This has been the longest radio silence the blog has been left to transmit, and now I’m back – which means the transmission of silence officially ends (hopefully).
I blame it on life.
Life has a way of making you reevaluate and reflect. Life has a way to get you busy; busy to the point your world spins out of control. Life has a way of putting up check points for you to check-in and take stock.
So this year, and these past months, I’ve made some bold moves in life. I’ve started the journey to entrepreneurship. If you know me, and have hung around long enough, you would know that I am a person teeming with crazy ideas, big dreams and a heart for social causes and education. I’ve decided not to silence them nor hide them in the guise of motherhood anymore. I am usually not one who would take the first step but I’ve decided to start meeting people, learn from them, ask to be mentored by them and surround myself with like-minded friends. I started meeting people who were willing to incubate ideas with me. We discussed endless possibilities.
As a mother, I embraced life. I decided to give one thing free rein at home. I allowed my kids to play. We stopped homelearning. We stopped doing activity books and worksheets. Inspired by the Reggio-approach, I exposed my children to everything open-ended. We gathered loose parts, Yakult bottles, dried leaves, twigs and toilet rolls. They ran barefoot everywhere, sang plenty of piggy-back songs and role-played. We played games. We drew. A lot. We made up stories.
As a teacher, I returned to school. I attended night classes. I met people who were hungry to learn and made new friends and began my academic pursuit for early years enrichment education.
As a family, we made big changes. We moved neighbourhoods and are now back in the West, where nothing much has changed, except that everyone around us got older. We started our family on a journey of ‘less is more’ as we downsized our space, and it has made us more appreciative – for what we have; and creative – with what we have. Nothing has humbled me more than the fact that living in a mature estate meant seeing old, lonely, sometimes grumpy, but most of the time kind and friendly elderly folks, and that it was always good to be reminded that we can always be a little kinder, a little more considerate of others – walking behind them, holding lift doors, putting on a smile and saying hello.
So like I said, life has a way of keeping you up, spinning you in circles, forcing you to stop at check points and making you reevaluate at pit stops. And that’s what I have been up to.
This blog has morphed more into a space for chronicling personal journeys more than motherhood journeys. Although there’s much to learn as a mother of a 6-year-old-soon-to-be-primary-school-going-child-who-is-sassy-with-retorts-every-waking-hour, a 5-year-old who’s still trying to find herself and blossom like she should, and a 3-year-old who only wrecks your nerve with his wit and mischief on good and bad days, these things have become increasingly private to me – things I wish to privately savour. I worry about the exposure the children have on social media, as the blog has grown and morphed into something quite beyond my control. We’ve come a long way, since 2012, and people are beginning to recognise the kids on the streets because of our public persona. I’m not sure if that’s something they want, now that they are older. I have thoughts like: what if someday my children become fiercely private people, and resent what I did? And I’m thinking perhaps this blog should be more of me than them, for now, unless it’s something that’s worth sharing – like a meaningful event or an engagement that benefitted the whole family.
But one thing remains: this blog is my gift to my children – a gift of my words to them and their growing up years chronicled for them. Because sometimes in life, we tend to forget. And may this space always serve as a reminder of how they have made my life so complete, and that because of them, I chose to pursue a life that was worth something.
One of the better quotes I’ve read, and always want to remember
P/S: Perhaps my co-writer might continue to share his fatherhood journey on the blog. But nope, not gonna be changing blog domain just yet.
