Stage 2

And here we are.

We lodged our prospective marriage visa on 13 August 2013. On 31 October that visa was granted and only three weeks later Americo arrived here with three giant suitcases in tow.

Two more weeks and we were married. Nine days later we had our first "real" Christmas together. Then our first New Year. And our first Valentines day.

And today, just two days after our two month wedding anniversary, Immigration has granted his temporary residency visa.

For the next two years he gets to stay here. We don't have to do any more applications. We don't have to pay any more money. In two years they get in touch and ask for some more evidence that we're still together, and then, all going according to plan he gets permanent residency.

For all our six years of apart, and the stresses that come with a long distance relationship, we have been astoundingly lucky in our immigration process. Our applications were straight forward, our approvals fast, and our case officers kind and professional. I am painfully aware the process is far from easy for most, and even our process wasn't entirely easy.

We were prepared for this in so many ways because we are both well organised with our emails, calls and evidence. We knew long in advance of our application that we'd need to have evidence, so we kept our skype call logs and chats, we kept so many emails, all the travel documents, letters, cards, both to each other and from others. Add to that our joint love of photography and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence of our relationship and love for each other.

My particularly organised brain and my experience with understanding government forms made it easy to put all the evidence together and complete the forms. Even with that experience we both managed to get questions wrong because of confusing wording. For people that don't have experience with government it must be painfully challenging to fill in those forms. I can't even imagine the greater difficulty for those for which English is not their first language.

Australia is a beautiful country. We are full of kind people with great hearts that have capacity to love and welcome people from all around the world. We are a country of immigrants whose cultures and traditions make this beautiful country what it is.

My wish for this country, and the world in general, is that we can all find within ourselves the kindness to make immigration as easy for everyone, as it was for us.

The book of love

For six years and four months I have loved Americo. Truth be told I have probably loved him longer, but we celebrate our anniversary on August 16th, and so today is six years and four months from the day we "officially" became a thing. An undefinable, complicated, long distance thing. 

For most of that time we have considered ourselves to be married, in the emotional commitment sense at least. It didn't matter to us whether the government or anyone else considered us married, we were as committed to each other as two people could be.

Today we made that official official. It was small (tiny really), but for us it was perfect. It was a warm but not hot. It was breezy, but not windy. In the dappled shade of the large oak trees at the Yarralumla gallery and cafe it was just divine.

It was a quick ceremony, with personal vows, that were very us and utterly perfect. For those of you that have followed our journey we didn't want you to miss out on our special day, so here are some photos and the text of our vows to each other.

 Americo's vows to Ruth

A vow is a promise, an oath. Sadly, there's nothing I can vow to say that I haven't vowed, or promised, or oathed (not a word) to you a thousand times before. In fact, o the day we are finally getting married, I can't promise you anything. I mean, I promised you we would be together, and here we are. I promised you I would love you forever, and six years in, I do, more and more every day. I promised you this day would come, and look, here it is. From here on out, the only thing I can really promise you is that whatever we face, whatever comes, we'll see it through together.  

But vows are something else as well. They're declarations. A shout into the ether that you believe something so earnestly regardless of who hears it. Normally declarations get lost in my ramblings, or scribbled in some notepad, or dismissed on social media. So hopefully here, no, they don't get so lost.  

Ruth, I love you. In all possible meanings and translations that that word has gone through, I do love you. From the moment I met you, I knew you were the one for me. I hope that each day from then, to now, to all the years ahead of us that I earn that love. You challenge me to be better in every way. You are my Yoda, my Wonder Woman. You are my Doctor. And I am looking forward to getting timey-wimey and spacey-wacy with you. 

With a little bit of wibbly-wobbly thrown in. 

Ruth's vows to Americo

Once, a long time ago, you wrote:

"Love isn't a movie, a book, a picture or a poem. Love is you, love me is, together we're in love. 

I didn't just fall in love with you, I've always loved you, I just had to find you first. " 

I'm so very glad you kept looking til you found me. 

From the day we first talked It was like I had known you, and loved you,  forever. 

You understand me in ways that nobody else had. 

You understand my crazy isnt really crazy, its just needed your patience to help me through the bad days. 

You understand that I'm passionate about my job, and sometimes it means working weekends and when I'm on holiday. You always keep me company instead of complaining. 

You understand that you aren't allowed to reorganise my kitchen. Or my linen cupboard. And I understood I needed to buy you a PS4 in order to convince you to move to Australia.  

I love that you love me enough to watch renovation shows and MasterChef. I love that I love you enough to watch Doctor Who and Lost. I love that we agree that Matt Smith just isn't quite the Doctor and the smoke monster was pretty stupid.  

I love that you're a feminist. 

I love that you think space is awesome. 

