Birth Labyrinth

Feb1

The labyrinth is a powerful metaphor for each woman’s unique journey of pregnancy and birth. I first discovered the “LabOrinth” via Birthing from Within and Pam England and I quickly incorporated into my birth education classes, making two homemade posters to discuss in class—one illustrating “clock watching” birth and one illustrating birth as a labyrinth. When I send gifts to long distance pregnant friends, I usually include a drawing of a womb labyrinth and this quick explanation:

The journey through birth is like a labyrinth—it has unexpected twists and turns, but it takes you where you need to go. You can find your way blindfolded if you need to, you can walk, run or crawl, and you’ll get to the center—to your baby—in your own time and in your own way. The postpartum return is also a labyrinth, one that can take some time to integrate into your life, being, and “new normal.”

Based on a drawing from my second pregnancy of a womb labyrinth, my husband carefully worked carving a small womb labyrinth design into clay and then making a mold from it and casting the design in pewter. The result is a little uneven and asymmetrical, much like life itself, but I love it! I took the new pendant to the woods with me and this is what I said about it’s meaning…

Womb Labyrinth

Birth journey. Each of us walks our own path. In the center, a baby waits. And, so too, wait deep truths about ourselves. Our own courage, our own fears, our own strength, our own power. One foot in front of the other. That’s how the journey is made. You set out for the threshhold, unknowing. Maybe a little fearful. Maybe intrigued. Maybe anticipatory. Maybe excited. And you start to walk. One foot in front of the other. Sometimes our journeys drop us to our knees. Sometimes we feel around in the dark, searching for something to hold onto. Sometimes we skip and twirl along the path. Sometimes we run. Sometimes we pause and sit down and wait. Sometimes someone walks with us, holding our hand. Maybe even giving us a little push from behind. But, ultimately, it is our own private journey. When we get to the center, we will discover what it is that we know that no one else does.

As I mention to pregnant women, the return journey of postpartum is a labyrinth as well…

Postpartum Labyrinth

The journey of postpartum is a labyrinth too. Carrying our babies in our arms, past sleepless nights, through endless days. Through worry and tears, through sharp, sweet, timeless moments of a joy so bone deep it knows no words and in a love so endless that it defies description. And, we walk. Sometimes we bounce. Sometimes we sway. Sometimes we sing a little tune. Sometimes we beg. Sometimes we scream. Sometimes we sit down and say we can’t keep going. Sometimes we skip through the sunshine and dance in the moonlight. Sometimes we can’t believe how much fun we are having and how wonderful this is. Sometimes we feel so alone, we think we might break. And, yet, we keep going, and we emerge, blinking at the newness of it all.

This new pendant is one of the designs released for the launch of Brigid’s Grove, my collaborative project with my husband. We’re hosting giveaways on our website throughout the month of February to correspond with our launch and one of these pendants will be offered as a giveaway! We’ve also got an etsy discount code, a free digital Ritual Recipe Kit, and more to check out on the Brigid’s Grove website and Facebook page.

Tuesday Tidbits: Breastfeeding and Ecofeminism

Jan28

“Women united in close circles can awaken the wisdom in each other’s hearts.” ~The 13 Indigenous Grandmothers (via The Girl God)

I agreed to serve as a faculty mentor for a Breastfeeding and Ecofeminism independent study class that started yesterday. Since my husband and I also recently finished our Breastfeeding Mama in pewter, I felt inspired to create this little message…

For the class, my student is reading three books and working on several projects (one of which will be a series of blog posts, so watch for those!). We chose these books:

The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business by Gabrielle Palmer

Milk, Money, and Madness: The Culture and Politics of Breastfeeding by Naomi Baumslag M.D. and Dia Michels

Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism by Irene Diamond

This is going to be so much fun! How lucky I am to get to do stuff like this! This is the course description we worked on together:

This course explores the cultural, social, and political environment surrounding breastfeeding in the United States through the lens of eco-feminism. We will examine global cultural attitudes compared to the United States, scientific research of the benefits of breast milk, marketing and advertising of artificial milk, and the sociocultural context surrounding infant feeding as a public health issue. This course emphasizes critical and varied perspectives on breast and bottle feeding; as well as the ways in which gender, race, and socioeconomic class affect women’s choices in breastfeeding. The birth-breastfeeding continuum will also be explored. We will study the aspects of ecology, spirituality, and feminism as well as many other perspectives supporting this holistic human experience for the well-being of the planet.

I wrote up some nifty course objectives as well:

Contextualize breastfeeding as a public health issue both within the sociocultural environment in the United States and cross-culturally.
Describe why breastfeeding is an ecofeminist issue—make connections between human treatment of the “world body” and the female body.
Articulate the systemic and structural context in which breastfeeding takes place in the US. (Describe the political and economic influences on infant feeding in the US and frame the issue within a broad cultural context extending beyond the concept of personal choice.)
Address the charge of “essentialism” with regard to breastfeeding in the context of feminist theory.

The student found me because of my past article on this subject…

Breastfeeding is a feminist issue and a fundamental women’s issue. And, it is an issue deeply embedded in a sociocultural context. Attitudes towards breastfeeding are intimately entwined with attitudes toward women, women’s bodies, and who has “ownership” of them. Patriarchy chafes at a woman having the audacity to feed her child with her own body, under her own authority, and without the need for any other. Feminism sometimes chafes at the “control” over the woman’s body exerted by the breastfeeding infant.

Part of the root core of patriarchy is a rejection of the female and of women’s bodies as abnormal OR as enticing or sinful or messy, hormonal, complicated, confusing…. Authentic feminism need not be about denying biological differences between women and men, but instead about defining both as profoundly worthy and capable and of never denying an opportunity to anyone for a sex-based reason. Feminism can be about creating a culture that values what is female as well as what is male, not a culture that tries to erase or hide “messy” evidence of femaleness.

However, precisely because of the patriarchal association of the female with the earthy and the physical, feminists have perhaps wanted to distance themselves from breastfeeding. This intensely embodied biologically mandated physical experience so clearly represents a fundamental difference between men and women that it appears to bolster biological reductionism. Yet in so doing feminism then colludes with patriarchy and itself becomes a tool of the patriarchy in the repression and silencing of women and their leaky ever-changing, endlessly cycling bodies: these bodies that change blood into food and bleed without dying and provide safe passage for new souls upon the earth. Sometimes the issue of a woman’s right not to breastfeed is framed as a feminist “choice.” This is a myth, made in the context of a society that places little value on women, children, and caregiving. It is society that needs to change. Not women and not babies.

via Breastfeeding as an Ecofeminist Issue | Talk Birth.

