folding to the panic and chaos
Last night, everything kind of hit me all at once. Some things I can talk and write about, others I can not.
I am trying to take care of everyone and everything and starting to feel very overwhelmed.
There is just too much going on and not enough of me to go around...
My reserves are severely tapped. I feel as if I am driving an old beat up car and just filling it up $5.00 at a time and never running on a full tank.
This is not a good way to live.
I spend my days daydreaming of sleeping for a whole day (or a whole weekend). Of taking off to a far away island somewhere to stand in the sun, like some kind of mom-version of Olivia Pope. Of not having to worry about anyone or anything for just a few hours.
It just doesn't seem to be the year for that.
We are in the height of flu season, I have had a head cold for over a week that I just can't shake, and I am perpetually paranoid about passing any kind of respiratory illness to my son. I know I am going to have a giant panic attack the day he gets his next fever and while I rationally know that this is ridiculous and that he will be fine, it's not something I can get away from yet.
Yesterday, he had a follow up appointment with the audiologist. It's an almost 2 hour appointment and halfway into the second hour, my phone rang. It was the kid's school. They were sending my daughter to the office and asking me to come pick her up because she had a fever and a tummy ache.
I froze. I didn't know what to do. I was on the other side of town, finding out that my son's hearing is not improving and may, for some reason, be getting worse, and my daughter was at school with a fever and a tummy ache and historically, these symptoms usually precede some kind of expelling of bodily fluids. I am fully aware that I have had far worse days than yesterday, and some quite recently, but it was just all too much. We cut the audiology appointment short and promised to follow up on another day for the debriefing part. We made it to the school within 25 minutes and I found her with a warm forehead, red cheeks, and a rumbling tummy, waiting quietly for me in the office. We all went home, changed into our pyjamas, laid out some towels on top of the bed (just in case) and had a nap.
Well, that was my plan at least. The kids "napped" for all of 15 minutes and then went off to play and demand things like snacks and Netflix access and reading of books and a bunch of other things that were not SLEEPING. And damn it, I was just so tired (and a certain someone got over her feverishness very quickly).
After dinner, The Consort and I managed to get the kids to bed early and then I planted myself in front of the TV in the living room and settled in for my version of a soothing, brainless, providing-order-when-I-feel-surrounded-by-chaos, activity: folding laundry. I sat and folded and surrounded myself with neat little piles of my family's perfectly folded wardrobes and felt a calm descend upon me.
And then I decided to watch Benjamin Button and cried all the tears.
{Sigh}
Maybe I should just take up colouring like my friend Elan has.
n~
Two things.
I spent the day in a room full of babies and baby carriers today at a local Babywearing Swap & Shop organized by a friend of mine. I had a bin full of demo carriers left over from my personal babywearing stash, the Natural Urban Mamas store and my babywearing educator days. I took along The Little Lady and we set up our table (she brought two of her doll carriers to sell) for a day of babywearing and de-stashing. This event confirmed a few things for me.
The first, is that I really am done with that phase of my life.
I don't long to hold every baby that comes my way, although I'll gladly do so if you need me to. I don't look at mamas with beautiful blossoming bellies and instinctively touch my own and wonder what it would be like again. Neither my ovaries, nor my boobs, feel any kind of twinge-ing or tingling when I hear a baby coo or cry. And surprisingly, I no longer yearn for the days of wearing my babies anymore - although I am almost 99% sure that my daughter would jump at the chance if I offered.
It's officially official. I am done with babyhood. So much so, that I didn't even wrap a baby on myself today OR take a babywearing selfie!
The second thing that was confirmed for me today, is that I am still really good at two things: educating and selling.
I love the look on a parent's face when I am able to show them how to use a carrier properly and it's like a whole new world has opened up for them. Or when a mama tells me that she has a ring sling, but her baby hates it and then I tweak it just a bit (upright positioning people!) and again that "OMG, I had no idea!" face happens. The best one today was the sweet, 8-week old, baby girl who fell asleep within 10 seconds of being put into a wrap carrier for the first time. That was the easiest $100 bucks I have ever made! Well, except for that one time at... oh, never mind. ;)
Sales has always been something that I am good at. In retail, as a pharmaceutical sales rep, and as an online boutique owner, it's just kind of what I do, and do really well. I catch myself doing it even when I am not making any money at it! Did I ever tell you about that time when we where building our first home and I spent a day at the show home office and sold two houses for our builder? Yup, that happened.
