{"id":3236,"date":"2015-03-11T21:14:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T21:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/?p=3236"},"modified":"2025-07-11T21:36:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T21:36:30","slug":"domestic-diva-career-detours-and-rewriting-the-chore-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/2015\/blog-misc-and-opinions\/domestic-diva-career-detours-and-rewriting-the-chore-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Domestic Diva: Career Detours and Rewriting the Chore Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Hillshire Farm on Unsplash<\/p><\/div>\r\n

From Career Queen to Domestic Diva: Rewriting the Chore Story<\/h1>\r\nMarch 2015. The washing machine broke down.\r\n\r\nSo, there I was\u2014sleeves rolled up, hands deep in soapy water. I hadn\u2019t washed clothes by hand in years, except maybe the occasional lingerie. My \u201cold school\u201d laundry moment felt like stepping into a time capsule. I remembered the Washman who used to pick up and drop off my clothes each week. I remembered dry-cleaning nearly everything else.\r\n\r\nAnd then my mother\u2019s voice came to me.\r\n
\u201cA woman needs to know how to do housework. Even if you can afford help, what happens the day they don\u2019t show up?\u201d<\/blockquote>\r\nAt the time, I thought: You wait until they resume. What else?<\/em> But here I was, years later, confronting the very thing I had been avoiding all my adult life.\r\n

A Life Lived Everywhere But the Kitchen<\/h2>\r\nI\u2019ve done it all\u2014career girl, global traveller, aid worker, government liaison, missionary, student in a foreign land. I\u2019ve moved through boardrooms and briefing rooms with ease. But I had never fully immersed myself in one role: homemaker.\r\n\r\nBefore marriage, I lived the dream. A Washman for laundry. A house help for everything else. I didn\u2019t cook. I didn\u2019t mop. I didn\u2019t market. Even after marriage, I remained somewhat insulated\u2014until pregnancy made it clear that help was a necessity, not a luxury. We hired a Nanny-Housekeeper, and she became part of the furniture for 13 years.\r\n\r\nAnd I? I stayed focused on my career.\r\n

Leaving It All\u2014Then Coming Back<\/h2>\r\nWhen I retired early to focus on family, I imagined leisure: gym mornings, poolside lunches, weekly massages. It was blissful\u2014for about six months. Then boredom hit hard.\r\n\r\nSo I chased another dream\u2014a doctorate abroad. But visa challenges brought me back home.\r\n\r\nTo fill the void, I launched a website and began writing. Two years later, the thought returned:\r\n
Why do you keep running from your home?<\/em><\/blockquote>\r\nI argued with myself. I did<\/em> take care of my home\u2014by managing people who did the actual work. Did I have to scrub floors or haggle in the market to prove anything?\r\n

The Fear Behind the Mop<\/h2>\r\nIt wasn\u2019t laziness. I knew how<\/em> to clean, cook, and shop. What I feared was what it represented: a loss of identity, the beginning of decline into the type of woman I never wanted to become.\r\n\r\nI once told my fianc\u00e9 (now husband):\r\n
\u201cI will never be the woman who drags through Mile 12 in muddy boots to save \u20a6200. If that\u2019s your idea of a good wife, tell me now.\u201d<\/blockquote>\r\nBless him, he stayed. And so began our life\u2014with help.\r\n\r\nThe one thing I never did? Go to the market. That was a non-negotiable.\r\n

Thinking Out Loud: The Diva Awakens<\/h2>\r\nThe day I told a friend I wanted to become a domestic diva, I surprised myself.\r\n\r\nI didn\u2019t have a plan. Just a burning desire to face the one thing that scared me: housework<\/em>.\r\n\r\nNot because I couldn\u2019t do it, but because it echoed my mother\u2019s teachings. Her relentless emphasis on chores. Her belief that womanhood was proven with a broom, a pot, and a spotless home.\r\n\r\nMaybe I avoided it all these years for one reason:\r\n
I didn\u2019t want her to be right.<\/em><\/blockquote>\r\nSo now, I\u2019m learning. Slowly. Rewriting what domesticity means for me. Not as a fallback. Not as failure. But as power reclaimed.\r\n\r\nI\u2019m learning to see the home not as a prison, but as a canvas. A space where I can bring intention, beauty, and purpose. I\u2019m not trading ambition for apron strings. I\u2019m expanding the meaning of womanhood on my own terms.\r\n\r\nI am becoming a domestic diva\u2014and I\u2019m proud of it.\r\n\r\nRead more Domestic Diva<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOvie Farraday is a wife and mother of five (including 2 teenagers and a pre-teen) living in a sub-Saharan West African suburb.\u00a0 She is married to an Architect and entrepreneur. Ovie Farraday is a pen-name.<\/sup>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Career Queen to Domestic Diva: Rewriting the Chore Story March 2015. The washing machine broke down. So, there I was\u2014sleeves rolled up, hands deep in soapy water. I hadn\u2019t washed clothes by hand in years, except maybe the occasional lingerie. My \u201cold school\u201d laundry moment felt like stepping into a time capsule. I remembered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[803,800,169,310,283,804,400,497],"class_list":["post-3236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-misc-and-opinions","tag-chores","tag-domestic","tag-family","tag-feel","tag-mother","tag-nubiaa","tag-purpose","tag-wife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3242,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236\/revisions\/3242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}