Last week I read a relevant article from Amy Glenn…

For the first time in human history, the female breast is nearly completely separated from its primary mammalian function. Rather than supporting the healthy development of our limbic lives, breasts are pornographically used to market a multitude of products. Why is the breast’s primary lactating function deemed strangely controversial today?

Despite the efforts of breastfeeding advocates, consider that mainstream news publications and talk shows feature mothers who nurse toddlers as cultural oddities…Our own society’s rupture from the wisdom of ancient ways is the true cultural oddity.

I applaud the efforts of public health advocates seeking to reconnect to the ancient wisdom of our female ancestors. Friends and family need to draw a fierce circle of protection and non-interference around the nursing mother-child dyad…

If it were up to breastfeeding advocates, federal legislation mandating paid maternity leave would exist everywhere. For nothing pressures a new mother to give up nursing more than struggling to meet the financial needs of her family. While teaching in Colombia, my employer was obligated legally to give me three months of paid maternity leave. Yet, if I had been working in the US at the time, it would have been up to my employer to determine the status of my maternity leave. The US stands alone as the only developed country without legally mandated paid maternity leave. This directly connects to our woeful breastfeeding rates…

Glenn read Palmer’s Politics book and it changed her perspectives on the systemic influences surrounding breastfeeding women:

In particular, Palmer’s connections between poverty and breastfeeding moved me. Over the last century, the purposefully deceptive marketing ploys of infant-formula makers have left tragedy in their destructive wake. For example, when promoting artificial milk in the developing world, companies dressed their representatives as medical professionals who claimed that their products were better than breast milk. Poverty stricken and largely uneducated mothers were persuaded to spend a large percentage of their household’s monthly income on the artificial milk powder that was considered best. To prolong its use, they often diluted the powder further reducing any nutritional value. In addition, these mothers lived in areas with poor sanitation and unsafe drinking water. Palmer describes how hundreds of thousands of babies died. At times, I had to put the book down as angry tears washed through me.

Choosing to move beyond the painful disconnections of our culture, I do my best to support the breastfeeding mothers I meet. Our world must move beyond separating baby from mother, self from breath, and bodies from hearts.

via In praise of breast milk.

I also read with interest an interview between Jeanette McCulloch of BirthSwell and Paige Hall Smith, a speaker at the 2013 Breastfeeding and Feminism conference, which makes some additional points about the relationship between income and breastfeeding rates:

PHS: The connection between women’s status and breastfeeding leads to a number of interesting ideas. We know from other research that both education and income are positively associated with breastfeeding outcomes. More research on why this is the case would be useful, particularly given that higher income is also associated with women’s employment. We also learn in this study that in those states where women have greater control of reproductive choices, and those where they are more likely to vote, also have higher breastfeeding rates. Since none of these are indicators that are directly implicated in breastfeeding success, we have to conclude that something interesting is going on in the climate of these states that makes a difference for women.

It makes sense that women who have higher status have more ability to manage their own time and resources (such as adjusting break times at work, taking additional maternity leave, determining the flow and location of their work) which may lead to higher breastfeeding rates. They may also have more authority at home and at work, which translates into greater ability to actualize their own decisions. Breastfeeding, like the ability to control one’s fertility, can be seen as a form of reproductive autonomy.

The relationship between women’s status and breastfeeding remained even when we controlled for available state-level breastfeeding support, such as access to IBCLCs, peer support like La Leche League, and baby friendly hospitals. One possible interpretation for this is that the breastfeeding support measures we have in place are ones that provide more assistance to higher status women than they do to lower status women. We need to think critically how our measures are affecting different populations. In general we found that clinical indicators of breastfeeding support had more impact on breastfeeding than did policy measures. This could have been because currently there insufficient “trickle down” from policy to women’s lives.

via Does Breastfeeding Hold Women Back? | Breastfeeding and Feminism International Conference

On a related-to-breastfeeding note, but moving off the topic of breastfeeding and ecofeminism, Mark and I also have a brand new nursing mama pendant that will be unveiled at the launch of our new collaborative business on February 1st! We’ll have a series of product giveaways, a free digital kit, and a new discount coupon as well. I’m so excited!

Other related posts:

The ‘Of Course’ Response

World Breastfeeding Week post roundup

Taking it to the Body

Thesis Tidbits: Birth as an Initiation

Jan21

“We owe it both to our children and to the world, to conceive, birth and welcome our children with as much love and prayerfulness as possible.” –Jackie Singer (Birthrites)

“Childbirth is a rite of passage so intense physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, that most other events in a woman’s life pale next to it. In our modern lives, there are few remaining rituals of initiation, few events that challenge a person’s mettle down to the very core. Childbirth remains a primary initiatory rite for a woman.” –from the book MotherMysteries

via Thesis Tidbits: Birth as a Shamanic Experience | Talk Birth.

I recently finished reading a short book called Return to the Great Mother, which is very specifically focused on giving birth as an initiatory event. It includes a variety of birthing women’s voices and experiences with accessing the energy and wisdom of the “great mother,” be it archetype, an inner resource, or one face of the Sacred. The author, Isa Gucciardi, writes:

Giving birth is one of a series of important initiations a woman may experience in her lifetime. Initiations are intimately tied with change. They bring the initiate from one state of being into a new state of being. Initiations accomplish this task by putting the initiate through a series of experiences that challenge them in a particular way and bring them into new ways of being and of understanding. The initiate must meet these challenges and overcome any obstacles in order for the initiation to succeed in bringing about these changes.

Today, many people going through initiations and many people managing initiations do not have a clear understanding of the nature of the power and vulnerability that is at the heart of initiation. Initiates must render themselves vulnerable to initiatory processes in order for initiations to become complete, and the power in that vulnerability must be managed carefully and thoughtfully. Most importantly, for an initiation to be successful, that power and vulnerability must be safeguarded and dedicated to the initiate.

The process of meeting an obstacle and overcoming it in order to ultimately gain greater insight and power is described by Joseph Campbell as the “hero’s journey.” The “hero’s journey” is an initiatory experience. Every woman takes this journey when she gives birth and it can be the primary initiation a woman undergoes in the course of her life.

Often a woman encounters herself in an entirely new way during the process of giving birth. She may encounter the effect of traumas long buried, or she may encounter fear long denied. She may also discover power deep within herself that she had never imagined.