I once attended a brilliant talk by Arlene Dickinson (I highly recommend you go see her speak if you ever get the chance). Arlene talks about how marketing is all about story telling and there is a very good reason that Arlene is as successful as she is, she is a DAMN GOOD story teller! Sales is a bit different though. Selling is about listening to another person's story and asking questions and then finding the right product to fit into that story. Sometimes that product is what you have on your table and sometimes it isn't and you have to send them somewhere else to find what they need. To me, THAT is the sign of a good salesperson. Remember that next time you are shopping and/or trying to sell something.
~~~~~
It's nice to have days that affirm certain aspects of your life for you.
It feels good to not have that nagging feeling of what if following you around and taking your focus away from the currently IS.
It's also nice to have that "I've still got it" feeling too.
Now, I've just got to figure out how to work what I've still got into where I am now in my life...
That's the next challenge.
n~
how to make grocery shopping fun.
This post is brought to you by SPUD.CA
~~~~~
When my kids were babies, I used to love grocery shopping. It was one of the things that got me (and my babies) out of the house and into pants other than ones of the yoga variety and the world of grown ups, and in line at the in-store coffee shop. And, I'll admit it, accomplishing this feat with babies in tow, used to make me feel like a super woman.
And then there were the times, when The Consort and I would finally get the babies to sleep and I would do the grocery shopping after 9 PM. I tell you, that is like the Golden Hour of grocery shopping. Barely anyone around, shelves getting restocked for the next day and again, the in-store coffee shop. I would leisurely walk every single aisle of the store, sipping my frothy latte, looking at new products, reading all the labels and squeezing all the melons. The soft hum of the store freezers was the background music to this idyllic scene and I swear customer service is at an all-time high at that hour as well.
Fast forward a few years and many more pounds of children to cart around and it gets a bit more complicated. Grocery shopping with toddlers and preschoolers involves multiple snacks, an iPad, the must-bring-toy-of-the-day and various other things that there is no room for in the cart. And yet, it can be done, with similar Super Woman-y feelings about it. You can luck out and get the ginormous cart that looks like a giant green toy car and this will entertain and contain the little buggers while you "drive" them around, picking up your cargo load of Bear Paws, mini carrots and cheese strings, so that you'll be stocked up on snacks for the next shopping trip. And of course, evening grocery shopping is still an option. A peaceful, get me out of the house, BY MYSELF, with no one touching me, hour or more of the weirdest self-care ever!
And now? Now I don't like the grocery shopping so much. And I know that this is going to come off as very #firstworldproblem-y, but it is what it is. Grocery shoping is just not as much fun anymore. Or, perhaps, I have simply figured out much better ways to administer my self-care, that I can now see through the facade that grocery shopping provided in those early, half-delirious with sleep-deprivation years. Oh sure, I can still handle the big Costco trip once a month to get all the things that cost too much or are not available elsewhere, but the weekly stuff? With all the activities that make up our days now between school, work and extracurricular stuff, at this point, I just want someone else to do the groceries thing.
Enter SPUD.ca.
Sustainable Produce Urban Delivery (SPUD) opened it's doors in Edmonton in September, 2014 and is delivering local and organic groceries to doorsteps throughout the city. Conveniently coinciding with the arrival of chillier temperatures and the closures of the summer farmers’ markets, the warehouse is now operating as the fourth SPUD office in Western Canada, enabling Edmontonians to stay connected to local producers and farmers, as well as the best in organic and sustainable groceries, all year long.
With over 1800 items including meat, dairy, grocery, produce, health, home and beauty, in SPUD’s online catalogue, diversity and convenience are what sets it apart. Ordering groceries from SPUD comes free of contracts or commitments, has a lower minimum order and later order cutoff time than other services, and does not require deposits on delivery boxes/bins.
