Driveway Revelations (on Family Size)

Apr1

Family size has been on my mind since Alaina was born two years ago. Before we got married we talked about having four or even six kids, but as we got a little older we settled on “probably three.” There was a time, post-miscarriages, in which I wondered if two was “enough” and whether we should be happy with our family of two boys. Then, after Alaina was born, even though we’d said she was the last, I found myself spending many moments during her first year thinking, but maybe one more! I fantasize about having a little sister for her. I look at the tight brother-bond of my sons and I want that for her too—for her to have someone on her own little team, rather than being the little tagalong at the end of the family. I have a nagging question of whether three feels like an “unbalanced” number. Then as we moved past one year, I started to have more moments of feeling “done.” Those moments usually came from frustration—i.e. after a long, whiny day, I’d think, “yes, family size is complete. NO MORE! AHHHHHHH.” I also kept having the thought that it makes sense to end our childbearing years on this high, sweet, clear, beautiful, joyful, triumphant note following her birth—why wait until we are fully “burned out” with parenting, why not retain some sweet, delicate wistfulness about infancy and childhood, instead of maxing our personal resources to our fullest extent? (Though, logically I know it isn’t necessarily an either-or proposition, that is how it often feels to me anyway.)

We decided we’d make the final, ultimate decision after she turned two, because too much longer after that point would make more of an age gap than we’d want. I posted on Facebook asking how do people know they’re “done.” I had an expectation of having some kind of blinding epiphany and a deep knowing that our family is complete, as I’ve had so many other people describe: “I just knew, our family was complete.” I didn’t have that knowing though—I vacillated day to day. What if I never know for sure, I fretted. Perhaps this sense of wistfulness and possibility with continue forever—maybe it is simply normal. One more. No, finished. But…ONE more?! And, I have a space in my heart that knows with great confidence that four (living) children would be the ultimate maximum for us. I definitely do not want more than four…so, does that mean there still is one more “out there” for us? And, back I go. I started out postpartum getting rid of maternity clothes and outgrown baby clothes, except for some special pieces and then at some point, I started putting them in a box in the closet instead. I smell her sweet head and think that she’s so wonderful how could I possibly never do this again. I look back at my pregnancies and births and think, WAIT, was that ALL? Is it over? Are my childbearing years behind me now? But, but…they were SO REAL! There is something about keeping the door open still. Not yet saying for sure. And then…some other moments have come recently. Rather than only having exhausted moments of “doneness,” I’ve had some sweet, beautiful moments of doneness too. Two weeks ago, we were all walking in the driveway. Alaina was in the middle with a brother holding each hand and me holding Lann’s hand and Mark holding Zander’s. I looked across at our line of our a family and suddenly there it was…a moment I’d not yet experienced…the sense that our family is complete. And, I thought, it IS a “balanced” family after all, even number or not. Yes, we’ve got the pair of brothers, but we also have “two girls,” so to speak, and that feels more balanced than I expected.

Then, last weekend, we were reorganizing our computer room and I was taking some things down off the walls as well as talking about having let one of my childbirth educator certifications lapse. I looked across at my birth art wall and I had this profound sense of distance from it, like, “oh yeah, I remember that life. It was a long time ago.” It no longer felt current or possible to me, like a part of my future reality, but felt firmly located in the past, in happy memory, rather than linked to possible future. I felt a sense of having “moved on,” past that stage after all, not waiting for the cycle to begin anew.

After my little brother got married last year, I’ve also started to have feelings of readiness to “pass the baton,” so to speak. It can be someone else’s turn to have the newborn, the baby, the toddler, the little kids. When I put away baby things and cloth diapers now, it is with an eye towards being able to give them to my sister-in-law or my sister, rather than saving them for myself. One of the things that has been challenging about the child spacing of my own family of origin is the age gap between my youngest sister, my brother and me. I am almost 11 years older than my sister and 9 years older than my brother (I do have another sister who is 22 months younger than I am too). This has created a “generation gap” of sorts in our lives and sometimes it feels difficult to reach across. A benefit however, that I’ve noticed for a long time, is that it offers the opportunity for each generation to be the “cool people,” to the current little kids of the extended family. Mark and I were the cool people when my little brother and sister were pre-teens and early teenagers—they would come stay at our apartment and we’d take them to the mall and things like that. Then, as they grew and we had kids, they became the cool, fun people to my own kids. I can look forward into a future slightly and see how my kids will now have the opportunity to be a cool, big people to my (as yet unconceived) future nieces and nephews. They won’t have the close-in-age cousin experience, but they will have the opportunity to take their turn as the fun, exciting role models. And, if my sister or sister-in-law hurries up and has a baby, it won’t be too much younger than Alaina and so at least one of my kids still has a shot at having a close in age cousin (and hey, maybe that baby can be her “sister” and teammate like my boys are for each other?! I’m liking this plan!).

Another benefit I can see to this generation-gap style extended family spacing is that each set of grandbabies can have their turn in the sun. If we were all having babies at the same time, how would my parents equally divide up their doting grandparent powers? How would my mom zoom around the state offering her postpartum nurturing skills to multiple new baby households? How would my dad patiently carry around a pile of curious babies? Would I still get my two hours during the day, or would the grandparents be too overwhelmed by having to have 50 grandchildren come over every day? How would I get to be a good, helpful aunt if I was busy taking care of my own newborn at the same time? Now each baby will have the chance to be the center of all the baby-attention and baby-love my whole family has to offer. We’ll all see and celebrate the first crawlings and first steps and first words of each new extended family member in their own turn, rather than having them lost in a shuffle of multiple babies all at the same time. And, I’ll have a chance to be the aunt who smells a tiny newborn head, and cradles soft hair, and marvels at delicate toes, and gummy smiles instead of thinking, “same old, same old.” ;-D

On Sunday afternoon, we took another stroll down the driveway. Mark and I were holding hands and chatting about various topics and when we turned around to head back the opposite direction, this is what we saw…

And, again, I felt that moment of bright, clear, certain awareness. THIS. This is our family size. These are our babies. We’re done.

(Or, are we?! :-D)

For some gorgeous thoughts on family size, do check out Leonie’s lyrical post On Choosing To Only Have One Kid.

—

And, on an unrelated note, I also took two pictures of the greenhouse. One during the delightful spring day…
And another during a delightful sunset…

Oh, and back to the original topic of family planning, don’t get me started on a conversation about birth control or how we truly plan to make that “ultimate” decision. I don’t freaking know what to do about that. All I know is that while I’m still willing to entertain the possibility of a “surprise” baby at this point in our family life, I am simply NOT willing to push the “reset” button at age 45 and accidentally have another baby then instead of menopause.

