Marginally Interesting Crap About Motheroad's Author

I’m Monika. I say my blog is about motherhood, and it is, sort of. I think it’s become more of an exploration of my own responses to motherhood, rather than a cataloging of cute or naughty or exasperating things that my daughter, Annika, does or says. And a lot of the time, it’s not about Annika or motherhood at all. I started blogging because—aw, who the hell cares why? Everybody blogs for more or less the same reasons. Not interesting.

I started out blogging as Sofia Higginbotham, writing about my husband, Sebastian (actually named Simon), and my daughter, Isabella (you already know what her name is because you read it in the first paragraph). I was scared to write as my real self, mainly because I wanted to mock acquaintances without my words ever being able to be traced back to me. And because I also wanted to use my blog to explore my difficult relationship with my own mother, and I didn’t want her, or my dad, reading about it.

But my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer a couple years after I started the blog. Now she’s dead, and I don’t have to worry about her finding out about the blog. Because wherever she is, she’s probably has been granted the omniscience of the afterlife, and she already knows every word I’ve written, and she’s forgiven me for it. My dad—well, I still haven’t told him. Maybe someday I will. Or maybe he’ll find out on his own.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to nestle in my obscure corner of the Internet, stringing up little pearls of everyday stuff—getting a laugh out of the absurdity of it all, and getting little thrill every time I press “publish.”