To the outside world I had an idyllic childhood. My younger sister and I grew up on a small farm on the Mid-North Coast of NSW. My mother and father had immigrated independently from England and Germany respectively, and met in Sydney. They were both adventurers at heart and initially were not planning on having children. My father was very keen to have a daughter however and I was born when my mother was 40. …
Growing up I was securely oriented in a small Pennsylvanian town, with a loving family and little church, where my dad was the pastor. My world was safe and it made sense. I trusted in the goodness of God and the future. When I was 18 years old, I found my way to a small liberal arts college, where I studied the Bible. I fully expected that these studies would increase my confidence in God’s …
In 2013, I started working for a fitness apparel company. I was immediately attracted to, border line obsessed with, the organization’s culture of goal setting. Upon being hired, each employee was given a packet of questions and a goal coaching session. The packet contained questions like ‘what would you do if you could not fail?’ or ‘if money were no object, what would you do for work?’ and my favorite, ‘write a 10-year vision for …
When I was 10 years old, my sisters and I were sent to live with my grandfather and his second wife, Nanna, for a couple of months, whilst my mother was in hospital. Nanna was the librarian at the local Catholic Primary School and so we became students there. Apart from the normal adjustments involved in changing schools, the move also meant that, for the first time, we were exposed to Roman Catholicism. This proved …
From as far back as I can remember I have felt lost and unwanted. I was born in Vietnam in 1991. My parents were not married and my father tried to convince my mother to have an abortion. My mother refused. She wanted to give me life. When I was nine months old my mother and I moved to Russia. When I was five my mother met my step-father and they decided to have a …
