Episode Notes

[Music] [Narelle] Hello and welcome to, I think it's episode six of The Digital Access Show. Today's guest is someone I've been wanting to interview for a while. I met her through a networking group called BX and the way Grace tackles life head-on, and with a laugh is just such she's a great person for me to follow in the way she manages life. I'd like to introduce you all to Grace Cameron. Grace is the director and owner of Sunlight Bookkeeping, but I'm going to let Grace tell you a little bit about, Grace and Grace's story. Hi Grace, thanks for being here. [Grace] Hi Narelle, Thank you for having me. [Narelle] As I said, I'm excited to have you here. Grace, can you tell me a little bit about yourself. What you do, what Sunlight Bookkeeping is about? [Grace] Well, I suppose I'll go back a little bit from before that because that helps me start. [Narelle] Yep. [Grace] My first career was actually in landscape architecture. I wanted to be a glamorous designer, but I'm actually not very good at design. So in my career as landscape architecture, I did analysis and budgets and construction contracts and numbers. Then I got meningitis in 2010 and developed POTS. So my POTS means that I spend 20 to 23 hours a day lying down. I'm lying down right now, I have the, the screen above me and the camera above me. [Narelle] Thank you Grace, what is POTS? Can you explain? [Grace] Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. And it's actually becoming more common and it's more of focus on it because a lot of people with long COVID developed POTS. So there's a, new research happening in it, which hopefully will provide some insights and some benefits soon. But essentially, my body doesn't maintain my blood pressure properly. So we have different things that we can do to increase blood pressure and, but my heart has to compensate. My heart has to work harder to keep blood circulating properly around my body. So if I sit up for too long, I get dizzy and I can't think because my brain isn't getting enough oxygen. [Narelle] Okay. [Grace] So [Narelle] So basically, you lie down on most of the time. [Grace] I lie down most of the time and when it first happened, I spent years mostly on my own in my bedroom bored and isolated and just challenged getting through the basic tasks of caring for myself and my family helping to care for me. And eventually getting adequate supports through State Government Funding and then through the NDIS changed, changed a lot for me and I enabled me to go back and retrain and study. I looked at my skills and my interests. I've had an interest in small business for a long time and from landscape architecture, but creative problem-solving, and numbers and analysis. And so I picked bookkeeping because I could do that incorporate all those things and do it lying down. And I started my business and we launched in February, the 1'st of February last year. So where I've just had a birthday. [Narelle] Happy Birthday! [Grace] Thank you. It's been, it's been a fantastic amazing process because it's changed so much for me. I have, I still spend all my time well most of my time lying down but now I have access to the business community through networking and through my clients and through my team members and all these inspiring people in my life. I'm learning so much about different things and it's just a lot more richness and I feel like so much has opened up for me. [Narelle] So, what was the reason, like at that point when you were sitting in your room by yourself? What was that reason that made you change? Was that you didn't like your life at that time? And you said, well, there's got to be something better. Was it, oops, I've got funding now that I can now change my life and make it better? What was it? What was it, was it family? Thank you. Come on, Grace. [Grace] No. I had, I had, CentreLink had me on disability and said that I couldn't work actually and family saying that I couldn't push myself. That