Nightmares to Dreams

Australian immigrant Maddie Mitchell, is the single parent to four children whose life has slowly transitioned from nightmares to dreams. Raised in a large family with a dominant and physically abusive polygamist father who had 24 wives, she is one of his 32 children and he has 45 grandchildren. Her mother was the fourth wife and when she divorced her husband she was forced to leave Maddie behind at the tender age of three and a half. As a teenager she fell in love and soon got married only to discover shortly afterwards giving birth to her second child at a funeral in her grandmother's village that her husband was in fact her step brother; one of her father's many children whom she had never met. The relationship dissolved and she found herself as a penniless single mother of two children selling vegetables and fruit in the market place to survive. Shortly afterwards her mother passed way, adding to her already sad and dismal life. Her second marriage failed too and she was left to raise her four children, two step sisters and four orphaned children who were part of her extended family alone. She got a job as a massage therapist in an exclusive hotel and eventually immigrated to Australia in 2008. On arrival she was yet again faced with more challenges, on a personal and financial level and ended up in a Women's refuge centre which presented a further set of problems. She got her permanent residency and managed to bring her children to Australia and has been trying to navigate the Australian welfare system to raise her four children as a single mother. Her story is truly inspiring, she became a published author and has been studying to become an actress and her dreams are finally coming true.