I write this to keep you updated, but also to keep me updated. I need to remember all the moments, minutes and days that make this project what it is going to become. I need to remember M who gave me three hugs yesterday just because I gave her a camera. Who also told me that doing this project is a chance for her to feel like she exists. And that’s the crux of it isn’t it; these women don’t get a chance to feel like they exist. Or like Dee said to me this morning they are just seen like robots. Sex robots.

I write because at some points I am going to need to remember that I love being here getting hugs from M. I love it because it means that she trusts me a bit. And I love it because having moved away from my home to be here for this, I miss my family, I miss the comfort of my sweet nephews wrapping their little arms around my neck, I miss the hello and goodbye hugs from old friends, and to whatever extent it is possible these women, this disarray of women (I can think of no other verb to describe the collection I have assembled in front of me other than a disarray – because they are indeed a motley crew) is going to become that familial comfort to me. And in the true nature of friendship they will also be my anxiety, my headache and sometimes my heartache. And of course my joy and pride. But that’s friendship isn’t it? Complex and inconsistent, a multitude of emotions all bundled into one invisible connection between two souls.

Yesterday I went with Bee to her access visit with her son. He is two years old and has been in the care of a foster family for most of his life. Not because Bee doesn’t love him, nor because she isn’t capable of being a mother, but because events in her life converged at time when she struggled to look after and love herself, let alone a small bundle of need and nappies.

And once a baby disappears into the hands of the Department of Human Services (DHS) it’s a hell of a fight to get it back. Especially because sometimes back is not the best place for the child. As we drove closer she talked faster, nerves mounting in anticipation of seeing her child.

As we walked into the DHS building, she lugged a huge, black, slightly worse for wear suitcase behind her. It was full of belated birthday and Easter presents. She spotted her son in the waiting area, and in a blur of activity the DHS supervisor arrived and escorted us down the grim corridor to the ‘meeting’ room. The room distinguished itself from any old meeting room in any old building by the child-sized table and chair in the corner. Elsewhere another table hosted a collection of battered and worn children’s books.

The air of desperation in the building was palpable as parents, foster parents, DHS supervisors and children shuffled through the motions of their too-short or too-long access visits. Meeting rooms were full of dads kneeling awkwardly on the floor with their kids and disconcertingly young mothers holding their tiny babies, all being watched by the social workers who have the unenviable job of determining the fate of these kids, born in difficult circumstances.

I sat in the corner of the room and watched my friend kneel on the floor and coax her son off his foster father’s lap. I sat in that room and watched as she was shown pictures of her son in the arms of another woman, her son at the beach with his other ‘parents’, her son on a holiday that she couldn’t ever afford to take him on. I felt a knot of desperation and longing clench deep in my stomach. It was heartbreaking. I wondered how the social workers didn’t sink under the tide of all those sad moments.

I watched her win her son’s attention and then his smiles with the presents that overflowed from the suitcase. While they were playing I watched his foster father and my heart broke for him too. This kind man was spending the latter part of his life as a full time dad, when he should have been a once-a-week granddad. This man would also take my friend’s baby home after this too-short hour and have to mop up the fallout from a kid with a confused and hurting heart. I can think of no better example of being between a rock and hard place. No one wins here. No one.

When we left, Bee and her son clung to each other, neither wanting to let go. I imagined what it would be like for one of my sisters to send their young kids home with a stranger, however kind that stranger was. That thought touched on places in my heart that hurt even more than watching this sad scene unfold in front of me. We stood and waved the car into the distance and then we went back to St Kilda. Back to Greeves Street.

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I’ve been writing this entry in that same day-to-day chaos of Gatehouse, and between words I’ve collected clothes, distributed phonecards, had a chat about babies, cuddled the resident baby, checked out a ‘new’ car and given someone a camera. It really is chaotic, this disarray of women, but I love it. Highs, lows, rocks and hard places.