A few weeks ago, we received a couple of boxes from SPUD delivered right to our front door. Eggs, bread, fresh organic apples and a great salad. All things that we needed and that I didn't have to leave the house to go get. The cute little pumpkin was a nice touch too and the kids loved it the most and proceeded to decorate it for our Halloween centrepiece.
Our fridge is getting a little low on a few things this week, it's cold outside, and I have a lot of writing to do to catch up on my missed days for #nablopomo. Time for shopping is just not in the cards for me this week, so I am going to be putting in my first official order. If you think you want to give it a try too, use the following promo code to receive $40 worth of groceries when you spend $20. Feel free to share it with friends too - the promo code is: EDMSAVE and it is good until November 30th.
And with that my friends, grocery shopping is fun again!
Thanks again to SPUD for the great intro to their service and the yummy produce - although I am still trying to figure out what to do with the beets!
Cheers,
natasha~
Feminist Fare Friday: The Day 7 of NaBloPoMo Edition.
It is Friday, I have read some really, really good shit on the web this week.
And you know how I like to share...
~~~~~
In response to the now viral Hollaback catcalling video, Elon James White, the CEO of This Week in Blackness responded in the best way... By creating the #DudesGreetingDudes Twitter hashtag. And even with some of the absolute hilarity of some of the tweets, there was a strong point to be made about the very nature of catcalling and street harassment...
~~~~~
And speaking of that catcalling video... The eye gymnastics that Amanda Seales had to perform in her CNN interview with her fellow "mansplaining" guest was seriously Olympic status worthy! She recalls that particularly trying routine for us at XOJane this week...
~~~~~
Also this week, excerpts from Lena Dunham's new memoir have thrown everyone for another really, REALLY, uncomfortable loop. I have an upcoming post that will address some of the issues arising from this in more depth, but for now, I want you all to read what Elan Morgan had to say about it. Because it is powerful and made me really take a step back and think. AS WE ALL SHOULD in these situations.
~~~~~
There is a conversation that needs to be happening more in the parenting world and it is one that goes far beyond normalizing breastfeeding and breastfeeding in public. It is one about mothering and race. Because as this past week has shown, a white woman breastfeeding in her cap and gown is "adorable", while a few months ago, a black women breastfeeding in her cap and gown is "ratchett and ghetto". Yup, we really are such an enlightened bunch. LE GRAND SIGH... come on people, we can do so much better than this!
~~~~~
And finally, this video.
Because, OH MY GO....
[youtube]http://youtu.be/hR3ctoLrOHk[/youtube]
Happy Friday Everyone!
n~
~~~~~~~~~~
A tooth, a lot of mom guilt and a bit of magic.
Crap! It happened already and it is technically only his 2nd lost tooth.
Last night, my son diligently put his baby tooth, the one he pulled out all by himself, "It was easy peasy Mom!", under his pillow. And this morning he walked into our room, completely deflated, holding the little bag with the tooth still in it. The most disappointed I have ever seen him.
"How come the tooth fairy didn't come?"
The Consort was quick on his feet and managed to give the kid a plausible answer (something about Halloween and Jawbreaker candies), while I tried to duck around the corner and figuratively kick myself with the full force of my Mommy Guilt.
The "Tooth Fairy" had a busy day. There was the family dinner and the late bedtime and then she had just watched that very disturbing episode of Walking Dead and was folding ALL THE LAUNDRY and.. and... and....
She forgot.
~~~~~
Childhood is supposed to be a magical time. A time when we believe in fairies and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and all that jazz. And while I do, to a certain degree, still believe in the magic of the world around us, lately I am having a hard time reconciling the fact that, about certain things, I am lying to my kids. And in our house, one of our top family rules is, No Lying.
I worry that when my kids finally do figure out the whole Santa or Tooth Fairy thing, they are going to walk into my room, look at me, shake their heads, let out a big giant sigh, and give me that look of terrible disappointment. You know, the one that says "How could you do this to me all these years?" look.
