Family Style Network

  Trigger warning! Uncle Tim here. In early December last year, my 9-year-old niece suddenly started hemorrhaging from her mouth late at night in the bathroom of her family home. Thankfully her parents were both nearby, however, she almost bled to death in their arms before my brother-in-law was able to somehow stop the bleeding while they were waiting for an ambulance to arrive. He almost lost a few fingers in the process when she began fitting and her jaw clamped down on him as he was trying to staunch the blood flow from his youngest child's (and only daughter's) mouth. He has bite mark scars on his hand now. What followed this were several weeks of completely emotionally harrowing times for my immediate family during which time my niece and sister were airlifted from Hobart in Tasmania to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne with my niece in critical condition where she ended up having multiple CAT scans, MRIs, angiograms, ultrasounds and operations where arteries...

Sometimes I think Bender has it right! Ahoy-hoy! Uncle Tim here!  👋 I hope everyone is well and hanging on as best you can during this shitshow of a time we call existence. Yes, super cynical intro I know but fuck it, that's where my head and heart are at right now. It's been a strange time for your Uncle Tim in The Land of Oz (AKA The Upside Down, AKA Fucken Straya, AKA the place that everyone knows doesn't really exist.....) since we last spoke. There's been work shit, family shit, social shit, political shit, health shit, mental shit, emotional shit, weather shit, friend shit, financial shit etc etc. It's been really fucking weird man! What a time to be alive! Weather and financial shit aside, one of the major constants throughout all the mess that has been going on are people, be they the cause of the issues, being impacted by them, helping to support me or others through it all, resolving the issues or just shutting right down so they don't/won't allo...

“A found family is every bit as beautiful as a born family. Even more so, perhaps. Stories are about choices, after all, and to choose to be family is as wonderful a story as can be told.” ― Dan Gemeinhart, The Midnight Children Life is funny, sometimes.  Every day starts to bleed into the next; monotony of the highest order.  Every day much the same as that which came before it.  You end up on auto-pilot.  You end up in a routine.  Your day to day consists of similar patterns, across the board.  In the best case scenario, you are at least content.  In the worst case scenario, you have relegated yourself to a position of unending misery that is simply your lot in life.  Some years back, I was in the latter category. I had dreams.  I had ambitions.  I had goals.  But somewhere along the line, my life took a hard turn in the opposite direction.  The car got parked, and someone else took the wheel and started driving, like a bat o...

Ahoy-hoy! Uncle Tim here. Last weekend I had the pleasure of joining our friends Ryan, Ashley and Heather for episode 2 (Electric Boogaloo!) of the Family Style Podcast. I had a great time! Sometimes nothing beats just sitting around with your mates and shooting the shit and having a laugh and boy did we talk some shit (especially me. I always talk a lot of shit!) I left the catch-up session feeling very light and happy, also pretty hungry as it was about 3pm for me by that point and I hadn't had lunch yet. Mainly, I began anticipating the release of the episode and was looking forward to checking it out and really looking forward to the FS family,  as well as other friends and family of mine, watching/listening to it.  Monday the 9th of January soon comes swanning around and apart from being your dear ol'Uncle Tim's birthday (wink wink nudge nudge), the audio and the video went out for the episode. Hooray! Now I was a tad preoccupied that day relaxing and being pampered ...

Family The concept of 'family' has been running through my mind quite a bit recently. I think it's partially to do with the time of year it is and also it's to do with some of the issues (historical, current, resolved and unresolved etc) I have with my immediate family. The end-of-year holiday season is not easy for people, there's a lot of stress that goes hand-in-hand with those religious, cultural and commercial holidays but I think the thing that causes people the most anguish at this time revolves around their relationships, or the lack thereof, with their families and that can become exacerbated when they are separated from them or, worse still, forced to spend time with people they don't like, let alone love. You talk to anyone and they will all have some sort of story about a family member they can't stand or someone that they just can't seem to find any common ground with, be it racist old Nanna Mavis, weird Uncle Joe or stingy cousin Bob, what...