Accused triple murderer Erin Patterson has spoken about battling low self-esteem, changes to her spirituality and becoming distant from her estranged husband's family.
The 50-year-old was called as a defence witness on Monday afternoon in the sixth week of her Supreme Court triple-murder trial in regional Victoria.
Her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, 70, and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, died in hospital from death cap mushroom poisoning days after a lunch served at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023.
She is also charged with the attempted murder of Heather's husband Ian Wilkinson, who became sick but survived the meal.
Patterson has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Wearing a paisley top and black pants, with straight dark hair, Patterson took an affirmation and drank from a paper cup as she sat inside the wooden witness box facing the jury.
She was asked by defence barrister Colin Mandy SC about her family situation in the months before the fatal lunch.
Patterson said her two children were living with her full-time and could see her estranged husband Simon "whenever they wanted to".
She said her financial circumstances at the time of the lunch were "comfortable".
"I could afford to go to university and I didn't need to work a job at the same time," she told the jury of 14.
Mr Mandy then asked Patterson about parts of her life that were not "so good" in July 2023, and she described changes in her relationship with Simon's family.
"I had felt for some months that my relationship with the wider Patterson family, and particularly Don and Gail, perhaps had a bit more distance or space put between us," she said.
"We saw each other less."
She said she had begun to have "concerns that Simon was not wanting me to be involved too much with the family anymore, perhaps I wasn't being invited to so many things".
She had been "fighting low self-esteem" for most of her adult life and said she had planned to have gastric bypass surgery after putting on weight.
Patterson described herself as a "fundamental atheist" and said she had expected Simon to join her after they started dating but "things happened in reverse and I became Christian".
She said she saw Simon's uncle Ian Wilkinson delivering a sermon in the early 2000s while visiting the Korumburra Baptist Church, saying it was a "spiritual experience".
"I'd been approaching religion as an intellectual exercise up until that point. Does it make sense? Is it rational? But I had a religious experience there and it quite overwhelmed me," Patterson said.
She cried as she described giving birth to her first child while living in Perth with Simon, saying it was a "very traumatic" experience.
"It went for a very long time and they tried to get him out with forceps. He wouldn't come out," she said.
"And he started to go into distress and they lost his heartbeat, so they did an emergency caesarean and got him out quickly."
Patterson said she discharged herself against medical advice, as her son was permitted to leave hospital and she wanted to go home with him.
"And Simon said to me, 'you can just do it, leave'," she said.
She said Gail and Don came to visit a couple of weeks after the birth and again became emotional as she described her mother-in-law being "supportive and gentle" with her.
Patterson said her relationship problems with Simon stemmed from communication issues.
"We could never communicate in a way that made each of us feel heard or understood, so we would just feel hurt," she said.
She will return to the witness box on Tuesday as the trial continues.