The Mommy Conflict

 My Monday's Musings today seem to center around women's issues.  I had a long phone conversation this morning with my mother, in which we marveled over the regressive attacks on access to birth control and women's rights that are going on all over the country.   Then I read this piece in Slate magazine about the new book The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women.  As I'm currently reading Reading Women: how the great books of feminism changed my life, it's a bit of a perfect storm in my intellectual life.

All of the politics around birth-control have got my ire up on an issue that I was pretty neutral about before.  It just, honestly, felt like the issue was null to me.  Who cared about abortion anymore?  I thought it should be legal, but I also felt emotionally that I personally could never have one.  And with the new excellence of birth-control, I remember saying to my mother a few years back "it's so easy to not get pregnant, that I don't see the big need for abortion services".  That younger me really felt like we were heading into a Post-Abortion world in much the same way that it felt like we were living in a Post-Feminism world.

It's not feeling like that anymore.  Suddenly, it actually feels like women are in danger of losing the ability to prevent themselves from becoming mothers.  And, quite frankly, all of this is bringing out my inner raging feminist.  I'm pissed.

And I'm not just mad about the attacks on reproductive choice.  I'm not thrilled about seeing a re-post on Facebook that says that wearing babies facing forward is "cruel".  If you are carrying your baby about with you, do you really need to be told that there is only one right way to do it?  I was never a very good attachment parent, but now I'm being told more and more often that the things I did when my children were young were "cruel", "damaging", "unnatural", and even "abusive".

You won't be able to not have a baby, and once you do have a baby you are going to be totally taken over with this labor-intensive, time-consuming, "best" way to take care of that baby.

And the thing is, I used to like attachment parenting.  I think attachment parenting is a great idea - up to a point.  But sometimes we make compromises, sometimes we can't do it perfectly, and I think it's become a bit extreme to tell anyone that those compromises are abusive or cruel.

Frankly, I'm starting to have more sympathy with the argument that this intensive modern-mothering is anti-feminist.  And up until recently I would have been passionately arguing the opposite!  But that was before many of the less-than-perfect choices I made when my son was an infant (letting him cry, daycare, expressing milk but having him fed from a bottle) were described as abusive and cruel. With those criteria then I just really couldn't have gone to grad school and had a baby at the same time.

Let me get this straight - we will not be able to choose if we want to be a mother or not, and then once we're a mother we really can't do anything else except be a mother.  I'm mad about this!  And I love being a mother and being home with my kids!  And it's real work, and there is no need to do anything else with your life if being a mother is what you like best!  But I'm still mad about this!  Mad enough to wade into more controversy than I usually take on on this blog.

If you attachment parent, I am not saying anything bad about you.  Like I said, I love attachment parenting.  I just think moms sometimes need to take the baby out of the sling, hand them to someone else, and have an identity outside of "mom" for a bit of time.  But I'm not saying you aren't a great mom if you follow the methods to the letter.  That's great, you're doing great, and please don't let anyone make you feel bad about yourself.

But I'm not going to feel bad about myself either (well, I'm going to try not to feel bad about myself, but boy that is hard sometimes).

And I hope the woman who has put her children in full-time daycare doesn't feel bad about herself.

And I hope the tired young mother who lets her baby cry itself to sleep so that she can get her homework done for college (been there, my dear) doesn't feel bad about herself either.

And the woman who didn't want to be a mother and had an abortion shouldn't feel bad about herself either.

And all the other people out there trying to be good parents and good people and still honor their own needs at the same time, I hope none of them feel bad about themselves either.

one bit of Sunday

The parable of the Blind men and the Elephant, followed by blind drawing challenges.

I love this town

Blessed

The last time I went to see my therapist, she pointed out that in many ways my problems could be described as "poor little rich girl syndrome".  This bit of tough love from her did point out a reality to me: I am Blessed, and now what do I do?

I have almost everything I've ever wanted.  I have a good relationship, a large extended family network, many friends, a connection to multiple circles of loving community, I'm healthy, I have two children (a boy and a girl, just like I wanted), I'm living in the town I like best, on a few acres in a home that is almost everything I imagined in a dream home, working my dream job, driving my preferred car, with my chosen pets, and the homeschooling lifestyle I desired.

Now what do I do?  I have so much, and sometimes it feels like I can't keep up with it all.

Can you have your cake and eat it too?  What if you are actually given three cakes?  At what point is life just too good?

What I'm short on now, is the blessing of Time.  But even that is all relative.  If I take one thing at a time, and accept less than ideal or perfect all the time, there is Enough Time for it all.

Now I need to feel like I deserve this, and let myself Be.  As long as I continue to beat myself up to Be Better, to Earn It, then I have problems.  I want to accept and celebrate and feel gratitude for my blessings.  I've been lucky, and it's OK.  At some point, I have to stop Proving Myself Worthy.

We weren't born needing to earn the privilege of happiness.  Life is not a test to be taken, so that we can earn the best grade.