When the processes of birth are allowed to take their course, a woman with the proper care has the opportunity to come to terms with whatever may arise. In doing so, she may experience a shift into a new way of being or understanding. Yet, when the birth process is interrupted, or not properly held, the power of the initiation is often lost or distorted… (p. 10)

We know that women do not always have full and free choice when it comes to decisions about their birthing bodies and childbearing years…so, how does this impact the initiatory process? Isa writes:

In modern births, the power of the initiation of birth is often co-opted by doctors, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and hospitals. It is also co-opted by the fear of pain and the influence of friends and family. It is difficult for women to hold onto the power of the initiation of birth under these circumstances. The unfortunate implication here is that the subsequent initiations of women interrupted in this way will be affected by their inability to hold onto the power of their birthing process.

Based on the level of interruption of the birth initiation caused by unnecessary interventions in the birthing process today, it seems reasonable to suggest that many women experience incomplete initiations when giving birth…

(Personally, I would clarify that it is not that women are unable to hold onto the power of the birthing process, but rather that it is often systematically stripped from them.)

Each of my children’s birth experience was an initiatory event for me, but in varying ways. With my first, it was the initiation to motherhood, the mystery and anticipation of giving birth. The crucible moment for me with him was actually my journey through the harrowing landscape of postpartum. With my second son, giving birth rapidly and with great intensity and power, the initiation felt like it was in letting go and hanging on for the ride—letting my mind stop and my body go. With my third birth, which was my first miscarriage, the initiation was in the physically grueling and bloody aftermath of his birth and then the broad, deep, unknown, transformative path of grief and change. I still feel as if this was one of the most powerfully initiatory experiences of my life. (And, I did have an encounter with one face of the great mother.) After Alaina’s birthday this week, I was talking to my husband about my memories of this last birth and telling him that I do not review the details of her birth with the same sense of power or initiation as the births of my other children. It doesn’t hold that same “touchstone” energy for me as the births of my boys—experiences that I continued to draw strength from as I went on into other events in my life. I don’t return to her birth for strength or courage the way I remember returning to the births of each of my sons. And, then I said it was because with her, the pregnancy was the initiation. The long, long, path of pregnancy after loss and all the fear and all the hope and all the strain of feeling the feelings and doing it anyway. Her birth itself was the moment of relief. The end of a trial, rather than the triumph or peak experience of the births of my first two babies. So, while of course I still carry powerful and potent memories of her birth as well, it was the journey of pregnancy that holds the talismans of initiation for me.

In her classic book Shakti Woman, Vicki Noble describes giving birth as a central shamanic experience and perhaps the root of all shamanism:

“I believe I underwent an initiation of the most ancient variety, birth as a shamanic experience, the central act of female shamanism—the quintessential act that offers a woman a completed experience of facing and moving through her fears to the other side. It isn’t that birth is the only way for a woman to experience this initiation—many women climb mountains or face other kinds of physical endurance tests and also come through it reborn into their power. But biologically birth is a doorway, a given for most women on the planet. It is fundamental opportunity to become empowered. Most of us giving birth today do not have the full experience, which is co-opted and distorted beyond recognition, changed from an active process into something that is done to us, as if we don’t know how to do it ourselves. Reclaiming the right to birth in our own instinctual way is a shamanic act of courage that has unfortunately become as remote to us as our ability to fly through the night in the form of an owl or heal the sick with the power of the drum. It wouldn’t hurt if we began to think of our birthing and child rearing as central parts of our shamanic work…” (p. 223).

via Thesis Tidbits: Birth as a Shamanic Experience | Talk Birth.

I just finished a new sculpt for a medium sized version of our classic birth goddess pendant and Mark cast and finished some of them last night. I woke up this morning with a phrase from a past piece of poetry floating through my mind over and over:

Soft belly
no longer bearing children
I am pregnant with myself
ripe with potential,
possibility, power
I incubate my dreams
and give birth to my vision…

I also thought about what I hope to communicate to others through my sculptures and when I took the new pendant down to the woods with me, a little song emerged to go with her:

Birth mama
birth goddess

reaching out
to join the circle of mothers

feeling her way
finding her place
in the web of women

Birth mama
birth goddess

hold strong
hold steady

make way for baby
make way for baby

Body opens
heart opens
hands open to receive

Birth mama
birth goddess

she’s finding her way
she’s finding her way…

—

Disclosure: I received a complimentary digital copy of the book for review purposes.

Third Birthday!

Jan19

“Growing, bearing, mothering, or fathering, supporting, and at last letting go…are powerful and mundane creative acts that rapturously suck up whole chunks of life.” –Louise Erdrich

Somehow, my little rainbow girl is THREE today! I can hardly believe it!

(As is my tradition…Alaina’s Complete Birth Story)

On January 2nd we had a family photo shoot…in the snow! It was 14 degrees outside. But, my brother and his wife and my sister and her husband and my parents could all make it work to get pictures taken together, so we did it! Alaina was really cold and we only got part of her face in the outdoor shots…

This was the “act cold” picture, but we didn’t have to pretend much!

When we went over to the photographer’s house, we got some cute indoor shots of the kids too though:
One of my favorites is actually this picture of our family’s socks together (my mom is a world class sock-knitter and we all wear them!):

Just look at that little person in her pink sparkly socks!

Here are some things to remember that I’ve written down over the last couple of weeks:

Heard Alaina yell at Zander (while working on making a marble maze together): “you ruin my ex-perience!” ;-D
Made brownie cookie sandwiches and she said,”these so strong they make my ears jiggle!”
Has excellent vocabulary and communicates well, but still says “me” instead of “I.” I haven’t worked on it too much with her, because she is the last little, “me do it” person who will live in our house and I’m not quite ready to stop hearing it! I wish I’d taken more videos of her talking (I’ve tried and they just don’t turn out. Or, she says “poop” too much to put them on youtube!). I missed out on video of “Happy Hall-o-yeen!” and “Merry Cwistmas” both and now those moments are past!
Later realized that when Alaina talks about her “experience” she actually means experiment! Pretty cute! (We were working on a make-your-own-bouncy-ball kit and she kept calling them her “experience.”) She can also open doorknobs now. I remember writing that milestone down for each of my kids at about three AND it usually exactly coordinated with a big leap in drawing skills. Better get this girl some paper to experience with…
She loves making “sacred bundles” lately and currently has three that she carries around and puts on my altars, says, “have yittle ceremony, Mama?” and, “me want make this yittle bundle for tiny baby.” (my sister-in-law’s baby) She plans ceremonies all the time and want to sit around with candles holding my hand.
She likes to help me with my sculptures too!

