LARA RYAN IS an Australian woman who’s had a seriously tough time of it in the last few weeks – to say the least.
She lost Elise, her partner of 10 years, in a tragic road accident three weeks ago in Sydney. They considered themselves a married couple – but Australian law didn’t recognise them as such.
On Monday she posted an image to Facebook of her and Elise, with a powerful message that is being shared widely around the world
She began:
This is why.
Because having lost my partner in a horrible pedestrian accident this month I had to ask policemen if I was ‘allowed’ to write Spouse on incident reports.
I had to cross out boxes for husband on the death certificate and boxes for father on our new baby’s birth certificate (both on the same day).
Her post has been shared over 58,000 times, and it’s a heartbreaking tale of an awful situation:
I had to yell out in a busy, crazy emergency room “She is my wife, I know it’s not legal but she is my wife!”
Because we were never political, we just did our thing, did our life our way and tried to live by example to shift peoples hearts rather than pushing agendas. BUT the amount of freaking paper work I am having to do to secure mine and my children’s future welfare is just ridiculous when all it would take is one marriage certificate.
As Australian website SMH reports, Lara’s four-year old daughter would walk up to anyone who would listen and announce: “I’ve got two mums.”
Lara’s Facebook post finished with a lovely tribute to both Elise and the very concept of marriage equality:
And most of all because I love her, and she has been my every day for ten years, She is the mother of our two girls, she is the future I dreamed of and she is my safe place to land.
Because love is love and we should celebrate it and encourage it always. The world is harsh enough.
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