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till prepared to give the man the benefit of the doubt trump may have unleashed forces that will have a lasting impact on the fabric of our society for years to come but for now i m savouring the moment and hoping the last four years will soon feel like the aberration they were a collective nightmare that fewer and fewer of us will want to return to because we know we can do better and be better and we know our children deserve better too adios donnie the world s a better place without you a big and slightly belated happy new year january 3 2020 january 7 2020 sunnyrap 2 comments whatever it is you re scared of doing do it make your mistakes next year and forever neil gaiman 2019 took me to the edge and back parts of it were among the toughest of my life caring for an elderly parent and a feisty toddler simultaneously adjusting to a new life after a decade away trying to find adequate care for a child also struggling to adapt attempting to find myself again amid the chaos somehow it got better a much needed holiday in india a renewed fitness drive a child gradually coming into his own and the chance to welcome in the new year here in h olland with some of my dearest friends so i m going into 2020 renewed with the same resolutions i always make and that i mostly failed at again this year to eat better exercise more write more but also to give more to be the change i want to see in the world i m raising a glass in the meantime to all of you to the challenges and experiences and setbacks that keep us alive and the friends and family and colleagues that make it all worthwhile to another year and all the opportunities it brings with it may it be a good one happy 2020 to you all to my son on his third birthday october 24 2019 october 25 2019 sunnyrap 11 comments and today just like that you are 3 to be a mother to be your mother is to feel a love that is visceral and tangible and infinite that consumes me and terrifies me and worries me but also humbles me delights me and makes my heart soar you are my greatest challenge my greatest fear my greatest gift my greatest joy and my greatest love our journey hasn t been easy you have a will and a personality all of your own you are determined and stubborn beyond belief eccentric already marching to the beat of your own drum for the longest time you called me noah as if we were still one person you didn t start speaking in sentences until just over a month ago which meant many many tantrums as you struggled to express yourself and some serious concerns the last few months have pushed me to the edge and back they don t call it the terrible twos for nothing but today as we reach your third birthday you are coming into your own again and you are nothing short of a delight though as strong willed and stubborn as ever you chatter incessantly now my heart still leaps every time you call me mama you dance a happy dance when you re excited say hello to everyone are fearless and wondrous and excited at the world around you you give hugs freely have a smile that lights up the universe and more than enough energy to fuel it for a day or two you tire me out and give me purpose all at once when i wrote about your first year i wrote about the paradox of motherhood and it is the paradoxes that still fascinate me i am on the cusp of my 50th birthday now 30 pounds heavier than before my pregnancy with a sheaf of new white hairs and tell tale circles around my eyes my life revolves around you i haven t read a book since you were born because i used to read mostly at night and our bed has been invaded by you i struggle to write my spare time is spent thinking about what you need to eat or do or learn when i go out shopping i shop for you first and foremost and yet for all of the rawness and exhaustion of these early years for all that i have lost in myself there is so much to enjoy in witnessing your growth and seeing the world anew through your eyes in being able to comfort you and kiss your hurts away and advocate for you and protect you one day you will be easier to manage i know but growing up will also mean growing away from me one day i won t be able to shield you from pain or fulfil all your needs or make decisions for you and that will be a necessary part of your growing up but you will always have my love a writer i love once said there are places in the heart you don t know exist until you have a child thank you for illuminating this heart of mine for extending its boundaries to places i was unaware of for making it swell with unbridled love and tenderness even if that process has made me more vulnerable than ever before thank you for making me laugh always and for allowing me to be silly even at my ripe old age thank you most of all for being you to be your mother is a privilege and a joy happy birthday my dearest noah happy 2019 january 1 2019 sunnyrap 7 comments i make pretty much the same resolutions every year eat better exercise more write more i failed miserably at all of them in 2018 i did however survive two of the most stressful experiences known to wo man applying for a uk spouse visa for my husband for those of you who worry about migrants rest assured the process of securing such visa is insanely complicated intrusive and expensive and it s a bloody miracle anyone survives and a house continent move from cairo to england after a decade away coming home which i d f eared has been surprisingly right it s a cliché i know but sometimes it takes going away to really appreciate what you have or at least to see it in new ways plus it s been a joy to be near my family and this year i also embraced motherhood or perhaps it s embraced me so much so that i can actually say i m enjoying the heinous toddler years my crazy kid makes me love and laugh a little more every day with all that in mind i m looking forward to 2019 it s a clean slate for new resolutions mistakes challenges and friendships and for consolidating old ones to all of you who reach out send messages comment on posts thank you i m not always great at responding but i appreciate it more than you know because motherhood and working from home can make for quite an insular experience most of all i wish you a wonderful and fulfilling new year may you be more successful than me at keeping your resolutions if you make them may it be challenging in all the right ways and may there be many many opportunities for love laughter and joy the brutal truth about relationships september 25 2018 october 15 2020 sunnyrap 36 comments is that they re hard i think i may have subconsciously avoided long term relationships for this reason for most of my life i used to tell people i couldn t imagine anything worse than domesticity or the proverbial white picket fence or the banality and routine the grind of a long term relationship or marriage having been in one now for a good few years i can tell you that parts of me still feel the same in the first warm glow of love you may think such feelings are impossible but you ll understand over time how that glow can gradually fade how familiarity can breed contempt or at least disdain and how easy it can be to feel disconnected and further and further removed from the person who should be closest to you physically and emotionally despite all this there s always been a part of me that s admired those couples who stay together in a relationship that s worth saving of course who understand the peaks and troughs are part