Or maybe (hopefully) they will be a bit older, and will realize what we were doing. That we were (are) keeping the magic alive, making memories that we will all cherish forever, seeing enchantment in the mundane and walking amongst the twinkly lights and fairy dust that helps us through this sometimes dark-ish journey of life.
~~~~~
We are a rather secular family. My kids have been to church, or as they like to call it, Jesus' House, with my parents, but a regular religious practice is not part of our lives. Faith on the other hand is. Faith in some form of a higher power, faith in each other, faith that everything happens for a reason and faith in our love for our world and our desire to make it a better one.
I think this whole believing in magic and Santa and the Tooth Fairy and yes, even that pesky Elf on a Shelf is part of that kind of faith. And in my view, all of these magical traditions are linked to celebrations of life and love. Of giving and receiving and the changing of seasons and the milestones of our lives. They provide us with stop points in our journeys together. Pins on our giant map of life that connect us to each other, to where we have been and to where we are going next.
Photo Credit: Cali4beach on Flickr
~~~~~
Ok, so maybe I went a bit deep in regards to this whole Tooth Fairy fail and forgetting to put $2 under my kid's pillow for his little tooth. This is what happens when you let all that mom guilt take hold of you. You delve into the tunnels of trying to be a mindful parent and come up with a long romanticized rationale for lying to your kids.
Because...
MAGIC!
Damn it.
There WILL be magic in their childhoods.
N~
~~~~~
It's November.
So...
NO, I am not doing some kind of crazy Dinosaur thing (although my kids would LOVE that!).
And NO, there is no one growing a moustache around here (although I appreciate the efforts of all those who don the creepy '70s adult film star look).
November around here means WRITING.
As in #NaBloPoMo.
I signed up "officially" with Blogher this year, along with over 1200 others.
As the wonderful Alexandra Rosas from Good Day, Regular People wrote...
"There are stories waiting to finally breath..."
this is six: the reboot
Six years ago to the minute (it is now 8:55 PM), after about 7 hours of labour, I was fully dilated and about to start pushing. By 9:05 pm, I had delivered my second child, a girl. Our perfect, full-term, straight to the breast, easy-peasy girl. When my husband first told me that she was a girl, I felt two things. Panic and complete and utter surprise.
And then panic again.
How was I going to raise a girl? I only know boy stuff. I have a house full of boy stuff. I know how to change boy diapers. I can DO boy. And I fully expected to be doing all that boy stuff again with our second one - hence the surprise part of my feelings.
Under the surprise and the joy was the panic though. That first night, she latched on to my breast within 45 minutes of being born and only came off for a quick wipe down and check by the nurses. She suckled all night long (her big brother had kept my supply going throughout my pregnancy so there was no real waiting for my milk to come in). And while she did, I stared at her. I stared and marvelled and traced every inch of her tinyness and fell in love.
And yet, the panic was still there.
It wasn't so much the logistics of caring for a newborn girl baby that had me all tied up in knots (although the amount of dirty diaper wiping needed for girl babies versus boy babies is vastly under-reported in all the baby books!), it was the whole concept of RAISING a girl in this world that had me feeling ALL the anxiety. It was the feeling of being a previously (and most likely still) slightly broken girl raising another girl. That first night, all the thoughts of what her life would be consumed me. I thought of how I was going to manage to not pass on to her all of my own issues with self-esteem and self-worth? Of how I would be able to help her navigate a world that automatically sees her as an other, just for being born a girl? Of how I was going to be able to help her through the mean girl years - teaching her both how to not be one and how not be picked on by one? But mostly, I thought of how this was the universe telling me that what goes around comes around. That she was going to be my mini-me and I had better be prepared for that.
Dear Universe. I do so hate it when you are right.
She is a mini me.
Except, it's in all the best ways possible.
And while I still panic every now and then about raising my daughter in this messed up world of ours, it is somewhat less than what it was on that first day when I held her and stared at her for 24 hours straight. Not because our world is any less messed up than it was then, but because I am. And because I am fixing the broken parts of me, the ones that tell me that I am not good enough, not strong enough, not {insert ingrained pattern of belief here) enough, I am in turn raising a girl child whom I hope will never internalize those kinds of beliefs about herself.