She still nurses, but we night weaned at some point in the last couple of months. I find myself increasing unenraptured with the toddler nursing experience and have been actively discouraging it in recent weeks. We go many days now with no nursing during the day after morning wake-up snuggle time. This also coincides with sleeping most nights in her own little bed from about midnight until 7-9. She is still the same little night owl she was the day she was born. Early this week she actually fell asleep on her own waiting for me to come to bed and I moved her to her own bed where she slept until almost 9:00. When she woke up and climbed in with me, I realized that that had been the first night in almost exactly three years that she hadn’t fallen asleep on my arm. This little girl has slept in my arms every night of her life until this one night! And, while I have a little pang of nostalgia and memory to see that time in our relationship slipping away, I’m also pretty ready. I’ve had a child sleeping in my arms for most of the last ten years and it feels like a good time to now just sleep. 😉

All that said, last night on the eve of her birthday, I had Mark take a couple of pictures:

Nostalgia. I so enjoy this little person as she is now and that I feel is quickly passing by, but I also think about the boys and I know that who my kids are now fills me up so much, that I rarely ever have much time to miss their old selves! There is a special poignancy though to this little girl’s infancy and then toddlerhood and then little girlhood. I have marveled at her existence and some element of her sweetness every single day of her life. Consciously and genuinely. I do not remember this sharp clarity of daily appreciation with my other kids. It may be as Barbara Kingsolver wrote, that the last baby trails her sweetness through your life like a final flag of surrender. And, it definitely isn’t that I didn’t appreciate and marvel at the the boys—I remember plenty of sweet moments of appreciation and marvelment of them too—but when Lann was little I felt like I struggled so much with the adjustment to parenthood and the struggle over my own identity and sense of loss, that that is almost my main memory. When Zander was little, I also had toddler Lann to occupy much of my attention and time and I was much more splintered between the needs, sometimes conflicting, of two small kids. The age difference is big enough between Zander and Alaina that I simply have more energy to savor her than I did with him.

“A mother’s body remembers her babies–the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It’s the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can’t dare say I loved the others less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me entirely. . . . That’s how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are–rich, poor, frazzled half to death or sweetly content. A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after–oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

She wanted to have a tea party for her birthday today and specified it be with “little girls,” so that’s what we did! She did not get a pocketknife like she requested, but she did get a ferocious mom and baby t-rex as well as many other lovely and thoughtful gifts from family and friends. 🙂 I was glad to have a friend and my mom who took some cute pictures for me!

: Dino egg hunt outside.

: (The t-rex in the front is actually an ancient family relic from the Jurassic Park movie, but the others are beloved new ones)

After the birthday extravaganza she requested music so she could dance in her new “mermaid dress” (hand-me-down from friend). The girl has moves and I videoed them (random radio music happened to be Material Girl):

And, then it was time for bed…

Yes, those are three t-rexes nestled lovingly in her arms.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl! 🙂

—
Postscript: after originally posting, I remembered a couple of things. First, she totally had a big girl overnight at my parents’ house in December! Somehow I forgot about this while waxing nostaglic about her sleeping in my arms. We didn’t expect her to stay and kept waiting for “the call” telling us to come back and get her, but she stayed all night. I was freaking out! (And, I couldn’t fall asleep. It was totally a shock that she stayed.)

I also wanted to remember her adorable way of calling bamboo “pandaboo” (!! The cute!!!) and her speculation that dog toys “prob-ly have dognip in ’em.” Less adorable is saying, “get out of my face” to me recently while making cookies and I told her not to dump all the chocolate chips in yet. And, flinging herself dramatically on beds or couches or in cracks between furniture and sobbing loudly when told she shouldn’t have done something or that she is, in fact, in the wrong about something (such as slapping Zander’s face while playing dinosaurs and then yelling at him that it is his fault). Back to adorableness is the frequent reminder that, “me only little person” when asked a variety of things (such as, “why did you do that?!”) or when requests are made she does not want to fulfill (such as, “please don’t throw string cheese wrappers on the floor, take them to the trash”). But, it is also often a very good reminder. And, finally, we’ve noticed within the last week that she can roll her tongue! Mark can roll his and I can’t roll mine. It has always been a tiny little sore spot for me, because I just don’t like not being able to do something. My dad can’t either and said when he was a kid he was pretty sure only bratty people could roll their tongues, so we exist in non-tongue-rolling, recessive gene solidarity together. Lann can’t roll his either, but Zander can and now Alaina can too! (I feel a little betrayed ;-P)

And, when we toured Bass Pro in conjunction with a homeschool field trip to Askinoise Chocolate Factory in Springfield last week she did get a little pink pocketknife after all.

New Projects!

Jan17

“Grace reveals to you a great mothering love that you can step into, that’s been here before you and will be here after you. Grace will be with you as you open your arms, as you release your children and send them out into the world. If you listen carefully, you can hear grace whispering its thanks to you for being a mother to these souls.” –Denise Roy (Momfulness)

As we enter 2014, I’ve got a couple of huge projects on my priority list. One is that I must commit to using my writing energy to focus on completing my thesis project, meaning thesis is first, rather than what I do with my leftover time (and thus blogging, by necessity, moves into the “leftover” time slot). And, two, after having quit his job this summer to join the rest of our family in our home-based life, Mark and I have been very hard at work on our new, shared project: Brigid’s Grove! This site will be an “umbrella” to embrace all of our projects, particularly our shared endeavor of pewter-casting and jewelry-making. Brigid’s Grove will officially launch on February first and we’re working on some launch products for our etsy shop as well as a special site launch discount code AND a fun and useful freebie, which will be a collection of my ritual “recipes” (outlines for mother blessing ceremonies and other rituals, not food recipes!). You can sign up for our newsletter now and you will then get the ritual kit on our launch day.

We’ve also been working on a new womb labyrinth pendant to have ready as one of our official launch products! It will be ready for Feb 1st and we will have a brand new nursing mama pendant design to unveil then too.

As anyone who has given birth knows, it can feel hard and even scary to let go and transition into new things. I’ve written about how I’ve recently retired as the FoMM newsletter editor after seven years of volunteer work. Last year I stopped offering birth classes and this year I’ve stopped offering birth classes. However, I’m also recognizing that letting go of some things, opens the way for new things to be born. One of my fears in letting go of my face-to-face birth work was in letting go of the opportunity to “make a difference” through one-on-one connection with pregnant women. Well, surprise! There are lots of different ways to make a difference and that can even be through jewelry and art. For example, this week one of my etsy customers sent me a picture of her laboring while wearing one of our birth goddess pendants! (And, she DID IT. I got a picture of her beautiful baby too. ♥) And, Rolla Birth Network has also started offering a free monthly mother-to-mother Birth Circle and I’m excited to be a part of that project too.

The colors of creativity!