And, I realized as I set this to post on April Fool’s Day that someone might think I’m posting this as an April Fool’s joke—surprise, I’m not really “done” after all, in fact I’m pregnant again!!!! Not. ;-D

The Revolving Wheel (Gift from the Sea)

Mar25

“With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls–woman’s normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Lindbergh’s notion of mother as the axis of the household wheel really resonated with me, as did her descriptions of being pulled off center and distracted by a million aspects of the “wheel” of life. Her comment that saints were rarely married women made me smile, because it makes me think of Wayne’s Dyer’s comments that gurus rarely have eight kids, because there is nothing like the experience of parenting to shake your sense of yourself as someone who has it all together, spiritually or otherwise. And, it makes me think about how after some reading about Zen philosophy, I decided that Buddhism and Zen were not for me, because attachment is at the core of a mothering life. I got super irritated with old Buddha and his remarks about being “non-attached” and I thought, “easy for you to say, Mr. Go Sit Under a Tree and Wait for Enlightenment while your wife stays home and takes care of your kid—I guess she was too unenlightened and ‘attached’ to let go.” Being a mother has taught me a lot about relationship as the ground of being and relatedness, not non-attachment, as the core of a rich human experience. As I described in a prior post:

I have learned a lot about the fundamental truth of relatedness through my own experiences as a mother. Relationship is our first and deepest urge. The infant’s first instinct is to connect with others. Before an infant can verbalize or mobilize, she reaches out a hand to her mother. I have seen this with my own babies. Mothering is a profoundly physical experience. The mother’s body is the baby’s “habitat” in pregnancy and for many months following birth. Through the mother’s body the baby learns to interpret and to relate to the rest of the world and it is to mother’s body that she returns for safety, nurturance, and peace. Birth and breastfeeding exist on a continuum as well, with mother’s chest becoming baby’s new “home” after having lived in her womb for nine months. These thoroughly embodied experiences of the act of giving life and in creating someone else’s life and relationship to the world are profoundly meaningful.

via Breastfeeding as a Spiritual Practice | Talk Birth.

Anyway, Lindbergh says:

…to be a woman is to have interests and duties raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essential circular. We must be open to all points of the compass; husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider’s web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes…

How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living…

She also acknowledges the essential, and yet often difficult to find, need for solitude to find stillness as the axis of the revolving wheel of life:

…Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensible center of the whole web of human relationships. She must find that inner stillness which Charles Morgan describes as ‘the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still…

This beautiful image is to my mind the one that women could hold before their eyes. This is an end toward which we could strive–to be the still axis within the revolving wheel of relationships, obligations and activities…

… she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself…

…It need not be an enormous project or great work. But it should be something of one’s own. Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day—like writing a poem, or saying a prayer. What matters most is that one be for a time inwardly attentive…

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh from Gift from the Sea

I recall feeling this way about my own mother—that she was the center of our family, the anchoring space, the core to return to.

Other thoughts from Lindbergh that I related to after finding them online when reading reviews of her book and stories about her life include:

“I cannot see what I have gone through until I write it down. I am blind without a pencil…I am convinced that you must write as if no one were ever going to see it. Write it all, as personally and specifically as you can, as deeply and honestly as you can. … In fact, I think it is the only true way to reach the universal, through the knot-hole of the personal. So do, do go ahead and write it as it boils up: the hot lava from the unconscious. Don’t stop to observe, criticize, or be ‘ironic.’ Just write it, like a letter, without rereading. Later, one can decide what to do.”

And that made me think about story and being a story woman and I also saved this quote (not from Lindbergh):

We constantly weave life events into narrative and interpret everything that happens through the veil of story. From our smallest, most personal challenges to global issues that affect nations and generations, we make the world fit into the story we are already carrying. This unceasing interplay between experience and narrative is a uniquely human attribute. We are the storytellers, the ones who put life into words. – Christina Baldwin, Storycatcher (via The Circle)

Here’s what’s been happening in my wheel lately and the stories I’ve been weaving (Zander featured heavily the last time I wrote a primarily personal update post. This one has more moments from Lann):

How funny that we had to wait for spring before being able to actually make a snowman this year! (*note bat posed for imminent destruction too!)

Last week, Lann had his first test (yellow stripe) in taekwondo. He did a good job!

Future plans involve moving on from cardboard armor, to real movie stuff…

In the car on the way home from a different class, Lann was planning his birthday party (Sept). He wants to learn how to make silicone movie masks. He said: “I’ll do the sculpting and art part, you do the reading and talking about it part, Dad can do the sitting around with his mouth open part, Zander can do the running around and squealing part, and Alaina can do the napping.” I said: “does Dad really only sit around with his mouth open?!” And Lann said, “Mom, in AWE!” He also said they’re going to go to the Drury Inn and dress up in Lord the Rings costumes, “and, we’ll have to hang up a sign that says Nerdfest.”

That same week we were briefly discussing the massive scale of the universe and the fact that the Earth is hanging around out there in space, spinning, and Lann said, “sometimes my brain hurts when thinking about a selection of topics.” 😉 And, that reminded me of a long ago Lann story when he was about four. We were doing the whole, “I love you as big as the sky” type of thing, and I said, “I love you as much as the universe–and guess what, the universe has no end, it keeps getting bigger, and goes on forever!” And Lann said, “oh mom, that’s so beautiful I don’t know what to say.”

The week before, Lann hitched a ride to taekwondo with Baba and since I was on break from class, I was home with Zander and Alaina (usually they go grocery shopping with Mark while I’m in class). Zander came running in to get my iphone so he could take a movie of something and I heard him their room taking a movie and narrating to Lann as he does so, so that he can give him the movies when he gets home and catch him up on what Z’s been up to while they’re separated! Good buddies!

Heartbreak of tooth decay sculpture from fall of last year–mama covers head, not wanting to know and yet holding both baby and the extracted teeth. At her heart is a jewel, because she acts with deep love.

