With Little Magician about to make his or her grand entrance in just a few weeks (where the hell did time go?), I've been spending more time online - getting info on Braxton Hicks contractions, finding prenatal yoga videos on YouTube, and sticking my toe into the unfamiliar waters of mommy blogging. Up until now, reading parenting blogs was done with an air of general interest and curiosity, but these days I find myself more drawn to the words and experiences of other moms in the digital sphere.
Sites like My Brown Baby, Mater Mea, Baby And Blog, and Black And Married With Kids have given me awesome insight to the complexities of modern African-American parenthood - but that's part of my current conundrum. I'm not African-American.
Searching for parenting blogs by Black Canadians has been extremely difficult. On lists like Savvy Mom's 75 Most Influential Canadian Mom Blogs, Yummy Mummy Club's 24 Mom Blogs You Should Be Reading, and Reader's Digest's list of Canada's Top 10 Mommy Bloggers, I could only readily identify 2 blogs by Black moms - Peg City Lovely and Globetrotting Mama. I haz a sad.
Visiting the aforementioned African-American blogs often makes me feel like I'm at a summer BBQ with the people who "get" me - those Black moms (and dads) who are navigating the ups and downs of raising Black children in today's world. However, every once in a while, a post here or there will remind me that I don't quite fit - like that distant cousin who brings the questionable potato salad to the festivities. Simply put, the African-American experience doesn't always resonate with my African-Canadian one, and I yearn to balance that with digital offerings this side of the border. That's proving to be quite difficult, though.
I attended a Canadian blogging conference a year and a half ago, and found that mommy bloggers rule the world up here. I met one Chinese-Canadian mommy blogger and one Sri Lankan-Canadian mommy blogger, but aside from them, the rest were White. Now, I know that that was just my finding at one random conference, but Google searches and requests for referrals from others have yielded very similar results.
Where are the Black Canadian mommy bloggers? Where are the mommy bloggers to discuss how provincial government cuts affect the statistics around Black children and education? Where are the mommy bloggers that have the scoop on cultural programs and events in the city? Where are the mommy bloggers who'll write about the first time they introduced their babies to cornmeal porridge, yam and fried dumplin? I understand and acknowledge that there are a multitude of motherhood topics that transcend race, but damn - sometimes I want to read about the experiences of parents who more closely share my cultural identity.
I was having a conversation about this with another mother of colour, and she stated that she'd love to start a mommy blog, but wanted it to be just that - a mommy blog, not a Black Canadian mommy blog. Concerns about alienating potential readers and brand partnerships were at the top of her list - "You've got to be careful not to make things too Black up here - I don't know if people are ready for that," she said. My response was, "What is 'too Black'? And how will people 'get ready' for us if we don't make our presence known?" Similarly to people who think that racism will go away when Black people stop talking about race, I feel that Canadians think we'll truly embody our happy multicultural identity when we stop drawing so much overt attention to our multiculturalism. I could go down a rabbit hole on thoughts around diversity, representation, appealing to the mainstream, access to business partnerships and much more (both within and outside of the digital sphere), but I'll hold off - for now. All I know is, if I can visit a Canadian mommy blog and be intrigued by a kids' DIY featuring a Scottish family crest and tartan, why can't someone visit another Canadian mommy blog and be intrigued by a recipe for a healthy kids' snack using ackee and saltfish? As a Black Canadian woman, I'm inspired by things totally unrelated to my culture all the time. We do ourselves a disservice when we place a label of normalcy on one cultural offering, and assume that our offering is too different to be accepted - leading us to seek acceptance by assimilation. You (yes, you, reader!) may disagree with me, but I don't think that should be the blueprint. And if I choose do go down that mommy blogger road, I don't think it'll be mine.
Ah, yes. If I choose to go down that mommy blogger road. While searching the web for that particular blog niche, a familiar voice popped up in the back of my head saying, "Be the thing you're looking for." Many of the goals I've accomplished and risks I've taken have all happened because I started out wondering when someone else was going to do them - and this mommy blogger thing might be the next task on that list. Now, I haven't fully committed myself to the idea or conceptualized what it may look like, but I do know that the best things come to me when I identify a gap and fill it myself. As '83 To Infinity is already my digital comfy couch, it's a given that I'll be posting about the journeys with my Little Magician from time to time - but how far do I want to take it? Until I figure that out, I'll continue to dabble in the digital offerings on both sides of the border and beyond, and see what other mommies have to say. I'm sure I'll add my own voice in my own way soon enough.
Who are your favourite mommy/parenting blogs? I'd love to check them out!