Where do babies come from?

 With my first child, I was only 21 and not married. When I told my mother I was pregnant, her response was absolutely classic. "I suppose it's too late to tell you about the birds and the bees now."

I mean really. The bluebird of happiness had just flown over me and shat on me, and you want to talk about the birds and the bees? I'm allergic to bees and have literally been shat on by seagulls on 3 separate occasions. Birds and the bees. Whoever came up with that?

Well nobody knows really who came up with that saying and the one about the stork delivering babies. It was just a way parents got out of having heavy sex discussions when their children asked penetrating questions about their origins.

My own children were no exception, asking the difficult question earlier rather than later. I decided to not go the stork or birds and bees route. I would be honest and tell them the truth and all the gory details. I would not be my mother.

So, when my oldest daughter asked me the dreaded question, I told her that she was wind-pollinated. I explained that I was lying on the beach suntanning, when there was a sudden gust of wind and voila! Say no more. For years I think she truly believed she was wind-pollinated.

When my son asked me where he came from, I told him that I'd found him under a rock. He just accepted that and never questioned it. Years later I found out that he thought he had been abandoned by his parents and I had adopted him. Of course he now knows that he's definitely my son as we are very similar in looks and personality.

My youngest daughter, I came up with something different. She was born in September, nine months after Christmas, so I told her I was filled with the festive Christmas spirit. Probably the closest to the truth.

What have you told your children when they asked where babies come from? Have you gone into explicit details or have you made up a story?

Cindy Vine is the author of both fiction and non-fiction books available on Amazon. Subscribe to her YouTube channel Cindy Vine Portugal to follow her journey as a retired teacher living her dream on an off-grid homestead in Portugal.

CELEBRATIONS

 

A student once asked during a unit of inquiry on celebrations, “Why do we only celebrate on certain days of the year? Every day should be a celebration.” Of course the whole class agreed. And before I could smile and nod my head patiently, the children had decided that we would find something to celebrate every day of the year. I had thought that finding 365 things to celebrate would be a challenge. Not for Grade 2!

And that was how we ended up with’Smile Day,’ ‘Dance Day’ and ‘Wear something blue day,’ to name a few.

Children have it right. Every day should be a celebration. And it’s true, some days, when the weather is miserable outside, just getting out of bed is cause to celebrate. 

Finding things to celebrate each day helps to give you a positive mindset. You can only achieve great things when you have a positive mindset and see possibilities rather than just the problems.

When things go wrong, as they do, you celebrate how you got through it and lived to tell the tale. Call it Creative Thinking Day!

Don’t go to sleep at night without celebrating something you achieved that day, however small. Everything is worthy of celebrating. Even if absolutely everything went wrong that day and you had a day from hell. Find something to celebrate. Going to sleep with that positive celebratory thought in your head, will give you a better night’s sleep and ensure that you wake up in the morning in good spirits, feeling positive.

What will you choose to celebrate? I wonder.

Cindy Vine is the author of fiction books available on Amazon as ebooks and paperbacks. Subscribe to Cindy Vine Portugal on YouTube to follow her journey of creating an off=grid homestead.

The Retirement Myth

“When I retire I’ll travel the world.”                                                 “I’m waiting for my retirement before I do that.”

How many times have you heard someone say that? They work their butts off for 40 odd years, not going on holidays, just saving, saving, saving for their retirement. Then when they finally retire, they don’t have the energy or desire to travel anymore. Sometimes health issues set in which prevents them from doing all the things they saved for retirement.

I’m not that person.

I’ve always lived my life at full speed never saving for that rainy day or retirement dream. Of course, this is to my detriment. I now find myself a supposedly retired person having to work until the day I die.

Retirement for me will always be a myth.

So what went wrong, you might ask with tears of sympathy in your eyes. Don’t feel sorry for me as it’s all my own doing. I made certain choices when I was younger that impacted my retirement. Because when you are young getting old seems to be far, far away in the distant future. I never imagined I’d get old. In my mind I would always be forty. Unfortunately reality dictates that each year you get older and before you know it, you are sixty!

