Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #25
I have that damn Friday song in my head! Which is a good and bad thing. It's good because, YAY! IT'S FRIDAY and bad because, OMG! that song. Either way, here's some of what I read this week that made me think. (Which is not what that damn song does!)
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1. Ready for another round of which Hollywood starlet wants you to know that she is definitely NOT a feminist and LOVES all the mens? Yeah, me neither, but you know, stupid sells. With some notable NOT stupid feminist actresses stepping up to the plate.
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2. Get into any kind of conversation about rape culture or feminism/anti-feminism or sexism or misogyny and you are going to hear from at least ONE person (usually male) tell you that NOT ALL MEN think/act/believe THAT way. For a brief history of every dudes favourite argument (and perhaps it's signalling of some kind of positive shift for SOME men), please read the following from Jess Zimmerman at TIME.
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3. When Hip Mama magazine tried to publish it's latest edition with a photo of artist Ana Alvarez-Errecalde's breastfeeding her son on it's cover, the backlash was swift. It showed us just how far we have NOT come in our efforts to normalize images of breasts performing their primary function - breastfeeding. Vendors refused to carry the magazine in their stores and (not surprisingly) Facebook banned the photo multiple times from multiple accounts. Please read the following from Ariel Gore, the editor of Hip Mama, about what happened next.
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4. Last Thursday was the end of this season's Grey Anatomy and the end of the era of Cristina Yang. I have watched this show since its beginning and have always been invested in the lives of these characters and the choices that they make for themselves. And it wasn't until Cristina uttered those final lines to Meredith last week that the full scope of what this show has done for women (and perhaps even for me) really hit me.
"Don't let what he wants eclipse what you need;
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4. And finally, the video "Hugs" by JC Little is pretty much the best thing on the internet this week!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/SHFhepoy-Rs[/youtube]
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"HUGS" everyone!
Have a great weekend.
n~
Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #24
Ah! May long weekend! I don't know about you, but for me, this marks start of me feeling the beginnings of summer (even though I live in Alberta and it did briefly snow for a bit last week). It's a weekend of clearing out the closets, figuring out who needs new shoes and rubber boots and finally packing away all of the winter gear and getting the box of summer and outside play things ready for use! Before you get into spring cleaning/gardening/going camping mode, what better way to start your weekend than with some wonderful feminist food for thought.
Enjoy!
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1. "Why aren't you happier?" "You should smile more?" "What have you got to be unhappy about?"
Ugh, so many questions. So many times directed mainly at women. Jessica Valenti breaks it down for us in this Guardian post about why women seem to be so "unhappy".
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2. It is prom time once again. You know, that time when teenage girls all across North America beg their mothers for a custom made red taffeta strapless dress with layers & layers of tulle under it (or was that just me in the late 80's??). Seriously though, it's a special time of year for these students as they celebrate their scholarly achievements and a rather big transition in their young lives. And they get to dress up all fancy-like for it. For some though, what is supposed to be a wonderful night with friends can turn into a complete sexist shit-show, as it did for Clare last week when she was asked to leave her prom because of her non-dress-code violating sparkly dress and a bunch of ogling 45-year old dads who blamed a teenage girl for their own pervy-ness!
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3. This week was not a great one for women in positions of power. Which begs the question? Is all this "leaning in" really working out or are we still just telling women to play a {male} role in a world not set up for them? Soraya Chemaly examines this phenomenon in this Ms. Magazine article.
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4. The kidnapped Nigerian girls are still missing and the world is still talking about it (although the Solange V Jay-Z Elevator thing seemed to take centre stage this week). What the world needs to know is that Nigerian women, these African women are the reason, and will likely be the main reason, that these girls will eventually be found and rescued. Please read this powerful piece from Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gwobee.
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Have a wonderful and restful long weekend everyone. At least that's my plan.
natasha~
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".
n~
Miracle Milk. make it, donate it, love it.
2,078 Days ago, I delivered a 3 lb, 6 oz baby boy. I kissed his tiny little head and then he was taken away, accompanied by his daddy, to the NICU one floor above me. This is how I entered the world of motherhood. It was at least 3 hours before I was able to see my child and another 5 more before I was able to hold him and all the various tubes and wires attached to him.
