Since quietly moving my blog over to Egypt Titchenal, I have been trying my hand at writing pieces for publication by online magazines, and I’m proud to announce that yesterday I was published over on Mutha Magazine! Maybe head on over there and show me some love? I’m hoping to write more pieces like this in the future!
And while you’re at it, go ahead and follow my new blog!
In class I have my students learn about their procrastination styles, and one of them, The Dreamer, appeals to me, especially as far as writing goes. The Dreamer is a type of procrastinator that spends most of their time dreaming about a project, and rarely even starting (let alone finishing) the project. I ask the question to my students, “anyone here want to write a book?” Hands sometimes raise and then I say, “but do you actually want to sit down and WRITE that book? Or do you just want it to appear.”
That’s when the class laughs, because typically my merry bunch of high school dropouts are filled with The Dreamer affliction. They’ve wanted things to happen, but haven’t quite gotten around to doing those things. Because other, cooler, things have gotten in the way. The moment takes precedent over the future self, which wants to have written a book.
While the class is comprised of all the other types of procrastination styles (taken from It’s About Time: The Six Styles of Procrastination and How to Overcome Them), I find that The Dreamer category is usually the largest. And it’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite awhile, even talking with bestie Ruth about it. Because on good days I think about the things that I want to write, the stories I want to tell, and while I’m not sure fiction lives in me, I’m certain that I have enough material for a book. Now whether I have an audience or not remains to be seen, but can’t be seen if I never even write. And I wonder about how living in 2014 affects our ability to get things done. Because blogging, a form of writing, is an instant form of gratification. I can write, not edit if I like, and send this out to at least 345 people who are currently subscribed (though based on readership numbers, only 10 or so ever actually read this. So there’s that).
Blogging takes the edge off. It’s like posting a picture to facebook for some likes but not taking the time to go out to coffee and get ‘likes’ in person. It’s like eating a power bar instead of a meal. Am I a writer who takes the edge off of that desire to have written a book. I’m a writer who thinks about writing, but rarely ever sits down to write, especially not intentionally write something with a direction of book attached to it. A blogger I can safely say I am, but a writer? And I wonder, if the pressure built up enough, and I didn’t take the edge off through blogging, would I sit down and actually WRITE?
The look on his face was fear, and then it crumpled into pouty shame as he buried his face in the couch. I reached out my arms and pulled him close. There he buried his face and stayed until is breath returned to normal, finally calm. He came to me, his mama, for comfort, snuggles, love, and guidance. Because after he caught his breath, and was ready again to face the world, I spoke softly in his ear about what he could do and what he wasn’t allowed to do. I explained the rules. I explained what had happened.
He had been exploring I’m sure, as 2 year olds are want to do, and in that exploration he crossed an invisible line. He’s learning about the world, exploring the difference between okay things and not okay things. There was a rule out there that he didn’t know, and so he had simply been obliviously doing his thing. My parenting philosophy is mostly that of observation and experimentation while keeping the BIG picture in mind. He’s 2. He hasn’t figured everything out yet. And just like how rules ebb and flow as we age, I am confident that my son will continue to be guided and molded into the person he’s supposed to be. But it won’t all be today.
He’s mischievous, curious, sweet, and mostly gentle. Or mostly mischievous. He’s got that Sagittarius blood flowing in his veins. He likes adventure and adrenaline rushing through his little body as he shouts “MORE, MORE,” when I swing him wildly through the air. He likes climbing. I like piercings. He likes jumping. I like tattoos. He likes splashing insanely in the hot tub. I like that too. We like adventure. We like excitement. We like exploration.
But parenting is fraught with challenges. Being an adventurer is fraught with challenges. In exploring the okayness to not-okayness blurry lines he has made mistakes. He’s learning that rules we have at home may not apply at school, the grocery store, or friend Mari’s house. Hes 2 and hasn’t figured it out yet. When he walks out of the kitchen proudly holding a serrated knife and grinning, he is focusing on his cleverness of figuring out the puzzle that is the kitchen counters, and has no concept that knife could cause him to bleed out if he stabbed himself with it. That’s the adult story laid on top of his actions.