The good thing is that I can look back on my life and see that I lived it to its very fullest. I took my children all over the world with me, lived in many different countries, had some amazing holidays, made awesome memories and basically experienced it all. I didn’t wait until I was too old to enjoy traveling. I lived for the moment and grabbed it with both hands.

But…and there is always a but. I never put anything aside for my retirement. Instead of saving, I paid for my children’s tertiary education, their accommodation and subsidized their living expenses until they were independent. And of course there were holidays. Even when backpacking, holidays don’t come cheap. As an international school teacher moving countries every few years, the onus was on me to plan for my retirement and pay into a retirement fund. Of course I never did that! I was never going to get old after all.

If there is something I learned it’s that we all eventually get old. Whether we like it or not. My advice to young people out there is, start paying into a retirement plan. Don’t put it off until it’s too late. You have to have a plan for the future. 

Don’t be like me.

I do long for a day when I can choose whether to work at something or just chill, and just stay on my farm and enjoy my golden years. Unfortunately that day will never come for me. I am destined to keep working paycheck to paycheck, never earning enough now I work part time to ever be able to put something aside to save. Work, work, work. You can see why for me retirement is a myth. And before you say anything, I agree with you. It is my own stupidity and something I have to live with and make the best of.

I have to say though, I don’t regret the choices I made when I was younger to travel and create memories with my children. I far prefer sharing the travel experiences with my family than traveling alone and having nobody to share it with. Being a solo tourist is lonely. I think if I didn’t have those family holidays when I was younger and instead saved that money for my retirement, I would never have visited all those wonderful places now as an older retired person. It’s no fun traveling alone. I would have missed out on so much. The world has so much to see and experience.

So no regrets on traveling with my children when I was younger rather than saving it to do in retirement. 

But there is definitely a regret that I never put aside money into a retirement plan.

For me retirement will always be a myth. Something that when I get up at 2am to drive to the airport to fly to a work assignment, will always be just out of my reach and something I yearn for.

One day we all get old. Remember that. Put money away for a rainy day. Pay into a retirement plan even if you are only twenty. 

Listen to this old lady.

DO IT!

Cindy Vine is a sort-of retired teacher, author of books available on Amazon and has a YouTube Channel that she would LOVE you to subscribe to @CindyVinePortugal

Series of Unfortunate Events

You can’t make this shit up. Really, you can’t.

What follows is a series of unfortunate events that resulted in 5 flights in 2 days to get from Lisbon to Amsterdam. 

I kid you not.

Sounds unbelievable? Well, read on and welcome to my life.

Let’s start at the very beginning. You might think that this has nothing to do with what subsequently happened but all will be revealed and all dots connected.

So the beginning of January I received a text message from the post office saying I had a package held up in customs. I was expecting a package at the time so followed the instructions in the text. Let me just state that I had received legitimate texts from that post office number before, telling me that a parcel delivery was on its way. Long story short, it was a scam and they emptied out my bank account mostly on gaming stuff. 

I went to the police, filed a report, and the bank canceled my card and gave me a temporary card while I waited for a new one to arrive and eventually refunded me my money. The new card has still not arrived more than a month later. And because I have been traveling for work so much, have not had an opportunity to follow up and visit the bank. You need to understand this part to make sense of the rest.

I was given a work assignment in Trondheim in Norway from the Wednesday to the Friday. My flights were booked Lisbon to Amsterdam then Amsterdam to Trondheim for the Tuesday before.

In the meantime I was given a short assignment in The Hague on the Monday and the Tuesday morning.  Great, I thought. Perfect. I would just change the Lisbon to Amsterdam leg of the trip to a couple of days earlier. How hard could that be? Sounds easy enough.