We’re dealing with ongoing dental issues with Alaina. Despite our heroic efforts, she’s ended up with the most severe problems of any of our children. Last week I took her to the local pediatric dentist. He was really nice and informative and Alaina did really great with him. However, she needs a LOT of work, more than I thought, and it is going to be really expensive. She needs the crowns she already has replaced because they were not fitted correctly by the first dentist and there is decay around/behind them, plus she needs four other crowns and also two regular fillings. :*(

We’re definitely going to have to go through the general anesthesia route. The local pediatric dentist only does this work in the hospital and we got the estimate from the surgery center for the hospital portion only and it was $8900. Our insurance will cover part of it (we’ll still have to cover about $4500), but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that that is absurd. What a broken system. Taking your kid to the hospital for two hours to get their teeth worked on just should NOT cost $9000, no matter who pays for it, that is patently ridiculous. So, I’m going ahead with the consultation I made for her in Springfield on Wednesday. I called in advance to double-check and they do their oral surgery work in an outpatient surgery center rather than in a hospital and their estimate for the clinic part is $2000, total. That is more like it and is worth the two-hour drive (one way). I wish I hadn’t bothered taking her locally, because now we just have to do the exact same thing on Wednesday and then still go back. She has to have a physical first, before she can have anesthesia, so I also made an appointment for her first-ever visit to the doctor. What I really, really wish is that I’d just taken her to Springfield in the first place, last year, when we first started to get her teeth taken care of. I am so angry with the dentist we took her to in St. Louis. I was happy with the same office for Lann (different dentist, 8 years ago), but I have HATED everything that happened there with Alaina and I wish I’d never taken her there. I feel like they actually caused the problems she has now by not acting to treat the teeth I first brought her in about and then doing an absolutely CRAPPY job on everything they did after that. I don’t actually feel like I really have energy to really be angry though, my primary feeling is sadness and anxiety about what is to come.

In a cuter Alaina story, I made myself a little sculpture to use as a pendant, but Alaina appropriated it. When I finally put it on her, she said…”dooool.” I said, “did you just say ‘cool’!?” And she said, yes!

She also “knits” and likes tiny dogs…

We get a lot of use out of the Ergo still too!

And, I guess our kids should be in a band:

Alaina sings!

Zander drums!

Lann drums too!

We went to my sister’s house a couple of weeks ago and the kids immediately took to my brother-in-law’s drums. Neither had ever drummed before and Zander really rocked it! Alaina singing was a moment I captured last week when I was printing invoices and she was sitting behind me putting on a show.

In my own news, I finally renewed my ICEA childbirth educator certification after dawdling on it for a long time, but I let my CAPPA certification lapse. It was a hard decision, but made the most sense. I’ve been moving on from birth education for quite some time, and continuing to shell out money for something I’m not using often doesn’t make a lot of sense.

My new classes begin today! After the hectic disequilibrium that comes with the final week of a school session, the following week feels a lot like coming home from being out-of-town—excited to see your familiar life, yet also slightly panicky about needing to “catch up.” Plus, there is so much to be unpacked…and then, BOOM, two weeks off is SHORT. My online class is full and my two in-seat classes have 12 students each. There was a lot of prep to do get ready for them–I always forget that these “breaks” aren’t about having a vacation, they are about preparing for next session.

I’m not sure how good I do about being the “axis,” but my wheel is a pretty fulfilling one 🙂

Kids: Hilariously Awesome & Awesomely Horrible

Mar7

Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh at Zander’s creativity and dramatic style or to take him to therapy! Today, he showed me this drawing titled, “Never Camp Outside.” It is both kind of genius and disturbing…

Never Camp Outside

Other features in the series: Never Box a Bear, Never Dive into a Volcano, and Never Sleep in the Street…

Never Dive into a Volcano

Never Box a Bear
(yes, that would be a headless guy with blood spurts)

My kids are all pretty sensitive to violence in the media and we avoid exposing them to violent TV shows/games as much as possible, but their own brains come up with a lot of horrible stuff—if it comes from them, they’re okay with it and enjoying grossing people out. If it comes from outside of them, their tolerance is a lot lower (example: just today they watched a Good Luck Charlie episode and had to hide their eyes when Charlie was almost breaking a glass reindeer).

When we had a lot of snow days recently the boys got all into getting embellished (with washable markers) for a movie project! Pretty creepy!

: Getting decorated!

: Tough face

: ATTACK!

: Pretty good, horrible makeup!

: These pictures are what made me say to the boys, “you are awesomely horrible!”

: So detailed with backs of necks and backs of ears too.

: Aww! Snuggling monsters!

: First horrible makeup also involved painstakingly constructed paper fingernails/claws, each tipped with “blood” and taped around his real fingers.

: Even monster need smoothies.

: All decked out with an “8 pack” and then posed in very smug manner!

: Matching hand art (feet were done too).

: “Disease” make up job at grandparent’s house.

A friend on Facebook commented that I was a “cool mom” for letting them draw all over themselves like this and my response was, cool or crazy or lazy or a combination of all three.

When it was Alaina’s turn to get embellished via washable markers (“beware a tiny girl with a blue marker,” Lann was heard to say), she then did some work on my cheeks too…

Later, I was making pumpkin cookies in the kitchen and waxing eloquent to Mark about human trafficking and the roots in patriarchal religious structures and then looked in the bathroom mirror and saw my face was still decorated…sort of reduced the oomph behind my impassioned soapbox!

Speaking of Alaina, this month she learned how to say her own name. Instead of calling herself baby or “me,” when asked she’ll say, “Lainey” often accompanied by, “me tiny.” Last week, she described herself as strong and funny (true), and she petted my face and said, “Mama, pretty!” (Lest I become too conceited, I recall her also describing Daddy’s 1956 tractor as “pretty” recently). She also says both “thank you” AND “no thank you” and also “love ya! And, she loves squeezing into a box outside with her favorite kitty, Gizmo:

Zander’s drawings made me think I should do my own series. First up for me, based on some of today’s experiences, would be:

Never Read the Comments

(on any articles online about things that I care about and on YouTube videos whether I care about them or not)

Never Buy “Delicious” Fish Oil Capsules for Kids

(unless you like throwing away $17, five years later)

Never Trust “Tastes Exactly Like” Recipes from Pinterest

(banana ice cream…cauliflower pizza crust…garbanzo bean cookie dough…I’m always instantly intrigued, however, if you don’t have dietary restrictions that prohibit the “real” versions of these things, don’t bother experimenting with them. Your family will thank you.)

Birth art journey: mamapriestess

Feb27

This month during my computer-off retreat I felt the itch to add to my birth art journey collection. I haven’t made a new addition to it since Alaina’s dental work in September. Since she is so very interested in rituals and likes participating in women’s circles and wearing my special jewelry and setting up altars (this month two words added to her vocabulary were “altar” and “sacred bundle.” Adorable!), I created a mamapriestess sculpture as the next in my series:

It felt perfect to me, which was great, because I’ve been experimenting with (single) priestess sculptures since my priestess ordination in July and I had a lot of bum starts like this unfortunate try:

Couldn’t figure out yet HOW to do a standing figure after so many creations of seated figures. This one quickly ended up in my closet as did this one:

Not only not very attractive and leaning over, but ended up with burned hands and a broken skirt piece too!)