At six years old, my own world came crashing down around me as my parents split up. No one was able to tell me why in a way that made sense to my then six-year old brain, and the messages about myself that I have carried with me ever since have been ones of low self-worth and un-lovableness. It is hard to unlearn 30-plus years of patterned beliefs about one's self. BUT... Because I see so much of myself when I look at my daughter now, in those hard parenting moments {and in the good ones too}, I get to stop and think of what six-year old me needed to hear those very many years ago and say those things to my own child.
I want the words that my daughter hears me speak to and about her now, to become the voice that she hears in her head as she grows up.
Loving words. Forgiving words. Kind words.
That is my birthday wish for her today and all her days.
My beautiful life lesson.
My gift from the Universe.
My girl.
XO,
n~
the strong one
I have always been the strong one.
The one who rides in and takes charge.
The one who keeps her head in a crisis.
The one who numbs herself and focuses on making sure everyone else is taken care of.
The one who knows all the big words used by the doctors and nurses.
The one who can read the monitors and know what all the numbers mean.
The one who asks the questions that no one else thinks about.
The one who will go to all the appointments and translate what it all means.
The one who will gently help them transition from one way of life to another.
I am the child, who became a mother.
Who is now the grown child standing beside a bed,
stroking her hair, kissing her forehead and taking care of her.
My mother.
And I don't know
if I am
strong enough
for this
just
yet.
A battle within: the stay at home mom vs the feminist.
Confession time. I am not always 100% on board with this whole "Stay at Home Feminist" thing.
I know, I know....
It's the name of my blog/Twitter/Instagram. I have claimed this moniker as ME. It is, as the marketing world calls it, "my personal brand". And yet, while I embrace this label that I have given myself and all the tongue-in-cheeky-ness that it implies, I have to be honest and admit that sometimes there exists within me a kind of battle of the two seemingly opposite sides of myself. As integrated as I think these two parts of me are, the "in-fighting" and negative self-talk that can happen from these two can be downright nasty at times.
The Stay-at-Home mother and housewife goes on and on about how I should DO more with the kids and around the house. More baking, more reading of books to the kids, more cleaning, more timely folding of the laundry, more crafts, less TV and iPads. She's can be a very demanding bitch and has obviously been spending way too much time on Pinterest, comparing all the way I am doing things to some kind of perfectly photoshopped vintage/retro/modern ideal of motherhood and housewifery.
And then there is the Feminist. She seeing things from a different angle and wants so much for a different world for her children. She gets upset that I am not doing more "active" activist work and wants me to find a way to "lean-in" and make some real changes for women in our world beyond just learning to play the game according to the current status quo. I know that there is a part of her that looks at the Stay-at-Home Mom and sneers at the level of privilege that she has and tells her that she just can't - absolutely CAN NOT - speak for other women who do not have it as good as she does.
Some, or all of these thoughts live together in my head at any given time and on any given day. Depending on the circumstances of the day, it can be an ugly battle that leaves me paralyzed with feelings of complete inadequacy in either role, or there can be an arbitrary truce and a certain level of acceptance that exists between the two.
I know what some of you are thinking, "Whoa there Natasha, how could YOU feel like this? You are supposed to be all, "Rah-rah-women can choose to do whatever they want-that's what Feminism is for!" and now your saying this? You are sending some serious mixed messages here! What is up with that?"
Let me try to explain.
A few weeks ago, I saw the CBC documentary "The Motherload". The film takes an in-depth and new look at the subject of working mothers - the current issues, challenges and triumphs that come from trying or having to do it all and that ever elusive utopian world called "work-life-balance". A lot of the film hinges on Anne-Marie Slaughter's 2012 article in The Atlantic in which she pointed out all the reasons "why women still can't have it all". While there were plenty of people who argued and disagreed with her take on this "motherload" phenomenon, I found most of her arguments compelling and very similar to my own.
"I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured."