3 weeks of emails back and forth between me and the travel agent ensued. Eventually, a few days before I had to leave my flight was changed. Or so I thought. I was arriving back from Berlin on the Wednesday night and would be leaving to drive the 3 hours from the farm to the airport at midnight on the Thursday, leaving me one day to sort out things on the farm and get more pig food for when I was away. Not ideal, but I can’t turn down work as I know I don’t get any work assignments during the long summer holidays as schools are closed. I have to earn as much as I can now to see me through the dry, lean months.

This is the Year of the Dragon after all and so far this year the blasted dragon has seemed intent on breathing its venomous fumes on me. A farm and pet sitter I hired for one of my trips stole from me. I’m still finding small items gone besides the laptop and power station, but that’s a whole other story.

On close examination of my ticket, I discovered that not only was my flight to Amsterdam changed as I had requested, but my flight from Amsterdam to Trondheim had also changed. In a mild panic, I contacted the travel agent only to be told that the ticket can’t be split.

Damnation!

What to do next? I had committed to The Hague so I had to find a way to get back to Amsterdam from Trondheim.

I tried to book a return flight from Trondheim to Amsterdam but found that my temporary Portuguese bank card didn’t work for online payments.

Drat!

Time for Plan C.

The problem was that I had put most of my money into my Portuguese account to pay for the new flights. Now it didn’t work for online payments. What to do? I had small amounts in other accounts, so the only solution was to buy the cheapest possible one way tickets, using a different card for each flight. One card purchased a flight from Trondheim to Oslo. So in one day starting at midnight, I drove the 3 hours from the farm to the airport, caught a flight to Amsterdam, had a 5 hour layover in Amsterdam, flew to Trondheim and checked in again for my flight to Oslo, with a 3 hour layover in Trondheim. 

I then discovered to my horror, that not only did the temporary bank card not work for online payments, it also didn’t work outside Portugal.

Crap! Crap! Crap!

Most of my money was in that bank account and I couldn’t access it!

A night at a cheap hotel and up fresh and early for the next part of what was turning out to be a mammoth journey. This leg of the trip was from Oslo to Warsaw, with a 4 hour layover in Warsaw before the next flight to Amsterdam, bought with another card that had a few cents on it.

And that’s where I am now. In Warsaw waiting to fly to Amsterdam. I’ve managed to book a cheap hotel for the night and in the morning will take a train to The Hague and check into my paid-for hotel. 

What a nightmare!

And of course, unable to access my money in my Portuguese account, I did not have enough funds left in my other bank accounts to pay to get me back to Trondheim for the start of the next assignment. I had used all available money on the extra flights and hotels. Luckily, a very kind, awesome friend bought me a ticket back to Trondheim. It only involves a 2 hour layover in Copenhagen but after all this, that’s not a problem!

What a palava!

I could have just cancelled The Hague, but I had made a commitment and was determined to see it through.

So……

How is your Year of the Dragon going?

Mine seems to be going swimmingly.

Subscribe to Cindy's YouTube channel Cindy Vine Portugal

The Family Scapegoat

 

It is an unfortunate fact that all around the world in some toxic families, one child is selected to be the family scapegoat.

I am proud to say that in my family I wore that title. It was not a role that I applied for. I never attended an interview. The scapegoat crown was unceremoniously placed upon my head and it made me who I am today. Stronger and more resilient than the masses.

So why was I selected? I was a little different because I questioned everything and was quite smart, always accused of having to have the last word and being full of cheek. I had a phenomenal memory and could remember whole conversations word for word which didn’t always go down well when I could repeat verbatim what had been said. In all of that I made myself a target. I see that now.

My mother always put me down in front of others right from when I was a little child. She couldn’t handle me perhaps taking the limelight away from her. She was a performer after all. I can remember her making me do a dance step in front of all the parents and her students. I had stupidly thought it was because she was proud of me, but when all those people started laughing at me, I realized at that very young age that I was just something to be ridiculed.