(I can’t sculpt now without thinking about my Rainbow Way “releasing our butterflies” post. These are my “butterflies” and they’re flying! ♥)

I’ve got more on my mind, like the fact that my baby girl turns THREE this weekend, but this is all I’ve got in me to write for now! 😉

Thesis Tidbits: Birth Mystery

Jan14

“Women’s mysteries, the blood mysteries of the body, are not the same as the physical realities of menstruation, lactation, pregnancy, and menopause; for physiology to become mystery, a mystical affiliation must be made between a woman and the archetypal feminine. A woman must sense, know or imagine herself as Woman, as Goddess, as an embodiment of the feminine principle…Under patriarchy this connection has been suppressed; there are no words or rituals that celebrate the connection between a woman’s physiological initiations and spiritual meaning.”

–Jean Shinoda Bolen

“Birth, like love, is an energy and a process, happening within a relationship. Both unfold with their own timing, with a uniqueness that can never be anticipated, with a power that can never be controlled, but with an exquisite mystery to be appreciated.” –Elizabeth Noble

While the phrase “birth is a mystery” may sound illogical on the surface, since birth is a normal, physiological process experienced every day by thousands of women around the world, at an emotional and experiential level it rings very true. No matter how many children we birth or how much we know logically about birth, each birth unfolds in its own unique way with its own unique timing and its own unique lessons. Most births require the crossing of a threshold of some kind—possibly emotional, usually physical, often spiritual, perhaps all at once. In my reading of Nané Jordan’s thesis Birthdance, Earthdance as I collect my research and thoughts for my own dissertation, I particularly enjoyed this quote about the mystery of birth:

Birth really invites mystery into our lives if we can, or want to, receive that. Wound up into that mystery is personal and societal fear of death, which birth, as female shaman Vicki Noble has stand, stands at the doorway of. So much of medical birth practice is about diverting this mystery into knowable forms with time-tables, charts, clocks and interventions. Yet birth is older and wiser than our clocks and technological tricks. Every birth unfolds in its own way in its own time. Birth inherently asks a mystery of us, women in particular. This is a true gift of listening to it’s calling, allowing the mystery to be present and unfold in our lives as the new being emerges into our arms.

Jordan also lyrically describes her own journey deep into the heart of birth and the spiritual connection she found there:

…I was alone in myself with my baby. It was like the water guided me into a deepening trance of ‘open and give over mumma,’ by holding and relaxing me in her substance. I was a babe held in the womb of some Great Goddess, even as I held a babe in the waters of my own womb. And open I did. Instinctively mt hands were working with each sensation, palms up and open, hands out of the water and raised, like a salutation to the Goddess herself, ‘yes I feel your presence Mother as I am Mother now.” These actions were what came to me in the tub as I did what is known as ‘active labour.’ I would more describe it as a multidimensional dance of the universe, a meditation beyond meditations. I found myself hissssss-ing as each sensation built low down and then up along the sides of my womb. There was no mistaking this ssssssnake-like ssssssound that guided my body into birth, my palms stretching into an ancient salutation of forces greater than myself yet no bigger than myself…

I loved this depiction of forces greater than yet no bigger than myself. I experienced this moment in birth as well. It reminds of a quote from an unknown writer: The power and intensity of your contractions cannot be stronger than you, because it is you. As others have written, I met myself in childbirth . And, I liked her. I’ve continued to learn from, draw upon, and reflect upon these birth experiences throughout my life to date (my oldest child is now ten).

“Birth is one of the most profound teaching experiences life offers. It touches us in the depths of our souls, the most private recesses of who we are. It requires that we respond with more creative energy, more conviction, more trust, than almost anything else we do. Birth requires an intensity that is rarely demanded by other experiences…And through it, we can learn more about ourselves, our strengths, our weaknesses, our relationship patterns, and our needs than through almost any other experience we will face in our life.” ~Nancy Wainer Cohen (Via: Peaceful Birth Project)

Have you met yourself in childbirth? What did you learn? How have you carried this forward into your own life?

Related past post: Birth Mystery | Talk Birth

—

Crossposted at Pagan Familes.

Birthrites: Miscarriage

Jan9

Miscarriage is a death in the heart of life, a death that happens inside the body of a woman. Sometimes a child just brushes the earth lightly, and is gone before the embryo is anything more than a few cells. Even so, there may already have been a strong connection, love, the beginning of hopes and dreams for the child. Later in a pregnancy, when the being has made itself known through kicks and a visible bump, a whole community may have already begun to make a place for it. Whenever a miscarriage happens, it is a loss that cuts deeply, and needs to be grieved…

–Jackie Singer

This quote from Birthrites touched me and made me think of the many women I’ve known who have walked the long, long path of grief. Singer then goes on to share some words from a mother of miscarriage:

“…When you miscarry, the body has already broken its ties with the baby, but I’d already put this child into my family in my imagination. That was what was hard to break…”

It my own experience, my body letting go of the baby was profoundly meaningful. My body’s later reluctance to let go of the placenta—to finally finish breaking the physical tie to the baby—was pretty traumatic. Acknowledging my own miscarriages through ritual, writing, ceremony, and memorial jewelry was very important to me and while these experiences are now past and do not hold the same fresh, raw, intensity as they once did, they are still inextricably a part of me and have shaped my identity and outlook today. I am always on the lookout for miscarriage resources for others and always, always take note when the experience of miscarriage is honored and included in a book.

As previously shared from Wild Feminine…

The red of my blood confirmed what my body already knew; miscarriage is birth and death simultaneously. Miscarriage is ecstatic connection and unquenchable loss. The uterus dilates and contracts, as in the process of birth. In its wake follows something ancient, something from the hearts and lives of the grandmothers and women who have walked before, pouring forth from the uterus…

via Wild Feminine: Miscarriage Wisdom | Talk Birth.

Some other past posts about honoring the experience of miscarriage:

Footprints symbol that held such healing for me and that I make sure to keep available affordably in my etsy shop.

Honoring Miscarriage

Tuesday Tidbits: Miscarriage Care

Miscarriage and Birth

Blog Circle: Tender Mercies, Unexpected Gifts

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

This post is part of a short series of posts from the book Birthrites by Jackie Singer. The first was about ritual and the second about birth as a rite of passage and the third about cesareans.

2013 Book Year in Review

Jan7

It is time for my annual book list! (last year’s list is here) I keep track of my annual reads using Goodreads. As soon as I finish a book, I add it to my appropriate bookshelf and then at the end of the year I can easily look back at it and see what I’ve read! In addition to the 68 books below via Goodreads, I also read 8 others that did not have a Goodreads listing (otherwise, easy peasy to use Goodreads to track books—that is, if tracking books holds any interest for you!)

