Last week I had lunch with Auntie Deidre and Uncle Gary.. who were visiting Naarm from Nambucca heads.. these lovely people chose me as family years ago. They chose me over them. I can't tell you how big that is, how much it means. ❤️✨
In mob culture and Aboriginal kinship systems, family is much wider than the Western nuclear model. Elders, particularly women, hold knowledge that gets passed through relationship, not institution. An Auntie isn't just someone who loves you... she's someone who knows things you need to know. Auntie isn't just a blood title. It's a term that carries respect, responsibility, and care. You can have many Aunties and they don't have to be related to you.
The contrast with Western family is important .. we treat family as fixed. In mob culture it's relational and active. It's something you DO, not something you just are.
'Chosen family' isn't just about misfit ravers who don't fit in to their blood families. It's not only about people ostracised for their queerness or ideological differences, who must leave and find their people somewhere else.
It's also just people who show up for you. Over and over, year after year, time after time, and meet you with love. They remind you who you are, they reflect where you've come from. It's not always easy or safe... but those who show up for each other, equally as energy and life permits. That's chosen family.
As the nuclear family disintegrates, as more people live alone or isolated, as divorce rates climb and nobody can seem to date anymore because we've broken the thing from the inside out.. we need chosen family more than ever.
It's why I always talk about it. It's why I cultivate mine. I will call and text and show up for you if you're in mine, I'll come to the birthdays, I'll remember the projects you're working on. I'll give whatever I have whenever I can.
A chosen family does ebb and flow over time, but some people choose to stay with each other forever.
Bound by nothing but Love.
❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
#auntie #chosenfamily #love #choice
It's been two years since I've done any renovating. It's not fully plastered yet, but I'm soooo stoked about this new cloud watching hole in my kitchen. Suddenly my ex commission house in the hood feels like a New York apartment! Who is this bougie bitch?! I keep finding myself under it when I'm on the phone.
Stage 1 of kitchen reno is happening 😀
#renovation #cloudlovers #kitchen #sky
For all who mother in non traditional ways.
For single mothers, because they sacrifice so much.
For step mothers, who take on so much not their own, for sheparding.
For those without mothers, for whom today feels like loss, for those who wanted a mom but didn't get one in this lifetime.
For those who wished to be mothers, but didn't get a chance to. 🩷
For my friends about to become mothers, and the support I intend to offer.
For all the people with a mother wound that still cuts, for whatever reason.
I see you.
I love you.
I'm wrapping you in my arms.
Also there's fur in my bed.
Sorry, I guess...
But the fur is a reminder that he needs me... because I am the safe place for him.
Which is what mothering is.
May we all be that place, may we all create it, for ourselves and for others
❤️🩷❤️
#mothers #mom #mothersday #love
This photo was taken 10 years ago.
I've only known who I am for 10 years. Today is my Truth anniversary.
It's more important than my birthday.
10 years today, I found out I'm not German or American. I'm from convict Aussie and immigrant Italian stock... I'm not just "white" and I'm not a "yank" though someone tried to pin both on me recently. Knowing this single piece kick-started the biggest ever excavation of self, and honestly required walking through a fire of my whole life, razing everything I knew to the ground till it was ash to come out the other side, with black toes and steel resolution.
Hi, I'm Bo Kitty and I'm half Italian.
I've only been able to fully process my shit and heal from everything for 9 years and 364 days. I've been through every human emotion and even been exiled for some Game of Thrones lineage shit. But I'm here. I'm still here. ❤️🔥
It's 53 days and 15 hours and 32 minutes and four seconds till I head back to Italia.
Till I touch more of my ley lines, till I breathe the air of my ancestors. Till I traverse lands that are in my bones as many generations, till I eat food that my body remembers. Till I sit quietly in places I'm meant to be, not borrowed, not stolen, but mine.
I feel like I've been waiting for this, even before the 46 years it took on this planet to get there. Generations past have been waiting for me.
They wait for me now.
One day they said, one day she'll come home. One day she'll visit us.
One day she will realise that she's never been alone, that she has always belonged.
Thank you to everyone who's been on this journey. Thank you to everyone who's coming for the next one.
I wouldn't trade my story for anything. I'm going to make fucking poetry out of it.
To the next ten years of self discovery. And to everyone who is here to find out who they really are.
Finché c'è vita c'è speranza -
Where there's life there's hope
💜🩷❤️💜🩷❤️
#italy #identity #decade #truth #self
Final touch ups...last session today.
I love my new hand so much
It's like permanent jewellery..
With every piece, I inhabit my body
even more than before..
I land deeper in myself,
in my strength & my fragility.
It's hard to explain with words.
But the feeling is why I keep going.
