Jan Taylor ​“Sell the business … why?”

​Right from Day 1 in 1940 my family needed to make way for me into their home. My mother had married a widower with two children. And they had to move over for a baby girl, their step-mother’s only child, at a time when life was less than easy at the beginning of World War II.

​I have realised that my mother, then 39, was a resourceful woman. When Dad shipped out to the Middle East in October 1940, she packed us up and we moved to her parents’ farm south of Hobart, renting out the suburban home to try to make ends meet.

On his return three years later Dad’s health had suffered. But they joined forces and set out to help those whose lives had been shattered. Their efforts showed me how important it is to help where help is needed and to share without a word of complaint, always considering others before ourselves. I will never forget Mum’s humility when she was awarded an MBE for her years of giving in 1954, and her overwhelming excitement at by being presented with the medal by the Queen.

Nancy Knudsen 'Around the world with words’

The relationship floundered, however, and it appeared to me that my career was getting in the way of the marriage, which had by now produced the real loves of my life, my two children. The kids were doing very well, with full lives and enjoying the extra benefits of attending good, but expensive schools. So I made an attempt to save the marriage by returning to university to study – yes, Words again: English and Philosophy. My logic for this was, if I had to make a choice – often demanded by my then husband – between being present at a business dinner and completing an assignment, only I would suffer if I skipped the assignment – something that does not apply when one has work commitments.
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As many would have already guessed, this didn't change anything in the relationship with my husband and we finally split. So in 1978 I ended up as a single parent with the two kids, no job, private school fees to pay, and the determination that I didn't want any scrapping over money to soil the children's lives. So this meant no money from my former spouse, and no way to pay the school fees. Because their lives were, naturally, altered by the marriage split, I wanted to keep as much stability as possible by not changing their schools.