Her penchant for putting me down and making me feel worthless drove me into a love affair with books and stories I could escape in. Both my stepfathers joined in her game, blaming me for everything that went wrong, taking out a hard day at work on me, always telling me I was useless, would never be successful at anything and would never amount to much. My second stepfather even held special meetings with my aunts and uncles to tell them how useless I was and they should stop standing up for me and protecting me as I was undeserving of their love.

The heroes and heroines I read about showed me how to be strong. I learned how to crack jokes about myself before others did. The more I was knocked down, the more determined I became to not conform and to forge my own path. I learned to not answer back and instead stare silently at the person shouting at me. 

This never stopped when I became an adult. The verbal and emotional abuse continued until I was in my fifties. That scapegoat crown was mine, and the unfortunate thing is that became the lens some of my siblings would always look at me through, even to this very day. In their eyes I would always be useless, never good enough and any successes I achieved would be downplayed and belittled.

As soon as I could I escaped from that toxic environment and is one of the reasons why I have lived in so many countries. Unfortunately, distance doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, and holidays to visit family usually resulted in some abuse and nasty comments being thrown my way, even in front of my children.

Over the years I’ve been able to forgive this bad behavior but I have never forgotten it. It’s embedded in my very being. I have realized that I made them feel threatened and inferior so they had to step on me to feel greater than. It became a habit for them. Almost a game. The more they tried to put me down the more I would bounce back and I would bounce back smiling. That was the best revenge. They could never win.

Has this left me with emotional scars, of course it has. I take criticism personally and will over analyze it for days. I hate things that are unfair and will brood on it. But in the end I do move on. 

When I was 21 I fell pregnant out of wedlock.  This was apparently confirmation of what a terrible person I was. Instead of supporting me, my mother and stepfather gave me 3 choices. 1) abortion 2) adoption 3) bugger off and make your own way in life.

I’m sure you can guess which option I chose. Option 3 was the best decision I ever made and all the sacrifices that went with it were worth it. 

Sometimes it’s good to look back and reflect on the past to see how far you’ve come and focus on the positives that came out of a bad situation. The resilience, strength and always looking for the positive against all odds are all by-products of being the family scapegoat. You have to see that it wasn’t all bad and something good did come from it. I survived to tell the tale. Isn’t that good?

Your childhood doesn’t just disappear when you become an adult. The trauma and experiences shape you and affects the way you handle certain situations and the choices that you make. I ended up in a very abusive marriage. Only now do I realize that I chose that man to be my husband because I thought I didn’t deserve anyone better and nobody would want me anyway because I was useless and not worth being loved. And more than anything I wanted a father for my child so that she could have a complete family with a mother and a father. I didn’t want her to go through what I went through as a child. 

As the family scapegoat, my family disapproved of my choice of husband and they didn’t bother to hide their displeasure. When we were in danger and my children and I had to flee for our lives, my family refused to help. “You made your bed, so you lie in it!”

And I did. By myself. 

I hit rock bottom, ended up in a Salvation Army Family Crisis Center with the children for a few months. My eldest daughter who was 15 at the time, made many sacrifices to support me. I managed to get a job in an international school and was able to pay a lawyer to get me sole custody of the children and put a great distance between the ex and my children and I.

I have learnt not to ask for help and try and do things by myself. That way the only person to let me down and disappoint me is me.

I have learnt to keep smiling and keep looking for that silver lining when inside I am a mess of anxiety and self doubt.

I have learnt to problem solve and find solutions.

I have learnt that I can survive in adverse circumstances despite the odds.

I have learnt to be strong, not give up and to always have a dream to work towards.

But most of all I have learnt that the toxic people I had in my life were wrong.

I am not useless.

I am not worthless.

I have something to contribute to the world.

My three beautiful children, now all amazing adults are proof of that.

I can make a difference.

I can always be there for people when they need help.

I will still make some bad choices because I am not perfect, and that’s okay because I am resilient. I tend to act from the heart rather than the head.