My next attempt was this one:

Ah! Getting better! Then, this one:

I created a mini version of her intending to include it in a “sacred bundle” at a festival, but I didn’t end up using her for that after all:

Larger priestess and mini priestess and tooth decay sadness mama sculptures.

I became enraptured with the tiny priestesses though and made this one also, who is still one my favorite sculptures (I call her the Womb of Creation):

Each figure in what I think of as my original birth art series has a special meaning to me. It is a 3-D journal of my life with my daughter. Each figure either had a message for me or was created to express a message or a lesson or to incorporate some aspect of my identity or to capture a memory. Here was the full series this summer:

After making the newest mamapriestess to add to the birth art journey series, I was on a roll and I created this version which I like even better:

And, I made a mini-mamapriestess as well:

Then, I started making other mini mamas and their babies:

And, I made a custom sculpture for Journey of Young Women:

Before mailing, I included her figures in a little grouping of minis on the altar for our women’s circle ritual this month:

The same week that my picture of my first custom sculpture order taken on my kitchen counter in front of a humble cake pan lid took off on Facebook (seriously, it had around 250 likes and over 130 shares, which is pretty close to “viral” in terms of birth art I think 😉 ), I also had two photos entered in a Goddess art contest in which this one won a prize…These figures are very near and dear to my heart and really represent my own journey through pregnancy, birth, and motherhood is a way that feels very meaningful to me, so I appreciated the feedback from the contest hostess on the photo also:

I love this one, Molly. It’s so perfect in its simplicity. The cast of shadows from the bright sunshine is lovely! The detail and uniqueness of each of the Goddesses Gathered is amazing! I find myself looking at each one wondering which is me! Such a special little altar for the Goddess. I can imagine myself focusing all my prayers in the center…. knowing that they will either slip through the crevice as dream seeds planted in the richness of the dark unknown, or being lifted upward to be gathered by the air, the wind and the very spirit of life and infinite possibility. Thank you for sharing. Blessings.

And this photo was a runner-up in the art contest 🙂

The “famous” cake pan lid photo!

In new experiments this week, I tried making some very tiny sculptures to use as pendants, with one continuing the “mamapriestess” motif…

Even tinier than that are these two I just finished late last night:

And, if I do say so myself, I made a pretty cool sculpture using a rock I found in the woods:

And, since my mamapriestess sculpture was about her in the first place, at her insistence, I gave the first little mini-mini mamapriestess to Alaina to wear as a necklace:

Finally, lest anyone think all I do is waltz through the forest photographing my art in the sunshine and feeling all Goddess-esque and Earth-mama divine, this is really what is sometimes like behind the scenes:

Crabby and wanting to go back inside (note my hand holding her back from stepping on me).

Scratchy knocking-stuff-down cat and toddler with pig ball “helping” me set up my little sculptures!

She also is very, very, very eager to help me put the pigment on (note the table and her arm!)

While this birth art journey has very much been intertwined with my pregnancy-after-loss journey, my preparation for birth, incorporating the lessons of birth, and expressing the phases and feelings of life with my new baby-turned-bigger-baby-turned-toddler as well as my life as a woman, I realized that it was high time I add another figure to my series that includes all of my kids!

They’re all bigger than this in proportion to me, obviously, but these aren’t meant to be perfect representations (I also don’t just have a smooth, faceless head!)

I also finished a bunch more sculptures late last night (my oldest said they look like a rainbow :)):

“In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves.”

—Everyday Blessings

Mental Defrag (computer off week reflections)

Feb22

“Come into my lap and sit in the center of your soul. Drink the living waters of memory and give birth to yourself. What you unearth with stun you. You will paint the walls of this cave in thanksgiving.” –Meinrad Craighead

A couple of weeks have already passed since my annual computer-off retreat. I wrote down a bunch of notes/reflections during my time off and was planning to do a series of posts about it. However, life keeps rolling along, so perhaps the moment to do so has already passed. Essentially, I wanted to take this digital sabbatical for two reasons:

To “defrag” my brain. That is what this felt like for me. It wasn’t/isn’t that technology is “bad,” but that I think differently with its ever-present tug in my life. It splinters my attention/thoughts/time and I felt the need to regroup and reconnect with myself. I felt a strong need to redefine my relationship with technology and my use of it.
To take a break from the digital noise all around me and experience quiet/internal solitude. I feel like too much time online contributes to a hoppy, jumpy, revved up, skipping, shallow thought-process and a brain filled with other people’s thoughts/ideas rather than my own.

Three things my period of mental defragmentation revealed:

It isn’t really technology use that fragments my attention/time/energy most of the time, it is actually my kids! (Notably, toddler-age person. Regardless of whether computer is on or off, I spend a lot of the day waiting for naptime!)
The story I tell myself about all the things I “really want to do” not getting done because I’m spending “too much time” writing blog posts or on Facebook or whatever is really just that, a story I tell myself, it is not backed up by real life.
I get more done and feel much less scattered and fragmented if I single-task while using technology–i.e. when grading papers, JUST grade papers, rather than putting a picture on Facebook, checking email, and then popping back to the papers and then back away again. This is common sense, but it took enforcement to realize the difference it really makes. It is also extremely easy to fall immediately back into the same jumpy pattern.

I wrote a TON of notes in my journal about this experience, which was funny because I hadn’t written in that particular journal since May of 2011 and that probably truly is related to tech use.

I started to dream vividly again once I stopped going to bed with my ipad.

I did a lot of things with my week off…and…one of my big realizations was that these are all things I probably would have done anyway! I kept doing things I really like and I didn’t do things I imagine or claim I want to do, because…ahem…I either don’t really want to do them OR they take more time/energy than I can give in a life with kids the age of my own (regardless of whether my cell phone is on or off).

But, I did paint something, which I have been claiming to want to do. And, I learned that I’m not very good at it and don’t really want to do any more! 😉

I attempted to recover from the failure of Operation Pug (perhaps more about this someday) by buying beanie baby pugs for all the kids.

I played with clay a LOT, both polymer clay…

And regular clay…

I wallowed in books which I always feel “denied” from having a chance to do!

I got ready for and taught another birth workshop (which I would have done anyway)…

I made homemade tapioca pudding with the kids (and, as I said, I made it the week before my sabbatical and the week after too, so it isn’t really about technology interfering after all!)

I took the kids to see a play at the theater (again, would have done it anyway) and couldn’t resist another picture of the cool Millennial Arch sculpture in front of the building.

