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...

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 ...