'I blew up my 'perfect' life to start over. I never could've predicted what would happen next.'

If you're considering a divorce, splitting up a family, ditching your career, moving states or countries, starting over again and you're looking for some advice? I'm your girl.

Yup, I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I blew up my entire life. I had everything I'd ever wanted. The house, the career, the family. I had it all. It turned out to be everything I didn't want. So I blew it up. Did I get my happy ending? Did I find all the things I was looking for? Yes. Absolutely. Everything and then some. Was it awful and amazing and horrific and traumatic and wonderful all at once? Yes.

Watch: Some things you need to know about Grief. Post continues after video.

Should you do it? What, chuck it all in and start again? If you really want my advice, then the answer is almost always yes. If you feel in your gut that you are not where you're supposed to be then absolutely. If you ask me, then I will say go for it. Life is too short. Seize the day. Carpe the diem.

But. There's always a 'but' isn't there?

But, this advice come with a serious warning label.

Although seemingly easily dispatched, this advice comes with a big old caveat. A huge sticker on the bottom - no fine print here - it would read: "Warning: This advice, if taken, can lead to extreme levels of guilt, shame and potential remorse."

You will almost certainly play over and over in your mind versions of the life that you would have had if you hadn't left it all behind. You will almost certainly have to answer very difficult questions from your children, deal with a lot of anger from everyone involved and you will need a lot of therapy. A. LOT.

Some days you will regret everything. Everything. Other days you will know exactly why you did it. You will find ways to deal with the gnawing feeling in your stomach that you are responsible for f**king everything up.

Some days you will wish life was like one of those choose your own adventure books or that Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors and you could go back to the start and see what happens if you chose the other path. 

I know you will because I did. I did and I still do. And that's after an awful lot of therapy.

It's almost eight years since I blew up my entire life. Eight years since I left my husband, our house, my dream career as a TV presenter and all of my friends and I moved our children from London to Melbourne.

When our relationship broke down, my husband and I tried everything to make it work. This is one bit of advice I would give you before the whole pack your bags and skip town part. Do the work. Get the therapy - together - before the therapy you're going need after the leaving part on your own. There were two little kids involved, so of course we did the work. I didn't just jump on a plane even though I really wanted to.

But after the work didn't work we both agreed that I could move home to Australia and take the kids with me. It was the hardest decision of my life but after everything went to sh*t, I knew there was no place like home and despite living in London for 20 years, Australia was always home. If we had known then what we know now, I probably wouldn't have left. If I'd known we would only have a few years before we would lose him then maybe things would have played out differently but we didn't know. So we left. Even writing that sentence eight years on has a physical effect on me. I told myself I'd rebuild my career, I'd make new friends, I'd build a new house and make us a home. I knew none of it would be easy but I had no idea how hard it would be.

We'd agreed he would visit whenever he wanted, when his work would allow and we would come back once a year for as long as we could.

At the start I thought this was a genius part of the plan. I'd always loved travel and knew I wanted the kids to know more than just London. But (there's always that but) travelling with two kids who were only four and five by this point, alone, was really hard. I don't think there are many airline staff between Australia and the UK who haven't seen me cry.

I thought I was avoiding the whole 'one weekend with Dad, one weekend with Mum' disaster that I'd seen play out in other families. Turns out what I'd designed for myself was worse. It was so hard to hand them over for weeks on end and drop myself back into my old life in London without my kids. All my friends had kids, we'd all hung out with all our kids before. Now I didn't have my kids. Now, I was like a drunken aunt, swooping in and sitting at their family dinner table drinking too much and crying. I'd see all my old work friends moving on to the next stage of their careers, acutely aware that I had prematurely ended mine. Every corner I turned in London I got slapped in the face with a memory of my old life.

So, my advice on this one? If you can and you want to, then yes get as far away as humanly possible but be prepared for the trauma. There is an element of doing it for the plot. I'd always say that it was never boring but the fact that it's taken me years to write about this does suggest that it was more than a little traumatic and I've still got a lot to work through. Never boring, but also not so good for the mental health.

My heart still hurts when I picture my kids throwing themselves into their dad's arms at the airport. More tears and no sympathy for me. My own doing. My own choices. I've spent the last eight years channeling Ross from Friends saying "I'm Fine". But I've been anything but fine.

Image: Supplied.

Enough of the bad stuff. You want to hear the good stuff right? The light at the end of the tunnel stuff. I told you to leave; I told you that if you felt it in your gut that it would be worth it. So I guess I should tell you there are more upsides than travel.

Well, the first upside of this little scenario was that I got to move to the beach. We moved to a little town called Torquay. A place I'd spent a lot of time when I'd been at uni in Melbourne. It was surfy and outdoorsy. All the kids went to the beach before and after school, they spent weekends outside riding their bikes and skateboards, they surfed, they swam. My mum and my sister were there. They spent their weekends kayaking, paddle boarding and on yoga retreats. It was a million miles away from the life the kids and I had in London.