I had gestational hypertension throughout my first pregnancy. It was discovered early enough at 26 weeks and we knew that regardless of how well controlled we could keep my blood pressure, the chances were VERY high that I was going to have to deliver the baby before we reached full-term. Outside of my weekly visits to the neonatology clinic for NSTs and ultrasounds, I was put on bed-rest for the remainder of my pregnancy. And I read. I read every book about premature babies that I could find. I learned about the challenges that they face, the complications of early birth and the best practices for how to overcome them.
This was how I learned about the benefits of kangaroo care and babywearing. And this was the first time I heard the phrase "liquid gold" in regards to colostrum and breastmilk. This was also when I learned about the #2 killer of NICU babies, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). In medical speak, "necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is one of the most common gastrointestinal emergencies in the newborn infant. It is a disorder characterized by ischemic necrosis of the intestinal mucosa, which is associated with inflammation, invasion of enteric gas forming organisms, and dissection of gas into the muscularis and portal venous system." (1) In laymans' terms, part of a baby's immature gut basically dies and needs to be surgically removed. It is extremely painful and has both short and long-term complications.
I was fortunate to carry my baby to 35 weeks and have a rather uneventful, albeit quick, delivery. My son was very small and very jaundiced, but otherwise healthy. He even ripped off his oxygen tube in those first few hours in the NICU (a fact my husband is still kind of proud of). Because we had done our research before heading into the NICU, both my husband and I were very insistent that our child only ever be fed breastmilk. I started pumping within hours of his birth and then set my alarm for every three hours and religiously pumped either at the hospital or at home to ensure that my milk came in and that he would have enough human breast milk at all times.
Some of the babies in our "pod" in the NICU were not as fortunate and had indeed succumbed to NEC. I remember the young mom of the baby next to us coming in every day to change her baby's ostomy bag (she insisted on doing it herself) and hoping that this would be the day that the doctors told her that his gut was healed, he could have his next surgery and that the hole in his belly would be closed up.
NEC sickens 5,000 U.S. and Canadian premature babies per year, of which roughly 500 die from the disease. Feeding fragile and compromised babies human milk – whether from the mother or by donor — has been shown to reduce the risk of NEC by 79%. For all these reasons, The Canadian Pediatric Society says “human breastmilk provides a bioactive matrix of benefits that cannot be replicated by any other source of nutrition.” The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends human milk, by mother or by donor, for all preterm infants. Both the AAP and CPS clearly recognize the life-saving power of donor milk for preterm babies.(2)
Yesterday, I participated in the first Best for Babes Miracle Milk™ Mother's Day Stroll. This North American campaign was started to raise awareness, funds and donor milk to save lives and spare the suffering of our most fragile population -- preterm and compromised babies. This is the first year for the Miracle Milk Stroll and Edmonton was one of almost 70 sites – 11 in Canada, 57 in the US and 2 on military bases in England who participated.
There are still NICUs within Canada and the US who do not or can not provide human milk for these preemie babies and this is why we stroll. To raise more awareness of the importance of human milk for human babies and the need for donor milk and for more milk banks across North America. Parents, health care providers and hospital administrators need to know more about the critical importance of an exclusive human milk diet in a preterm baby’s care or about the accessibility, safety and life-saving power of donor milk if mother’s own milk is not available.
I was extremely proud that the kids and I got to be a part of this inaugural campaign and encourage you to find out more about how you can help these tiny babies in your community.
Yes, that is my preemie now in the grey sweatshirt.
Find out where your local milk bank is and donate and please check out the Best for Babes website and all the ways you can help mothers and babies.
In Canada, we now have four human milk banks that you can donate to {monetarily or milkily} in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Edmonton has it own Milk Bank Depot at the Grey Nuns Hospital where donations can be dropped off as well.
Tell your friends about how important human milk is for these compromised babies and how easy and safe it is to donate milk!
And of course, wear your Miracle Milk™ T-shirt with pride!
Happy Mother's Day Everyone!
natasha~
1. Neu J. Necrotizing enterocolitis: the search for a unifying pathogenic theory leading to prevention. Pediatr Clin North Am 1996; 43:409.
Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #23
Here is the thing. I flew from Edmonton, Alberta to Atlanta, Georgia and back again in the span of 3.5 days. I spent most of those days awake and in the company of so many amazing people that sleep just wasn't big on my priority list. This essentially means that this week, I have been a total mess. Jet-lag, lack of sleep, a brain on overdrive, a soccer season that started on Monday and has us on the field 4 days a week and all the regular daily stuff, has caught up to me and people, it is NOT pretty. My eldest child looked at me yesterday and in a concerned voice said, "Mama, are you tired? You should go lay down." So, I did.
But first, I've been collecting some awesome posts this week! So here you go, some good Mother's Day weekend reading!
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1. Gabourey Sidibe's speech from the Ms. Foundation Gala. Pro-tip: never ask a women how she is so confident. Just admire it and perhaps, let it rub off on you a bit.
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2. Remember that time I was on an airplane and the guy behind me protested loudly as I lowered my seat to get more comfortable and then I folded in on myself? Did you know that I constantly apologize for taking up too much space with my "stuff" when I am at the coffee shop? This space issue is a gendered one, a societal one, and it's one we learn early on. And while it may be her school headmistress that Soraya Chemaly hears in her head, it is my grandmother in mine.
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3. Mother's day is on Sunday. Did you know it is the 100th anniversary of Mother's Day? Did you also know about it's radical feminist beginnings too?
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4. Mothering in the digital age. Google that. You'll find pages and pages for almost any topic/issue/need that you have as a mother, as you prepare for motherhood, as you struggle with motherhood, as you celebrate motherhood. Meagan Francis wrote this incredibly personal and insightful post after the Mom 2.0 Summit this past weekend and well... just read it. You'll understand.
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Happiest of Mother's Day to each and every mother out there. I wish you 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, a closed door to pee behind. a book to read that has more than 10 pages in it, a quiet moment and a nice cup/glass of {insert whatever you love to drink here} and love, lots and lots of LOVE!
XO,
natasha~
Go to blogging conference. Make a list.
I am tired.
Not like, "Oh, the kids didn't sleep well and I may have stayed up too late to watch whatever I had on the PVR" tired. I am 'OH MY GOD, I spent 72 hours with 600 of the most wicked people on the internet this past weekend" tired!
THAT my friends, is exhausting, but in the most amazing way possible.
I am still processing my weekend at the Mom 2.0 Summit in Atlanta, but I did want to write down some of my top moments of the conference. Here they are, in no particular order and so I too don't forget how awesome a weekend it was...
1. Arriving at the hotel and seeing so many beautiful and familiar (Canadian) faces made it feel not so scary being a newbie amongst the 600 attendees at Mom 2.0. Thank you Annie, Elan, Shannon, Jennifer, and Connie for providing me with a that sense of "home" away from home.
2. I REALLY had to pee towards the end of the first keynote session on Friday morning. I was packing up my bag and about to sneak out when Derreck Kayongo took the stage. And then I couldn't move. Maybe it was the bright pink flower he was wearing on his jacket lapel, maybe it was his beautiful Ugandan accent, or it could have been the energy with which he bounded onto the stage. Whatever it was, I was not going anywhere. Watch this and you'll understand why. A simple thing. A bar of soap. And idea. This is the power of story and of being a change maker in our world!
[youtube]http://youtu.be/sauWSDPBV3g[/youtube]
3. This weekend, I got schooled. We ALL got schooled. I learned the true meaning of 'leaning in' and found myself doing just that. As Kelly Wickham, aka Mocha Momma, read her post "Calling out my sisters", there I was physically leaning forward to truly hear her words. Leaning in to the discomfort that is a conversation about race, about real solidarity and about truly, publicly being there for each other when things get rough. (Please read her post and lean in to this with me.)
4. And then, this one time at Mom 2.0 Summit, I sat down with Heather Armstrong (yes, THAT Heather Dooce Armstrong) for 10 minutes, told her how much I love what she does and how she writes and tells stories and asked her for her advice about how to keep doing just that while the landscape of the blogging world shifts - or as she said, "is completely destroyed" - beneath our feet. It was a good chat. (So good that I did not get any photographic evidence of our time together. Total rookie fangirl mistake.)
5. Mint Julips from the Minted folks. Let me just say this: bourbon is the devil's drink and therefore I can not be held responsible for whatever I said/did after drinking it!