I can’t expect everyone to parent their kids like I do. Because the freeing thing is that I allow myself to be myself as a parent. Because I am comfortable with him exploring the woodshed alone, and am aware of the consequences of what might happen if he were to get hurt, I go with my gut and let him explore. But the challenge in being my brand of parent is that there are sideline participants in our life whose philosophies on parenting vary drastically. For the most part this doesn’t cause conflict or complication, as Potamus knows who his parents are, but when I’m left with my way of being in the world with my son bumping up against another’s comfort zone in sideline-parenting (as in the above example), I scratch my head for what to do.
Because my instinct is to scream. My natural fight (vs. flight) tendency is always to unleash the claws, and it’s only intensified in my entrance into motherhood. My comfort zone for acceptable exploratory behavior is not the same as others, and so I am sometimes left in a position of biting my tongue while comforting my son. I’m battle the prejudice that I don’t have ‘rules,’ or that I don’t ‘discipline,’ while also battling the appeared belief that my child is ‘naughty,’ or ‘out of control’ or that children should ‘behave’ like little adults.
It’s easy to be on the sideline, to look in and say ‘I would do this,’ or ‘my kid wouldn’t behave like that,’ but those are lies. I sit with Mari and watch our boys run around; they act like angels and dicks at the same time. And she gets Potamus to eat blueberries that I’ve been trying to get him to eat for months, and I get her son to try and play nicer with the baby. Being the non-parent isn’t hard, because it isn’t 24/7. And so to take that tiny snapchat of a moment and think ‘oh if I were blah blah blah parent I would blah blah blah’ is delusional at best, and damaging at worst.
I can’t save Potamus from all the hurt in the world. I can’t save him from being scolded, and shamed, and disciplined. But I’d like him to remain free from fear and shame for as long as possible. I’d like to be the parent who puts aside my jealousy that “when I was a kid I couldn’t watch TV” and confidently let him pick a show to watch. I’d like to live into the truth that his experience will not be the same experience as mine, that my parents will treat him differently than they treated me, and that just because his experience isn’t the same it doesn’t mean mine was bad or wrong (although it could also mean that there were bad or wrong parts). I try to set aside the cultural idea of controlling a child in order to make sure that he becomes a ‘good’ person, because I believe that he is already a good person. And I believe that freedom to explore under his mama’s watchful eye is how he will learn to be the most authentic Potamus he can be. And that somehow, just like me, he will make mostly-amicable peace with the idea that rules exist, and he’ll know when to follow them, and when to mindfully break them.
And so I won’t punch or scream or cuss them out, though in the moment I was seething with rage. Instead I will remember that the sideline, just like in sports, is where the people who sit who aren’t playing the game. And their opinions and rants and rituals have less effect on the outcome as the players and coaches on the field. I’m in this with him. We’re on the field. We’re playing our game. And it involves climbing on tables and getting tattoos.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly;” Theodore Roosevelt
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
-Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
I chose to be an anonymous blogger in an attempt at destroying my tendency to self-censor. Blogging is the modern equivalent to my scribbled teenage journals (of which I have an entired box filled), and I’ve been using this medium in various capacities since the early 2000’s. There was Live Journal in college, and Myspace blogs that I relied on heavily while travelling in India, and the Blogger account that I tried when focusing on art and poetry. All of those accounts were ME accounts, with varying levels of privacy.
And so, when I decided to start a parenting blog, I wanted to have some sort of anonymity in the great online world. Not only for professional sake, but also for the semi-privacy of Potamus. Because he will grow up in a world of social media, and these pictures of him will likely be seen, but I am telling MY story here, not his. So here I am, anonymously blogging, though I recognize that it is not, in fact, anonymous.
