Books / parenting
Learning about motherhood from a single-parent dad
“Bigging up the underrepresented mum” is what Zeena Moolla does.
The 47-year-old mum, whose Facebook page Word to the Mothers has 16,000 likes, has now released a book about her experiences of early motherhood.
Everything I’ve Learned about Motherhood is a non-fiction telling of Zeena’s experiences, set against a backdrop of being raised by a single-parent Indian-Muslim father.
is needed now More than ever
“I wrote this book specifically for the new mum ‘not cherishing every moment’, whose dark sense of humour is perhaps not often reflected in the publishing world,” says Zeena, who lives in Long Ashton.
“I wanted to help take the edge off the exhaustion, engorged boobs and days when the idea of a solo trip to Tesco sounds as blissful as a fortnight in Benidorm.”
Zeena Moolla was raised by her Indian-Muslim dad. Photo: Zeena Moolla
The book was also a chance to diversify funny parenting books, with Zeena saying: “I also felt that any sort of diversity in parenting books tends to sit amid more serious, specialised titles, slightly ghettoised away from the mainstream.”
Being brought up solely by a single dad, Everything I’ve Learned about Motherhood shows that parenting comes in all forms.
It took Zeena several years to go from initial idea to finished product. Having had the idea for a comical parenting book three years ago, she found an agent in 2019, with Thread Books taking the book on, adding Zeena’s dad to the heart of it.
Writing it over the course of summer 2020, her husband home-schooling their two children, will be released in February 2021.
Image: Zeena Moolla
“I’d love for readers of my book to laugh (in all the right places), because let’s face it, we could all use a laugh right now,” Zeena says. “And I hope to offer reassurance to any new mums feeling, as I did, like they’ve joined a club they don’t quite belong to.
“I want to help them own that ‘misfit’ feeling, because I honestly believe embracing that and adopting a decent sense of humour can make such a difference to how you feel about a situation.”
Everything I’ve Learned about Motherhood comes out on February 24, 2021.
Main photo: Paul Box
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