Mother's Guilt - Who Needs It? (Writing Workshop)

We all know that mothers are the most self-sacrificing people. Well it's one of the eternal verities that I bought into for quite a long time. I was fully ready to play my part in all of that too. Then I read a really interesting article one day that advised that time spent with your children is an investment, not a sacrifice. It made me look at things differently. I fed all my kids 'myself' which is a euphemism for breastfeeding. Deep down I admit that I didn't do it as a sacrifice. It was way too convenient for that. No getting up at night to heat bottles of milk. I could lie down and get some extra rest and feed the baby too. Heck, it was the most convenient system ever and I made full use of it.

I breastfed (discreetly of course) in every place you could imagine. On the back of scooters. In church. Even while walking along using the baby sling. It never cost me a thought. If people noticed and criticized me, I ignored them. None of their business. If they noticed and praised me for my 'sacrifice', I smiled graciously and asked 'what sacrifice?' What could be easier? No getting up in the night, no making up feeds, no dragging bottles along? As far as I was concerned, I'd chosen the better part.

One day my husband gave me a drop of whiskey in my evening glass of milk. I hardly ever drink, I must tell you. I had a great sleep that night and so did the baby. I took that whiskey again off and on, particularly if I'd had a tiring day. But I never did it when the baby was under six months old just to be on the safe side.

All my four kids fed until they were school age. They all remember feeding as toddlers. We have no regrets. It was a perfect choice for our family.

Maternal guilt - who needs it?

This post was inspired by Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop at the blog Mama’s Losin’ It. I looked at the current week’s prompts and got inspired by the third prompt “Mother's Guilt - Who Needs It?”.

This post first appeared on Write Away on WordPress on 23 July, 2010.

Five Ways Social Media Has Changed Our Lives

Has social media changed the way we live? You bet it has! I’ve been in India for 22 years and have visited home in Ireland maybe half-a-dozen times. The biggest challenge about this, for me, has always been coping with the difficulty of making contact with old friends and family. However, that’s all over now, thanks to Facebook. I check my phone every morning and read that uncle Ned in Dublin is furious over the biased referee in the boxing match or that my cousin Paula in Dublin went to see Take That in concert (or whoever!). I speak to my cousin Veronica in Scotland every few days thanks to WhatsApp. We haven’t spoken this frequently since we wrote to each other as kids. Social media has definitely changed our lives forever. I can think of at least five ways that social in which it has affected life as we know it.

Social media makes the world more accessible to us. This is a fact. The world is at your fingertips. Find out which of your friends and family are on Facebook and once you …

Kipling Got it Wrong! Or Eastern and Western Culture - Reflections

What Is Culture?
I’m opening this blog post with a question. What is that elusive concept which is commonly known as ‘culture? Culture is way of life. How we live. What our values are. Our customs, attitudes and perceptions. And also, I suppose, how we express ourselves in art through, such as music, dance, theatre and cinema. It’s quite a comprehensive area and not too easy to define, really.

The Journey
I was born in what is commonly known as ‘the west’. I lived in Ireland for the first thirty years of my life. When I was thirty, I married my husband and came out to India to live here with him. That was the beginning of an interesting journey, which is still evolving. I must have had some east/west comparison stereotypes in my head. But in India, I found that the people I met had huge stereotypes in their heads about what they called ‘western culture’ and ‘western way of life’. Not long after I arrived in India, I was struck by the number of people who said things to me like ‘in the …

Impatience

Many years ago, when I lived in Dublin, I met someone nice and started dating. I wasn't serious, I just thought we could have nice interesting discussions about India, which I found absolutely fascinating, as I was working in the Embassy of India back then. I had no intention of getting attached with a foreigner, with all the attendant cultural problems. I was happy living in Ireland and the idea of marriage couldn't have been further from my mind.

We both thought we could just keep things in control. One day, after a lot of emotional turmoil and denial, it hit us both that we were in love. Truly. Madly. Irrevocably. To the point where we couldn't live without each other. I'd known about the Indian system of arranged marriages and when it occurred to me that he would probably be married off by his family as soon as he returned to India, I felt physically ill at the thought. We are both tenacious and patient people. We realised that bringing our two worlds together would…

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