Except I do not think it is just America's economy and society, it is our whole world. I have written about this before, about how there is no winning (read: having it all) in a game where one group of players has ALWAYS gotten a head start or where the playing field is always tipped in favour of one side.
One of the most strikingly true lines from the film is one from York University Women's Studies professor Andrea O'Reilly, in which she points out that "motherhood is the unfinished business of feminism." This statement is undoubtedly at the very core of a lot of the issues surrounding modern feminism today. And because most theories of feminism were based on the "unencumbered subject", I believe that this is why there exists this general feeling and misconception that feminism is done, that we've "arrived", and that there is no need for a continued movement towards equality for all women.
I need you to know that whether this is the third or fourth wave of feminism or modern feminism or whatever you want to call it, it is decidedly NOT done. And not just because women are not leaning in to more high profile corporate and political positions, but because we've been sold a version of equality that simply can not exist within the framework of our current society.
In the film, Slaughter says that she receives emails from women all the time who have some version of the same story that goes along the lines of "I had a promising career, I got married, I had children and then LIFE happened. I felt like such a failure, like I had betrayed my younger self." These sentiments gave me great pause while watching the film and made me think that we are doing a major disservice to our daughters and young women when we don't actively talk about motherhood as part of their life plans or career paths. Statements like the one above, obviously felt by many women, actually hurt my heart. And while I know that these women are not necessarily saying that becoming a mother was a failure, in our world that values the primacy of work and what we "do" versus who we are, motherhood just doesn't quite fit the bill of valuable work. Not only does it not compare to our paid work, women who are mothers are often penalized for this 'life happening' as well. In Ann Crittenden's 2001 book The Price of Motherhood, she points out that:
"We talk endlessly about the importance of family, yet the work it takes to make a family is utterly disregarded. This contradiction can be found in every corner of our society.
First, inflexible workplaces guarantee that many women will have to cut back on, if not quit, their employment once they have children. The result is a loss of income that produces a bigger wage gap between mothers and childless women than the wage gap between young men and women. This forgone income, the equivalent of a huge "mommy tax," is typically more than $1 million for a college-educated American woman."
and
"The idea that time spent with one's child is time wasted is embedded in traditional economic thinking. People who are not formally employed may create human capital, but they themselves are said to suffer a deterioration of the stuff, as if they were so many pieces of equipment left out to rust. The extraordinary talents required to do the long-term work of building human character and instilling in young children the ability and desire to learn have no place in the economists' calculations. Economic theory has nothing to say about the acquisition of skills by those who work with children; presumably there are none."
Not much has changed since she wrote that more than 12 years ago, except that now, not only is the pressure on for mothers to "lean in" and have it all at work, they are expected to be doing it all and doing it all FABULOUSLY at home too. If you are a women who had decided to stay at home with your children, it can sometimes feel like the pressure to be the "perfect" mother is just as great as the pressure to climb the corporate ladder and break the glass ceiling. From how to feed your baby, to what to put on their bums, what kind of school or 'un'school you choose, to what are considered 'essential' mommy and me classes, to getting a nanny or to sending them daycare, and for all the major and minor decisions made each and every day, motherhood has become a veritable rat-race in and of itself.
And in both the work and the home front women are paying an increasingly high price for being in these races. In Arianna Huffington's new book Thrive, she points out that,
"... women in highly stressful jobs have a nearly 40% increase risk of heart disease and heart attacks compared to thier less-stressed colleagues, and a 60 % greater risk for type 2 diabetes (a link that does not exist for men, by the way). Women who have heart attacks are almost twice as likely as men to die within a year of the attack, and women in high-stress jobs are more likely to become alcoholics than women in low-stress jobs."
The statistics are not that much brighter for mothers either, with upwards of 20% suffering from postpartum mood disorders. Katherine Stone of Post Partum Progress Inc. reports that,
"...more mothers will suffer from postpartum depression and related illnesses this year than the combined number of new cases for both sexes of tuberculosis, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. This is not to minimize these other terrible diseases, of course. I simply want to illustrate just how prevalent postpartum mood & anxiety disorders are."
