I am and have been in a search for meaning all my life. I was raised by my parents as an atheist and so am in a very real sense a spiritual orphan. This time last year I had a breakdown mostly because my dying mother had cut me out of her life because my father decided to cut me off over a triviality. My mother had breast cancer ten years ago (which was cut out) but she smoked the whole time she was awake so when lung cancer struck two years ago she went through the gruelling process of chemo but it didn't help. After I came out of hospital I wrote my mother a letter but she never answered (they had cut their phone off). In the letter I talked a lot about God, something I had never done before. I remembered how she said that she'd been born a Catholic and hence would die one.

I was informed of my mother's death by my father weeks after her funeral in March 2016, to which I was obviously not invited. And then in July the cops came to the door and gave me a number to ring. It was my Dad's solicitor and he informed me that Dad had passed from bowel cancer on 30th May. I didn't even know he was sick. The solicitor also told me that my father had made a Will that gave the house to a scientific institute that practices vivisection (Garvan Institute) and the house contents to a neighbour. The house was in my mother's name but she failed to make a Will so it automatically went to Dad. Dad always hated me and my brother, and I was never my mother's favourite child but honestly thought she loved me if not as much as I loved her. But my brother was my mother's favourite, and it seems strange indeed that she wouldn't have protected him from Dad's vindictiveness. The house was sold a few months ago and with Sydney's inflated prices it sold for A$1.55 mil. I'll be lucky to get a third of that.

During the first 4 months of this year I actually felt God's presence enough to finally believe in him/her. I went to a Lutheran Church thinking of joining and being baptised because I was so moved by J.S.Bach's St Matthew's Passion. But I simply felt awkward - not at all at home. Then I tried an American-style pentecostal Church called "The Potter's House" which is where Hillsong Church used to be. I felt good singing along to the rock band but having fun wasn't really what I was looking for.

Well,I haven't been baptised yet, and I'm trying to regain that joyous lifting of heaviness off my shoulders which I felt when I was honestly trying to hand my will and my life over to God, acknowledging my powerlessness in all things but being able to trust TRUST God to look after me better than I could ever take care of myself.

Maybe I need to move from church to church until I find what I'm looking before. Maybe it's just a personal thing but I feel lonely without a "tribe" - I long for a spiritual home.

Our little youngster Kimberly (Kimby for short) has grown out the wing that was clipped when we brought her home but none of the scary events that we feared from past experience occurred, mainly because Bluey (short for Blueberry Snowflake) stayed by her side all the way.

There's a photo of little Kimby sitting on my husband's shoulder in my "budgerigar" album.

She's a brave little soul, but even brave little souls can get frightened when they are faced with something with which they are inexperienced. It's amazing how they might have the urge to flight, but all the rest they have to learn.

With Bluey's help Kimby stayed away from the dangerous places like falling behind cupboards and terrifying (for them and us) situations like when a pile of books fell onto Bluey and it was a miracle that he knew to stay put and not move during the avalanche - where he was crouching in a little lean-to shelter formed by one book caused all the rest of the paperback books to slide off harmlessly.

Oh what joy replaced dread when we unearthed him from the bottom of the pile, well and healthy if a little shaken.

Instead of the experience turning him into a paranoid bird, he's taken it upon himself to try and make sure that he does everything he can to prevent the same heart-stopping occurrences happening to his beloved partner.

Our pair of budgerigars are so in love it makes a mockery of assertions that "animals don't feel". Nothing can be further from the truth.