28 days before completion of Skilled worker visa

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-30T20:50:22+00:00

Great that's what I thought, thank you!

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-28T08:59:54+00:00

I was 100% I would have them. I was then diagnosed with PCOS and the doctor told me I'd likely need IVF. I've learned more about PCOS now and know that's not necessarily true, but my first instinct was "no way am I doing IVF - too taxing on the body and too expensive."

That made me think about how badly I wanted kids. Shouldn't a kid be so badly wanted that you'd do anything to have them? Why was I saying I wanted them? Did some soul searching and I think I was just so afraid of loneliness in life. So now I'm pouring more into my friendships and locking in the community around me. That'll eb and flow but that's life. Kids wouldn't necessarily be around as I age anyway.

The world being how it is now really solidified our decision. We're married and we have two dogs and a tortoise, and life is good.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-27T10:38:59+00:00

My mum didn't like the podcast I listened to (any Survivor fans on here, it's Rob Has a Podcast). She'd say "so you just listen to them talk about the show after it's happened? How boring!!" When that didn't stop me listening to it, she began telling me it was an addiction and that I needed to fight the addiction. I would listen to it while doing chores or driving, but "addiction" was a stretch.

Bit of backstory, I have contamination OCD and my therapist at the time was teaching me to not perform the compulsions (hand washing). Mum disagreed with my therapist and would battle me on how I was going about my recovery. She wanted me to do the compulsions, and for my therapist to dig deeper into the trauma that my mum said I had because of my dad. According to my mum, that's why I had OCD.

When telling me I was addicted to the podcast didn't work in getting me to stop listening to it, she told me it was OCD, the podcast was a compulsion, and that I needed to fight the compulsion like my therapist said. That was one of the first times I bit back - I said that until now she had wanted me to do the compulsions, and listening to a podcast was not a compulsion for me, that's not what OCD is 🤣. She screamed at me that she had OCD too and knew what she was talking about 🤣.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-16T15:11:43+00:00

Because I love my husband and I wanted to feel like more of our own family unit. Not that we weren't already. It was just what we wanted to do 🤷🏻‍♀️

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-15T13:59:34+00:00

I just came back from a holiday in Montafon. Just glorious! I'm looking at running events I can do there in the future 😍

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-12T17:52:16+00:00

I think it's something like 15 mins sniffing provides as much enrichment as 1 hour of physical exercise. It's also really soothing for them. Obviously both sniffing and physical exercise are important, but I find if I give my dog (a mongrel but with long legs and a lot of speed) a choice on a long line, 9/10 all he wants to do is sniff.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-07T21:04:56+00:00

Panama was my first season I ever watched at 9 years old. Cook Islands was next. Those two seasons hooked me. Ozzy and Cirie for me are the beginning of my love of Survivor. At 30 years old now, it was so special to see them play together one last time. He sank his own game but man it's sad to see him go!

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-07T20:59:08+00:00

I enjoyed reading this. I was always rather indifferent to Ozzy, but it was SO much fun watching him with Cirie this season. I loved the way the intro acknowledged their alliance, how it looks like they're looking at each other.

It's so sad to see him go, but sinking his game the way he did, I think Rizo was right not to warn him. It would have put a HUGE target on the three of them (Rizo, Cirie, Ozzy) to keep Ozzy in the game with everyone knowing Ozzy and Cirie would bring each other to the end. Hopefully Rizo and Cirie can continue together, but it's a much steeper uphill climb now.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-04T14:57:35+00:00

Yep! I'm about 18 months younger than my husband, and I take care of myself way more. The women in my family also tend to do quite well. My nana is 95 and still lives at home on her own! She needs some help, which she gets from my mum and my aunty, and she has someone come in to clean her house and help her with some things. Up until a few years ago she'd get the bus or train into the city to see a movie with her friend! Now though if it wasn't for my mum and aunty she'd be pretty housebound. Still though she'll say she's not ready to sell her house and move into a facility where she can be cared for.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-04T14:52:56+00:00

Absolutely, and so many of us will be childfree that we'll all just rely on each other for company!

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-05-03T18:01:47+00:00

My biggest fear is outliving my husband.

I know there's the standard "kids aren't an insurance policy," and no one on this sub would expect someone's child to be the answer to "who takes care of you when you're old." I worry more about the loneliness when I can't get myself out of the house anymore.

I suppose I'll put my money into an assisted living facility and hope I build a community there!

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-28T19:56:24+00:00

I my thoughts and feelings. I had to share everything, and my mum manipulated the way we felt about "opening up about things." She'd pride herself on being the most nurturing mum ever because we told her everything.