Because unlike scribbled journals, and my teenage self, I long desperately for my medium to convey my feelings within a community, which requires them to be read. And while I’ve connected anons who’ve transitioned to IRL online friends (shoutout to you Momaste!), I also have this hunger to be known by those I see in flesh and blood. So I’ve shared a link to my writing, in an attempt to connect. To bridge the online world of my mind and the fleshy world of my life. But writing my truth, my experience, from my own perspective, is difficult for some people to read. My raw honesty about experiences has caused defensiveness or confusion in friends and family.
And yet I am compelled to write or explode from all the feelings. For while I don’t get paid to do it, I am a writer. I think about writing. I love sentence structure and the meditative quality that happens when I feel with my fingers translating those feelings into words that appear on my screen.
I would like to believe that I am telling MY story, and not anyone else’s. That of course there is room for two sides, or more sides, and the world will welcome the individual perspectives and stories. I tell MY side, MY feelings, and, at the end of the day, has no bearing on whether the others invovled are good or bad people or shouldn’t have made certain choices. It is simply my account of my life through my senses.
It’s why I like Anne Lamott so much. She writes brilliantly funny memoirs about her fucked up life as a recovering alcoholic with a screwed up family. Her truthiness shines through even though the rawness makes me (and I’m sure those she writes about) uncomfortable. I need to write my truth, my experience, my life, from MY perspective. And if it hits you in the gut, makes you uncomfortable, then start writing from your own perspective. And maybe our writings will interesect someday.
“We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out…
Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth.”
-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Five minutes before my yoga class I made the mistake of checking the WordPress icon on my phone showing that I had new comments. Always flattered, since my comments range from about 0-3 per blog, I clicked on it. Even more flattered, it was a pingback to a blog and I thought, “oh wow, someone is referencing me, how cool!” And then, as I was strolling in the door of the yoga studio, I clicked on the link referencing my blog and BLAMMO! I had just taken a shot of Hater-ade.
Ugh.
While my initial reaction was “thank God it’s not some child porno using my kiddo’s picture,” the fact that it was an article referencing how terrible working mothers are, was pretty awful. And I screamed internally, and got defensive, and tweeted the link out to my hubby and my “sister wife” and was glad I was entering the hot room, because MAN, I was seething that someone would dare say I shouldn’t have had a kid because I work.
I was really proud that I made it through the class. My anger fueled me, and I didn’t even let the fact that it was a new, male, teacher on the night it was supposed to be my favorite, female, teacher (who always sings at the end of class). Mostly because I couldn’t stop giggling that the teacher had a bunch of tattoos on his 40 year old body…most noticeably the Player For Life in Olde English script across his belly. I mean, really? How can that NOT be funny, unless you think it’s really really sad throwback and maybe, at some point, we should stop being players? Or maybe life IS a game, and he’s on to something wise. At any rate, yoga is feeling fucking fantastic and I was way less annoyed when I left the class.
I write this blog for myself. I know I’m a good mom, and my son is doing really well, and I’m doubtful that the fall of the empire is going to happen because he was in daycare as a toddler. He’s not “being raised by strangers,” and I shouldn’t have aborted him because I wanted to work. My husband isn’t weak because he was a “house husband” in the first year of Potamus’ life, and if I breathe and focus on my life, rather than the inconsequential blogging of an angryish newbie, then I’m better off.
Ya’ll, I’ve been published over on Offbeat Home! I think I’ve had three husbands: Navigating spousal career changes | Offbeat Home.
Head on over and give me some love?
