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for mothers

I am an independent woman, a strong woman, someone who has always relied on myself and rarely compromises or backs down from anything I truly believe in. I’ve always loved powerful, creative, strong women and have often been inspired by them. Whether professionals, professors, authors or artists, the power and strength from a focused creative woman is passionate. But there is one thing that makes me angry. Occasionally there is an idea, an undercurrent that I sense from both individuals and society, that somehow a woman with a family, with a spouse or partner, or even more so with children, is somehow less powerful, less independence, less passionately strong, less fierce in her pursuits.



I have a family now. I’ve has a family for a while, but now I have a baby. A great deal of my energy, my time and my spirit goes towards nurturing my baby boy, supporting him, my partner and our family, taking care of us all day to day. I got a new package of cloth diapers in the mail today. A bigger size, they’re being prepped in the washer right now. I feel a calmness and happiness unwrapping them from their box, washing them and taking them out of the dryer, warm in my hands as I stack the now fluffy fabric in the cold laundry room. This very simple task, the feel of this fabric on my skin, the care I take in the lot of it gives me a moment of stillness and intent. But don’t for one second think this takes away from my strength, or diminishes my lofty goals. Don’t for one minute think that I am somehow less than I was before. Don’t you dare think I am somehow not as strong or fierce or passionate. If you think that you have absolutely no idea what it means to parent or to partner.

The hardest thing I’ve ever done is give birth to my son, nurture him, begin to raise him and begin to transition through the growth it has given me. It was not the labor or giving birth that was hard. It was not the sleepless nights or the daily acts. It was realizing that birthing in the traditional American way was not nurturing or safe for any of us, and figuring out how to afford and protect our right to birth at home as we knew was right for our family. It was the discovery of what was right for me, the grasping of it, and the standing up for it. Giving birth to my son at home made me more of myself. Deciding what kind of pregnancy I wanted for myself and for him made me more of myself. Deciding what kind of entrance I wanted to give him into this world made me more of myself. Deciding how I would deal with his colic, his cries, his hunger and his smiles made me more of myself. It doesn’t lessen my passion, rather it gives me strength in my convictions, strength in myself. Losing all my time and freedom has been difficult. Having a baby who doesn’t nap, loves only to be held, and is just now, most nights, sleeping for a couple of hours at a time has been difficult. And yes most of my time is now spent on his care, not in reading, or exercising, or working on something tangible. But it has also been spent dreaming, imagining, and loving, as I was forced into mental and emotional stillness where you cannot disguise yourself with your pursuits. Having children or living in a family is challenging because it takes away a lot of your crutches. I can no longer mold the world to my benefit and do what needs doing or I want to do. Rather, I’m challenged to build my strength of character, to focus my ideas, interests and insights, claiming seconds for myself rather than hours. It doesn’t make me weaker, rather it makes my mindset stronger. I can not be a child, emotions and insights at the whim of outside sources. I have to keep the stillness I’m forced into inside of myself to keep my path straighter than the tip of a pen.



All of these things make me stronger and more of myself, as long as when I do have those seconds or minutes I stand up for myself, claiming every dream I’ve had for son, as well as myself.

Having a family doesn’t make you weaker, it makes you stronger. Having a family doesn’t dilute you, it increases your potency. So never doubt a mother again.

Loving people does not make you compromise yourself, it filters out the insignificant and challenges you to be not just what you imagine yourself to be but what others might see in you, moving you closer to who you really are. It tests you, to see if you’re willing to rise up for your own truth.

I love my little family, I take care of them, they challenge me, they embrace me, and embracing them fuels me with fire that burns hotter than ever before, fire to do, to accomplish, to be, to enjoy and to live.

delusions and compassion

A human being is a part of the whole called the “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of… consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Albert Einstein

music

Some days lately are bookended with music. Music seems to bookend my best days, the days where I lay my head down with the kind of peace that comes from rightness and knowledge of where I am in time, in life, in home and heart. My best days are the days that I’m aware of the new breath my life has, a slower breath where accomplishments are of the soul and not the pocketbook or prospectus. On these days I begin and end my days with music. I usually find the world to have both too many and too few words. Too many words of surface, of speaking, or telling, and too few words of listening, of honesty, of substance and connection. I think sometimes after a day filled with conversation, a day filled with events and speaking and places to go, I end the day feeling empty because I always crave a deeper connection. I crave a connection with the words that were not spoken that lie behind the words that either were or weren’t. Words are too easily held back. Words are too easily used to attack. Despite my love for them words often feel inadequate. Music fills the chasm.

