Media: WHITE magazine issue #27

How LOVELY!

Mrs. Carla Burrell and her team at WHITE never cease to delight with an issue. While the lace and broderie anglaise, melodious studio images, woodland wedding settings and lovely flat-lays captivate aesthetically, it's the articles that give this wedding/bridal magazine a unique twist and more grist.

Issue #27 showcases the work of creatives, including Meredith Gaston (illustrator), who says, "To this day, I still remember the first illustration of mine that was commissioned. It was a painting I created at 19 when I worked for boutiques in Sydney. It was called 'Toffee Apple Town - a series of rolling polka dot hills in rich apple greens and soft pinks... I love capturing uplifting moments of joy and love, and quiet instances of tenderness and peace."

Mrs Satchel: The Office of Wife

A younger but perhaps wiser friend recently pointed out to me, "It doesn't naturally follow that if you are a mother, you also have the role of a wife, and even if you were, the role of a wife is different to the role of a mother. They are two separate things that don't necessarily need to be seen in the context of the other. They stand alone."

Well, obviously, you might say, but not so if you are performing both roles in a haze of sleep deprivation and cognitive conflict. So, my apologies to readers of WHITE magazine, because what I have given you, in my latest first-person piece, is a conflation of the role of wife and mother. And given readers of WHITE, for the most part, are, I imagine, embarking on the journey of marriage and not always with a child, my thinking and writing were a little misguided; as tangled as a pair of earphones in a handbag.

This is one of the perils of working with words. Thinking changes but you cannot always take back the words that appear on the page. It's hard sometimes to negotiate those limitations and the imperfection of this craft called writing.

For those wives who do have children, perhaps the original will resonate (pick up your copy of WHITE!). But what follows is a piece I am much happier to publish about the challenges of wifely status from where I sit...