A challenge and change and channelling my anxiety.

Ask me to drink 3 litres of water a day and I'll make it to maybe day four. Ask me to wake up one hour earlier than usual to meditate/workout/write and realistically I'll do it a few times and then be back to hitting the snooze button until small people insist that I wake up to feed them.

But...

Challenge me {for the third year in a row} to write a blog post a day for a month for the 2014 Summer Blog Challenge, and BAM! I am in. Again.

To be honest, I need a kick in the pants to get my writing mojo back. It has been lost for a while now as we were dealing with other life altering events this summer.

Daily blogging definitely is a challenge. And with school starting in a couple of weeks and the regular and some new {our first year with an IPP} challenges that this will bring to my life, will likely make it even more so.

So why do I do this then?

That is a very good question.

Because it is tradition now. Because I like to prove to myself that I can do it. And because every now and then, amongst the silly, last minute, "oh crap, I need to get a post out today" drivel that yes, I fully admit, you will get, sometimes a shot of brilliance will shine through. I'll have an epiphany and some divine power will guide my hand and I'll bang out something fan-freaking-tastic.

---

Today I spent most of the day cleaning the house and clearing it of the debris of life that has been collecting in unaddressed piles since June. The bags of all of my son's school work that his teacher lovingly packed up for us, the mail that has been sitting on my desk unopened along with all the unfiled bills and papers, the toys and books that have accumulated in all the tiny spaces that they can find to play together just like before. We tackled it all today ,and while it may not have seemed like it for everyone around here (read: there was much whining about when we would be doooooonnnnne), for me, it was a mixture of purging and nesting and wiping the slate clean to ready ourselves for the next chapter in our lives.

I am the most prepared that I have ever been for back to school this year. A couple of new outfits each and all the school supplies have been bought sorted and are ready to go. Every year, the beginning of the school year is like walking into a bit of an unknown (we don't get to find out who the kid's teachers are until that first day), but this year it feels even more so. Most people know that C was very sick and in the hospital, but few know the full extend of his illness or about his stroke/brain injury. He has expressed his concern to his therapists and to me about going back to school and having people ask him all about what happened and what he will say to them and he now has a list of answers that they came up with together and wrote down. I think I may have to follow suit as I am realizing that I too am feeling quite anxious about this as well. And when I get anxious about events or situations that are outside of my realm of control, I re-organize. I control my immediate environment and make it orderly and pretty.

Seriously people, my closet and my office have never looked better.

 All ready to welcome back both me and my mojo!

---

So.... Here we go!

Subscribe to my RSS feed, sign up to get my posts delivered directly in your email every day (see box over there on your right), or find me on Facebook or Instagram (and maybe Twitter too, although my presence there has been sporadic lately - more on that in another post) because you never know which one of these posts is going to be the brilliant one!

XO,

n~

P.S. There are quite a few bloggers from all walks of life participating in the #SummerBlogChallenge. On social media we usually hashtag it as such or #SBC2014 or just #SBC. I'll have the full list of participants for you tomorrow if you'd like to check out some of their writing as well.

Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #28

Today's post is not really that feminist in nature, but nonetheless, every piece here has touched me immensely this week. This very hard, very difficult, very sad, very frustrating, very angry week. I have cried, I have cry-laughed, I have felt bubbles of rage in my belly and I have been tired, so, so very tired. Yes, this week was a doozy, and we are all still here, despite it all... Because of it all? Either way, here we go...