I’ve got this.

I can do it.

Love

The Family Scapegoat 

You can find Cindy Vine's fiction and non-fiction books on Amazon. Follow Cindy Vine Portugal on Youtube.

Why I chose to live alone

 

In 2024 I will turn 63.  People often ask me why I opted to live alone.

After a messy divorce in November 1999, I have had some relationships but nothing that was forever.

Currently, I live alone on a 3 hectare homestead in Central Portugal, 35km away from the nearest city, 6km from the nearest little grocery store. My little farm had been abandoned for 60 years and the stone cottage was little more than a ruin. Despite the challenges I would face trying to restore the farm and cottage, I bought the farm I'd fallen in love with without a second thought, knowing I would be doing it alone. My goal is to create something beautiful for my children to inherit when I'm no longer on this earth. My animals and the renovation work keep me busy, but in these beautiful surroundings I have had time to pause and reflect on my life, the many mistakes and bad choices I've made, the failed relationships. The time alone on the farm has helped me to get to know myself, and do some research on why I absolutely suck at relationships. Many years ago I wrote a self-help book on breaking the cycle of bad relationships called Fear, Phobias and Frozen Feet. It was then that I decided that I was not relationship material. I either sabotage the relationship or engage in limerence. When I wrote that book, I focused on how to break the cycle of bad relationships, but never looked at why I always chose bad relationships. This time of reflection has made me start reflecting on the why and it's taken me back to my childhood.

I was an unplanned pregnancy and ruined my mother's career as a dancer, something I was often reminded of. She started a dance studio which was her life and there was no place for an unwanted, unplanned for child. My parents divorced when I was 3 months old and my granny and my aunts ensured that I experienced some love. They saved me from being a complete basket case, but despite their love it wasn't the love I sought from my parents and didn't get. Throughout my elementary school time, I always felt like I was an outsider and didn't belong. In fact, this has continued throughout my life. I always feel like an outsider looking in. My high school was not much different. My mother went on to marry two more times. Both stepfathers were abusive in different ways, cementing the idea that I was a burden and not worthy of love. I ended up in an abusive marriage. I just couldn't seem to escape being abused or taken advantage of.

I have spent my life being a people pleaser. In my subconscious mind, if I make people happy then that's like a kind of love. But when you are the family scapegoat, no matter what you do, you are never going to make them believe that you are worthy of their love. You become like a hamster on a wheel. Running in circles and never achieving the desired result. With all of the running on the wheel and getting nowhere, you suffer from anxiety which you have to find ways to disguise so that those abusing you don't think you are weak and even more of a target. One coping strategy is to poke fun at yourself and make people laugh. That way you feel in control. You belittle yourself before they do.

I have come to realise that I am the way I am through childhood trauma and emotional neglect. My granny and my aunts were there for me and always had my back, but when we moved away and they passed on, there was nobody. I had to be independent but I was terrified. I had three children to raise by myself. Because of my childhood, I suffer from CPTSD - Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The wounds from my childhood are ever present and have yet to become scars. It doesn't take much to open those wounds even though I am now in my sixties.

So I choose to live alone. My children are now adult and I have a grandson. I miss them terribly as they always made me feel worthy and gave me the love I was always looking for. I have realised that I will never experience that kind of a love in a relationship. When my last relationship ended, that was the nail in the coffin so to speak. I am not relationship material. I carry too much baggage. Also, I have become way too independent and don't like giving anyone control of my life. Besides the people pleasing and being the resident doormat, I was also a rescuer, thinking I could fix others' problems. Frankly, that is exhausting. I am tired of pleasing others and fixing their problems. It's time to focus on myself. And that is why I chose to live alone.

You can follow my off-grid journey of restoring and renovating an abandoned farm in Portugal on my YouTube Channel 'Cindy Vine Portugal.' https://youtu.be/L2OlsKhKfg8

A TYPICAL DAY ON MY OFF-GRID HOMESTEAD