If I did a review of the title, it is linked to in my comments. I’d also love to know what were your favorite reads of 2013? 🙂

Also, remember that my organized, birth-specific, ongoing book recommendations/reviews are here: Talk Books

title	author	rating	date added
Open Mind: Women’s Daily Inspiration for Becoming Mindful read this all year (it is daily meditation book) and I loved it!	Mariechild, Diane	5 stars	Dec 30, 2013
Journey of the Priestess	Shepsut, Asia	4 stars	Dec 30, 2013
Cooking Like a Goddess: Bringing Seasonal Magic Into the Kitchen	Johnson, Cait	4 stars	Dec 26, 2013
Birthrites: Rituals and Celebrations for the Child-Bearing Years Post series about this book here	Singer, Jackie	4 stars	Dec 25, 2013
Meet Marie-Grace (American Girls: Marie-Grace and Cécile, #1) I got this doll for Christmas. No, I did not need another American Girl doll, BUT she was on sale via a steals site of some kind and I could NOT resist her.	Buckey, Sarah Masters	3 stars	Dec 24, 2013
V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone #22)	Grafton, Sue	3 stars	Dec 13, 2013
When God Was a Woman This was one of my first readings in feminist thealogy. I had to re-read it for one of my D.Min classes.	Stone, Merlin	4 stars	Dec 05, 2013
Cut, Stapled, and Mended: When One Woman Reclaimed Her Body and Gave Birth on Her Own Terms After Cesarean Loved this! Review here.	Rosewood, Roanna *	5 stars	Dec 01, 2013
My Kitchen Cure: How I Cooked My Way Out of Chronic Autoimmune Disease with Whole Foods and Healing Recipes Surprisingly good and fun! Review here.	McCormick, Mee Tracy	4 stars	Nov 23, 2013
The Rainbow Way: Cultivating Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood Affirming and important. Post for the associated blog carnival is here.	Pearce, Lucy H. *	5 stars	Nov 23, 2013
Blessed by Less: A Spiritual Approach to Clearing Your Life of Clutter Read for Patheos book club. Review here.	Vogt, Susan V.	4 stars	Nov 22, 2013
The Unschooling Handbook : How to Use the Whole World As Your Child’s Classroom	Griffith, Mary	4 stars	Oct 08, 2013
West Country Wicca: A Journal of the Old Religion I don’t consider myself wiccan and parts of this book were hokeylicious, but parts were very interesting.	Ryall, Rhiannon	3 stars	Sep 29, 2013
Priestess of Avalon Priestess of the Goddess: A Renewed Spiritual Path for the 21st Century : A Journey of Transformation within the Sacred Landscape of Glastonbury and the Isle of Avalon One of my favorite priestess reads of the year! Highly recommended!	Jones, Kathy	5 stars	Aug 28, 2013
The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future This was another second reading for my D.Min coursework.	Eisler, Riane	4 stars	Aug 25, 2013
From Pain to Parenthood: A Journey Through Miscarriage to Adoption Used quotes from this book in this post.	Kahler, Deanna *	3 stars	Aug 11, 2013
Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life I read this book for a year-long course in compassion for my D.Min program. I keep meaning to do a post series about it, but have not yet done so.	Armstrong, Karen	3 stars	Aug 10, 2013
The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Song of the Lioness, #3) My all-time favorite books from childhood. Being interviewed by First the Egg about childhood favorites inspired me to start reading them aloud to my kids. They love them too! (I do edit very slightly for minimal sex content) And, no fewer than two of my own children’s names were inspired by these books–the same character, no less! 😉	Pierce, Tamora *	5 stars	Aug 09, 2013
Keep Simple Ceremonies: The Feminist Spiritual Community of Portland, Maine Cool format, interesting ideas.	Eiker, Diane	4 stars	Aug 04, 2013
The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth Read for another D. Min course.	Sjoo, Monica	4 stars	Aug 01, 2013
Cybill Disobedience: How I Survived Beauty Pageants, Elvis, Sex, Bruce Willis, Lies, Marriage, Motherhood, Hollywood, and the Irrepressible Surprising commentary on birth and breastfeeding (including nursing twins into toddlerhood!)	Shepherd, Cybill	3 stars	Jul 25, 2013
Introduction to Human Services: Through the Eyes of Practice Settings New edition of textbook for one of the classes I teach. Yes, I did actually read the entire thing.	Martin, Michelle E	4 stars	Jul 21, 2013
Virgin Mother Crone: Myths and Mysteries of the Triple Goddess	Wilshire, Donna	4 stars	Jul 18, 2013
Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality dense and academic and GOOD.	Raphael, Melissa	5 stars	Jul 14, 2013
The Magical Household: Spells & Rituals for the Home	Cunningham, Scott	1 star	Jul 08, 2013
Lady of the Northern Light: A Feminist Guide to the Runes	Emmer-Gitlin, Susan	2 stars	Jul 04, 2013
A Woman’s Way To Wisdom	Ball, Pamela J.	2 stars	Jul 01, 2013
Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World available to read online here.	Grahn, Judy	3 stars	Jun 30, 2013
Seeking the Mystery: An Introduction to Pagan Theologies	Kraemer, Christine Hoff	4 stars	Jun 30, 2013
The Wander Year: One Couple’s Journey Around the World	McIntyre, Mike *	4 stars	Jun 27, 2013
Honoring Menstruation: A Time of Self-Renewal	Owen, Lara	5 stars	Jun 21, 2013
Reaching for the Moon	Pearce, Lucy H. *	4 stars	Jun 10, 2013
Bridging the Gap	Blanton, Crystal	5 stars	Jun 07, 2013
Priestesses Pythonesses Sibyls – The Sacred Voices of Women Who Speak with and for the Gods	D’este, Sorita *	3 stars	May 17, 2013
Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture	Baldwin, Christina	3 stars	May 13, 2013
Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother	Madre, Leslene della	4 stars	May 09, 2013
Moon Mysteries	Sims, Nao	4 stars	May 04, 2013
Woman Prayer, Woman Song: Resources for Ritual	Winter, Miriam Therese	3 stars	May 02, 2013
Thea Gallas Always Gets Her Man Fun and sassy mystery novel about an IBCLC. Review here.	Panzer, Kristen *	4 stars	Apr 26, 2013
Journey to the Dark Goddess: How to Return to Your Soul	Meredith, Jane	4 stars	Apr 21, 2013
More or Less: Choosing a Lifestyle of Excessive Generosity	Shinabarger, Jeff	3 stars	Apr 19, 2013
What Dying People Want: Practical Wisdom For The End Of Life Read right before my grandma died. Post here.	Kuhl, David	4 stars	Apr 18, 2013
Eve Hallows and the Book of Shadows (The Nightmare Series, #2) Read aloud to boys and they chose rating.	Gray, Robert *	5 stars	Apr 14, 2013
The Art of being a Healing Presence Read during my grandma’s illness. Commentary here.	Miller, James E.	4 stars	Apr 09, 2013
The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change Some quotes and thoughts in this post.	Strong, Shari MacDonald *	4 stars	Apr 08, 2013
She Is Everywhere! Volume 3: An Anthology of Writings in Womanist/Feminist Spirituality Have this as a digital copy that I somehow managed to lose and cannot find! So frustrating!	Saracino, Mary	4 stars	Apr 07, 2013
The Art of Family: Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality Talk Books post here.	Bria, Gina	3 stars	Mar 30, 2013
The Alternative Medicine Cabinet	Gruver, Kathy	3 stars	Mar 25, 2013
The Midwife’s Tale Author interview and brief review here.	Thomas, Sam *	4 stars	Mar 24, 2013
Gift from the Sea Quotes and connections here.	Lindbergh, Anne Morrow	5 stars	Mar 16, 2013
The Great Convergence (The Book of Deacon, #2)	Lallo, Joseph R. *	3 stars	Mar 11, 2013
Foundations of Social Policy: Social Justice in Human Perspective Now I remember why I didn’t get as many books finished in 2013. Switched to a different, much shorter, textbook for the 2014 session of this course!	Barusch, Amanda S.	3 stars	Feb 24, 2013
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking Written about here and referenced in this post about being an introverted mama.	Cain, Susan *	4 stars	Feb 24, 2013
Refuse to Do Nothing: Finding Your Power to Abolish Modern-Day Slavery Read for Patheos book club and written about on that platform. Eventually will post here also!	Moore, Shayne	3 stars	Feb 17, 2013
The Earth Speaks: An Acclimatization Journal	Matre, Steve Van	5 stars	Feb 02, 2013
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7) Listened to complete book on CD with kids.	Rowling, J.K.	5 stars	Jan 31, 2013
Moods of Motherhood Very much enjoyed! Referenced in this post and this one too.	Pearce, Lucy H. *	5 stars	Jan 30, 2013
The Magickal Retreat: Making Time for Solitude, Intention & Rejuvenation	Pesznecker, Susan	4 stars	Jan 20, 2013
Child of the Mist (These Highland Hills, #1)	Morgan, Kathleen	2 stars	Jan 16, 2013
Red Moon	Gray, Miranda	4 stars	Jan 13, 2013
Gathering for Goddes, a Complete Manual for Priestessing Women’s Circles	Mihaltses, B. Melusine	4 stars	Jan 07, 2013
Jump Up: Good Times Throughout the Seasons with Celebrations from Around the World	Teish, Luisah	2 stars	Jan 07, 2013
Shakti Woman: Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World Touched upon in this post.	Noble, Vicki	5 stars	Jan 06, 2013
Pagan Every Day: Finding the Extraordinary in Our Ordinary Lives	Ardinger, Barbara *	2 stars	Jan 06, 2013

