Here To Maternity

Vote Now for National Bank Holiday for Mums Only

When did you last have a night out?

When did you last do something JUST for you?

When did you last spend a whole day ‘girlyfying’ yourself with Gok Wan style shopping and lunch with your girlfriend?

I did it last week…twice!

After two long dry years with hardly a girlfriends in sight, I escaped!  And ran like hell!

Now I know just what the hell I have missed for two years.

The baron island I usually stroll around, that of nappies, dishes and washing were miles behind me as I swaggered, deliriously through Reading shopping centre, Mummy duties lay well over the ocean as I strolled staring longingly at the clothes, jewellery, and kitchen gadgets.

I have recently found my femininity (after years of carrying the Tom Boy label) and I was ready to be possessed by Gok Wan and to be held to ransom to spend as much as possible.

My Mummy eyes were excited by all the beautiful maxi-dresses, feminine scarves and lace that I could see.  I was ready to take off the Tom Boy flesh and release the new feminine beast inside.  I hadn’t realised how much not only my mental identity had been affected by the sudden role change into Mummy but also my attention to myself.  “I want Pickles to be inspired by me” I keep telling Hubby. “A Tom Boy isn’t really inspiring”.

You see for years I was the Tom Boy out of all 5 girls.  Mum was an inspiration though, she was beautiful, feminine and sexy when she wanted to be and that is what I want to teach my daughter.  So here starts the practice of what I have been teaching myself for the last two years…all about style.

On the way home, after stopping to make our own perfume, we were chatting about how girly we felt.  Gok Wan, you make sense.  You possessed me for a day and it worked.  I have beautiful clothes and a pair of shoes and a gorgeous, ‘I am so drooling’ scarf.  (I have a mad desire to collect scarves, I love them and wear them all seasons – back home in OZ I would never get away with it, but here in Blighty…well, just don’t tell the Hubby I bought another one).

I found my spark, my girlishness, my sexy ‘come get em hubbyness’ thanks to a break away from changing nappies, mentoring and cleaning up behind Pickles.  I didn’t have to think about what I had to feed her for lunch or dinner and all the rest that comes with parenting. It was sooooooo wonderful to have a day off and hang out with ‘me’ for a change.

As Mums, I hereby vote that we have a national Bank Holiday just for us.  Then we can all go shopping together and make perfume, have lunch, drink way too much coffee and just be ourselves.  An investment into our health and sanity!

VOTE NOW!!

Thanks for voting and enjoy your feminine freedom.

Music has always had a cathartic affect on me, one I had forgotten for two years but I never dreamed I would find ‘me’ again by simply bringing it back into my life.  And if you told me that it would give me back my identity two years after becoming a Mummy I would never have believed you.  Surely I need a years psychotherapy for that?

Having a baby has been the only thing in my life until yesterday. Standing at the kitchen bench, the cold laminate under my elbows I sighed that same old tired sigh that had become a nemesis since Pickles was born.   Here I am, ironing items of clothing only me and my hubby used to see, I am a slave to the dishwasher, shackled to it twice a day and the rest of me belongs to the challenges of being a responsible adult and a ‘positive parent’.  Geesh. Who am I was a question that haunted me since being lost in the word of becoming a parent.

Where did I go?  Who was I besides Mummy?  Somewhere between giving birth and yesterday I had lost the art of myself and lost my identity along with it.  Except for the role of Mummy I had no idea who I was, what I wanted and where I sat in my future.

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