I spent a lot of time down in the woods on the priestess rocks (on January first of this year I started what I plan to continue as a year-long practice of visiting these rocks every year and taking at least one picture. I haven’t missed a day yet, so again, technology not interfering with my true “want to do’s”).

Zander made me a super-awesome sculpture that I will write more about in a minute…

And I made more super awesome sculptures myself (and have continued to do so, even with the computer back on).

I did not sew on my penny rug, or map out big charts about my life, or keep up with my daily journal, or draw, or clean the house, or take up new hobbies, or make masks, or do loads of school with the boys, or listen to all the saved up guided meditations and recordings that I can’t resist downloading when they come as free links in interesting newsletters, which are all things I tell myself I would do if I didn’t “waste” time online. I did start doing yoga again and walking outside with Mark again at night (both things I’ve continued since this retreat).

A couple of other things I noticed:

The “itch” or the “twitch” to check email/open Facebook is very frequent. If I sit with it for a minute, it passes.
A lot of my technology use that makes me feel like I have too much to do is very whim-based and kind of ADHDish. If I sit with it a minute, the false urgency of needing to act or respond also passes.
It is peaceful and still to disconnect. It feels like a mental relief and a rest for my brain. The need to “defrag” is real. However, I don’t need a whole week to do this, just bits of time during each day and a minimum of one full day each week.
I always have “too much to do,” technology or not. It is kind of how I’m built. I am packed with ideas and plans and goals all the time, so are my kids, so are my parents. I think it is genetic. Also, this makes us interesting people (albeit perhaps not Zen enough for some as well as for my imaginary conception of how my life “should” be).
I have a persistent imaginary scenario of being Playful Mom making projects and singing songs with my kids all day and I’m really more of Parallel Play Mom in which I like to work on my things while my kids work on theirs, whether the things I’m working on are online or offline. Maybe it is time to stop apologizing about that.
Time is a kind of blobby, amorphous thing that pretty much gets “used up” regardless of what I do with it. I just always want to be conscious of how I’m using it up and whether it is in harmony with my values, goals, and purpose.

Blog Integration (and Greenhouse!)

Feb20

I go back and forth a bit on my relationship to blogging. Sometimes I feel like maintaining separate “spaces” in the form of different blogs and sometimes my attention feels too splintered and I feel like integrating everything together under one umbrella. I originally started out as a book blogger and kept my book blog going for several years as well as starting a blog specifically about birth art. I started this Talk Birth blog really as just a website for my local birth classes, but as it took off (while the classes themselves did not) I started to devote more energy to it. As time went on, I started a blog for Citizens for Midwifery during my time on their Board. I retired from the Board several years ago, but maintain the blog on a limited basis. As the role and presence of Facebook grew, I steadily moved more of the content I normally would have shared on the CfM blog to the CfM Facebook page instead and find this seems like the most effective use of my time. I was one of ICEA’s bloggers for a short time and wrote book reviews for CAPPA for two years. With all of these, I get an itch to centralize my writing in one location…here…rather than dividing my attention (hence the retirement of my book and birth art blogs several years ago also).

However, then sometimes things happen for which a separate space feels more appropriate–this was true when I had my first miscarriage-birth and felt very strongly that my writing about miscarriage needed a new, distinct home. Interestingly, now that three years have passed, I’m bringing more and more of my miscarriage writings over here, mostly in conjunction with The Amethyst Network, and I feel like it is important to include and acknowledge pregnancy loss in the spectrum of topics covered on a birth blog. After Alaina’s birth, I felt my miscarriage-specific blog was officially complete and I no longer update it. This summer I became ordained as a priestess and again the urge to differentiate blog spaces struck. I started a separate blog for my more spiritually oriented writings and my thoughts about feminism and religion. More recently still I became a contributor to a blog on Patheos. While these blogs intersect, my interest in Goddess spirituality having been born out of my own commitment to birthwork and women, separate spaces at the time feel most comfortable to me.

I’m not sure if anyone noticed and the actual words on the screen are hard to see in my blog header’s layout, but in an effort to communicate my own expanded focus, a while ago I did add “WomanSpace” to the title of Talk Birth.

I’ve minimally kept up a separate farm/land blog as well in various incarnations and this brings me to my motivation for the current post, as I’ve decided I’m going to go ahead and just include those farm life/land picture posts here in the future. This is my primary internet home/presence and I’d like to integrate the two spaces. I’ve resisted because I don’t want to turn off any regular, birth-oriented readers (same logic behind separating out to a new spirituality blog) by “boring” them with greenhouse pictures. Likewise, I have nonbirthy family members and friends who follow me here just for the few slices of “other life” that I include amidst the birth and breastfeeding content!

So, that brings me to…updated greenhouse pictures! 😉 The greenhouse has been almost exclusively a work party project. Mark has done a little bit of independent work on it, but it has primary been built by the members of our work party over the last year (we started it in March of 2012). During our work party this month, we got the building finished and got the grow beds (for aquaponics system) much closer to being finished!

Soffit and fascia up!

Washing river gravel for the grow beds.

New grow beds!

Cat investigating the ooky muddy water coming from the river gravel.

Grow beds looking the other direction.

The clear front wall.

This picture was taken before the greenhouse was actually finished, but it is still my favorite greenhouse picture!

The Amethyst Network February Blog Circle ~ Sharing Our Stories: A Confusing Early Miscarriage Story

Feb15

We have chosen the theme for the month of February to be “Sharing our Stories” as we all have a story to share. By sharing our stories we have the opportunity to heal ourselves, heal each other, and break the taboo surrounding miscarriage and pregnancy loss. Story telling is a powerful tool of healing.

Every year I try to come up with a word to focus on. One year it was JOY. One year it was HOPE. This year I was contemplating what word I needed to focus on. Simplify? Prioritize? Gratitude? Service? But the recurring word that has come up for me over and over is STORY TELLING. I admit, I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. I always have a story to share about whatever is being talked about. Clearly I need to work on keeping my mouth closed! Maybe my word needs to be listening? Listening is an art as well and a valuable tool of healing. Maybe I need to work on listening to others stories? I digress here. The theme of story telling has come up over and over. And we would love to hear your stories.

Please share your stories on miscarriage, pregnancy loss, hope, healing, the journey to your baby, the journey to a rainbow (garnet) baby, the journey to decide to be done. Whatever story is in your heart needing to be shared, that is the one we want to hear.

—February Blog Circle ~ Sharing Our Stories » The Amethyst Network.

As soon as I learned the theme for this month’s Blog Circle with The Amethyst Network, especially since it coincides with the month of my second miscarriage experience, I knew it was time for me to finally try to share my story of my second miscarriage.

