Hi. Welcome. This is my new blog. I’m really so glad that you’re here.

A couple of months ago, while on vacation in Europe, it seemed that my blog, Expatria, Baby was broken. My words and pictures were gone, and in their place descriptions of unsavoury things of which I’d rather remain innocent.

I was disheartened. My BLOG!

But rather than act, I ignored it. I was on holiday, after all. I felt entitled to default on my responsibilities.

I think, however, my decision to ignore my blog was more than vacation inertia. This decision, or rather lack thereof, reflected my feelings towards my work on those pages.

I started that blog in 2010, not long after my girl was born. I was a new mum, in a new town, in a new country, in a new language. A few months before, I had just given up my job, my friends, and all that was familiar, moving from China to Japan. Back then, I was immersed in the work of figuring out who I was now that there was a baby on my hip, and no pay cheque in my pocket.

I said that started my blog to fill the lonely lulls that are constituent of mothering in the early years. I said that I started my blog to reach others, to connect humans who spoke the same language as me. And that was partly true.

But more than anything, I was searching for identity. I was a mother, and wrestling with how that changed who I knew myself to be. I wrote there, and took pictures, and thought about babies, and tired to figure it all out. Without a job, without real-life friends, without a life that extended beyond the park-supermarket-home loop, was I still relevant? Was I still cool? I was still a person beyond Wife and Mother, right? Look at me! Look at me! I still mattered? Didn’t I?

Still, in the back of my mind, I knew that one day, I will no longer have baby on my hip. One day, I won’t be deliberating of questions of cloth versus disposable diapers, wondering how my the various and sundry decisions of motherhood symbolise and define my identity. And my sense of personhood will, one day, no longer be swaddled in the minutia of babies and motherhood.

And one day, perhaps down some distant road, experiences of expatriate life will no longer be as central to my identity. It is hard to imagine, but maybe, some day, I will live somewhere with roots firmly planted in the ground.

And then, who would I be? Expatria? Baby?

Meanwhile, I was less and less excited about blogging. I loved reading what others wrote, seeing their pictures and and drawing inspiration. But the moment I came to my blog, I felt flat, like I had nothing to say, like it was all just sort of irrelevant.

And then the trouble with my domain.

So I though, now is the time. I’m going to do something new. I’m going to create a new space for myself that is more my own. I want this site to be more reflective of who I am now, and where I’m going, the work that I’m doing and the way that I’m growing.

I want to get excited again. I want to be inspired. I want to take it all a bit more seriously, and be more proud of my work.

For the time being I will still, most likely, write a great deal about motherhood. After all, I am deeply intrenched in the physical and emotional work of raising small children. Motherhood occupies most of my time, and naturally, a great deal of my mind. But it’s not everything. This new space offers me a little more room to grow.

I hope that, if you’re interested, you’ll hang out here with me, and help me as I practice telling stories through words and photographs. I hope that you’ll join me here on that wild road

Something New