We like to think we can tell a lot about a person simply by looking at them. We think we pick up cues by what people wear, what they eat, the way they talk, what they drive. The list is endless but evaluation by appearance is also flawed.
Can you really tell what life is like for someone because of what they post on Facebook? Can you see just by looking at a woman that life hasn’t gone to plan and she has had to find the strength to change everything?
Stacey Currie should be living on the streets, in jail, on drugs or dead. She ticks all the boxes when it comes to risk factors, having grown up without her mum, being brought up in housing commission, sexually abused, pregnant at age 15, with 2 babies and homeless at age 19. By the age of 21 she had 3 kids and was living in a violent relationship.
One night in hospital, after a terrifying domestic violence incident with her partner, Stacey was given a choice by authorities. Stay with your partner and your children go into foster care tonight, or leave him and keep your children. Stacey chose her children, and then bit by bit; a job at a funeral home, weekly therapy for herself and children, and a burning drive to have a better life (one that she didn't even know existed until she left her abusive partner), she changed everything about her world.
Stacey is now 36 years old and has five wonderful children, a beautiful and supportive partner and is an author, international speaker, and runs a successful business, Brand Print Australia.
"Don't allow other people to get in and sabotage you," Stacey says.
"Go with your own self belief because that's what's going to take you to where you need to be."
Nicky Lavigne always knew she wanted to be a mum. Married for her 30s it seemed like an imminently possible dream, except it wasn't. It didn't happen and then she turned around one day and she was 40 and single.
Nicky spent four years and had seven unsuccessful IVF cycles before making the decision to use an egg donor. As it was not a procedure readily available in Australia, she travelled to Athens, Greece on the recommendation of her fertility doctor. Thankfully, the baby gods were smiling the day she had her transfer and blessed her with two absolutely divine tiny humans. Her twin boys are now two and Nicky is busy and in love.
"My plan when I was young was to have babies and be in this wonderful relationship with their father," she says. "But it didn't happen. And I was always someone who wanted to be a mum. It was what I wanted more than anything."