In January 2010, I experienced a sort of “mysterious surprise” conception. We’d been planning to try again after having lost Noah, I kept waiting and waiting to ovulate and “never” did. I had a dream that I was pregnant and decided to take a pregnancy test just in case. It was positive. I still have confusion about how it happened and how long I was pregnant. I did eventually find the embryo from the pregnancy, which seemed consistent with a 5-6 week embryo, so that I how I define the loss. On February 1 of 2010, I began to bleed red and I knew that my slender hope of a viable pregnancy-after-loss was bleeding away. This miscarriage was a crushing blow, one of the lowest and darkest experiences of my life. While I’d found courage, strength, and even joy and purpose in Noah’s miscarriage-birth, the second miscarriage brought me to floor in despair and confusion. Because there wasn’t a clear-cut “birth event” and there was no baby to hold, name, and cry over, it seemed ambiguous, amorphous, and just so confusing. This miscarriage actually dragged on for almost the entire month of February, with positive pregnancy tests up until a week before I started another period. For some time I even held out hope that I was somehow still pregnant, despite the bleeding and the tiny embryo. In my journal I wrote the story of my feelings:

…I feel dissolved. I am disconnected from this experience and feel unreal and unmoored….I feel so foolish—WHY did I think I could do this again. Why did I open myself up to this again so soon? Why did I let Noah’s birth get run over by this new loss that I fear will eclipse the lessons, gifts, strength, and wisdom he brought to me….I do not want people to have to feel sorry for me again so soon. I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want people to forget Noah and what he meant. I don’t want him to be lost in a string of recurrent losses…I told Mark I am done after this, at least for a good long while. We now have been trying to have another baby for over a year. AND, I have been pregnant during at least part of every month since July 2009…

As it turns out, I did decide I was willing to open myself up to pain one more time and after the February loss, conceived Alaina in early May, meaning I had technically only one “non-pregnant” month between July 2009 and January 2011. Whoa. No wonder I felt so confused and unmoored.

I continue in my journal…

I started to bash myself today about how I have felt so trapped by motherhood on so many different occasions and have yearned for “freedom.” Well, now I’ve got it. My kids steadily need me less and less and I am more mobile and free than I’ve been in six years and so now what?! I can’t believe Zander was the last—last to nurse, to sleep in our bed, to be carried in the Ergo, to watch crawl and learn to walk, to hold in scrunchy newbornness. I’m NOT DONE YET. Or am I? My body is saying yes [I’m done] and my fear is that my subconscious somehow made it so—perhaps the unconscious message I’ve been sending about having another baby is a NO instead of yes.

I do not want to end our family’s childbearing experience on this note of heartache. I do not want my boys to associate pregnancy with dead babies and a crying mama.

I feel like my career ends here too. And, my joy for other women.

I’m also embarrassed to have tried again “too soon” and “failed” again. I really wanted to be pregnant again to fix myself. To right the “wrongness” of being non-pregnant. To show myself (and my kids and the world) that I could still do it. But, I couldn’t after all. What a hideous realization. I think I feel more shame than sadness…I am back to not knowing who I am and not feeling like a good enough or worthy person. I felt a fundamental sense of worth after Noah and I lost it—it has evaporated.

In the night as I laid awake for two hours thinking, I had a lot of memories of how deconstructed I felt after L & Z were born. How NON and how captive and bound. It was HARD for me to transition to motherhood and to give up so many pieces of my identity and sense of myself. And now, I’m on the other side (??) of my childbearing years and suddenly it seems like a FLASH. Like those captive, denied, blocked, not allowed moments have evaporated into nothingness, leaving me both with new clarity and yet nothing tangible.

I just want to say two things again:

I do NOT want people to feel sorry again for me so soon.

I feel DUMB

Burying the embryo and planting a memorial tulip tree during a mizuko-kuyo ceremony planned by my mom and friends.

I do not feel like I am handling this well or with strength. I just feel numb and dumb and done and done for. I am bottoming out right now. Bottom. Pit. Despair.

It is hard for me to read this again, to type it out, and to remember these feelings. It still feels strange or confusing to me about how Noah’s birth was “easier” for me to cope with emotionally—even as it was the most fundamental and profound grief I’ve ever experienced, it was clean. It felt meaningful. It also had a distinct physical, embodied connection via having given birth to him. The second miscarriage felt like being kicked while I was down and being erased.

On my old miscarriage blog I explained my feelings about this miscarriage like this:

…this miscarriage experience was very different from my experience with Noah. It was extremely confusing and not clear-cut and was very personally undermining. My sense of body failure and almost “shame” was much, much higher. It was confusing as to when I got pregnant, how pregnant I was, and when I stopped being pregnant—I kept having positive tests for almost a month after I started bleeding, etc., etc. Very confusing and hard to come to terms with—because there is so much I don’t understand. It was a terribly painful blow right on the heels of Noah’s loss and I just couldn’t DEAL with it. I had thought I was ready to handle a new pregnancy, but I definitely was not ready (emotionally or psychologically) to handle another loss. The physical experience was, in its way, “no big deal”—it was the semi-mythological “heavy period” type of m/c, though even less crampy than a normal period—though I was stunned when about six days after the first bleeding, I found the tiny embryo (smaller than a grain of rice—maybe 5 weeks?). I really expected to see nothing and it was terribly shocking to suddenly see it. Since Noah’s birth was so much a birth, in a way this experience was harder to deal with, because it was very prolonged and had no clear-cut beginning or end. Very strange experience overall. I hesitate to even talk about it. I was surprised by how very DUMB I felt about having tried again. For having opened myself up to loss again so soon. For “cheapening” his memory by dumping another loss right on top of it. For thinking I could just pick back up where I left off and be “fixed” by a new pregnancy, etc., etc., etc. It was a very isolating experience and I also felt like it “undid” some of the good and positive things that came from Noah’s birth.

I was taking an online class in how to lead Birth Art sessions when I experienced my second miscarriage and I decided to create some birth art about miscarriage. This was my drawing:

Birth Art is about “process,” not product, so it is not supposed to be beautiful or even interpretable. The dice refer to our feeling of “tossing the dice” one more time—the numbers 3 and 4 show on the dice—and having those tosses end in blood. The question mark is self-explanatory with the squiggles representing all my reading and efforts to understand. The night I realized that I definitely going to have another m/c, I lay in bed and kept picturing a bridge that I was going to have to cross alone—-leaving behind the safe and familiar. A song kept running through my head, “keep walking in the light….keep following the path…” So, the little figure walking across the bridge is that. Tears are running down below her. The little bubble with other stick figures in it is the women who have gone before me—who are close to me, but I still have to cross alone. The happy pregnant woman behind me represents the “other side”—the one I can’t go back to. The naïvety. The certainty that a positive pregnancy test will result in a baby nine months later. She is all the other women who haven’t “been there” and I am forever separated from her by a wall (the thick line above her head). Or, she is the former me—falling down, down, down and away. The the right is my uterus, weeping both tears and blood. The ovaries and inside the uterus glow with energy. There are some purple dots inside to represent each of my babies—the largest one is actually a little “baby in my heart” image, like my pendant. It is larger because of my feeling post-Noah that I would always be a “little bit pregnant with him.”