Books not able to be entered via Goodreads:

Runes of the Goddess by PMH Atwater (5/22/13)Menarche–a journey into womanhood by Racheal Hertogs (6/29/13)

Prosperous Priestess Handbook by Lisa Michaels (7/4/13)

Surviving online group work (7/11/13. Booklet, basically)

Inner Goddess Revolution (7/14/13. Cheap)

Father’s Seed, Mother’s Sorrow (reproduction theory. Extremely interesting. More about this one later. 12/3/2013)

Earthdance, Birthdance (Nane Jordan MA thesis. Very good! 12/4/2013)

Love and the Goddess (free Kindle book, 12/6/2013)

Birthrites: Meditation Before a Cesarean

Jan3

You say you honor choices.

Can you really honor mine?

I will always honor the process which

brought forth flesh of my flesh.

I honor your births too.

Can you ever honor my experience, or will I

forever be a part of your statistics on

the way things shouldn’t be?

via When birth doesn’t go as planned… | Talk Birth

I have sometimes felt at a loss in how to help women cope with their feelings about their cesarean birth experiences. Jackie Singer, the author of Birthrites, writes about her own preparation for a cesarean (after a previous vaginal birth) and includes this “meditation” suggestion (to use at any time—while walking, sitting, preparing for sleep, stuck in traffic):

The practice is simply to nod the head, and say inwardly, ‘Yes.’ Whatever is going on, whether it be delightful, or thoroughly unpleasant, breathe into it and think, ‘OK, this is what is happening now.’ Pay attention to each sense in turn: what can you see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Feel? Notice your thoughts, and remember that they are not you, they are just thoughts. It becomes quite a liberation not to hold on to your judgements about things, but to witness instead how sensations arise and then pass away.

When you find yourself feeling anxious about the coming operation, just remind yourself to nod and say, ‘Yes.’ When you are putting on the ridiculous surgical stockings, think, ‘Yes,’ and allow yourself to smile. When the epidural needle is going in, breathe deeply and think ‘Yes, this pain is like a contraction and will pass.’ When you are numb from the chest down, being lifted onto the trolley and wheeled into the operating theatre, just think, ‘yes, yes, yes.’

Because I had made a birthing necklace in advance of my first baby’s birth…I brought this to the hospital and hung it on my wall. Even though I couldn’t see it during the operation, it helped me to remember that this would still be a birth: a challenging and yet joyous event, and one for which the qualities of love, going with the flow, majesty and a sense of humour would be just as important as during a natural labour…

She goes on to describe how she visited with a friend who is a hospital chaplain and they did a little ceremony:

…it was a relief to feel a hand on my belly that spoke of love and wonder and beauty, rather than the functionality of the body. Tess rubbed my forehead and belly with scented oil and laid flowers from her garden on my bump. We shut our eyes and she asked Mother Spirit to surround the baby and me, to keep us safe through the operation, to bring blessings on the hands of the surgeon and the skill of the midwives. This brought me peace in the hours leading up to the operation, and helped me to face it with quiet confidence, feeling protected.

This post is part of a short series of posts from the book Birthrites by Jackie Singer. The first was about ritual and the second about birth as a rite of passage.

Past posts related to cesarean birth:

Cesarean Awareness Month

Cesarean Birth Art Sculptures

Cesarean Trivia

Cesarean Birth in a Culture of Fear Handout

Becoming an Informed Birth Consumer (updated edition)

The Illusion of Choice

ICAN Conference Thoughts

Helping a Woman Give Birth?

Tuesday Tidbits: Cesarean Awareness Month Round-Up

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Year in Review (according to Facebook anyway!)