6. Shoe shopping and dinner and thought-provoking and brilliant conversations about blogging and feminism and life. With Annie @PhDinParenting, Shannon @Shasherslife, and Jennifer @HartGalla.
7. Trying to be in two places at the same time on Saturday morning for two amazing sessions. While this in fact did not quite work out, I did find Elizabeth Jayne Lui of FlourishinProgress.com in one of them and for that alone, it may have been all worth the frantic running around the conference centre at the hotel. She is by far the tiniest, and quite possibly one of the funniest bloggers I met this weekend.
8. Front row keenering (totally a word) at the rest of the sessions on Saturday. So much change-maker/writing/story-tellng/hot-topics/sexy beasts blogging goodness!
The panelists (from L to R).
The #sexybeasts are: @laflowers, @schmutzie, @bostonmamas @titaniajordon @justicefergie
The #changemakers are: @mamanongrata @ElenaSonnino @postpartumprog @HeatherBarmore and @morraam (not pictured)
9. When Karen @chookooloonks Walrund, totally Kanye'd Jenny @thebloggess Lawson at The Iris Awards ceremony.
10. And then, 10 minutes later when I stood less than 12 inches from Jenny at the back of the theatre while holding another woman's very adorable baby, I managed to spit out the words, "This is the baby that pooped during your acceptance speech." Cause, you know, WORDS is what I do y'all! #facepalm
11. This photo. And this woman. Outfits totally not planned, I swear. Damn we look good!
12. Having only ONE degree of separation from Amy Poehler because of meeting the amazing Meredith Walker of @smrtgirls!
13. The panels. The painted bellies. The party. The people. MY People! I found them, we talked, we danced, we knew each other before we had even met, and then when we did meet, it was good. It was very, very, good.
Selfies from top to bottom with:
@lifewithroozle, @phdinparenting and @dresdenplaid, @schmutzie, @DebontheRocks and @farrahbrannif.
Bonus #14: Having the best conference roomie = She who takes #365feministselfie shots with a lovely butt bomb from yours truly!
{photo credit: Annie @phdinparenting}
Now, I really do need to catch up on some more sleep.
Goodnight lovelies,
natasha~
Thoughts on a plane.
I woke this morning with little legs intertwined with mine and wispy fine hair tickling my nose. I don't remember what time she came over, but L snuck into our bed once again last night. Not that I really mind though. After all these years of some form of bed-sharing, it has somehow become the norm for us to all figure out how we fit together and sleep.
We are like a little four person jigsaw puzzle and somehow we manage to fit all the pieces together on our queen-sized bed. No small feat, let me tell you! L’s internal alarm clock woke us all up at 6:44 AM as she slid out of the bed and declared to everyone her need to pee.
.....
I joined a yoga class last week. My friend Mandy has a beautiful little studio in her equally beautiful house and has been teaching yoga and meditation for over 15 years. She is the kind of person in whose company you can't help but feel a sense of calm and serenity.
All of this week, amongst the preparation and angst of me going away for four days to MOM 2.0 Summit, all I could think about was going to yoga with Mandy again. Class was this morning and it was a glorious and much needed hour of practice! And I am not just saying that because she gives all of us a neck massage as we lay in our final savasana. I had rushed into the studio after dropping of the kids at school with a raging storm of pre-travel and pre-conference anxiety nestled in my solar plexus and what I can only describe as angry moths (as opposed to butterflies) in my tummy. I set my intention for my practice of 'calming the storm within' and for the next hour I breathed and moved my way to a place of calm waters, glorious sunshine and openness of mind, body and spirit.
Mandy spoke of the Hindu Goddess Shiva, who is known as the destroyer. How destruction is not always a negative thing and that it is often necessary in life in order to clear away the old and make room for new things to flourish. It reminded me of the forest fire video that the kids and I watch at the museum that shows the time-lapsed regrowth of the forest after the devastation and destruction of the fire. There is beauty in this process and it takes looking at it from a little bit of a different angle to see this and to know that the fire had to happen for the life of the forest to be sustained. I started thinking about all of the things/feelings/ways of thinking that we hold on to in our own lives, for whatever reason (safety, habit, tradition), that no longer serve us. Perhaps it is time to let Shiva in to do her thing, so that we can make room for and create the right nurturing environment for new things to take root.
