The Mother Media (TMM) is about promoting the Awesome Aussie Mummy Bloggers. We want to get the inside scoop. We want to get to know the writer behind the words. We want to hear their backstories.
I am so thrilled to have the amazingly talented Tiff of My Three Ring Circus today!
Tiff with her daughter Ivy
Tell us about yourself in the Before Children era.
I’m not sure I remember a time before kids!
Let’s see, I was a shy kid. I grew up in an abusive home, with my brother and sister and my parents. My mother was great and my father was not. I think my childhood was a little all over the place but essentially I was an okay person. Often teased beyond belief, it wasn’t until I hit the middle of High School that I found my feet.
I was always big on drama and dancing and singing and I loved being part of Scouting. Anything I could do to escape home life, really.
That’s where I met David. It was all very sordid at the time but I followed my then boyfriend to his Rover group because he would not spend time with me, I thought I would join in, so then he couldn’t use that as an excuse! I had gone through the whole of the Girl Guide system and was a Brownie leader, so Scouting was kind of like a sideways step.
David was there.
He was shy and kind and sweet.
We started hanging out more and more because the boyfriend was off doing his own thing (I’m sure it was Dungeons and Dragons conventions and the like, heh heh, what can I say? I have a penchant for the geek).
One thing led to another and well, we just moved beyond friendship.
Of course, I was still officially going out with the boyfriend so there was big scandal amongst the scouting circles! LOL! Me, a two timer!!
It really wasn’t like that at all. Dave was there when my whole world was imploding. My father was awful, my brother died from a drug overdose and my sister was into drugs too, in a big way. My mother couldn’t cope and one day packed up everything and left the family home.
He was so loving and gentle and so unlike anyone I had ever met and nothing like my father at all.
I finished year 12 and went onto uni to do a psychology degree but I hated it, so I did my childcare certificate instead but that didn’t hold my attention for long. I went into nursing and found that I really loved it. Of course, by then Dave and I were married (I married young, I was just 20) and Immy and Maddy came into my life when I was almost 24. After a while I went on to become a midwife and that is where I really felt I belonged. I loved being with families as they welcomed their babies into the world. I loved everything about it and I miss it every day.
When did you start your blog?
I started blogging in March, 2007. It seems so long ago now, although I know there are bloggers out there who have been writing much longer.
I guess my blog started out more like a diary, where I talked about the little things that were going on. I wanted to chronicle life, so the kids could look back on it one day. I never imagined people would read it and that people would comment. When I started nobody knew about blogging and when I spoke about my new hobby, friends and family would look at me like I was something from a Sci Fi convention.
My blog has changed alot, for different reasons.
Now I use less words, I was quite long winded when I started! Also, I think I have a writing style now, whereas before I didn’t. It was more conversational.
I guess it’s like everything, there is an evolution. My subject matter is still the same though.
I haven’t changed the look of the blog for quite some time (quietly, I think it might be time to shake things up from that perspective).
When I started blogging it was less interactive and I would never have dreamed of raising money for a worthy cause or raising awareness about something – both of these are things I’ve done this year.
What made you finally decide to start a blog?
In 2004, my son William died and in 2005 Ivy and Noah came along.
With the grief of losing Will
mixed in with the responsibility of two premature babies,
I fell into this horrible post natal depression.
I had been journalling since William died but one day Dave suggested I start a blog.
I’d never heard of such a thing.
He found a free platform and set me up.
He said it was an easy way to journal and document my feelings
and that is how I started.
It was for therapy purposes.
What do you love the most about blogging?
There is so much I love about blogging.
Firstly, it’s the community.
We live in a very small part of NSW and Ivy is immune deficient, so we are very isolated from ‘real life’.
I love that I can write my heart out on the blog and feel carried by all of the amazing people out there.
I might be on my own in the physical sense but I am never really alone.
When you are dealing with things that seem overwhelming, it’s nice to know there are people out there who care.
I also love that I can use blogging as therapy, to push words out into the universe is very comforting for me.
It’s an out, if you like, a way to process things.
I love the creative aspect of blogging,
I can write and take photos and express myself in a way that I often find difficult in society.
I’m a shy person at heart and I have terrible phone skills
but when I write I am definitely more eloquent and confident.
I like being able to be that person,
if only through words.
What do you hate the most about blogging?
I think it’s the nasty people out there, the trolls, if you will.
They come along and make hurtful, sweeping statements and I find it really hard to shake those off.
I guess it’s easy to feel that you are in some kind of competition with other bloggers too and that gets me down sometimes.
I don’t like feeling that I can’t keep up with all the new things that are happening in the blogging community.
How do you handle the trolls on your blog?
It depends, you know?
Sometimes, I just let it go but that is extremely hard to do for me.
I might debrief on twitter or to a few other bloggers, who I have come to see as my friends.
Sometimes, I write them an email, answering their accusations or thanking them for their point of view and letting them know I will give it the consideration it deserves. That’s tricky though because then they have my email address and it sometimes makes them think that they can then pound me into the ground with horrible and hurtful words.
Other times, I will blog about it.
