Know that you are of woman born. You come from a long line of incredible, ferocious, extraordinary women. You carry all of their legacies and stories with you wherever you go. Honour that in every encounter with women throughout your life. The world will tell you it is okay to forget that you are of women;… Read More Things I Want to Tell My Son in this age when #MenAreTrash
About a year ago, a video on womanhood was doing the rounds on social media. It features a series of older women talking about what they feel younger women should and could do differently in today’s fast-paced world. The video was produced by a spa called Sanctuary, as part of their campaign to convince women… Read More All I Want for Mother’s Day
Whilst I was watching a particularly harrowing sequence in the new HBO-produced movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (based on Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book), I was reminded of a bit that Chris Rock used to include in his stand-up about race. He would argue that the most ‘racist’ black people he knew were older black people,… Read More The Immortal Lessons of Henrietta Lacks
On Sunday morning I had a delightful breakfast with some friends I had not seen in a long time, over breakfast we discussed the Hawks, the Burkini ban in France and Sipho Pitayana’s speech, which for all of us was fascinating. We all postulated different theories on what would follow, and the possible impact on… Read More The politics of hair and language
The first year of motherhood. May I be so presumptuous as to write about it from within, before I have fully emerged, one-year-old and smashed (sugar and gluten free) birthday cake in each hand? I. The pulsating loneliness of it. I don’t quite know how to explain it. You won’t be alone, ever. If you’re… Read More No hood like this mamahood
In the end, we – or I – caved. My son was measuring big, huge, large, especially his head. There was no way I was even going to try to push him out. Yes, I carry that shame. And I still feel the need to justify it. But his head was huge, look at him,… Read More A Birth Story
“For the first time in my life, I understand the concept of home: it is not a refuge, not necessarily a snuggly place of warmth and cheery domesticity, not some essential rightness like the satisfying click that releases a lock, but rather a sense of peace with contradiction. It is a giving in, an acceptance,… Read More Birth Pains
Another year, another viral story about Cape Town’s insidious racism. This time the story came from a young woman who was visiting the city with her family over the festive season. At some point, she and her family tried to make reservations at an upmarket Camps Bay restaurant, using (as you do) their own… Read More But is it racism?
I don’t know quite what I expected. For the longest time (and I know how lucky we are that for us, that only meant months, not years), we’d been planning for this pregnancy, working as hard as we could emotionally to conceive our miracle, fighting the despair that threatened to overwhelm anything positive about… Read More On What I did not Expect
I have a very happy, complicated relationship with writing. It is at once very personal, in the ways that only the places you can call home are, and very public, in the way that professional ambition can be. Writing has always been a place for me to take the pieces of my life, sorrowful… Read More Writing against the silence
Rumbi Writes 
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