I grew up playing music, I matured listening to it, and I use it for every creative pursuit I try. Now more than any other I use it for the creative pursuit that is my life. In the early early morning, hours before the sun rises, after I put my son down for his last episode at night I slip downstairs, plug in my headphones and pick through notes of old songs and new, remembering how to play not just with my fingers but the ache within me that reaches past common words towards the truth I find so slippery to pursue. At the end of my days I bathe in water and listen to music, usually allowing myself the luxury of two songs. I put the headphones in, turn the music up far too loud for my ears, and drift back into that space that somehow lies within me but is only accessed through deep connection and emotion. I wonder at how music carries me into it so quickly. Especially when I try so hard to find it with words spoken, words shared, words tried.

the idealist

Beneath my deep pessimism I am an idealist. I'll admit it. I've heard people disparage this word, this concept, idealist. I've heard people infer that someone who is an idealist is childish, inexperienced, somehow not grounded in reality. I think people sometimes think these people who are idealists, especially politically, have not been tested, have not been tried, and have in some ways surely had an easy life. I don't agree. To be an idealist is to dream of a better way. To be an idealist is to hold humanity up to a higher standard. To be an idealist is to know in your heart that better is possible. And in that way I think it's possible to get a broken heart when the world appears to have let you down. But to be an idealist you have to be tenavious, stubborn, persistent. It's easier to let the dream die out. It's easier to say, well - that's not possible so I'm not going to try, I'll just work within reality. But just because something is easier doesn't mean it's the adult way of doing things. In fact, I think it should be the opposite.



I've felt tempted to let reality break me, to avoid it breaking my heart. I've felt tempted to let reality lower my expectations. But I don't think I can. I've said before that having a child makes it impossible for me to consider giving up. That's maybe the most amazing, overwhelming and inspiring change my son has brought me. I won't let myself rollover and give up until I know with certainty I've done my best to provide for him, provide food, shelter, love, safety, reassurance, creativity, awareness, grounding and possibility. So I will fight my own pessimism to remain open to the possibility of change. I won't let one lost election, one absent paycheck, one prejudicial decision, or one leaking roof lower my expectations for the world and the life that is possible for him to have.

"Our moral instincts are immune to the explicitly articulated commandments handed down by religions and governments. Sometimes our moral intuitions will converge with those that culture spells out, and sometimes they will diverge. An understanding of our moral instincts is long overdue." Marc D. Hauser

A Woman's Nation: Reclaim Your Right To Birth Right

A Woman's Nation: Reclaim Your Right To Birth Right
from Huffington Post

on traveling

I have been completely obsessed with a television program called Long Way Down, and the first one of its like, Long Way Round. It’s a documentary series following Ewan MacGregor and his friend Charlie Boorman on their motorbike trips around the world. They travel from London to New York going east one trip, and from Scotland to Cape Town, South Africa going south in another.

My son doesn’t nap, well, he does, but only if I’m holding him. And if he doesn’t sleep he’s able to summon a mood cantankerous enough to cause a cosmic shift. So I hold him in the glider we thankfully bought while he eats, and while he sleeps. At three months old this is probably eighty percent of our day. So I sit in this chair, unable to move or get up most of the time.

The irony of my newfound video obsession is not lost on me, nor is the reason I enjoy it so much right now. While sitting in my chair it gives me a way of dreaming about travel, and remembering that there is indeed a whole world out there, with people who are so similar, even if in completely different circumstances. This gives me perspective, something that’s hard to maintain when your world consists entirely of conversations with an infant, a coffee table piled with various magazines or books, laundry undone and a pile of yarn.

I went on my first road trip when I was 20, traveling away from college and the state I grew up in to live in a place I’d never seen or really heard much about. Traveling from Colorado east and north until I arrived in Maine, I hardly left the highways. Yet even that kind of uneventful travel was meaningful to me. There’s something about traveling on the ground, seeing the earth move by you as you move towards a destination, that allows you to place yourself, distinguish your new place on the conceptual map we all carry in our minds of the world.



It’s the conceptual that this kind of travel breaks down, and that’s what I love about it. Seeing places and moving yourself through them breaks down the concept that this place is apart from you. Even on my uneventful trip, the east coast was a conceptual “other” place for me. It was something I imagined in my mind and heard people talk about, but saw as “other”, something that was not a part of my life. Like someone who thinks a certain illness or tragedy will never happen to them, and then it does. Finding yourself standing in a place, smelling, hearing, feeling the world around you in that place makes the realness of it, the biology of it, a part of your life, memory and body. It completely breaks down your preconceived notions of it, and you will never think of it the same way. The same thing happens in a place like Europe, Africa, India, Iraq. I don’t think it matters how foreign or different the place is. Inevitably it becomes a real place with real people.