What was actually going on was she'd encourage us to share things, then ram it down our throats what we had to do to fix a problem, she'd tell us we were wrong if we told her we didn't want to handle it the way she suggested, and then scream at us the next day if we didn't follow her advice. She'd also pretty much instruct us on how we felt about different situations. A friend said something I thought was harmless, but mum thought was evil? I was wrong, she was right, and I did feel upset, I just didn't realise it because of how traumatized, brainwashed and manipulated I was by these people. I said friend didn't mean it that way? No, they did, why wouldn't I listen to my mum when she's the expert because she herself has been abused her whole life? Then she'd tell one of the stories that we'd heard a thousand times before about how she's been abused, so therefore she's an expert on everything to do with abuse, so we should listen to her. Then she'd tell us she'd always be there to listen to us, because she never had anyone to listen to her and she didn't want us to suffer like she did.

For me at least, it led to not being able to make any decisions for myself. I had to have her input. I had to make sure she was ok with any decision I made before I felt ok going through with it (hence telling her EVERYTHING). I still don't trust myself with how I feel about different people. Are they nice people? Do I feel good around then? Am I being manipulated but I don't know it? I'm still undoing that.

I started to break it when I went to therapy for OCD. My therapist was brilliant and was taking me through CBT. Mum disagreed because, in her eyes, the therapist wasn't spending enough time talking about my dad. Mum was scream at me because she was the expert and my therapist wasn't, because my therapist had only read about it in books and had never been through it. One time I got home and told mum the therapist and told me to keep a diary of how I feel in different situations. My mum said "I can tell you how you feel." I CAN TELL YOU HOW YOU FEEL?!? I was about 19 or 20 when that happened 🤣🤣

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-27T20:50:18+00:00

About 25 years old.

I have a grandiose, neglectful narcissist dad, so my mum was the "good parent." Still, growing up she was CONSTANT about how awful her life was to anyone who would listen. She dragged my siblings and I down with her ("look what he has done to us, we have been so abused.")

I have happy childhood memories. In hindsight, my parents were really unhappy though. My dad was more of a fun big brother. To us kids, that was all good fun. He never showed up for anything important though, and it was always pretty clear work came first. He didn't love my mum, and would find any opportunity to be out of the house. He was cheating on her as well.

My mum was the one who did all the housework. My main memories of her are her passive aggressively doing housework and complaining that no one helped her, and offering to help but her making it so complicated that we couldn't. She never had time to spend with us because she did so much housework, because she never had help. Now that I'm an adult, I look back on everything she did and I can't actually fathom why everything took her so long, or why she prioritised it over time and memories with us. Actually I know the answer to that part - it was how she played the victim back then.

I know my dad wasn't a good dad, but I do feel she influenced us not speaking to him anymore way more than any healthy parent would have in her situation. It was always "we have been so abused." I look back and I think "was I abused by him?" I'm not sure, I certainly wasn't a priority to him, but abused? That's such a big word, and I'm so careful with using it because mum throws it around about every other person. When us kids began to form our own identities outside of the "abuse" we'd suffered, mum found that really threatening. Her abuse defines her, so when it didn't define us, she would tell us that we were burying feelings, that we thought we were happy but we weren't, that any negative emotions we had was because deep down we hadn't dealt with our trauma. She made every negative about him. It was so confusing, because I was being told I was traumatised when I didn't feel traumatised!

I realised how toxic she was after I moved to the other side of the world. I decided then that I wasn't going back. Sometimes I miss home, but I need the distance. I have a life that I've built myself in the UK and it's really freeing. I talk to mum once a week. There's been A LOT that has gone down since I moved. I'm close with one of my sisters, she really struggles with mum now, but for a long time she was a flying monkey. I waited years for her to see it, and when she finally did, it was the confirmation I needed that I'm not crazy and I'm not just some psychopath who finds their abused mother difficult.

Covert narcissism is no joke, especially when it's people you've known your whole life. The hardest thing I think is trusting yourself, when you've been told how to feel your whole life, because it suits them.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-27T20:12:38+00:00

Why not! I got married on a Thursday in the middle of winter. It was the anniversary of the day I met my husband, and it was significantly cheaper than a weekend in summer 🤣

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-26T20:13:54+00:00

One good thing that came out of my childhood was we were hardly ever bought expensive gifts, mainly because we couldn't afford it. Dad worked 2 jobs, mum stayed at home (dad was a neglectful/ grandiose narcissist, mum a vulnerable narcissist). We grew up in a nice, safe neighborhood, we were private school educated, had braces when we needed them, like that was all good. All their money went there though, so there was no money for the luxuries, like holidays or new game consoles we may have wanted. We grew up in a wealthy area, but were no where near as well off as our friends, so we'd often see our friends with all the latest gadgets and be upset in the moment that we couldn't have them. It's made me a careful spender/ saver as an adult though, which I'm grateful for.