The pressure these days to have it all, be it all, and do it all are too much for our bodies and our minds to handle and it is a no-win situation for everyone involved. And yet, I can't help but wonder, as my two sides battle it out in my own head, how much of this pressure is coming from ourselves? We live in the era of the "cult of busy-ness" and 24/7 connectivity and 10,000 hours to mastery (Ha! I just calculated and I've been a mother for just over 60,000 hours! I am SO the master of this! -insert sarcastic eye roll here-), and putting our lives on display via social media for all to see (and criticize). And then we wonder why, for some reason, it is never, ever, enough? We are a time-starved people living in a world of scarcity that is often of our own doing.
My question is: are we in fact the creators of this scarcity and if so, how do we change that?
Do you know what landed me in the hospital 26 weeks pregnant with my first child with a blood pressure hovering around 200/100 (normal is 110/70)? Because one hour before my OB appointment, I had gotten into an argument with a work colleague about a rather important event that we were planning. My life changed in an instant that day. My blood pressure would not go back down without medications and complete bed rest and I had to take an immediate medical leave from work.
That was my first AHA! moment of motherhood and it was a scary-ass wake up call to the reality that would now be my life. One responsible for the safety and well-being of not only myself, but of this other person I was growing inside of me. In essence, motherhood made me look up. Look up from my self-centred, looking-out-for-Number-One, how-do-I-get-ahead, life and see the world in front of me. One that sadly, as Joan Williams, law professor at the University of California Hastings, says in the Motherload film "was never set up for women."
So what is a woman to do in a world that is not set up for her? How does one reconcile the need to be a valuable, contributing member of our economic society and also one who is nurturing the human capital that will one day be valuable, contributing members of said society?
I don't know that anyone has the answers to this just yet. Slaughter thinks that a woman in the White House will affect changes, but I question this as a blanket solution. Other women have held the highest offices of government in other countries before and still the world has not changed significantly for women. Sheryl Sandberg thinks that women need to lean-in and actively seek the higher paying, higher ranking jobs we want, but she forgets how she got to the place she is in now, in part by hiding the fact that she was sneaking home at 5:30 to have dinner with her children.
In THIS world, one has to make compromises. For me, the decision to stop working was made for me due to medical circumstances, but the decision to STAY at home after my children were born was all mine. This is the compromise I made. My former career, for this new version of my life. It's one that I would likely make again and one that in hindsight, made me realize how much I was trying to play the game of "work/career" with a set of rules that were never going to let me win. So, yeah, I forfeited the game and 'opted out'.
And so the two sides of me sometimes get into a bit of a kerfuffle with each other over this. I strive to be an example for my own children of living a wholehearted life and valuing myself and my work, both as a stay at home mother and as a feminist, but the guilt of not being the ideal or "perfect" version for either of these sometimes still gets to me.
Today I came across this post from Karen Walrond, photographer and blogger extraordinaire, and someone I had the pleasure of both meeting and hearing speak at Mom 2.014 last week. Here's what she had to say about comparison.
"I believe that comparison -- that is, comparing yourself or your work or your art with another person('s) -- is ultimately and almost without exception a waste of time. In my opinion, when you compare yourself with someone, you're comparing all of you -- your work, your thoughts about your own work, the effort behind your work, your thoughts about yourself -- with the appearance of someone else or their work at one instance in time, having no knowledge of its context. In other words, comparing yourself or your work with anyone else or their work is inherently an unfair comparison. It should be avoided. Besides, I do believe that it is patently impossible to create effectively in someone else's voice -- the inevitable result is disappointment. Accepting that you will do what you do differently from everyone else is incredibly freeing, and should be lived whole-heartedly."
This made me think... do you know what I do differently from everyone else?
I do this whole Stay at Home Feminist thing differently than anyone else. I know that in however small the ways may be, I AM affecting change. I am giving a voice, my voice, to other mothers and women in the world of feminism and beyond. And I am going to do my darnedest for the rest of my life to make sure that motherhood does not remain "the unfinished business of feminism".