So events, news, wars and stories that you hear about that happen in a place that you’ve stood take on a new meaning. I think we could all stand to see how small the world is, and how alike we all are. But I think we can also stand to see our differences and learn from them. I want to travel more, and more importantly to me I want my son to be able to travel if he wants. Because I want him to have the perspective it can bring. From the little bit of travel I’ve done, and from doing my chair travel that I do now, by watching this program, reading as much as I can, and purposely remembering that there’s a whole world out there, it helps me feel grateful for all that I do have. I think for a person living in American culture there’s no better medicine than seeing how most of the world lives, with little to no material possessions, but often still great joy.

I spend hours now dreaming what feels like opposing dreams. I dream of building roots, no longer just for me but my son. I dream of giving him the feeling that I never had, of really coming from some place. But I also dream of visiting places, seeing new places, smelling the earth on other parts of the globe. Even deeper than that I dream of feeling a deep connection to both here and there, and how my life might be lived with that connection. Maybe a sustainable farm here, and volunteer projects or connections with children there. I don’t know, I don’t even know where “there” is yet. But just the thinking of it is good for me and hopefully good for my son.

i take it personally

I’ve always found it hard to ignore things. I remember being very little, still a child, watching television one morning. A commercial came on for some charity, probably save the children or something. It came on in between other commercials, probably for cheerios or shaving cream. I remember how I couldn’t forget about it, felt an impulse to help, and felt somehow horrified that the commercial for these children, just like me only suffering, had been sandwiched between mundane ads. I think it was one of the first moments that I realized that bad things can happen, people can know about them, but they happen anyway and nobody stops them. When I became a vegetarian, and especially when I stayed one, it was because of this same impulse. I could not ignore the suffering I knew happens so that I could eat a food I didn’t truly need. No more than I can now ignore the cries of my child when he believes, in his brand new brain that he needs me, even if I know he’s all right. I’ve always taken things personally, in that I’ve always felt responsible to live my life in a way that doesn’t contribute to the suffering that I can’t justify and don’t see a reason for.

But now I find it even more difficult. Before when I thought of war, an image was brought to my mind of a young man in fatigues, wearing a helmet above his dirty face. Now I think of my son, and the other mothers out there whose boys are grown and wearing the fatigues. And similarly, I sometimes can’t help but take some politics personally. You see I want more than anything else to help fight for a world that will be kind to my son, even as my greatest desire is to raise a boy that is kind to the world. Maine right now is voting on a motion to repeal a law allowing same-sex couples to marry. I believe these campaigns are fostered because of people’s religious views about marriage. And this is what I don’t understand and have a hard time not taking personally. I want my son to grow up in a state where people love each other, are committed to each other, and raise their children with intention, stability and creativity. I don’t think it matters how old they are, what religion they are, what color they are or what gender.


I want my son to grow up in a state that in many ways is “old-fashioned”, where he will learn to help a neighbor, grow some food, save a dollar, be happy with less, practice gratitude and get to know the place around him. I want him to grow up in a place welcoming of others, compassionate to all and in this way moral, where he will learn to do the right thing. I don’t understand how judgment and a lack of compassion are moral, and if there is one thing I hope to teach him, it is to embrace diversity.

So when I see political signs up all over, the one’s that give an outcry of peace, love and acceptance give me hope. When I see the ones that imply judgment, what I perceive as warped stodgy morality, and views of a world that I don’t understand, they would depress me, but I don’t have that luxury now. For I think it is my responsibility to do my best to create a world I hope some day my son is proud to live in, where he feels safe not just in body, but in spirit.

just worth watching again, and the inspiration i needed

Morning Mist

I'm living in the land of Sebastien Schuller's morning mist, and almost ready to speak again.