Don't get me wrong. I loved London and couldn't imagine being anywhere else when it came to work and my social life, but when kids came along I wanted to get out. We'd talked about moving before we split, when we were trying to work things out. This was just after my daughter had developed bronchitis because of the pollution on our walk to her nursery school. We tried to move but his work and family were in London. 

My family were all back in Australia. I wanted the kids to have a childhood more like mine than the one they were getting in London. My son loved to run. On the beach he just ran for miles, feet in the sand, delving into rock pools, exploring at bush kinder. He was in his element. My daughter loved swimming, I couldn't get her out of the water most days. I wanted them to have this all the time, not just once a year on holiday.

Image: Supplied.

More good stuff? When I dropped the kids at their dad's in London I got to travel with my friends. We actually got to go away for those European weekends we'd talked about but never thought we'd be able to organise around our busy family lives. When I arrived in London for a few weeks a year we forced ourselves to jump on a plane and travel - Barcelona, Sardinia, Positano, Milan, Lisbon, some of the best weekends of my life.  

More good stuff? You need more than travel with your girlfriends? OK, not all the dating was bad. Tinder and Bumble had arrived since I'd last been on the dating scene and I got to play swipe left all over the world. My advice, I know you asked for it. Do it. Go on all the dates. Have all the fun.

Did I find my Mr Right? Well actually yes, thanks for asking. I did. I met him at work four years after we moved back to Australia. We got married just over a year ago and he is the most wonderful husband and the best step-dad ever. What we have now is the fairytale I only let myself dream we would have. I found the happy ending, but we paid a huge emotional price along the way.

Image: Supplied.

So on that note I have to warn you about the worst. The part that I didn't see coming and wouldn't have even seen in my worst nightmares. The part that makes me replay everything over and over. The part that makes me wonder that if I knew then what I know now would I have done it again? The answer is a little trickier now that he's gone.

Five years after we left, their father died. He was diagnosed with Leukaemia just two years after we moved away. We had just worked out the whole flying back-and-forth thing. I'd bought a house, the kids were settled in school; I was getting back to work. Suddenly none of it mattered.

He'd gone from feeling a little under the weather to being told he had cancer and having to start treatment right away. We got on a plane and I started to wrestle with the idea of moving back to London.  

I have no advice on this one other than get there. Spend time. Try not to beat yourself up like I did. Try.

We went back and forth twice a year for the next few years. He was in and out of remission. We tried to time the trips with when he was feeling good. We tried. I brought the kids home to Australia and tried to make life as normal as possible. I tried to console myself with the idea that even though I decided not to move back to London, at least they weren't seeing him at his worst. They didn't have to live through the hell of him going through chemo and radiotherapy. The hell he was living through, the hell he was enduring so he could live. I couldn't begin to imagine. I wanted to help but all I could do was try to hold it together for the kids and hope that it wouldn't end. That he would live. 

Then COVID arrived. We couldn't go. We couldn't travel. We couldn't go until we had to. Christmas 2020, the worst time and the worst trip. The doctors said we had to come and say goodbye.

My advice on this one. Don't drink away the feelings like I did. Be kind to yourself. Go. Say goodbye and hope it doesn't turn out like it did for us. 

We spent Christmas in London, me isolating, the kids with their Dad, all of us taking COVID tests in weird car park tents. Watching Boris on TV, hoping we'd be able to leave, heading for two weeks quarantine at home. (I wrote about it for Mamamia).

He lived through Christmas, through more COVID but passed away before the end of the year. Another moment I will never get out of my mind is telling my kids that their dad had died. They were just nine and 10 years old. They had spoken to him on FaceTime in the few days before the end until he'd stopped recognising them and was confused. We told him we loved him.  

My only advice on this one. Tell them you love them. Despite everything. In spite of it all. The horrible fights. All the bad stuff. None of it cancels out the good stuff. I'm glad I got the chance to tell him. The love that made the family, even though it doesn't look the way you wanted it to, even though it doesn't resemble the picture you had in your mind. It is what it is and you are where you're meant to be.

I was left wondering though. Am I the worst person in the world? My kids will never understand why we moved away, why they didn't get more time with their dad. If I had known that he would only get those too few years with them would I have stayed? I know the answer is probably yes. If I'd known. But I didn't know. How could I? I will never know if I made the right decisions back then. You will never know unless you go. If you stay then what?

If I had stayed I wouldn't have met my husband. I wouldn't be sitting on a beach with my kids, watching them grow up in the most wonderful place on earth. I wouldn't be as happy as I am now. If I can take anything from the worst thing that ever happened and share it with you then it is this. My advice stands. Even though I wrestle with the emotions around it every day. I would still say do it. I wanted to be here. I wanted the children to see this life. I can never get back what they lost but I hope what I give them is enough. Mostly they're happy that I'm happy.

Feature Image: Supplied.