So, there it is. My second miscarriage story in all its confusion, sadness, and nearly crippling despair. Thanks for listening.

Introverted Mama

Feb11

This post is excerpted from one written in response to the current Patheos Book Club exploration of the book Quiet : The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. I previously wrote a post for my blog about Quiet and then built on that post for my book club post. The previous post is here and my new additions are below…

I really enjoy being around people and I’m friendly and social, but on the flip side I feel very drained after people contact and need time alone to recharge. I find I am restored by being alone and drained by being with others (even though I like them!), hence I would self-label as an “extroverted-introvert,” “ambivert,” or social introvert. By definition it isn’t that extroverts “like people” and introverts don’t like people, it is a difference between whether they are fueled or drained by people contact. However, I’ve observed that people seem to make an assumption that being introverted means someone is “shy” or “doesn’t like people,” so that’s why I would choose extroverted-introvert for myself. I recently took a week-long retreat from Facebook, email, social media, and reading articles online. I did this primarily to silence the digital noise in my life (see some good explorations of why you, too, may be an introvert in this article: “Noise” Got You Down? Maybe You’re an Introvert).

Once I starting thinking about this book, Quiet, I was amazed at the connections I uncovered with how my introverted personality is expressed during pregnancy, labor, and birth. This was actually the very first time I’ve made the connection between my own birthing preferences and my introvert nature, that finds such renewal in solitude and craves silence.

Labyrinth of pregnancy pre-birth sculpture.

Pregnancy—towards the end of pregnancy I feel an inward call. I start wanting to quit things, to be alone, to “nest,” to create art, to journal, and to sink into myself. Nothing sounds better to me in late pregnancy than sitting in the sunlight with my hands on my belly, breathing, and being alone with my baby and my thoughts.

Labor—during my first pregnancy, the very first thing on my birth plan was “no extraneous noise.” It was really essential to me to labor without beeping, chattering, or questions. This birth room silence, in fact, was SO essential that it was one of my only requests for my second labor—no unnecessary talking. I can talk during labor, I talk a lot in fact, but I don’t want people around me talking. I want silence. My epiphany as I thought about the Quiet book was that this is why. I’m an Introverted Mama. I know many women are very nourished by the presence of supportive and loving family members and friends during their labors. They express wanting to be encircled by support and companionship. For me, I like to cut my birth attendants down to only the very most essential companions (and they’d better be quiet!). And, this leads me to…

Birth—after my first birth, in which I’d had the loving and supportive accompaniment of my husband, my mother, my best friend, my doula, a midwife, and a doctor, one of my most potent longings for my second birth was as few people present as possible. And, indeed, for this second labor I had my husband alone present for the first hour of a train ride of a two-hour labor, my mother and toddler son present for about 30 minutes and my midwife who walked in as my son’s head was crowning. For my last birth, I wanted even fewer companions, spending the bulk of the labor alone with my husband and later calling in my mother. When my daughter was actually born, I was the sole witness to her emergence as she slid forth into my grateful hands in one swift spontaneous birth reflex just as my mother stepped into another room and my husband was moving from behind me around to the front of my body. Shortly after her birth, my doula arrived to provide amazing postpartum care and my midwife came shortly after that to assess blood loss and to help with the placenta. This was the perfect companionship arrangement for an Introverted Mama. My older children were pretty disappointed not to be present, but I need solitude in birth and I heeded that call.

Postpartum—I am firmly convinced of the critical importance of planning for a postpartum “nesting” time or babymoon, in which parents can cocoon privately with their new baby in the solitude of their own home. I only now came to realize that perhaps this is Introverted Mama talking! I’ve spoken to other women who say that getting out and seeing people was really important during their own postpartum time. I’ve maintained for ages that this is probably culture talking (“get back to ‘normal,’ prove how capable of a mother you are,” etc.), and not what the tender new motherbaby most needs, but perhaps my preference is largely a function of personality. There is nothing better for me than spending at least four weeks nested at home with my new baby and my immediate family, no long-time visitors, no phone calls, little email, and no travel, visiting, or responsibilities. Ahhhh….babymoon bliss.

Breastfeeding—in the early days, weeks, and months of breastfeeding the symbiosis of the nursing relationship is so complete that the baby becomes a part of me. A newborn does not “disturb my peace” the way toddlers are wont to do. I especially feel this interdependent connection during nighttime nursings, in which the harmony with the baby feels complete and total and a peace like little else.

Toddlerhood and Beyond—Oh dear, now is when “no time to think” starts to wear on Introverted Mama’s nerves and stamina. I’ve met some awesome mothers of large families who comment on how they, “love the chaos” of home with lots of children. “Our house is wild and crazy and full of noise and I love it,” they may be known to say. Thinking of how desperately I crave silence and solitude, sometimes with an almost physical pain and longing, I feel inadequate in comparison to these declarations. Is this too simply a function of personality? Can these chaos-thriving mamas be extroverts who gain energy from interaction with others? I find that my own dear children, my own flesh and blood and bone and sweat and tears, still feel very much like “company” in terms of the drain on my energy that I experience. Whether it is socializing with a group or friends or spending the day with my energetic, loveable, highly talkative children, I crave time alone to recollect myself and to become whole once more. I once commented to my husband that I feel most like a “real person” when I’m alone. That means that the intensiveness and unyielding commitment of parenting can be really, really hard on me emotionally. Maybe it is okay to “own” that need for quiet, even as a mother, rather than to consider it some type of failure or an indication of not being truly cut out for this motherhood gig. (See more in a past, lengthy, navel-gazing post on why I need my “two hours”.)

How do you experience (and honor) introversion in your life as a parent? Sometimes I feel like being an introvert and being a mother are not very compatible, but as I learn to respect my own needs, to speak up for myself, and to heed that call for silence and solitude, I realize it is compatible after all. My children have two introverted parents and will hopefully grow up feeling confident in the knowing that there is profound power in being quiet, in taking time to think deeply, and to respond to the call of solitude if it comes knocking at the door of their hearts.