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Airports make me nervous. Granted more often than not it is more of an excited nervous, but still it is there. I get anxious about getting there on time, I am worried that I forgot to pack something, I worry about losing my boarding pass and saying goodbye and "please dear God be on the other end" to my checked luggage. I remind myself about a dozen times to go to the bathroom before getting on the plane - because, hello - men and airplane bathrooms - Duh! I start to relax a bit after I've passed through security, which, by the way, is always a special full body pat-down treat when one had metal implants.
The first leg of my trip this weekend is to the Twin Citiies. One of the things I also do when flying is play the "I wonder where they are going" game about all of the other travellers on my flight. I am on a small plane, an E170-CP, that is full to capacity and if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say 75% of the passengers are men who look like they are travelling for work - briefcases, laptops and androids abound. I mention this because I am sitting in the window seat surrounded on all three sides by said business men. Once we were up in the air, I tried to recline my seat and the man behind me got a bit agnry about it and gave me a big, "JESUS, lady"! It seems my comfort was infringing upon his very important newspaper reading. I apologized and brought my seat back upright and then noticed two things that I was doing. One, I was physically making myself smaller, trying not to take up to much space from the 'important' people around me, and two, I had to consciously STOP the self-talk that started in my head about me being "just" the silly little housewife going away to her silly little blogging conference.
That was the moment I pulled out my laptop and started writing. All of the men and women on this plane are doing important things in their lives, of this I have no doubt. And not one of them is without his or her own fears or worries or insecurities (even though some may not be as kind as others).
All of these thoughts have led me to want to set an intention for my time at the Mom 2.014 Summit this weekend and this is it:
I intend to see beyond myself and to recognize the connections we all have to each other. The needs we all have to be seen, to be valued and to know that whatever we choose to "do" for a living, or for a life, is important, is worthwhile and is done as uniquely as we all are ourselves.
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Let the conferencing, connecting and celebrating begin!
natasha~
Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #22
Happy Easter/Passover/Zombie Jesus/Egg laying Bunny weekend to everyone. Ok, no really, if this weekend is a serious one for you, I mean it, I wish you peace and blessings all around. And if for some of you it is just a good excuse to crack open those Cadbury eggs and slowly lick out the centres until you pass out from all the sugar, well, have at 'er folks! Just make sure you read some yummy feminist fare below before you get too full on all that creamy, sugary, chocolate-y goodness.
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1. No one has ever said that being a parent is easy. It's hard knowing that pieces of your heart are walking around outside of your body. This week was the release of yet another (timely) "motherhood is the toughest job on earth" videos. It's been shared and viewed close to a bajillion times already (my fact-checker is on vacation, but I am pretty sure that is accurate) and it's one of those 'love it or hate it' kind of videos. I kinda don't love it at all that much and not surprisingly, I am not the only one.
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2. Tuesday and Wednesday nights on Twitter it is usually PAR-TAY central. And by par-tay, I mean the corporately sponsored, hashtaged kind where you get to win prizes and answer all kinds of really important questions like, which bread you use, when was the last time you cleaned your bum with a wet wipe or what spunky outfit your kid is wearing this season. I do not usually participate in these twitter parties, for a variety of reasons; I don't use the product, I don't feel comfortable disclosing my personal toilet hygiene routines online or more often than not, I do not support the company sponsoring the party.
This last point has become increasingly important in my consumerism since the tragedy that happened at the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh last year. Annie at Phd in Parenting has been staying on top of what has been happening since the factory collapse and has put together a rather comprehensive post outlining some of the brands and companies that have, and those that have not, stepped up to the plate to compensate the victims and change the way that they do business in Bangladesh. There is no need to boycott all goods made in Bangladesh, but there is a need to hold accountable the companies that are NOT doing the right thing for and by the people they use to make their goods.
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3. I am not a fan of banning words. I like words. I write a lot of them here and I aim to write a whole lot more of them. One day I hope that my words will end up in a book that people will want to read and buy and keep in their libraries. And maybe, just maybe, it will be one that gets me on the list of most-banned books in America, along with the likes of Captain Underpants, The Hunger Games and Perks of Being a Wallflower - all three of which made the 2013 list of the top ten most challenged books.
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4. And a bit of good news from our local provincial government today.
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Have a wonderful long weekend everyone.
natasha~