Mary

Mary is Chinese Australian, born in Fiji during World War Two. Mary believes her life is blessed. She is 76, the mother of 7 children, the grandmother of 5 children.  Her Catholic faith strongly shapes the way that Mary sees the world. The three most important things in her life are loving God, your neighbour, and yourself. To her, loving yourself is very important.  "I like this bit... We need to do the right thing by ourselves, look after ourselves." Despite the strength of her Catholic religious beliefs, she also believes that all religions are essentially good, "If we go back to their teachings, it is love God, love your neighbour as yourself." She also acknowledges that Catholicism is far from perfect. "A lot of harm has been done in the name of the church."   Mary feels it is important to accept people for who they are. She says that she tries to be accepting, especially as she herself is not perfect, although sometimes, she finds that hard. Her deep faith in God leads her to have a basic trust in life, that things will work out for the best, even if that is not the way that we would have wanted. She loves life and hopes to be around for much longer, although she is not afraid of dying.  "Basically I think that's my life and I like to think I'm happy about it."