Ma Wa Gray

OK so here's the scenario. Imagine the person you love and respect the most in the whole wide world. The person who you try to be most like. This person has a friend whom they hold in the highest regard. You've never met them but you know they must be a pretty big deal if they hold so much sway in your person's life. In fact you alter your behaviour completely to fit in with this mystery person's very exacting standards. They're like a constant third presence in your relationship with you and your person and if at any time you are disappointing or letting them down your person reminds you of their mysterious friend and the expectations this friend has of you. The pressure to perform for someone you have absolutely no relationship with is immense. And then you discover that this person doesn't even exist. Never did. Just a figment of the imagination. They were a lie. And you are left betrayed and confused. It's a weird scenario. No weirder than what ...

This blog was born at three in the morning while I sat eating a bowl of Pronutro balanced on my tummy waiting for activity from my three year old's bedroom because sleep only ever arrives five minutes before your child wakes up. I am 35 weeks pregnant. The insomnia is bad. And this time I know, sort of, what to expect. I've called this blog 'Ma Wa Gray' because I think the Zulu culture is on to something - the moment you have your first child your name becomes Ma Wa (in my case) Gray. Mother of Gray. Ones entire identity shifts to belonging to someone else. Someone small, foreign and terrifyingly wonderful. Someone who literally will be the last thing on both you and your partner's lips every single night. Every single night. Forever. And so this is a blog devoted to motherhood, to finding an identity that isn't always necessarily linked to motherhood and to saying the things I want to say on Facebook but can't because of brain dead anti-vaxxers and...