{Trigger warning bells on all of it! Suicide, depression, racism, sexism.}

~~~~~~~~~~

Robin Williams 

1951-2014

Not very often do I hear of a celebrity death and immediately fall on my bed in a puddle of tears, but that is exactly what happened on Monday when I heard the news of Robin Williams' passing. This man, this funny, funny man, whose work has peppered my life with so many memories, was gone. Suffering from depression (and in the early stages of Parkinson's Disease), he took his own life and left this world. I don't want to comment on why he did it, how he did it, why he needed more help with his depression, or anything of the sort. He is gone and the world mourns and we start talking about depression again and this post from Logan Fisher at A Muddled Mother, was probably one of the most powerful things I read that day...

"So in honor of Robin, for his laughter and his legacy, instead of sending someone to the nearest hotline or hoping that the clinically depressed reach out to someone, please...reach out to them, stay with them, ensure them that you'll never leave, that you'll be there for as long as they need you. I am lucky. I have that--ten fold. Don't get me wrong, so many have left--"friends" telling me that my life just drags them down--depression is not for the weak. It takes great strength for both the depressed and those that love them to not waiver in their resolve. "

~~~~~

Last Saturday, another tragedy occurred in America. An 18-year-old, unarmed black man was shot dead by a police officer in the town of Ferguson, Missouri. His name was Michael Brown. His life cut short for no other apparent reason than the fact that he was a black man, walking on the street with his friends. What happened next seemed like something from a movie of a war-torn village in the Middle East, but it was not. The following post from Greg Howard outlines so much of what has been happening not only in Ferguson this week, but across the country, where it really does seem that...

"The United States of America is not for black people. We know this, and then we put it out of our minds, and then something happens to remind us."

The impact of all of this is being felt the world over and by people whom I care about and respect very, very, deeply. Please read their words, examine how this is affecting you too, and if it isn't, ask yourself why that is?

Karen Walrond at Chookooloonks is very Affected by all of this. And Vicki Reich at VillageQ, who is from Kansas City, gives us some cultural context for what is happening in Ferguson and amplifies the voices that need to be heard right now.

And finally, one of the most powerful things I read this week comes from a Canadian writer. Sarah Bessey lays it all out in black and white and left me raw with emotion after I read her post, In which I have a few things to tell you about #Ferguson.

"Black lives matter. I cannot even believe I have to write that sentence but there it is. Black lives matter. These young men matter, their lives are sacred. It doesn’t matter if Mike Brown was on his way to college or on his way to the unemployment line – his life had value and purpose. He was loved. His life mattered. Every single black life matters. If your pro-life ethic doesn’t include black lives, then your pro-life ethic is useless."

In all of this, I only have one more thing to say. Silence is not an option. Sit with the uncomfortableness of these hard conversations and issues of race and justice and oppression, and really listen, and then stand up. Stand with the people of #Ferguson and those across America fighting for justice and more often than they should be, for their very lives.

~~~~~

Social media is how we communicate. This is the truth of our time. BUT... within these constructs, these massive platforms of code and algorithms and formulas and insidious marketing campaigns, how do we make it work for us. How do we "buck the system", especially when the system is constantly changing, not to suit our needs, but those of the people who make boatloads of money off of us. BUT, but, Facebook is FREE, right? Well yes, it is free, as in, you do not have to pay a fee to use the site, but you do pay with something far more valuable than money these days... you pay with your "LIKES". In the span of a week two people wrote about two similar yet completely opposite experiments they conducted with their Facebook usage. Mat Honan from Wired decided to LIKE everything he saw on his Facebook feed for 48 hours and Elan Morgan from Schmutzie.com decided to NOT like anything on her Facebook feed for two weeks. The results of these two experiments are somewhat fascinating.

From Mat:"By the end of day one, I noticed that on mobile, my feed was almost completely devoid of human content. I was only presented with the chance to like stories from various websites, and various other ads. Yet on the desktop—while it’s still mostly branded content—I continue to see things from my friends. On that little bitty screen, where real-estate is so valuable, Facebook’s robots decided that the way to keep my attention is by hiding the people and only showing me the stuff that other machines have pumped out. Weird."

From Elan:"When I used to like everything that did not actively bore me or make me feel hateful, my stream of Facebook updates was more like a series of soapboxes spouting outrage dotted with weddings, cute baby animals, and only occasionally real content worth pursuing. Since I stopped liking altogether, though, my Facebook stream is more akin to an eclectic dinner party. There is conversation, there is disagreement (mostly) without hostility, and there is connection."

And for the record, I too have sworn off the "LIKE" button myself to see if and how it changes my Facebook experience.