of the natural order the ebb and flow of all things and who know it s possible to find your way back no matter how lost you may feel if you both care enough and fight hard enough no one s expressed this better for me than william himes at quora whose answer i wanted to share here what is the brutal truth about relationships you like somebody you get to know them you decide you re compatible this takes a different amount of time for everyone but it s usually not years then come the good days you finish each other s sentences you judge your friends relationships for not being as healthy as yours you promise to love each other forever then one day you wake up and the infatuation is gone you look at the person lying next to you and you don t feel butterflies you don t want to jump their bones you d kind of like a day or two to yourself and you pull away you wonder if maybe you re not compatible after all you notice the way he always leaves his shoes right in the doorway and you ve tripped over them eighty five times or how she sometimes puts garbage on the counter above the garbage can just throw it in the can damn it it s eight inches away you think duty is an awful reason to stay with somebody just because i made a promise in the midst of infatuation doesn t mean i need to keep it she s changed and i ve changed and we don t work together anymore and you break up it s the natural life cycle of a relationship after going through it a few times you come to a conclusion humans or at least you aren t meant to be eternally monogamous attraction dies after a while and relationships have this natural life cycle for a reason don t stick with a relationship after the love is gone it s not right but another couple doesn t break up another man says to his partner things aren t working right now do you feel like we re in a rut and she says yes and they say well we promised to stick it out let s try to do it and they go through the motions even though the love is gone he s not feeling like planning a romantic date tonight he s tired and he wants to go to bed but he cooks her favorite meal and goes on a walk in the local park as they sit on a bench in the cool evening she lies her head on his shoulder he feels a single butterfly she s thinking it s sweet he made my favorite meal i can try to be an attentive and affectionate date she puts away her smartphone she knows he likes to watch the birds and so even though she thinks it s kind of dumb she points out a hawk while she lies up against him he smiles she feels a single butterfly the idea of having sex at least with each other has been out of both of their minds for weeks maybe months after all they fell out of love but she figures what the hell it s been a nice evening we ll see where things go and he does too and they have an even nicer evening he forces himself to listen to her work stories she listens patiently while he tries to explain the problem he s having with his program they watch reality tv together even though she doesn t like it and then they decide to read a book at the same time and talk about it he reads the damn thing even though it s one of those infuriating books with no plot he admits he s not into it but he finds a couple nice things to say she leaves a gift on his bedside when she gets up in the morning they re just going through the motions even though they fell out of love and after a few months of this they re both happy the butterflies the infatuation it comes and goes sometimes they re just two people who live with each other and depend on each other they do things they enjoy together and things they don t love together they do things apart too but always with the knowledge that somebody they care about is waiting when they get home and one day he realizes the secret they never fell out of love falling out of love is a dumb story people tell themselves to feel better about themselves sure sometimes people reveal an entire personality they kept hidden during the opening stages of a relationship sure some relationships turn abusive or cold or unendurable but he was going to throw all of this away for a candy bar wrapper in the wrong place she was going to throw all of this away for a second s pause before entering her bedroom they were never out of love because love isn t something you fall into it s something you do a brief reflection on english privilege and power september 1 2018 sunnyrap 34 comments for all of my rich heritage my parents come from a land which has 22 languages and more than 700 dialects after all i speak only one language english fluently arundathi roy s wonderful essay what is the morally appropriate language in which to think and write has got me thinking about languages and their histories the stories they tell and the maps they chart of our lives i ve always called myself a native speaker of english but my very first language was actually malayalam from kerala in southern india where i was born and spent the first two or so years of my life i d probably still be able to speak malayalam if it hadn t been immediately subsumed by english when we returned to the uk because my parents were told to speak to us only in english or they d confuse us which was the thinking at the time i m wondering how different my relationships would have been with my home state my extended family there perhaps even my parents if i d been able to think and converse in their language i m thinking that even after a decade in egypt and an egyptian husband my arabic could still sadly best be described as functional and there s so much i miss out on here because of this especially the humour because the egyptian sense of humour is priceless i m also thinking of the many layers of snobbery around english in egypt and probably many developing countries the casual mockery of those whose english is heavily accented how as a brown skinned native english speaker i can still confuse people how i sat in a posh cairo family club last week where every announcement was made in english when everyone was speaking arabic and i was probably the only native english speaker for miles and i think also of how different my life would have been if i weren t a fluent english speaker of how learning good english if you re poor or disadvantaged or from a developing country can be an arduous costly battle but is still vital to open doors and how you can still distinguish the elite of almost any country by the quality of the english they speak usually american rather than british tinged these days sadly the language s we speak especially if you re an immigrant expat third culture kid or in a developing country carries so much political socio economic cultural and also religious baggage and sometimes so much privilege it s good to be reminded of this sometimes when you ask me what motherhood is like august 8 2018 august 15 2018 sunnyrap 53 comments when you ask me what motherhood is like i wonder how i can ever convey it i could tell you about the tiredness the bone crushing weariness that comes from too many nights of interrupted sleep and scrolling through your phone at 4 am while your baby feeds hungrily beside you and of long days at the mercy of this sweet new tyrant whose needs now surpass any of your own i could tell you about the loneliness a singular loneliness that comes from feeling trapped by the sheer logistics of moving with an infant how it s impossible to meet a friend for a coffee or pop to the shops or pay an impromptu visit to the cinema...