Dec31

From Facebook’s year in review feature, here were my top 20 moments of 2013. Some of them are pretty right on, others are unintentionally hilarious…

January

Working on her own birthday cake!

Photo: Working on her own birthday cake! :)

February

15 years ago today, my sweetie asked me to marry him! I love the life, home, and family we’ve built together. Photo: 15 years ago today, my sweetie asked me to marry him! I love the life, home, and family we've built together, Mark Remer! <3

March

Today marks my eighth anniversary as an LLL Leader and it feels fitting that this month LLL of Rolla welcomed a new Leader! I never thought I’d see the day when we actually had THREE co-Leaders here in town. I’m so excited! When I began, I didn’t how long I’d keep doing it and I’ve had a lot of discouraging rough patches where I felt like giving up, but now I suspect I might end up as a “lifer.” I’ve logged over 1200 contacts since my accreditation, I’ve learned so much from the mothers I’ve worked with, and I continue learning new things all the time. I’d hoped to have a chance to finish a blog post today in honor of the occasion, but I’m bogged down with end of the session work instead. So, here’s to all the amazing women I’ve had a chance to meet, help, become friends with, and learn from!

(really close to 2000 contacts since accreditation now)

March

I was asked to be a permanent contributor on the Feminism and Religion blog and I feel pretty proud of myself about that.

March

My blog hit 400,000 hits today and my FB page hit 1700 “fans” (up from just 1300 in November!) Those both make me happy.

(now almost 600,000 and 2200)

(not sure why so many “big events” for March)

April 5

At Columbia College Main Campus for a faculty conference. Had to get a photo by iconic Rogers Gate in front of St. Clair Hall to post in my class!

Photo: At Columbia College Main Campus for a faculty conference. Had to get a photo by iconic Rogers Gate in front of St. Clair Hall to post in my class! :)

April

First day of Shannondale Craft Camp felt like a success! We did it anyway.

(this was immediately after my grandma died. It is an event we work all year on and we proceeded with it anyway, while my mom was still in California)

April 29
Today, Alaina went to the Dr for the first time ever to have a pre-op checkup (for her tooth work on May 14). When we left, she kept repeating the doctor’s verdict over and over and it was adorable! 🙂 (click for video via FB)

May

Happy Mother’s Day!
Photo: Happy Mother's Day! :)

(this one is only hilarious if you know how hard we had to work to prop up my iphone to take this picture! This was actually taken after our small family home memorial service for my grandma before we went to California for the large one)

May

I guess it wasn’t so “little” of a story about my class–just found out it was front page news! The Columbia College PR rep also emailed me about it!

June

June

Woohoo! Now, THAT’S what I’m talking about. Tonight’s wild raspberry adventure was pretty productive!
Photo: Woohoo! Now, THAT'S what I'm talking about. Tonight's wild raspberry adventure was pretty productive!

July
Not sure what exactly I’m thinking after our big CA trip this year, but I just booked a room for a mini-vacation to Arcadia for our 15th wedding anniversary on the 25th! The last time we went to Elephant Rocks was when I was pregnant with Lann–time to go back and this time bring THREE kids with us! Rather than go with a chain motel, I reserved a “third floor apartment” at the historical Arcadia Academy. I think it is going to be super fun!

July

Fifteen years ago today we got married in the rain! Today, we got home from our mini vacation to Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut Ins.

August

Screen shot just from this weekend. 😉

After 18 years with Mark and almost ten years of boy-momming, they’ve finally rubbed off on me–just now I danced around the kitchen in genuine triumph and excitement because I beat Nerezza the Assassin in Knights and Dragons. ;-D

(side note: Facebook is correct that this was a pivotal life event, because I’m still playing this game—indeed, I’m over level 100 now and the Guild Master of my guild!)

October

Lann’s bday choices courtesy of Skyler, Jenny, Shasta, and Sean arrived this afternoon! A small cotton candy machine and a blue morph suit (for making movies and using himself as a blue screen). We’ve made cotton candy with Werther’s and peppermints so far!

Photo: Lann's bday choices courtesy of Skyler, Jenny, Shasta, and Sean arrived this afternoon! A small cotton candy machine and a blue morph suit (for making movies and using himself as a blue screen). We've made cotton candy with Werther's and peppermints so far! :)

October

Zander is a playdough master!

November

We’ve spent ALL day on a major household reorganizing project converting our extra bedroom into Alaina’s room!!!
Photo: We've spent ALL day on a major household reorganizing project converting our extra bedroom into Alaina's room!!! :)
November

All my kids skated for the first time ever at playgroup at the skating rink today! (We’ve been going to said rink for playgroup once a month for about 7 years, so this is a big deal!)

Photo: All my kids skated for the first time ever at playgroup at the skating rink today! (We've been going to said rink for playgroup once a month for about 7 years, so this is a big deal!)

(they all got skates for Christmas and skate all over the house now)

November

My sister already outed my Thanksgiving shame, so I might as well too. Several hours in to our family gathering yesterday, I noticed my shirt was on backwards. (The “shame” being that Mark had already expressed puzzlement over me having had my pj shirt on backwards on two different occasions this week and also gone to class with inside-out undies on.) Then, as I was switching the shirt around in prep for family photo op, she came running in to show me…the tag sticking out of the front of her own shirt! What would Thanksgiving be without an opportunity for fun family ridicule as well as thanks?! ;-D

(this moment making the final slot on my FB “top 20 moments from 2013” auto-generated list was the icing on my shame-cake!)

It is funny to me how many of these moments did not make it into blog posts and for that I feel grateful for Facebook (I guess). I’m a personal archivist at heart. I love the opportunity to remember, to not forget things, and to capture slices of my life and world.

I also wanted to mention the cool video slideshow year-end tribute that our friends made of all of our work party projects over the past two years. Pretty incredible: Work Party Tribute | Our Hand-Built Home.

(clicking the screengrab below should take you to the video too)

None of our pewter-casting pix or updates made FB’s list, but that was a pretty great part of 2013. My husband quit his regular job in July and we’ve been enjoying our home-based life ever since. Our sculpture and pewter-casting collaboration has been very fun and rewarding. This year as a whole has been a creativity-rich one.

New pewter work! I ❤ her!

Notably absent from my FB moments too are any mentions of my own classes (either those I teach or take) or of the women’s rituals/ceremonies I priestessed (I guess because that concentrates in my other blog) or birth-related stuff in general (because that’s all on this blog).

And, on Thanksgiving this year my brother and his wife announced that they’re having a baby! This is probably the best moment of 2013! More about this soon…

Happy New Year!

Oh, and after getting this post ready and scheduled, I got a year-end summary from WordPress also…

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 220,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 9 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.