~~~~~

I have posted things from Robot Hugs before, and this comic strip ranks up there as one of my all time faves. It's the kind of thing you should keep bookmarked on your phone so you can pull it up at a moment's notice, whenever someone starts going off about how "they just don't see all this sexual harassment you ladies are talking about".

One of the challenging things about talking to men about violence, harassment, and sexism against women and femmetype folk is that it so often seems invisible.
Dude: I certainly never see it! Are you sure you’re not just being sensitive?

~~~~~

OK, I know that was a lot to take in. Just breathe.

Take some time for you this weekend.

Know that no matter what, love wins, compassion is hard (but worth it) and we are all in this together.

XO,

n~

What the tides keep at bay

 

There is a sacredness to the tides, stepping your feet in the waters of the ocean and having it wash away the sand on your feet, only for more sand to be washed back upon them as the waves keep coming back towards you. The ocean's edge has always been a blissful place for me and it hurts my soul to leave it every time. I am a Capricorn, I am drawn towards bodies of water and to the heights of mountains and I wonder sometimes at the seemingly opposite pull of these two places. It is as if my body craves the solitude that exists in both, that my mind needs it and that I am most at peace when I am either dipping my feet in the waters that connect us all or breathing in the pure air of a mountain top.

Every time we go away to either the ocean or the mountains, I can't help but start planning for our next vacation.The next time I will get to dip my feet in the waters that wash everything away and make things new again, whether those waters come from the top of a mountain or the depths of the earth.

Maybe I am just feeling the effects of the full moon, the tides of our lives that pull us in certain directions, that help us to see things that we haven't seen before. The tides clean off the old dust and wash away what we no longer need, tumble us around to smooth out the rough edges and make us new again.

Maybe it is because I just finished reading The Alchemist and it too pulled at my soul. It made me think of the omens in my life and whether or not I always listen to them or am even aware of them. What would happen to this world we live in if we all did that? If we all listened the the Soul of the World and followed the signs it leaves for us. What if we trusted in love and followed our instincts, instead of constantly getting fooled by our fears?

I know this is all a bit trippy, but the last few days and weeks have made me really look at my life, my fears, the things I say to my kids over and over and the messages and fears that I am passing down to them. My daughter wants to be a ballet dancer and I am stressing over this because of my own fears and insecurities and issues about having a "perfect" dancer's body. The stress I am feeling is not about finding the best dance school for her, it is all about me, projecting my own fears of rejection and ridicule onto her. I am killing her dream before it even begins and I know this and I can't stop the panic I feel about it.

Panic and fear.

I have had enough of both in my life as of late and I so want out of this cycle. Being on the island for our holidays gave me that feeling of peace and a quiet in my soul that has not been there for a long time. I laid in the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the panic and fear was washed away. My family was whole and happy and together and I stepped into those waters every day and felt my connection to the earth and both the smallness and infiniteness of my being and my place in this world.

Now to figure out how to replicate that feeling here, at home, in my every day life, before the panic and fear start creeping in again.

n~

so what?

Sometimes you see or hear something and it just speaks to you on so many levels, it's impossible not to share it. Today Mary Lambert is IN MY HEAD! And for some reason, I have a feeling that many of you might feel the same way.  

Am I wrong?

I don't care either Mary. Thank you for this!

n~

Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #27.

The world doesn't stop. Even when life hands you a bowl full of mouldy strawberries, it still goes on growing new, fresh things. My world has been flipped upside down these past two months and we are just now getting back our equilibrium. I am reading {and writing} again and have found some very yummy fare for you this week. Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~

1. Abstinence-only sex education. Yeah right. I was a teenager once and if you told me I couldn't or shouldn't do something, guess what? I liked to prove people wrong. Outside of being a typical jack-ass teenager though, I was an informed one. My mom made sure of that. Which is why I was very impressed to read about the Edmonton mom and daughter who launched a human rights complaint about the outsourcing of sex ed in public schools to the never-advertised-as-such-but-totally-religious-based Pregnancy Care Centre. Jessica Valenti examines why these programs don't work and the dangers of them in this piece from The Guardian.

