Michelle

My name is Michelle Bowden and I am a wife, stepmother, mother, and artist. My priority is my family. My life is actually on track and I am where I want to be.

I am in the enviable position to be able to focus on my love of art and I have put together an artists run initiative called Art Salon. This organisation uses a lot of the skills I have developed over my life like: networking, researching, event planning, and budgeting. Using all these skills I am then able to help myself and others.

My dreams for 2020 women

Women need to find respect for themselves. There is still a culture of sexual discrimination.

There needs to be a culture of acceptance and respect.

Women are not a minority group we are the majority so more of life show be towards helping women do important work in the world not hindering them. Unfortunately we have to do this in a system developed by men.

An ideal system is where children are integrated into working life. Once this happens then the working Mums of this world can stop feeling guilty

My thoughts on success and adversity

I have come to realise that the main thing is to believe in your own abilities. If you can find that place within that gives you strength and helps you see things clearly its enough to help you carry on.

Any adversity I have faced in my life has been made bearable by the support of my family and friends. Being there for family and friends is important and they will be there for you.

Things happen in life that are nobodies fault and to try and reason ‘why me?' is not helpful.

The important people in my life

The most important people in my life are:

• My husband - who is so supportive of me in all my schemes and makes me feel very wanted and safe.
• My Family - they are my inspiration.
• My girlfriends from school - more like sisters who are always there and bring a wonderful continuity to my life.
• Those I have yet to meet - I continue to meet and be inspired by those around me. Talking and connecting to people I am in contact with on a daily basis adds a richness to everyday life.

It was at about the age of 14 that I met an amazing group of friends. We developed very strong bonds throughout high school and are still friends today. My five main friends have been there through all my trials and tribulations.
At 16 I met someone I thought would be my life partner and remained in that relationship for 13 years.

During that time my self-esteem took a battering. Looking back I now know the fact that I was successful in my career and found it easy to get on with anyone I met really bothered my partner and because he felt insecure he took this out on me. There was no physical abuse but a subtle chipping away with unkind words and disrespect.
I knew deep down there was something fundamentally unhealthy and wrong about the relationship but I had made a commitment, so for years tried to make things work.

More about Michelle

I studied, got my degree, worked my way steadily up the corporate ladder but I have always wondered how much more I could have achieved with the support and help of my partner. I began thinking about children and becoming a mother and realized the person I was with was not the person I wanted to father my children.

Then I met the most amazing man - I was very taken but as yet did not realize how right he was for me.
When my current husband and I met he had three children and I was still going through the death throws of a bad relationship. Privately we both thought the situation impossible. So initially we admired each other from afar.
Eventually we were honest with each other and felt we had to be together. This was the beginning of a wonderful relationship but not an easy one.

Being together complicated the untangling from our previous partners. He was separated but not divorced and I hadn't finalized the property settlement with my previous partner.
It took years to work through this with solicitors and in the end I settled for a lot less than I was entitled because I needed the emotional trauma to end.

This was added to the adjustment I was going through with an instant family. My three stepchildren lived with us. Taking on a 9 year old, 13 year old and 14 year old was a bit of a shock to the system. A lot of the way I lived had to change. It wasn't easy but I was determined to make everything work. We had some ups and downs but I always tried to treat the children as my own - always keeping in mind what I would expect of my own children and how I would treat them. I never was at arms length - I got my hands dirty. It was through my actions that I know that my stepchildren realize they had another parent to love and support them and they could always depend on me as I was there for the long term.
Even with a hectic household of teenagers I once more thought about having children. I had found the right person and knew he made a great dad, but I faced more complications. My husband had a vasectomy after his third child was born, as he was satisfied with three children and thought his marriage of the time was secure. For us to have children together would take a lot of medical intervention.

To have children we had to go through IVF (amongst other procedures) to get pregnant. Even though our IVF treatments were successful it was not easy. We still had three teenagers to worry about which is an emotional roller coaster without the added hormonal roller coaster you go on with IVF.

We ended up with two healthy children.

After the birth of my son I went back to work on a job share basis working a five day fortnight. We had to fight hard for this working arrangement and come up with the conditions ourselves as there were no guidelines concerning job sharing at the time. The other woman and myself were well suited in our skill sets and we bought lots of extra to the job. We both took work home and we were able to look at problems from both points of view.

This arrangement worked so well we staggered our next pregnancies so the job would be covered all except for 1 month. Unfortunately it was in the month we were both off on maternity leave that the decision to move the job to Melbourne was made. Neither of us wanted to move with the job. So we no longer had our jobs. Without really planning it I became a stay at home Mum.

At first I dabbled in various hobbies and then setup my own business doing childrens parties. I was the ultimate party planner for children. After 6 years of parties I needed to move on but it was an enjoyable and successful 6 years. My little business kept me sane, believe it or not. It was one thing I felt I had total control over.
The stepkids have now moved out (at this moment in time) and we are bringing up the two smaller children who are at primary school. They are both happy and healthy and love having older brothers and an older sister. My husband and I have a strong marriage and life is pretty good.

I have always loved art and been creative on the sidelines. I now have the time to pursue art more extensively and am loving it. I network with artists so we can pool our resources to share our art with the world. I have always loved helping others achieve their goals but the difference is now I am achieving mine as well.