Read: The Fire and The Water

I don’t trust the title of this book anymore. For a long time, The Fire and The Water felt right. It gave shape to things that were overwhelming. It made intensity feel meaningful. Now I’m not so sure. I’m starting to wonder if fire and water were never the problem. If naming them that way was just a way to avoid looking at something deeper and harder to admit. I wasn’t drowned. I wasn’t forged. I wasn’t even changed in the dramatic way I once believed. I was hiding. Not all

Travis was never a gypsy. That was the disguise I wrapped him in so I didn’t have to call him what he was. He appeared when it suited him. Disappeared when it didn’t. Never stayed long enough to be known. Never left long enough to be free of. Just enough to keep my heart from healing back inside my chest. I told myself he was a free spirit. That he lived lightly. That his absence meant complexity, not avoidance. Sometimes I messaged him — not because he was the only one who u

I went into labour nine days before I let myself give birth. My body knew what my mind refused to admit:  I wasn’t safe yet. Every night the contractions started, sharp and insistent, and every night I clamped down on them with the kind of strength you only find when you’re cornered.  Not here.  Not now.  Not with him in the house.  Not while danger breathed on the other side of the wall. I paced the hallway in the dark, fists pressed into my ribs, whispering bargains to a c

INTERLUDE: THE PLACE I COULDN’T LEAVE Until Pebblestone, I could always run. If something became unbearable, I escaped. My father’s property. My marriage. The caravan. Sydney. The entire east coast of Australia. There was always somewhere else to go. Some version of reinvention waiting on the other side of endurance. Leaving was how I survived. But Pebblestone was different. By the time I arrived there, escape was no longer an option. I had two children, a mortgage, and a bod