Blog Festival Entries to date:

On recent mini-vacation.

In my family, we have a saying about being, “my own best friend.” We say it when we’re helped out by something we did, or something we plan to do—i.e. “I picked out my clothes in advance last night when I knew I had an early morning ahead of me. I’m my own best friend!”

So, I’m going to be my own best friend right now and host a blog festival as well as a blog break for myself!

I have a crazy October/November ahead of me. I’m teaching three classes—two in-seat and one online—and I’m feeling overwhelmed by that already and they don’t start until Monday. I’m also planning a Sagewoman ceremony for my women’s circle and really want it to be special. Alaina needs a lot from me lately and the boys are really busy with their classes and activities and so my usual opportunities to have alone time to work are becoming markedly diminished lately. And, like a genius, I decided to sign up for FIVE new classes in my doctoral program in addition to the three I’m currently in the progress of finishing! (Luckily, they’re all self-paced and so I don’t have to work on them all at once. If I did, I wouldn’t have been that crazy to sign up for five more.) As I look ahead at the next couple of months, I realize that I need to take a moderate blog break in order to free up my attention and energy for my other projects. I don’t want to totally put my blog on hold, but I do want to, finally, figure out how to write SHORTER posts for the time being and save the involved, insightful posts that I put a lot of thought into for my winter break. I also just really need to give myself permission to be “off” here and direct my attention towards other roles.

Blog Festival

So, for my blog festival, I’m seeking guest posts to publish during my blog break! Rather than a blog carnival, I want to host the posts here (with links back to your own blogs/sites of course). I hope this is a mutually beneficial idea and can showcase the work of other birth/women’s health bloggers! Your post does not have to be new content, it can be a personal favorite, or, related to the specific topic ideas for which I am soliciting content. My wishes are for…

Your own musing on the “What if’s” of pregnancy and birth (see: What If? Shifting the Dialogue of Birth and What If…She’s Stronger than She Knows…)
Thoughts on what it means to be Motherful/what that concept looks like in your life.
Feminism and motherhood/birth/breastfeeding
Moontime/menstrual empowerment
Postpartum
Mother Blessings (or women’s rituals in general)
Birth art!
The things you don’t blog about (these can be anonymous guest posts, obviously)
Your own personal favorite posts from your own blog!

I’m also collecting stories about labial/clitoral tearing for a future article or blog post on the subject. More specific follow-up post to follow about this.

Please email me your contributions for this Blog Festival experiment and I will merrily schedule them!

Permission & Radiance

So, once again I’ve found myself staring at The Mountain of Too Much and a familiar a crisis of abundance. This happens routinely. I should be used to it by now! But, I feel this creeping sense of overwhelm and dismay as I look at my calendar, my commitments, and my neverending to-do list. And, as I continue to try to be more and do better and yet always feel as if I’m not enough. I feel myself getting ragged and I don’t like it. I also have a feeling that I’m forgetting the self-care mantra, “the things that matter most should never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.” I keep getting distracted by little bits and bites and losing sight of what I most value. I’m also not taking care of myself—not eating enough, running out of time to exercise, being preoccupied rather than present, always doing the “should dos” instead of the “want tos.” I crave rest. I fantasize about just being able to rest. But, then I discover I’m not sure I know how.

So, I very much appreciated this extremely thought-provoking audio-blog Women in Cyberspace ~ Our Blind Spots – IndigoBacal.com. She makes a lot of important observations about how women use social media, including blogging, and she shared: “What I discovered was that sharing as much of myself as possible, as much of my inspiration as possible [online] was actually diminishing my radiance…”

I actually have quite a lot more to share about this and various navel-gazing meandering thoughts about me, me, me, but I think I’m going to keep my radiance to myself for a bit. And, practice this whole SHORTER posts goal…

As I listened however, I became aware that at some level almost all the time is the thought, I can’t stop/rest, because I might die. Meaning, what if I die before I “finish”—what if I run out of time for my dreams and plans, what if my life ends before I “get around to it”? And so, this compulsion to do it all now. In case this is my only opportunity. And, what if I don’t matter? Isn’t that stinky? I need to work on this in myself (or not, because I’m really sick and tired of my never-ending, relentless self-improvement project and never, never being enough). I also read/listened to this piece: You Have Permission (Right NOW!) and decided that I MUST give myself permission to rest without worrying about dying. I must! So, I am. And, you, lovely readers, can help me do that by sending me delicious blog posts to publish during my blog festival…

Thank you for reading! 🙂

Oh, and by the way, contributions about how you rest are also most welcomed…