Freshly pressed featured this lovely little piece called: The Peculiar Allure of Blog Search Terms, which is a topic that I’ve been interested in for awhile now. I know that I’m not the first parent to have the “oh shit” moment when looking in our search terms and realizing that people might stumble upon our innocent parenting blogs and find pictures of our children to use for their own sick, twisted pleasure. That thought scares me to death, but then I post pictures anyway, and feel quite torn about it all. I’ve tried to cut back, but…
Because, just this month the search terms that have led people to stumble upon my blog are:
| naked toddler | 3 |
| halloween turtleneck | 2 |
| adoption fog triggers | 1 |
| calvin from calvin and hobbes expressions | 1 |
| nude image photo swinger father mother teaching how child sex fucking harder | 1 |
| boof infection | 1 |
| college guy feet | 1 |
| pinterest keeping toddlers busy | 1 |
| sucking boof | 1 |
| joni mitchell both sides now | 1 |
| halloween turtleneck for adults | 1 |
| weight training that reduces bmi | 1 |
| girl who loves to wear rubber | 1 |
| gay huge muscular guys fucking scrawny kids | 1 |
| thanksgiving birthday invitations | 1 |
| montessori floor bed | 1 |
| funny christmas cards made by monks | 1 |
Yikes. Too many porn searches for my taste. But what to do about this? I tried to reverse search for my blog using some of these search terms and didn’t ever come across my blog, so I’m confused by how search engine terms work exactly, but I am absolutely terrified that people are searching for NAKED TODDLERS and coming across my innocent child. Will it be enough to eradicate all of the photos of Potamus on this blog? Probably not, but despite my anonymity, I might do a little scrubby dub dub for awhile to keep my anxiety at bay.
Last year I had the privilege of meeting in the home of Courtney Putnam, my wonderful massage therapist/reiki practitioner. Not only is she an amazing, healing, bodyworker (is that even a word?), but she is also an amazing artist and writer (and blogger!). All last summer she hosted a weekly “Zen Pen” group, where we met and wrote together. She has this amazing way of guiding, creating prompts, and giving opportunity for writers to get outside of their ‘head’ and write from their body. She says:
What’s different about ZenPen is that it is body-based. What that means is that during the writing process, we will tap into the wisdom of our bodies. Our minds can only get us so far — and sometimes our minds play tricks on us or lead us down roads of self-criticism or limitation. The body holds all the information, wisdom, and experiences we’ve had in our lives. It plays no tricks. It tells us the truth.
And this year Zen Pen is being offered as an e-course! I am excited to being (August 5th) her 6 week series, and am planning on sharing, here, some of the body writing that I create. But, since I love you all dearly, I am inviting you to participate as well! For only $59 for the 6 week Zen Pen E-Course, how could you resist? So, if you’ve been looking for some inspiration in your writing process, and want to get away from that critical voice, then join me in ushering in the fall with a little Zen Pen! Head on over to the e-course description to get a better understanding of what is being offered!!
I have to be honest, I’m both excited and nervous about the discoveries I’ll have in this 6 week course. Last summer I learned so much about myself, my hopes, dreams, and really solidified some truths that I hadn’t been able to grasp with my anxious mind. Can’t wait to start, and hopefully see a bunch of YOU all over on the secret FB group or here in blog-land 🙂
It’s National Adoption Awareness Month, which is taken by many in the adoptee community, as a challenge to write every day about our experience as adoptees and our beliefs about adoption. While I can’t promise to blog every day, or blog everyday about adoption specifically, I am always an adoptee blogging. Adoption, the experience of being adopted, is who I am and clouds how I view and interact with the world. Some people try to boil my adoptedness down to the event, the legal action taken one day that made me my parent’s daughter, but being adopted is NOT just an event, it is a lifetime experience.
As a new parent, one of the things that is most often on my mind is how my son looks like me. Or how he looks like Boof. And the wondernment as he grows and changes. Because, I was 25 before I met someone who looked like me.
I was twenty five before I met someone who looked like me. And so I immediately began obsessing over features.
And here is a picture of my 1/2 sister, when I met her she was about 4 and the picture of me on the left is about 2.
Even though Potamus most often gets mistaken for a spittin’ image of Boof, he currently still has my blonde wispy curl hair and blue eyes. And there’s something about his eyes and nose shape that makes me think, in a few years, I’m going to be comparing his face a lot to my own childhood face. Even my parents say that he looks like me as a kid.
In college I used to get mistaken for a guy, and it used to bother me A LOT. But now, I can see perhaps that maybe they were seeing my father in me.
I am still trying to wrap my mind around genetics, and how little bits of me are now in my son, but it’s been helpful to be in reunion with my biological family, so that I can see a more linear progression of features.
boof & monk-monk 