I love how you love movies, even the really bad ones. 

Especially the really bad ones.  

I love that you like cooking and that you can't drink hot coffee because it puts you to sleep. 

I love that you stuck around for 6 years, and 4 months until we figured out how to make this one country thing work, even when it was really really hard.  

I thank you for the thousands of hours tied to a headset. For the amazing airport reunions, and the heartbreaking departures. For the cards, letters and poems that were a constant reminder you loved me. 

For every holiday, apart and together. For never giving up. And for never letting me give up. 

Everything I am, everything I have learned in the last 6 years, every success I have had, it has been because you supported me. You held my hand (more figuratively, than literally) and told me I could do anything, and I did, because I believed you.  

To me, you have been my husband since the day you told me you were going to marry me so many years ago. Today you become my husband to the government and the rest of the world. And most importantly to the department of immigration.  

I am blessed to be your wife, and I promise I will love you more than coffee, cheesecake, and Eddie Vender, I sincerely promise that I will love you more very day, and I also swear, with every part of my soul, that I won't make you watch the Fast and the Furious movies more than once a year. 

For my husband... I told you today how much I love you, and I promise I will continue to tell you every day how much I value you and our relationship. And I swear that from now on I'll quit blogging our life. 


For those of you that couldn't be with us today... you were missed. Sometime in the future when we have our life sorted out we'll do a "proper" wedding when all of our friends and family can be part of the day. We both hope the photos make up for that a little bit. 

The Feminist Voice

Hi, my name’s Ruth and I am a feminist.

This, obviously, is no shock to the five of you that read this blog, or anyone that follows me on twitter.

I have strong opinions about how women are currently treated in the world, how they should be treated, what rights women should have to their own body autonomy and freedom of movement. I’m highly outspoken on those opinions.

And while it is the case that I will forthrightly put forward those opinions in discussions and debates on ‘women’s’ issues, no matter what you think I am not speaking for the feminist movement as a whole.

When Clementine Ford wrote this article I don't think she was speaking for all feminists either. The way you know that is that the article falls under the heading of “opinion” and her name is on the article. Ms Ford is expressing her opinion. It’s one I agree with and wholeheartedly endorse, but it’s not for everyone.

If you read the comments, which I don’t personally recommend (yes, I was stupid enough to ignore my own advice), you’ll see gems like these:

“The authors willingness to assert her moral superiority over a choice as individual as this one signifies more about the nature of modern feminism than anything said in the text”

“No attacks please, but I can bet all the "feminists" have plenty to say to me”

“Alert the equalist brigade- another feminist is mouthing off about what a real feminist is and does”

“I'm getting tired of this myth and those feminists who cling to it like a talisman”

The common link in these responses is the implication that feminists are one hive mind. We all think alike. Every issue with a feminist bent is one that is attacked with single focus that doesn’t allow for individual thought or self expression.

This is a common attack from people that think feminism is a dirty word.

And the generalisation of feminists, and in fact women overall, leads us down a path of minimising the value of self choice and self expression. We are forced to spend time defending attacks on feminism that may not even relate to our own personal opinions. We take exception to one feminist’s argument that can be interpreted to imply that you are not feminist enough if you disagree with that opinion.

I don’t believe that to be the case, and while I certainly don’t speak for Ms Ford, I don’t think (based on reading that article and her tweets) that she does either.

Every feminist I know firmly believes in choice. Your choice to make a decision that’s best for you. I might not agree with the historical context of the decision you make i.e. changing your name on marriage, but I respect that it’s your choice to make and your reasons for making it

What I ask in return, for respecting your choice, is that you do the same.

You don’t tsk tsk behind my back about my choices to not take my husband’s name (when I finally tie the knot).

You don’t punish me for taking a name of my choice by charging me to change my name where you don’t do the same for women who take their husbands name or return to their fathers name post divorce.

You don’t make jokes about me being a lesbian.

You don’t ask if my partner is offended that I changed my name without his ‘permission’ or imply he’s ‘whipped’ because he ‘let’ me take a name that wasn’t related to him.

You accept that my choice is mine and it has absolutely nothing to do with you, to the point that you really have no business even asking why I did it.

The simple fact is that in this big bad world you only speak for one person, you, and those people you’re talking with only speak for themselves not a whole movement.

When we push a group, feminists, men, Asians, Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Labour, into having a single voice we are limiting the millions of voices that might have something really important to say, that are drowned out by generalisations.

So, next time you’re having a conversation and you’re tempted to imply that a group of millions of the people around the world are all saying the same thing and can’t possibly think for themselves, perhaps you’d like pause and add the word “some” in front of feminist/builder/lawyer/elephant to acknowledge that there might be some people in that group that don’t conform with the majority and your generalisation of that group is misleading and insulting.