I live in this vessel, It's the only thing that is really mine, and I'm going to honour it and cherish it and decorate it for as long as I can.
Tattooing is therapy.
Tattooing is self care.
An addiction I am happy to own.
🩷
Walked 30kms on the weekend at my last event for the season.
Spent sunday on the couch, missed the dancefloor moment but didn't actually miss it. I've done a lot in that space, got new frontiers to traverse.
Now it's bike ride, gym, horse riding.
Eyes on the mufuggin prize.
You gotta sacrifice to get the gold. I'm feelin financial, fit AF, well rested, moisturized in my lane, about to go solo beast mode out in the world.. Brad Pitt fight club styles.
If you're making huge moves on your own...for the juiciest life you can dream up ..
Here's your reminder to keep going.
Slay the dragons,
change...
Change till they don't recognise you anymore.
👾👾👾👾👾👾
Rehearsal for LIT festival last night in Werribee was incredible! I felt the magic, this install is totally my universe ✨🖤
#work #magic #art #werribee #litfest
After 3 years of regular training, the jumps are going up up up. I can feel 16-year-old me here & 46-year-old me is ecstatic about it. Honestly better than drugs. If you ask me in the arena if I want to go higher... the answer is always gonna be yes. 💋
#higher #horseriding #betterthandrugs #riding #ride
I'd like to announce that I resign from regular employment.
I won't be trying to fit into the job market ever again. The only jobs I'll take are ones where amazing people call and book me for my skills. It's been like that since covid anyway.
In between those, I'll be commenting on the current shit show.
Everyone in arts and creative industries is underemployed. Corporates are next — they just don't know it yet. There are no benefits for the underemployed. No system for small business owners. We're taxed 40 cents in the dollar while major corporations pay nothing. Those of us in our mid-40s are overlooked, underpaid, and overqualified.
When you live in one of the most resource-rich countries on earth and people are sleeping in their cars, you're in a broken timeline. No amount of political rhetoric is getting us out of this.
So. Starting immediately — I'll be working on Mad Max solutions that can be enacted in the city while living in the ruins of capitalism.
Think stockpiling. Think trade economy. Think self-sufficiency. Act as if community is the only support structure, because that's where we are.
Currently generating about five business ideas a day and stress-testing them against the wrecked economy. Most will fail. We're heading toward a cyclical, local, cash economy. A return to craftsmanship. Buying local because we have to.
PS. It is now entirely ethical to steal cheese from major supermarket chains. If you see someone doing it, give a nod and go about your day.
Also — the fuel crisis means driving will soon not be an option. Which brings me to my conclusion:
IT'S TIME FOR EVERYONE TO BUY A HORSE. SOON, WE RIDE TOGETHER.
Please don't despair. It's about to get absolutely ridiculous and I'm going to lead the way. I cannot wait for the systems to fall apart — because on the other side, WE BUILD.
More news at 11. 🔥
#system #collapse #madmax #community #selfreliance
Real talk. It's been 114 days since I've been to the gym. For the last few years, summer work life is just too hectic, and having a membership I'm not using gives me anxiety.
But... the only time you'll get a gym selfie from me, is when I'm getting back on the horse. And in this year of the fire horse, I have set myself another insane mission. In 77 days I'll be riding point-to-point for 8 days straight around an active volcano.
It's going to be a harder ride than Safari in Tanzania. It's going to be hot and dusty and heavy going and I need to be in peak physical condition. So here I fucking am. Showing up for me, my ageing body, my two metal feet, and insane missions that give me life and something to work towards.
If you're in your forties, especially if you're ADHD and a woman in perimenopause, I cannot tout enough the benefits of lifting heavy things. Not just for osteoporosis, not just for your heart, not just to balance out the partying..but for mental health as well. Just did my first workout, where I almost lifted what I was lifting 114 days ago.. and I am dancing the whole way home rinsing drum and bass.
If anyone wants to join me, I'm at the very cheap Rezza leisure Centre gym.
MOVE IT OR LOSE IT my friends.
And I ain't going to be losing shit.
🏇🏽🔥🏇🏽🔥🏇🏽🔥🏇🏽
#gym #horse #getit #fitness #back
After spending all weekend with some of my nearest and dearest.. nothing is more obvious to me than the fact that humans are not meant to do life alone. I promise... that my retirement plan is to create a village.
I don't know how or when or where, but this has actually been the quiet dream for a long time. And the more crazy everything gets... the more I'm certain this is the only way.
My heart feels tight and limitless at the same time at the thought of it. I'm going to hold this close no matter what happens. My darlings, we are not going to die quietly alone in nursing homes at the end of our days, this I know.
We are going to burn bright and suck the juice out of every minute we are still here and..we're gonna do it together. Okay?
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
