Welcome to the Times of Amma
I started my working life at the age of 21 as a TV news trainee who later graduated into a TV news editor and then a TV news reporter. Later, I quit the hamster wheel of daily news to work as a communications officer for an environmental NGO. Much as I loved my work, the love of my life, lived two flights away in a different part of the continent and I quit my job and packed my bags to join him in the Philippines in 2009.
Where I said, Hello to the recession, which meant employers spent a long, long time ignoring me.
Depression, rejection and melancholy have long been known to stimulate the muses and it did the same with me. I started blogging again and writing travel columns. One thing led to another and by the end of 2011 -I was a travel columnist and a published author with books and short stories to my name.
I had also become a mother.
Three more books and a permanent travel column followed but somehow the title of mother seemed to be trumping all the other designations I had held so far. And even though, I did embrace the title of mother wholeheartedly, my heart never did want to give up on all my other identities.
Though it took a while, when I got pregnant with my second child I realized that there is also no need to give up all my other personalities.
Being a mother makes me a natural multitasker. It requires me to juggle me, my family, my work and the other myriad duties of motherhood on a daily basis. No one person can hope to be a writer, chef, crafter, environmentalist, fashionista, traveler, nutritionist and all other things rolled into one - but most mothers are called upon to be all this and more right from the point they decide to be mothers.
And so I figured that there is nothing better for my sanity and my family's, than me deciding to go with the flow.
And that is what this new space is all about.
It is about appreciating the multipotentialite nature of mothers - albeit innate or thrust upon us.
It's about sharing tips to help us through the myriad challenges of motherhood and celebrating mothers of all shapes, sizes and kinds as they navigate this much written about yet still individually unique personal journey.
Welcome to the Times of Amma - a space I dedicate to my Amma who made me the Amma I am to my daughter and son.
I cannot wait to start on this adventure with all you mothers out there!
