Hello mommas and friends. My name is Ashley. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You may be wondering what the a “Mayu” (ma-yew) is. Mayu,  “a young girl” in Bassa, is a nickname given to me by my mom. She was born and raised in Liberia speaking both English and Bassa. We moved to South Florida when I was just two years old. So, today, if anyone asks me where I’m from, I say I’m from Miami. Flash forward a couple years and I was living New York City studying photography at Parsons the New School for Design.

I loved living in NYC and returned to Miami for what I thought would be a short time to be with my mom before I struck out on my world-circling adventure. Then I met Matthew … got married … and had Sammy!

So it goes, you make plans, then life happens … and I wouldn’t change it for the world. The whirlwind of life had sucked me in and was taking me for a ride. I feel like I blinked and then suddenly I was going to be a mom, blinked again and I was a mom with a rambunctious beautiful little boy! The next thing you know all of my personal goals and plans, in an instant, were on the back burner. I struggled to find that ‘balance’ everyone talks about. How on earth was I going to be able to check off all these things I wanted to do whilst raising a new person and being a wife? For my sanity, I needed to find an outlet.

And so The Mayu blog was born. Here I can express myself creatively through writing, photography, video, and this new “mom style” I’ve acquired. Motherhood can be tough, even lonely at times, and I want to extend a hand to the moms out there who don’t necessarily have it all figured out. The one who might be doing things differently than her mom, or other family members and friends did. But is paving her own way, one day at a time. Enjoy