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...

TW: Mental Health, Addiction and Suicidal Ideation. "What's my drug of choice?  Well, what have you got? I don't go broke, and I do it a lot. I do it a lot!" - Junkhead by Alice In Chains Hi, my name is Uncle Tim, and I am an addict. Greetings and salutations Fam-bam (thank you Ma'am!). Shit, hows the above for a blog intro? Am I right? Your Uncle Tim celebrated a milestone 2 days ago, that being 1000 days sober. It was a relatively quiet affair, just like when I hit 2 years last September as I guess I'm still a little skittish when it comes to the energy I put towards it. I told a very small group of people, accepted their praise, best wishes, kind words and support etc and that's it. I set it aside, maybe compartmentalised it a little (I dunno!), and just moved forward with my day and my life. I haven't celebrated it, in all honesty, I don't know how to. I'm also trying to allow myself to be proud of myself but that too is something that does...

  Uncle Tim here 👽👋   Just thought I'd pop in and say hello or "How's it going?" (pronounced "Owzigowen" in Upside Down Talk.) It sure has been a while friends. "Where have I been hiding?" I hear none of you ask, well I've been lurking about on Discord, or working my little buns off but I've been about.  The last few months have been a very strange time for me and without going into too much detail here it has left me feeling quite flat, demotivated and relatively uninspired overall. My muse has been absent of late and that's ok, these things happen, and I always said from the get-go that there would be no timetable to this, it was more when I felt like writing something that I would. A couple of months ago we kicked off the ' 30 mins for 30 days Challenge ' again on the Discord which is where you set yourself a goal for the month and try to carve out 30 mins a day to work on it. The goal can be anything you want, there are no...

Everyone struggles with the fact that they sometimes feel like they are not enough. They can't be everywhere, they can't do everything, they don't know everything etc. It's bad enough when we get this way about ourselves but if you throw a dependent or loved one into the mix then those feelings of failure can become magnified a thousandfold as not only are you letting yourself down, but now you're letting someone else who depends on you down as well. Or so we tell ourselves. The mind games we put ourselves through are amazing in themselves, not so much from a sense of wonder and awe but more from a sense of morbid fascination. I spoke recently about ourselves being our own harshest critics and I'd like to continue that theme today as really there is just so much that can be discussed about that topic alone. The pressure that a lot of us put ourselves under on a daily basis is phenomenal and it can range from getting the most menial of tasks perfect, like doing ...

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...