So. It has been a hot minute. Well. Seven years to be precise. I kept threatening to start and just not well, starting. Looks like in 2017 I did actually begin penning a little something – I think someone online had mentioned I had been blogging and I decided to try pick it up again. Well. Needless to say I only published that one this week. Seven years later. And only out of respect for the five years ago me who was trying to do a thing, you know. Closure man, closure. Also, I lost an incredible amount of weight in that time. Then some of it found me again. Then I lost it and it decided this was a fun game of hide and seek…Now in 2022 the weight is still “it” and I seem to have found a great hiding spot. Pray it doesn’t find me again.

Between 2015 and 2017 I did some wild sh*t. Got into radio in a big way, got my own TV show, gigged across the globe… the 2017 it feels like on an unstoppable climb, the stairs gave way under me and I had the kind of fall that would trigger Humpty Dumpty. And unlike that privileged dude, there were no kings horse and king’s men trying to put me back together. Just me, my incredible family and some superglue. Sometimes I wonder if, like Humpty, I can never be put together again. I mean Humpty transitioned. Humpty probably had to find himself as an omellette or fried egg – well he had royalty on his side so probably quiche. And in putting myself together again, scored a book deal with Penguin books and wrote all about it while honoring the woman I had watched take bigger knocks than me in life, my mother. And Then Mama Said was a book I wrote from the heart. I wish I had written it more from the head because this darn heart has no filter. Shuu it went in hey. I had no idea how much, until I stood in a studio, recording the audiobook version of And Then Mama Said. I needed quite a few moments. At some point the engineer asked me if I had not read it. I had, I just hadn’t listened to myself. I had read it technically not emotionally not with presence. Just to minimize errors and fact check. How did it do? I never asked. I was however, on the long list for a literary award. Didn’t follow that one up either but.. year, it got a nod and that made me smile. The most fulfilling reward has been the feedback from the people who read it. My intention with that book, was realized. We hear it all the time but it begs repeating. We all get challenged, broken, tested. We have to push through, we have it in us, and it is not always through big acts of bravado, but rather by simply getting up and continuing to swim. Tide never stays the same. I flew under the radar for some time after that, then as I begin to raise my head in 2020 fucking Covid decided to book it’s universal flight tickets at the same time as us. We were about to hit the US, covid was about to hit the whole world.

Now here I am. I had been frozen in time and now I am thawed, ready for consumption…I think. I reckon the time is ripe. Plus I have a bit more time on my hands now. Well kinda. I am in the US, settling in and watching my children thrive. Listen, that is the biggest source of my anxiety sorted out right there: I can handle my own misery, but my children’s misery – that would break me. We all, and I mean ALL, worldwide, have our own lockdown, covid-19 tales, and our presence in America is a heck of a chapter in that little essay. One minute I was supporting my husband in following his dream of playing in the States, the next I was part of the delegation heading to the states. Now, don’t get me wrong, the plan was always that the family would eventually all make their way here but how it happened was just destiny saying it didn’t ask for a ghost writer. Before the universe sent us all into the naughty corner, we had just arrived on US soil with one simple plan: Grab the green cards, leave dad behind to plant roots, find us a home and forage so that when we head back just under a year later, all would be cooked and ready for us. How does the saying go? Life is what happens when you are making plans. What was meant to be a three month trip turned into a year long unplanned stay in America. Thank goodness we were legal. Our astute financial habits meant ourr ands could hold up against the indomitable dollar. Eintlik the dollar can be rude sometimes, or the rand can be a bitch, I don’t know, just know it’s been a heck of a game of monopoly. Still. I was not ready to be cooped up in a foreign land with no idea when next I would see home. But I also wasn’t ready to jump on those charter flights that were taking people home because we could not leave without our green cards. We didn’t even know how long staying be or when return would be possible – we joined all the other sitting ducks in the world. Not a single authority in the world said anything that made anyone one hundred percent sure what was going on. Except the conspiracy theorists. Now those guys were clear from the onset and they were my source of peace. In a time when you are being bombarded with information, the crazy sh*t is way more fun to wade through. All the while, keeping my radio gig in SA going, broadcasting live every morning from Virginia to MAfikeng, Mafikeng to all of SA, with a time difference of six hours. I was living on SA time on US soil. Nothing about that time was normal. When lockdown was announced I looked at my babies and thought, well, this is the stuff of nightmares. Cooped up children who can’t go outside, energy, American food and a virus like the antagonist in an apocalyptic film. And a whole husband who, honestly, I had never spent more than a few months with at a time, ever since we were dating. Suddenly we were together indefinitely. Plus a preteen. Oh, then a gregarious boy who loves the outdoors. But wait, there’s more: a last born with a sweet tooth. No clear sign of escape. I just knew we had to leave New York. In an apartment building with three wild kids, we would be easy kill for the other residents of our fancy temporary Manhattan home. It was time to head out to Virginia, where at least, you can kick the kids out of the house for time out. Couldn’t do that in New York. Obvs. Well, we probably could in New York but the Apocalyptic film would turn into a thriller.

Two years later here I am, alive to tell the tale. A long tale of beating covid then long covid giving me a beatdown, having to evict a gall bladder and following my other calling. One would argue, the original calling. Issa lot. Can’t tell it all in a single blog post without it looking like I am sending you manuscript samples of my next book. For now, I am back. I hope. To share the madness of my mind and my soul. To connect and reconnect. To think aloud and hopefully entertain you. Those of you who stuck around, believing I would return, thank you. For those new to my musings, eh, well, hi. Enjoy. 🙂