New Days

Dear Son,

Last night you weren’t sleeping again. I sat up, rubbed your back, wondering what was going on in your tiny mind, untainted by words or expectations. I lied down next to you and put my face right in front of yours, looking into your tiny eyes six inches from mine. I asked you what you needed, “don’t you think we should sleep now? Mama needs sleep to, you know”. The room was very dim, just a small nightlight beside the bed casting just enough light so that my eyes, adjusted to the darkness from sleeping, can make you out on the bed, just able to see your pale face clearly. And after I asked you if you thought we should go back to sleep now, nearly begging you to agree with me, your eyes crinkled, glinting at me and your mouth opened wide in a big smile, making me laugh out loud in a way that feels more pure than any laughter I’ve felt since my own childhood. This is the reason I don’t usually mind being so tired. This is the reason the rest of the stresses of life, the rest of the business of summer, the rest of my expectations of motherhood don’t matter. Every day we make our way through together, we get to know each other, as you get to know the world.

You’ll turn a month old day after tomorrow. Part of me looks forward to it. A huge part of me is so excited for the months and years to come, as I get to know who you are, and you get to know me, as we create a rhythm in our lives and get to do more together. I so look forward to when we can talk, and I can hear those thoughts in your head. But another part of me is incredibly aware of how fast the days go by, and how precious the memories of this first month will be. You are small and mighty, as is your influence on my life. In the morning when I come down to meet you and your father after getting ready for whatever the day may bring, sometimes my breath is caught away when I hear you two downstairs. Either your dad is talking to you, or you are fussing at your dad. In the small amount of space that you both hold in this slightly ramshackle house that I now adore for being the place of your birth lies everything in this world that I absolutely need. By the time I get downstairs I am refueled, humbled and maybe sometimes overwhelmed. I love you, and I will live my life in the hope of more midnight smiles.

on proximity and distance

The other night I had a strange dream. I’ve been cleaning, organizing and as always, always, always, working on our house. We’ve recently joked that it seems to take much less time to create a new human than it does to fix our house. But in this dream I was cleaning an area near my office and found a new door inside of this small closet that has the steam release to our boiler. I opened this door and it was a gateway to a closet of a friend of mine, and into her house across the country. This is one of my many closest friends who all seem to live at least several hundred miles away. Most of my early life I moved away from people, and then as happens after college all of us moved away from each other. So I’m left with many great friends, people incredibly dear to me who each know a part of me that I often wish people in my present life knew, but these people have lives that feel very separate from me. Since these people are scattered across the country, most on the opposite side of it than I am, I often feel like there are little parts of me scattered across the country.

Parts of me that are still a part of their daily life. Parts that stay connected to them in ways impossible for the rest of me in our busy lives here in Maine. There’s something about gestating I think that makes you want to reignite those deep female connections in your life. There’s something about it that makes me want to go to lunch with my girlfriends and feel their support with a hug, and the vibrance of their lives through their stories.

I love where I live. I finally found my home after a quarter century of looking and I don’t intend to leave it. Most of the time not living near all these people that I miss is just something that I think of somewhat somberly, a part of life, a part of adulthood that is inevitable, a sacrifice for finding what I think is the best place for me to live. But sometimes the fact that I like living here so much makes the sadness of missing some of these ladies even more piercing. Because it’s an intentional choice. If feels like I choose a place over them. And even though I know with everything in me and all my experiences that it’s the right choice, it still sometimes almost makes me wish I’d never found this place.



So I guess that’s why in a dream I made a place where I could reach them, near my office, where I sit alone and write these words, where I come when I can’t sleep to read my favorite books, and where I remember other times and other people. If only there was a way to keep the distance we’ve all traveled and the experiences we’ve gathered, staying the people we are now without going back, but have a secret closet where we could still reach each other almost through time, like going to Narnia itself.

Spring 2009

spring

I might be waddling around a lot, but I've never enjoyed Spring more...

there's a new kid in town

Yesterday I saw 2 male woodpeckers fighting like crazy just outside... then I saw this





which made the cardinal mad too...

new lives and new spaces

Sometimes it seems like life shifts, moves and shimmies in condensed little periods of time. Like little earthquakes that come out of your soul and cause rippling waves of effects all around you. This winter has been a season of changes, the results of which are just beginning to emerge, just as the green of grass is finally this week emerging from under such impenetrable snow. We’re expecting a new life. We’re welcoming a child into our home. This little creature inside me feels like more of a whole personality every day as its sleep patterns begin to effect my own. It seems to like listening to guitar and male voices sing, as well as news broadcasts, and loves baths. But the eccentricities of what this new life will bring to mine I know I can only begin to fathom. But nevertheless, ready or not, in July will be the start of a whole new beginning.


