in a private correctional facility in Australia. Whether you believe that basic human rights should be extended to prisoners or not is irrelevant to me. I have been a victim of violent crime on more than one occasion, and I’ve spent 12 hour shifts underground with dozens of rapidly detoxing drug addicts in close confines. I’ve seen young men draw their last breathes in front of me without being able to save them and I’ve witnessed out of session court hearings with pedophiles – I’ve also seen what happens to them during strip search. I’ve seen cells being used to accommodate the overflow from the mental health system and disabled teenagers ridiculed and humiliated.

I have seen the very worst in human nature – and I can tell you it resides on both sides of the cell door. As a parent, it makes you very wary of where your children are, who they are with and what they are doing. I am a painfully protective parent, as any of my children would tell you. But I have very good reason.

While taking maternity leave from the centre, my son with Aspergers Syndrome started school. We never expected him to last in a mainstream school, and burdened with encopresis (fecal incontinence) he struggled for many years, whilst I was often called to assist with him at the school. It was around this time that I realised that working 12 hour shifts 1.5hours away from home wasn’t going to allow me to be available to my special needs children. I needed a home based business so I could make money and still be a mother to, at that stage, 7 children.

From the scraps of fabric left over from my wedding dress, I started sewing bits and pieces and started a little business called The Australian Wedding Company – over the coming years I built this business into the largest retailer of wedding merchandise in Australia, expanding from online to bricks and mortar and planning some of the largest, most expensive and extravagant weddings the country has ever seen.

Before I knew it this award winning business had employed dozens of staff, engaged 80+ suppliers and had a product range into the 10′s of thousands. This whirlwind experience was intoxicatingly exciting and addictive – to the point that I travelled through 2 pregnancies, births and infancies without taking more than 48 hours off work. Hello, me! I’d totally missed the point and was now dealing on a daily basis with more and more spoilt princesses who appreciated none of my efforts and could easily waste thousands of dollars to get exactly what they wanted, without any concern for the environment.

I’m on public record as saying this in the past in newspaper and radio interviews, but I have no problem in saying it again. I would rather deal with 100 prisoners than a single bride. I’m generalising here of course, and there are women in the world that can exchange nuptials without turning into moronic beasts but there’s something that switches in women’s minds when they get an engagement ring. At least criminals generally follow some basic rules of “engagement” that allow them to afford some level of respect and decency to their fellow man.

Around 2006 a friend of mine, a mother of 7, lost a child to Coronary Heart Disease. I spent some time helping her with a charity that she started in his honour and held my own children in an even higher light of love and protection than ever before.  My business was in the height of it’s success and my customer service staff were coming to me several times a day with frivolous requests from customers to which I found myself answering “tell her there are children dying in the world”. To their credit, they never did relay that message, but dealt with the customers needs the best they could. This is probably the time that I realised I was in the wrong industry. If you’ve ever wondered why things are so expensive in the bridal industry – it’s called “danger money”.

At the end of 2008 I moved from Victoria to Queensland to put some distance between myself and the business and get new perspective in my life. In June 2009, I handed TAWC over to my best buddy and long-suffering employee and walked away. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. Carol is now reshaping TAWC and I’m sure she will do a better job at keeping it in perspective than I did. If you need anything for a wedding, new baby or an special event, you won’t get better service anywhere than from Carol. She’s a remarkable human being.

So, there’s the background… what will happen next? *gasp* The excitement builds LOL.

Never lose sight of the big picture… and more importantly, make sure you understand what the picture actually is.

Here's my "Big Picture" - what's yours?