Prepare to be a MAZed—you have never read anything like this before. In The MAZ Factor: A Gutsy True Story to Change Your Life, Marylin Schirmer exposes her deepest, darkest secrets in light of the truths that changed her life and with the knowledge that these same truths can bring passion, vision, optimism and fulfillment to all of our lives as well.

Marylin’s life, from childhood and for the first thirty plus years, was a crushing saga of oppressive, abusive relationships and horrific events. The darkest hour comes just before the dawn, however, Marylin’s true rags-to-riches story offers ample proof of how brightly the dawn can shine. Only after moving across Australia with her four children, and making a radical decision, did Marylin finally break free from such a doomed cycle—only then was she able to create the opposite cycle, one that will astound you.

In her down-to-earth personality and style, Marylin expertly guides us along The MAZ Factor’s tragic and yet ultimately inspiring journey, from desperation to transformation to finally turning the focus on ourselves and how to use our own magnificent hearts and minds to create our own cycle of fortune. In more ways than one, what appears to be a book about Marylin's story becomes a book about ours.

We were not a close family, we had many secrets, and so it was mum’s belief that it was nobody’s business but our own, one mustn’t air ones dirty laundry, it is life after all. She was just raised that way and that was that. Mum never questioned her situation, which of course meant she never questioned mine either. It’s just not done.

Mum’s most remembered saying to me was ‘don’t tell your father’. I don’t think she even noticed that I didn’t dare talk to him at the best of times.

I’d hear mum talk to her sister like everything was just dandy, Mum could be so happy around her sister but boy; she certainly suffered at other times, behind closed doors. Another door she was closed behind was the door of reality.

OK!

The feeling in my stomach is telling me that it is almost time to tell the story of my childhood and my old life, however, I warn you that I will tell it from my heart using my own words, as I remember it. I am sorry in advance if some of my language offends, but I didn’t have other words available to me at the time and I want to tell it like it was THEN.

I dare not take too long as I don’t like the old feelings that are surfacing right now. Best I get to it then and push past it to the good stuff. I want to fit lots of that in here for you. After all, the past is the past and in fact only exists in our memory and so if our memory is not a tangible thing then it is not necessarily reality at all. If it were, I could not have grown into the person I am today. If that is confusing for you just wait and see what I mean in later chapters.

PART 1

MY OLD LIFE

“The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.”

Oprah Winfrey

LITTLE MISS FOGHORN

Who was Marylin Schirmer from flying fish point and who the heck cares? She certainly wasn’t someone her father loved let alone liked or wanted, heck she wasn’t even someone he could stand the sight of. To be honest, although her mother no doubt loved her very much, she had a strange way of showing it.

Being a little kid I just didn’t get that stuff, I just wanted to grow up and get out of there. The problem was though, by the time I did I was pretty damn messed up, so where was I to go? Straight into the arms of other messed up people, that is where I went, I even went on to mess up others along the way. I was one big ball of mess on a downhill slope gathering even more mess along the way, how much crap could 1 girl take?

My earliest memories are scattered somewhere between baby and about 4 years old, if you can call them memories, they are more like my monumental life learning’s that created my world as I knew it then, and carried forward into my school years and beyond. The first one I can remember, is thinking, that man who lives here is scary and when I go near him he turns into a big angry monster.

Could I have been a baby? Perhaps, certainly I was very young. Another one was that whenever he is not around life is ok, it’s peaceful. Another one was that he wasn’t like that with everybody, only with me. Another one was

EXCERPT FROM A LATER SECTION IN PART 1 THE BOOK

What adult daughter wants to stand naked in front of a room full of men including your hateful father? He left scoffing without a single apology or any words whatsoever. My future husband was out fishing somewhere at the time. We did not do drug’s, that man had it in his head that we must have been up to no good.

Anyway, my father remained in the background of my life for many years afterwards because he was mums husband and that was it, mum still could never see anything outside of the only life she knew.

On the day of my wedding (my husband is another story I will tell you about soon enough) dad said to me just as we were getting into the car, ‘look how beautiful your sister is, she looks more like a bride than you do’, and then he climbed into the back seat of the bridal car next to me and proceeded to do the honor of giving me away….

Occasionally he would try to do something nice, like the time he caught all these fresh mud-crabs and came to give me one. Wow, I was impressed until I asked why it was frozen, don’t be silly he said, this is that little one I had in the bottom of the freezer for ages, I needed the room for the fresh ones. Well I was sick for days, I got food poisoning.

The best act of all by my father comes a little later in this part of the book as there is much to know first…..

MY CHILDREN’S FATHER

(Please excuse the scramble of time frame occasionally as I felt some things of relevance should be told before others, so stay with me)

We met when I was 15 and just before I moved out of home. Whilst working at Woolworths one day, I went to a hotel and ordered a counter lunch (yes I was underage, by far, but I was a regular and never questioned about my age back then). My future husband walked up to me and started to talk to me. Any attention from a male was enough for me, after all, who was I to think I would do any better than this.

One night we were courting and walking along a suburban street when he jumped the fence of a beautiful home with a lovely garden and picked me the most beautiful rose. No male had ever done anything like that FOR ME before so that was it, in my mind, I had committed to him. I believed that was the best I would ever get. Attention and love at last.

We’d been dating for several months or so when we were shopping in town one night. The police pulled up in the street and grabbed him violently from me in front of everyone. They threw him into the police car and left. I was left there in the street not knowing what the heck had just happened. The next time I saw him he had his front tooth in his hand and was beaten up pretty bad. That was possibly because of one of 2 reasons, it was either at my father’s request or because my boyfriend had been to jail (new info to me at the time) before and maybe the bashing was to warn him to behave. By that time we’d been dating for quite a while, yet it was the first I’d ever heard about jail.

He only told me about it when I kept at him for information. To this day I am not sure why he did go to jail. He said it was because he’d been mean to 2 tourist backpackers. He had an elaborate story for me and although I said I believed him, I never was quite sure, but a part of me didn’t want to know anyway. Mind you, I was disgusted at the time however I still stayed with him. (I warned you I did some stupid things)

Actually, here is an example of just how stupid. I caught him in bed with another girl when I was just 17. I broke my toe trying to open the door that he and she were behind, my own bedroom door. I then drove around Australia, but I got stranded when my car broke down and had no money. I needed to get home because I was on the other side of Australia. I was absolutely destitute. I was staying in a pub without any money at all, and I felt really trapped and alone.