This house we call home is in a constant state of shifting, each season we go through within it has its own effect, allowing us to notice certain things about it that we either like, don’t like, or directly need to fix. It is far from perfect and enormously flawed, as only a truly known house can be. We’ll get to things when we get to them, we’ll fix things when we fix them, and life just has to keep happening within it in the meantime. Over the past several months I’ve been pushing and pulling this house, little bits at a time, so that it will support this new little life coming into it, as well as our changing needs. One thing that needed a drastic shift – my entire workspace. I used to sort of have three workspaces, one for writing and creative thinking, one for sewing and one for storage. This wasn’t always convenient, but I loved the privacy of my little upstairs alcove where most of the writing, sewing and creating happened. But to make room for the baby we had to move part of my closet and my partner’s office. To make room for his office we had to move part of my sewing area. To make room for the sewing area I would have had to get rid of my desk and writing area, etc… etc… etc… So starting from scratch we moved everything into one room with the storage area. Everything is in one area, which is convenient. There are large windows that I love. And never did I think in my life I would have a whole room devoted to my work and creative pursuits regarding this “work”. I love that it’s a room of my own, and that there’s a tree outside (which might be dead, hope with me it can stay up… ). Scouring our barn I found a way to make a work table and sewing table out an old railing, discarded plywood and a new 6 dollar topper. I found some random chairs, stools, posters, lamps and made myself a workspace.

It’s peaceful, and it’s green, my favorite color. I do miss my private little alcove upstairs where I would sew while looking down at the street and field below. But I’ve found over the past years that most spaces when new, make you long for a space that you either dream about or remember. Every day I spend in here working, planning and creating things for others to use makes me connect to this space. Every day I am more comfortable, finding out what part of day has the best light to take pictures. Finding out where exactly I’ll put all the little things, and building up memories and expectations of all the other changes I know are to come.

water and winter, the bump and sun

Winter is beginning to break. And I am beginning to emerge from it.

on wellness and sunshine

A lot of my life is set firmly upon the idea that I’ve found my home. Maybe I won’t live in this house for my whole life, but this area, this state, this climate and community are the home that I searched for and have rooted myself into deeply. But every February comes along, with its bleakness and hopelessness, like a chest cold you thought was over, only to linger for a couple extra weeks. Winter in Maine is long. It’s long and consistent, a sign of its character. In Colorado, where I grew up, the climate was a fast mover, a fickle friend. The weather was severe, cold, snowy, windy, but sometimes in the middle of winter you’d have a bright sunny day, when you only needed a sweatshirt outside, and any remaining snow is long gone by noon. Maine is more dependable than that. Most of the time February comes along, and you wonder if you’ll ever see the ground again, if it will ever rise above freezing, and if you’ll ever remember why you love this place so much.


I like shoveling snow (and it’s a good thing I do), I like cold weather more than hot, and the beauty of a clear winter day still strikes me, when I wonder if the sky has ever looked more blue. But come the middle of February even that beauty begins to fade, and my eyes search out green wherever they go. Movies or photos of spring or summer seem like chocolate cake or a Cinnabon for a super strict dieter. There, and full of goodness, but almost sinister in their inaccessibility. And come this time of year, my bleak attitude finally arises and I wonder again why I love this place so much, and why I want to stay.

This past weekend I had a bad chest cold. I had a bad chest cold, and while growingly pregnant didn’t have the privilege of good sleep or pharmaceuticals (which I’m not a fan of anyway, but seriously sometimes a girl just needs a bit of NyQuil). I was feeling growingly pouty and perhaps even slightly despondent. Then we had one of those miracles that happen this time of year and restore all sense of rightness and sanity. A truly, truly, sunny day. I sat at the kitchen table, curtains as open as I could get them, drinking hot tea and eating hashbrowns, and pointed my chest toward the sun. The warmth hit my chest and burned it, simmering it, feeling like it melted my pessimism like it melts the layer of ice on the top of all the snowbanks. It warmed my chest enough to make me feel better, my cough getting lighter, my body finally feeling that thing long absent since the fall, warmth. On days like these I begin to remember why I love it here so much. I love it because the first sign of mud, on a sunny day, hidden for months under layers of ice and snow, brings adults the same joy as it did everyone when they were kids and got to play with it. I love it because absence does make the heart grow fonder, and I would never appreciate the spring as much if I lived somewhere I could take it for granted. I love it because it is real. Life can sometimes be difficult, it just can, and getting through those stretches of difficulty, like the endlessness of winter in February in Maine, allows an appreciation and recognition of beauty when it is finished that I would never have without the challenges that came before it.

spring is coming

art

Andrea Dorfman's music video of Tanya Davis' song



as John Mayer says, say what you need to say...