These false, ideologically-driven programs are turning out sexually illiterate young people whose lives and health are put in literal danger by "educators" handing out false information. All this, just so your teenager might be scared straight enough to forgo sex for a few extra months.

..........

2. I read this next one after a friend had posted it to her Facebook page. Two things - I had no idea who Kathleen Hanna and Melissa Febos are and I don't think it matters. What they had to say about the creative process and about feminism resonated with me. And yes, I did some googling shortly afterwards  and I am not sure how or why, but I seem to have somehow missed the whole Riot Grrrl era.

I think as women who consider ourselves feminists, there’s a legacy of responsibility, of feeling like there’s not enough of us and so we have to do things right. Just being women in male-dominated fields, we feel like ambassadors and we have to do a really good job. We have to not only make this great work, but we also have to instruct and educate.

..........

3. THE BLOGGESS IS WRITING ABOUT FEMINISM! And yes, I meant that to be all shout-y! She also wrote some weird ass shark analogies - as she does. In other words, you should really just read this.

Here’s the thing: Do you think men and women should have equal rights politically, socially and economically? Then you’re probably a feminist. There are a million tiny aspects of this to break off into and I get it. It’s complicated. There’s not just one type of feminist, just as there’s not just one type of Christian or Muslim, or man or woman. Hell, there’s not even just one type of shark. Some are non-threatening and friendly.

..........

4. The story of Debra Harrell, the South Carolina mother who was arrested for letting her nine-year old play at the park while she worked her shift a MacDonald's, is all over the news and the blogosphere. Some are saying that this is a free-range parenting issue and that we have become so much of a helicopter society that we can't see our children (the trees) through the arranged play-dates, supervised camps and scheduled activities (the forest). Others are seeing this situation from a different perspective, one of class and race and privilege. Rebecca Cuneo Keenan at Playground Confidential hits this one square on the head. I just wish the authorities and perhaps those parents at the park who reported Ms. Harrell could have seen it this way too.

...the real shame is that anybody should have to choose between going to work and their child’s well being. It’s shameful that in the richest country in the world, the poorest families are still left to fend for themselves.

..........

5. Young feminists, we need more of them. Funny, young feminists? Yes, please! Meet Marina Watanabe everyone and go subscribe to her Youtube channel.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Obt32tD7nDI[/youtube]

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

n~

Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #26

Let's just get to it today shall we...

 ..........

1. I have never watched Mad Men. I know, it's a great show, Jon Hamm is a wonderful actor, Christina Hendricks and Elizabeth Moss are brilliant in their roles and blah, blah, blah... I just can't. I am all for historical dramas, but the history of sexism on that show just isn't for me. In the following post, you'll see why. Advertising in the mid-twentieth century was enough to make you want to throw up a bit in your mouth. As my friend Kathleen says,

"But really, feminists just made up that entire misogynistic patriarchal paradigm crap. It's all a figment of our collective feminazi vagiocentric imagination..."

.....

2. By now you know that Disney bought Lucasfilms last year and with it the rights to all things Star Wars. Walk into any Disney Store and you'll find that they are already capitalizing on merchandise sales from the films and the TV series. It seems that in their haste to get products on the shelves, they neglected to include one particular and rather important character in the mix. Princess Leia.

One mother asked about this last week and this was Disney's response:

Film scholar Natalie Wreyford took to Twitter last week to ask Disney why its online store doesn't sell any action figures of Princess Leia, one of the three co-leads in the original trilogy:

This week, Disney backtracked and has officially said that yes, in fact, there are plans for Leia merchandise in the pipeline. And if you have ever wondered about the power of Social Media, this might be one for the books - The #WeWantLeia hashtag started after Natalie's tweet was responded to and within a week, one of the largest companies in the world changed their tune.  I call that a win this week!

