This week I am so pleased to share my little blog space with one of the most successful South African women in publishing. The media icon that is Vanessa Raphaely. When she’s not editing Cosmopolitan or working as Editorial Director for Associated Magazines she can be found sharing her hilarious brand of humour and ironic internet insights on her blog, Hurricane Vanessa – a rather apt description of her life it seems!

I always head there when I have 5 mins for a quick break and I’m looking to laugh… It’s a smorgasboard of the wierd and wonderful.

Besides all this Vanessa also manages to mother 3 kids. I think they only reason I managed to score this interview was because she was playing nursemaid to a sick one and stuck indoors – whatever her reason I’m very pleased to have an…

“EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH VANESSA RAPHAELY”

What I….

Know
To have failed is a privilege, so long as you learn from it. Humility is one important lesson to be gleaned from failure. The absence of humility is a curse.
Let the desire to do only good work motivate you. Not the fantasy of success, money or fame.
If you want children (even a little) and you haven’t started at 35 … Prioritise babies immediately.
How good a man is, is written in his history. Judge him by his deeds, (past and present) not by his words.
A working woman cannot “have it all” at the same time. You can “have it all” once you’ve raised happy children. At any other time, out of good work, happy kids and a social life, you probably have to choose two, out of the three.
Maternal anxiety is a cancer. A fearless mother is a great gift to her children.
As a mother, your role is not to protect your children from life, but to prepare them for an authentic one.
Marry a man who thinks you’re a 12 and who you think is a 9.
I am not always right.
If I hadn’t sometimes felt like an outsider and a bit lonely when I was young, if I had been invited out every Saturday night … I wouldn’t have discovered books, and my life would have been much poorer.
When people are ugly to me and I feel anger, hurt or sadness, I sing @LilyRoseAllen to myself. Then I go for a run. I won’t let trolls own the smallest piece of me.

Love
My kids (especially when they’re singing,) my husband, my friends and the two women who help me keep my life on track. Plus two ungrateful chocolate Labradors. My homes. My art. Stories. Seashells. I tell the children that when I die, if they want to remember me, all they need to do is walk or run on Table Mountain Road or Keurbooms beach. My happy ghost, I am sure, will haunt those two places.

Read
Everything, except chick lit and gossip magazines.
Once, on a hiking trail in the mountains, when I had forgotten to take a book, I read a cornflakes carton.

Wear
Whatever makes me feel comfortable, warm or cool, (not stylish, cool as in not sweating in summer) and happy. Nothing else.

Need
Freedom, stimulation.
My kids, my husband, my friends, the two women who help me keep my life together.
To read.
To run on Table Mountain and to walk on Keurbooms Beach.

Thanks so much Vanessa for taking part in my blogger interview series. I am thrilled!

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