ANTHOLOGY

About me

Hello there. My full name is Rhonda Ho Yee Mason but, once upon a time, it was Chan Ho Yee—a phonetic translation of my Chinese name, 陳灝怡. Some years after we moved to Australia back in the eighties, my parents added ‘Rhonda’ to my name because, believe it or not, my father was partial to a certain Japanese car manufacturer. When Rick and I married twenty years ago, I adopted his surname but kept Ho Yee as my middle name: 灝 means ‘vast’ and 怡 means ‘harmony’. (You can read the full story about my name here.)

I am a writer, a designer, and a visual artist, and I live in Sydney with my husband and five1 of our six boys. In 2007, our first son, Cameron, died in utero at forty-one weeks, and we love him and miss him dearly. Six days after Cameron died, I started an online journal called Life Without Cameron, and the words I shared in that space eventually became the manuscript for Cameron’s book, which was published in 2016. As well as writing about Cameron, I blogged as Pink Ronnie for over twelve years during the golden era of blogging, and from 2013 to 2018, I was the main writer and editor of the Life Captured Inc blog. (You can read all about my writing journey here.)

Alongside my writing, I have worked in marketing, branding, and graphic design since 2005, and it is something that I enjoy doing to this day. In 2018, I decided to venture into artmaking, and two years ago, I began attending Julian Ashton Art School in The Rocks, Sydney, as a part-time student.

About Anthology

My oldest son turns sixteen this year, and I cannot wrap my head around this. In fact, the day he started kindergarten is still etched in my memory. My parents were back in Hong Kong visiting relatives at the time, and I’d sent my father a text about his oldest grandson starting school. Within minutes, he replied to tell me that ‘the time when you went to kindergarten is still in my mind’. And just as I started to cry, he sent another: ‘Time really flies’.

Two truths hit home when I received my dad’s reply: The cycle of life is a force to be reckoned with. And time does not stop for us, no matter how much we may wish it. 

Only just yesterday, we were children. Today, we are parents. Only just yesterday, my children were little. Before I know it, they will be all grown up.

Yes, time really flies.

And it certainly does not stop for any for us.

But. But.

We can choose to slow down. We can choose to be present. We can work hard at savouring each moment. And more than that, we can write stories, turn moments into words, and in doing so, we can preserve them in time. I’ve sought to do this at many points in my life, and I am now recommitting to the practice. Why? Because life is fleeting, but words are forever.

With this in mind, Anthology is a memoir, and a time capsule.

The words you will find here are excerpts from my personal journal, with perhaps the occasional lyrical essay. Yes, Anthology is, quite literally, an anthology of love, laughter, grief, motherhood, and the daily joys and trials of making and pursuing art.

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