Life is Good.  Amen, and Blessed Be.

The Reading Life

Here I sat this week, sharing a quilt with Hypatia, reading picture books to her, and trying to teach her to use her new spool knitter.  Books that were lovely for all of that:

Mrs. Katz and Tush by Patricia Polacco, is a lovely story about neighbors who become like family, and the little cat that is part of the bonding experience.  As usual with Polacco's books, she touches on big issues of race, history, discrimination, and death, but in such a light and loving way that the children see the bad stuff but don't lose the love in the process.

With Love From Grandma inspired Hypatia to really want to learn to crochet.  It's a simple story about the making of an afghan, and the passing down of it through the generations.


The Watcher: Jane Goodall's Life with the Chimps is yet another nice picture book about Jane Goodall.  Hypatia has enjoyed all she's learned about Goodall - she has the perfect life to inspire children, I think.


The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton is an African American folk tale, about people flying away from slavery.  It's beautiful, and the writing and language is just lilting, but of course it's also sad.

Piggy Bunny is about a piglet who doesn't dream of being a pig when he grows up - no he wants to be the Easter Bunny.  His family and neighbors don't understand, and they want him to just love himself the way he is.  But when Grandma and Grandpa come to visit, they help him get a bunny suit and see himself in a new way.   

My journaling practices

I have been journaling for a long time, but in this last year, I find that I actually need  three different notebooks for the different practices that I'm doing.  It may soon be four books, as I think I soon need to separate my Religious Education related thoughts from my personal spiritual practice and self-reflection thoughts.

There are many different ways to pursue journaling as a spiritual practice, and I have not tried them all.  So what I'm going to describe is just what I do, not a prescription for The Way of The Journal.

I keep a general journal with me in my purse, and pull it out to jot down thoughts that occur to me during the day.  I also use that journal when I'm reading, and I record quotes that strike me from my reading and write responses to my readings.  Spending some time every day writing, copying thought-provoking passages, and then writing a response to them is my primary daily spiritual practice.

My other journals are for more specific needs.  I found that I needed a place to record what we did in our homeschool, and also my observations about the children.  Here I jot down the facts of what we did, and how they did, and my thoughts about where we should go next with our studies.  I purchased a day planner for this, so that the days are already recorded and if I miss a day it is obvious to me.  That keeps me honest on making daily observations.

And my third journal is my solution to the emotional burden I was beginning to feel of carrying other people's joys and sorrows in my heart.  I am told things in confidence, and asked to provide pastoral care to members of my congregation, my outside friends, my family, even by virtual friends I only know through reading their blogs.  What do you do when someone asks you to "pray for me"?  What do you do when you have just spent an hour lovingly and actively listening to someone speak of their pain and sorrow and worry and stress?  I was letting all of this weigh my heart down too much, and in recent months more and more people have reached out to me and asked if we could just talk - if I could just come listen for a bit, hold them in my heart in love, be a sounding board for their worries.  Of course I will, but then what do I do?

That's why I started the "Sara's Cares Book".  A simple lined journal, to record everyone that I'm holding in my heart right now.  I use initials, and I write down what they are going through right now.  I like to also record joys as well - it feels better to have the book hold some positive stuff too.  And I go back through the last month or so and re-read it regularly, thinking again of each of those people.  If they are still in that place of stress or sorrow, I write them down again on the new day's entry.  If they are doing better, I put a little smiley face or a heart next to the original entry.  It's helpful for me to see all these sorrows easing, these worries resolving, and these stresses finding release.

This practice is really helping me to compartmentalize, to keep my own emotional life separate from that of others, but to still care and actively hold others in my heart.  And now, whenever someone asks "please pray for me" or "send me good energy for ..." I have something I can actually Do.  I write them in my book. :)

Life is not a photo-op

Everything I'm about to say was already said, better, on this post at The Power of Moms.  Reading that got me to thinking about my own habits of looking at blogs and Pinterest, and comparing myself (negatively) to the images I see there.

I've been blogging for six years now, and bloggers who blog about their personal lives get into the habit of taking pictures "for the blog".

It's no secret that blogs with lovely pictures get better traffic.  And now there's Pinterest, to further feed our hunger for inspiring pictures.

But, I've never really become all that interested in photography as a hobby, and I'm also not too interested in taking the time to stage the background of my home to make a better picture.  After all - if we aren't careful we start to think we have to live in a magazine spread every day of our lives.

I'm trying to live an intentional and thoughtful life, not a "pretty" one.  But at the same time, I can find myself comparing my life to the pictures I see on other blogs and on Pinterest.  So I spent a few hours playing "circus tent" with my kids.  But wouldn't it have been more worth my time to make them a healthy snack that looked like a circus?

I cook my family dinner almost every night, but it's not photo-worthy.  I clean and do the laundry and run the household - and none of that is going to make a lovely photo either.

How about you?  Does searching for a lovely photo of your life ever detract from living your life?