If I’m really upset by something or if I can’t work through it on my own, I’ll put it out there – like the time one troll suggested that I killed William and was now trying to do the same thing with Ivy, or the time I was told I was selfish for not considering that Doctors had better things to do than worry about my child.
It’s hard to deal with and I have come close to shutting the whole blog down because of them.
With 7 children, how do you find the time to blog?
A good question.
I’m kind of a fly by the seat of my pants girl. I don’t really commit to number of hours and I’ll draft posts that then end up staying just that.
I usually blog either very early in the morning or late at night, when everyone is asleep or settled, although if something is rumbling around in my head, I might just write it out then and there.
I have bad times, where so much is happening, I can’t see my way to blogging and then I have weeks when everything just comes easily.
I think I probably average a post every second day and it depends on the post as to how much time I spend on it.
Again somedays, the words come easily and others, I struggle to express myself.
Posts with lots of photos in them take the longest, sometimes four hours and I don’t like to sit on a post, once I’ve started it.
I tend to finish and publish it, rather than leave it overnight because I’m very critical of my own work and more often than not, if I sit on a post, I end up deleting it.
The best thing is that the kids all support my blogging, in fact one has taken it up herself.
They love to look back on the entries and they’ll often come in and ask me to read a post to them.
Tell us about Team Ivy.
I would love to tell you about Team Ivy!
Ivy is my daughter. She has an immune deficiency, which means she can’t mount a response to infection, like you or I.
She spends so much time in the hospital, that she often refers to it as home.
I often get emails from people, who follow Ivy’s story. They want to donate money and send gifts to her and to our family. They want to be able to help us in some way. I’ve always thanked them but could not accept because I felt we always had enough. Gifts have snuck through though!
I will always be so grateful to those people who have brightened up my life (and all of the family’s) with their goodness and overwhelming generosity. It really is so amazing to know that there are such kind people out there.
Last March, we had to spend two weeks in the little medical ward that Ivy stays in. We are always in an isolation room and the bed was quite rundown. I learnt that there were some rooms without beds at all and that I was one of the lucky parents. It was not the hospital’s fault. They always did the very best they could. I mentioned it on twitter and people started emailing me, telling me I should ask for donations.
I’d never ever done anything like that before
but David’s work also had a charity pool, where they would donate to the employees charity of choice and so the seed was planted and
Team Ivy was born.
On the first day that I opened up donations, we had an amazing response! People from all over the world donated and tweeted and blogged about it.
I was totally blown away.
People started offering their services as prizes for donation
and then companies started coming on board.
Nuffnang offered to donate the last $500 when we reached $4500!
In less than three months we had reached the first goal of $5000, most of the donations had come from bloggers and our wonderful online community.
It was humbling and at a time when there is so much financial difficulty and hardship, people still donated.
Humanity at its greatest.
After that, our local community joined in and the High School that my older children go to had a Team Ivy Day. With their help, we raised another $2600.
Team Ivy finished in September, although donations are still coming in, we’ve already raised over $8000 for the ward.
The nurses are just beginning to use the money that Team Ivy raised now.
It started out as wanting to be able to give something back, for all that we have been given – the help and kindness and respect that has been allowed our family but it became so much more.
It restored my faith in people,
it taught my children about giving and seeing beyond themselves.
It taught me many things and for Ivy, well, I think it brought a little bit of magic into her life, it certainly did mine.
Now it looks as though team Ivy may become an annual thing.
The local schools are coming together to hold fair days all in the name of Team Ivy and to raise money for the hospital.
I feel as though I’ve done something good, really good and I have blogging and the wonderful friends I’ve met along the way, through this medium, to thank.
You also run Blue Hippo Photography, how is that going for you?
Well, it’s taking off now!
It’s very exciting and scary all at once and still very new.
Again, it was the blogging community that convinced me that I could become a professional photographer.
I’d always loved photography but it wasn’t until I was forced to leave midwifery, due to Ivy’s illness, that I started to consider it as an option for a career.
I would put my photos on the blog and people would comment that my photography was emotive.
It always gave me tingles to read that I could portray something with a photo.
I decided I wanted to be a better photographer and late last year opened up blue hippo.
I’ve been so very honoured to have my photo on the front of a book
and on some websites
beyond that, I am starting to take photos of families and babies and I’ve shot two weddings as well.
I feel incredibly grateful to be able to find something that I can do that works in quite well with the kids and also with Ivy.
I also love meeting the people and trying to capture their spirits in a photo.
There is still alot to do, to work on so that blue hippo can be successful but I’m happy to be doing it.
If there is one tip that you would give to a newbie blogger, what would it be?
Blog from your heart.
As a personal blogger, I think it’s one of the most important things.
If you are honest and upfront, people will be the same with you.
I have had some of the most wonderful people come into my life through blogging because I chose to share my life online.
***
Thanks Tiff. You inspire me. You truly do. Never ever stop writing!
You can check out Tiff’s blog here. Her Blue Hippo Photoblog here. And follow her on Twitter here.
(TMM is on the lookout for more Awesome Aussie Mummy Bloggers, shoot me an email at brenda@themothermedia.com.au and tell me your backstory.)
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