It is only when we silence the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of the truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.

~ K.T. Jong (via Kingfish Komment)

Guest post: working/parenting interview

Feb7

In late 2011, I participated in a working/parenting series at the blog First the Egg (authored by another Molly!) As I continue to balance my working/parenting life (and as I take a computer-off retreat during this week), I decided to revisit my guest post and reprint it here. I’m not changing or editing anything about it, so in this universe, I still had an infant, rather than a busy toddler girl!

working/parenting interview: Molly Remer

Balancing working and parenting… 😉

By Molly | Published: 18 October 2011

An interview with Molly Remer of Talk Birth, & part of working/parenting series that’s ongoing here. The first three of us were Mollys, but I swear I’m done and will give you guest post authors with other first names soon!

–

What activities in your life do you consider “work”? Do you think of parenting–or some component of parenting–as “work”?

I do not think of parenting as my “job.” Being a mother is a *relationship* to me, not a role or a job. However, it is an extremely consuming relationship! And, perhaps paradoxically, some elements of mothering do feel like hard work. Like Adrienne Rich, I feel like one’s feelings about motherhood as a relationship and motherhood as an institution are two separate things–I can find motherhood as institution oppressive, while still finding the relationship with my children fulfilling. So, I guess what I’m saying is that there are parenting tasks that are work to me, but that the relationship dimension–which I place primary value on–is not a job or work.

A mothering moment that I’m not proud of came up for me immediately upon reading this question. My son was about three and something challenging had happened that I’ve since forgotten–I believe it was something to do with kitchen mess–and I said to my son with a sigh, “wow! Sometimes you are really hard to take care of” (like I indicated, not the best moment from me) and he replied, “I’m not hard, I’m soft! Just feel my little body!” He rubbed his hands all around his chest and stomach as he shared this–demonstrating his genuine softness. ::sob::

Has your relationship with work changed as a result of your experiences parenting?

Yes, I desperately snatch at free moments, packing one million tasks into my solo hours, like a starving person who is unsure where the next time-meal is coming from. I feel greedy for time alone to work in silence. I continue to require silence for my best work–I hate listening to music while writing, etc. This isn’t new for me, but the advent of motherhood layered on many challenges to experiencing what for me is an ideal work environment (silent and distractionless).

Do you do any non-parenting activities, for pay or without pay, that you consider “work”? If so, how do you juggle these roles and activities with parenting?

An example: I typed this whole response on my phone while nursing my sleeping baby.

Yes, I teach in-seat and online college classes. I write. I am a breastfeeding counselor. I edit a newsletter. I am a D.Min student. I facilitate groups. I teach birth classes. I consider all of these things work activities. I do not distinguish between paid and unpaid activities.

Something I feel is important to mention and is likely a feature of socioeconomic factors, is that to me my work equals passion, commitment, vibrancy, and aliveness. The place where the world’s great hunger and my own gifts meet. It is my “music.” The things I am “called” to do on this planet. The wild and precious life I have to offer to the world. Work to me does not connote drudgery or burden (except when I make it so, by expecting inhuman quantities of productivity from myself).

Is there work that you want to do but can’t right now? What does that look like for you?

Yes, I have three books in partial stages of development and just have to let them rest right now.

Do you ever feel misunderstood or judged because of how work happens in your family, or because of your relationship with work? What does that look like for you?

Yes, but I don’t feel like I have time to explore my answer right now. Women have always worked-–in motherhood capacities and in other capacities (usually simultaneously). I feel like we do all women a disservice by setting up or assuming either-or scenarios. I feel like people who think of me as a WOHM imagine I’m gone all the time and missing milestones, when really I’m out of the house ten hours per week and spend 99% of my waking and sleeping moments in the company of my baby, not to mention the fact that I homeschool my boys. I feel like those who look at me as a SAHM consider my teaching and writing to be my casual little “hobbies” that I dabble with in my free time, rather than career activities for me.

I could go on for ages, but both work and motherhood call to me now and I’m going to have to be okay with this being what I have to offer to the dialog in this moment.

–

For more on Molly’s relationship with working/parenting, please click through to her lovely post “I just want to grind my corn!” and her follow-up “Surrender?“

Annual retreat

Feb1

I held a blue flower in my hand, probably a wild aster, wondering what its name was, and then thought that human names for natural things are superfluous. Nature herself does not name them. The important thing is to know this flower, look at its colors until the blueness becomes as real as a keynote of music. Look at the exquisite yellow flowerettes in the center, become very small with them. Be the flower, be the trees, the blowing grasses. Fly with the birds, jump with the squirrel! –Sally Carrighar in The Earth Speaks

It is that time of year again…time for a retreat! I recognize a pattern in my own life that I’ve been conscious of since my first miscarriage, the deep call to retreat beginning in November of each year and finally having a chance to be held in February. I’ve been feeling it coming. I started hearing the call in late October/early November and I was like, oh yeah, THIS. This call for silence, for mindfulness, for taking heed, for regrouping, for calling my spirit back, for resting. I set aside the first week of February each year to take a “computer-off retreat,” in which I unplug Facebook and take a break from blogging. Since the rest of my life doesn’t necessarily recognize this rhythm, I can’t take a completely computer-off retreat this year (having the computer off isn’t really compatible with teaching online, especially during midterm week!), but I can take a Facebook retreat and a retreat from feeling compelled to write/blog and to stay “caught up” with a variety of miscellaneous time-eating, online-based activities (like clicking on interesting articles or updating my ScoopIt page). I will also try really, really hard to check email only once a day. I’d like to actually deactivate my FB account, but that will take away my pages too (from what I understand) and I don’t want to do that—if I’m wrong, tell me please! (and, I’ll see your message when I check my email once a day ;)) And, guess what?! This year, I’m not making a to-do list. I know what I want and need and it isn’t a list.

I went out to the woods to think about this and this is what I said:

Keep vigil
bear witness
hold space

open heart
open hands
open mind

share stories
share healing
share laughter

Keep vigil
hold space
circle round

Amazon affiliate link included.

This is mainly a noise-silencing thing for me. I’ve been looking forward to it since November. I’ve been feeling it coming. I need it badly!

My favorite retreat resource is Woman’s Retreat Book: A Guide to Restoring, Rediscovering and Reawakening Your True Self –In a Moment, An Hour, Or a Weekend by Jen Louden. I also treated myself to a Breathe Peace online class (ah, the irony, since I’m having a computer off retreat! Luckily, the online class lasts throughout the month of February, so I can take my break and still come back to it!)