I'm not going to say much here, because a lot of what I want to say probably belongs in the post I'll write when I leave Australia, but suffice to say, I feel pretty lucky. I got to stand on the balcony of my gorgeous apartment, surrounded by my friends (who, honest to God, chose to be there with me), and watch the new year begin in a completely different country and continent.

I can honestly say I'll remember that for the rest of my life, and I hope I have many more experiences like that to come. I hope 2018 treats us all better than 2017 did, and if not, I hope we all treat ourselves better. 2018 is still pretty unplanned for me, so let's see where it goes from here!

Aside from that, I'm pretty excited to be starting rehearsals for First Date tomorrow! Mostly excited, but also pretty nervous, since it's been ages since I've had to memorise this many lines at once. Everyone cross their fingers for me, please!

Aside from that, it's looking like the rest of my time in Sydney will be spent working, rehearsing, and getting out to the beach when I can in the meantime. I'm pretty sure I'll be teased within an inch of my life if I don't come back at least a bit less pale than I normally am.

Until next time!

#kiwisareripe: We came back from New Zealand and it accidentally made me even more homesick for Canada... oops?

1400km later and our trip is done! I can hardly believe it myself, but for something we planned so last minute, we had a blast. Come in and see some photos that didn't make it to instagram and also the quickest and worst video montage set to Lorde ever (I'm not kidding I did it in an hour last night).

Rowena Holiday: the last update before I spend 23 hours on a plane back to Sydney

It seems hardly real that I'm writing this post, finally, but here we are. I'm headed back home on Thursday to Sydney and a (somewhat) regular life again.

salut, Paris!: turns out everyone here does actually hate my accent.

Hello, bonjour!

winning london pt 1: twenty-three hours of travel later...

I made it to London! Only keep reading if you want to hear me whine about the amount of babies and sitting I just did.

A Quiet Night at Home: it's about to get real Bare

This is gonna get real weird and uncomfortably emotional so I'd just skip this post if you're not into that kind of thing. Of course, come right on in if you're all about that gross uncomfortable emotional shit.

the tiniest of updates for the longest of absences

Uh, hey. I'm still around. It turns out that living in a new city means you're stupid busy.

So let's have an update, shall we?

Happy Mother's Day!

‘Mom, how do I hand-wash my clothes? What do I separate?’

I’m frantically texting my mother; for some reason, we weren’t given a key to the laundry room in our apartment building, and we won’t get one for at least another week. The ever-growing pile in my laundry basket  reminds me that I don’t have a week, in fact I ran out of clean clothing this morning.

But it’s seven o’clock at night, which means it’s two o’clock in the morning in Vancouver, and my mother is asleep. I have vague memories of her in our bathroom, gently telling me how to wash my underwear and jeans, and I brushed her off with vague mumbles of understanding.

If my mother was anyone but my mother, she’d be laughing at me.

My phone lights up only twenty minutes later with a response from her; like some motherly Bat Signal, she woke up in the middle of the night to get water and replied to me.

‘Hi sweetie. Separate your underwear and use a bar of soap on them, it’ll go faster. Soak everything else in hot water for an hour and then rinse and repeat. Love you, going to bed again. xoxoxo’

I breathe a sigh of relief; she hasn’t told me anything I couldn’t google, and yet her instructions are clearer to me than anything I’ve ever read. It’s as if they’re spoken in a secret language between me and her—like she knows I’d been staring in defeat at the pile of clothing in front of me, unsure of where to start.

Not very many people know this (not because I hide it or anything), but I was in foster care when I was five until I was seven years old. My mother, a single parent, couldn’t care for me for two weeks—my understanding is that she was having surgery and needed time for recovery.

No one in my family stepped up to take me. My father could have solved all of this with a simple decision, but he said no.

But, as usual, this isn’t about him. It never is or was.

My mother turned to government care. It would only be for two weeks, she was assured, and she rested easy knowing I was in a good home while she recuperated.

But when the time came to take me back, something went wrong. I don’t know that I’ll ever know the details—maybe they felt like they were acting in my best interest, and maybe there was no malicious intent. But the result was that I ended up in care for two years while my mother went insane over court documents trying to get me back.

When she finally did (and of course she did), it was only up from there. I got back into francophone school and salvaged what I’d lost of my native language, French, and had a good home and friends and never wondered why my mother called the school about field trips sometimes, or why some other kids got hot lunches but I never did. It was an unspoken pact—money just wasn’t in my life, but that was okay, because I had my mom.

I’m not here to tell you my life story, or romanticise my relationship with my mother; the fact is, that took a toll on it. Of course it did. To tell everyone I have this magical relationship with her would be a lie.

But to act as if it isn’t a relationship founded on a fierce desire to protect one another from the world would be, too.

Single mothers have the most unique, powerful bond I’ve ever come across. It’s a bond that comes from having the entire focus of your world in one thing: keeping your child happy and alive. And you know what? That’s a hard fucking job. Kids are hard enough with both parents, but if you take away the extra support and income, then it becomes near impossible.

Before I left I never imagined that I’d feel different about my mother—I’d already been living away from her for a while. But, well, I guess I never realised how much of my life I’d built up around her, and how much of herself she’d poured into me to make sure I could do things like this.

I guess this is my other open love letter to my mother: without her, I would not be the person I am today. I can’t imagine it was ever easy to raise a precocious brat like me on her own, and I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to work full-time while doing it. I’m across the Pacific Ocean right now, and yet I know that I could call her at two o’clock in the morning and she would be there for me.

So here’s to the single mothers out there: you, working two jobs, or a graveyard shift, or maybe just barely getting by because it’s hard to do all of this at once. And you making sure your child eats before you, and they have clothes, and maybe they don’t have the exact brand name that’s popular right now but they have one that’s pretty close.

From one child of a single mother to you all: we don’t see the weathered hands or the weary eyes, and we never see an empty fridge or care that the hot water got turned off (that’s what kettles are for!). We see a full heart, and a smiling face, and warm arms, and we know safety and love.

And let me tell you, that’s what I hold onto when I’m away from my mother, nothing more.

I'm alive! Though the heat might kill me.

Oh my God, you guys. It's been a week today since I left. Sort of, time zones are weird. Anyway, our internet finally started working like two days ago so here is my first week recap! This update is gonna be a long one, so buckle up, kiddies.

On sisters and happiness and knowing I can always come home.

So, it's here.

Goodbye, Squamish; Hello, Vancouver!

I dunno if you guys know this, but I've been living in Squamish for the last ten or so months trying to save up money for this trip. And in the mean time, I got to do things like:

It's a month until I leave, but also-- IT'S A MONTH UNTIL I LEAVE?!

I'm only a few weeks away from leaving and I'm already starting to get the jitters! Now that my ticket and insurance is bought, and that I've actually officially planned a 'going away' party of sorts, it's all becoming a bit more real than I thought it would.

Honestly, I'm still the most worried about the spiders.

I guess the big question is, why am I going? And you know, shit, I have no idea either. I guess it's just a desire to be somewhere that I have no history for a while, just to see who I am without it.