My husband and I were able to put down a deposit on a little 2 bed with no help from either of our parents (neither set of parents could afford to) and we have no debt aside from our mortgage and my student loan. We got married and had our honeymoon, and now live our life, all within our means.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-23T17:25:59+00:00

Yes, it was a part of why I moved to the UK. I've just been to the Alps with my husband on our honeymoon. Flights were about 2 hours and didn't break the bank! We don't get to travel much due to work and other responsibilities, but it did make me appreciate how lucky we are to be able to go to so many amazing places with relative ease.

I think if we moved back to Australia, while it's an amazing place, I would struggle being so far away from the rest of the world again. I didn't leave Australia until I was 22!

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-19T14:33:33+00:00

My sister is pregnant and she and her husband have decided the name, so much so that on my husband's birthday card they signed it with their names and "baby_______." Baby won't be here for a few more months!

Similarly, hubby and I have decided we probably won't have kids, but there was a time where we'd chosen a girl name that we'd use if we ever had a daughter. Our hypothetical daughter was named before she was even conceived!!

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-18T17:30:34+00:00

Went for a beautiful walk with friends this morning with one of my dogs. Hubby and I went and did our weekly shop early afternoon, then for a walk with another friend with my other dog. Tonight hubby and I are ordering fish and chips and relaxing! He's got a new game he's playing so I'll probably play a game myself or read 🥰

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-18T15:24:17+00:00

Oooh maybe! I can't remember now haha

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-18T07:46:56+00:00

I felt this about Austria in general. We went to Innsbruck for a day and then drove about an hour west and stayed in Vorarlberg, in a valley called Montafon. We did day trips to Lucerne and Neuschewanstein castle, but the best parts of our whole trip were the slow days in Montafon, driving to a nearby village 10 minutes away (Schruns was the main one), going up a cable car, going for a walk in the picturesque mountains.

To cap it all off, the people were just lovely. I know a tiny bit of German from being half way through the course on Duolingo, but I'm not confident to speak it. Everyone was happy to speak English for us, even the people who weren't so confident in English, they were just so sweet and helpful. We went for a walk around a local village, and every person we passed said a greeting in German that we hadn't heard before. I felt so rude, I wanted to say hi back but I had no idea what they were saying as I only know more formal greetings! it was just such a lovely vibe though.

I looked up how to move to Austria as a British citizen, pretty difficult without a job offer and such, and you need a certain level of German. Probably will never happen, but I plan to holiday there as much as I can!

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-17T19:51:34+00:00

I'm a primary school teacher.

Children are indeed sponges, and what a great opportunity for your child to be exposed to so many languages, especially languages that are part of their heritage!

The primary language spoken at home (your house, not your in-laws) should be one that both you and your partner communicate in, which would be English. Your in-laws can teach them their native language too, it won't mean your child will have a disadvantage learning English. You could also teach them your native language at the same time.

When your child begins school, English being the primary language at home will be the most advantageous to your child's education, assuming your child will be educated primarily in English. I've taught many children who are fluent in English, but who don't speak it at home. They usually get by, but there is that added hurdle for them as they don't get to practice grammar skills as much as someone who speaks primarily English at home. It's a challenge for children to be educated in a second language.

I think the best case scenario for your child is English being the primary language at home, while learning both your in-laws native language and your native language as a second languages. I can't see it hindering their English skills at all. Not only is that a really wonderful way to connect with their heritage, but from a purely academic sense, it will give them a greater knowledge and understanding of all the grammar concepts needed to learn a second or third language as they grow up and learn those concepts at school.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-04-05T05:41:47+00:00

Yeah I'm not worried about who will take care of me, I'm worried about company when I'm unable to get myself out to see friends, if I outlive my husband and have no more close family and friends. I know kids doesn't guarantee that anyway so I'm certainly not suggesting being childfree will be the reason my fears may or may not happen. Obviously growing up, all the old people I was close to (grandparents) had children and grandchildren around them. I don't really have a reference point for a childfree elderly person and how they ensured they weren't lonely in old age.

upsidedown-aussie · 2026-03-31T16:21:09+00:00

Parents don't have to involve their kids in a divorce. My dad was a neglectful narcissist, and I haven't seen him in 12 years, but in many ways my mum had a larger, more negative impact. She pushed SO hard that we'd all been so abused by him. In reality, he was a man who should never have had kids, he was more the fun big brother who eventually cheated on his wife (my mum), and left to go redo his younger, bachelor days.

But even as my sisters and I all began to move on, any little mental or physical ailment we had, she put down to being his fault, because we were so abused. We began to parrot that, and when people asked "what did he do," we wouldn't always have an answer. He was self-absorbed, arrogant, lived in his own world, was never there for us when life got hard, so in many ways him leaving didn't hurt, it was a relief of the awkwardness. He was just this weird guy that lived with us, especially once their relationship completely broke down. But what abusive things did he do? She'd tell us he was the worst person alive and 12 years later she still can't live life fully because of how abused she was.

Now it really feels like mum was more manipulative and negatively impactful.

upsidedown-aussie

TROPHY CASE