.....

3. I like Jimmy Fallon. I really do. He's funny, he's multi-talented, he has epic lip-synch battles with some of my favourite actors. This week though, I am not impressed with him (or possibly the producers of The Tonight Show) for cutting out a part of his interview with Shailene Woodley in which she discussed gender politics.

"During the course of the piece, however, the interviewer — Lynn Hirschberg — attended a taping of The Tonight Show with Shailene Woodley, and noticed that a section in which Woodley had harshed the Fallon mellow had been cut. Fallon had asked Woodley how she felt about being compared to Jennifer Lawrence, and Woodley did not appreciate the question."

Way to just keep perpetuating the status quo Jimmy. I expect better of you next time!

.....

4. And while we are talking about young Hollywood and gender politics, I have to give a shout out to Scout Willis. Her #FreetheNipple protest against Instagram's censorship (and deletion of her account) has garnered much attention this week from both critics and supporters and is further evidence of our younger generation "connecting the dots between nipple policing and larger issues of gender, sexuality, slut-shaming, victim-blaming, and body politics..." 

Willis is very clear that she’s not a persecuted minority or victim: “My situation was in no way unique; women are regularly kicked off Instagram for posting photos with any portion of the areola exposed, while photos sans nipple — degrading as they might be — remain unchallenged.” Nor does Willis portray herself as a revolutionary, trailblazing savior: “I am certainly not doing anything novel. A group here in New York called Topless Pulp gathers in parks to read topless regularly, and the Free The Nipple campaign has been protesting for the same rights for the last four years. If my coming from a high-profile family could help spread their message, so be it.”  

.....

5.  Yesterday, my five year old daughter asked me if I have a job that I go to. It was the first time she has asked me this and it kind of caught me off guard. I am quite sure of my choices in life, but I do worry at times that I am not DOING enough to show my children that there are other equally valid and fulfilling choices in the world. Last week a study was published about gender roles in the home and the subsequent headlines were making the rounds on Facebook claiming that if Dads do more housework, their daughters are more likely to become scientists and doctors and engineers. I am not one to fall for such blatant click-baiting headlines and neither is my good friend Annie at Phd in Parenting.

Headlines are written for clicks, not to educate people. So when I read the news about this study last week, I didn't jump to write about it right away. Instead, I contacted the lead researcher Alyssa Croft and asked her to send me a copy of her paper and then I read it.

I'll admit I had some questions (or possibly assumptions) going into it. The one question in my mind as I read the study was "did it control for the mother's career?". Sure, it is nice to say that girls whose fathers do more housework are more likely to want to be scientists, but is that because their father is doing housework or is that because their mother is a scientist?

..........

Have a great weekend everyone!

natasha~

The clothes that you wear

A few days ago I was in our neighbourhood cafe around dismissal time for the local junior high school. The cafe is frequented by a lot of the neighbourhood kids and that day was no exception. It was one of our first VERY hot days of the summer and slushy drink sales were at an all time high! I was in line behind two teenage girls ordering said slushy drinks and I couldn't help but notice what they were wearing. One had on a tank top and the typical short shorts that one wears when your hips are still narrow and you are mostly legs and the other was wearing a very loose black tank top that had very wide arm openings that went all the way down to her waist and cropped black leggings. Underneath her tank top, she was wearing a sheer black bra. And in my head, two voices started battling it out. One was saying, "OMG! I can totally see ALL of her bra! That is so inappropriate! Why would her mother let her wear that! Stop staring at her bra!"

The other was saying, "Shut up already. It's hot outside and she is obviously very comfortable in what she is wearing. YOU are the only one who seems to have an issue here, get over yourself. You are not the fashion/modesty/appropriateness police, so just get your coffee and move on lady."

You see, I am a product of my society, the culture that I grew up in and in that culture, a woman's body (regardless of her age), and how she dresses it, are for others to comment on, to admire, to admonish, to assess and to judge. As much as I hate to admit this, a part of me did judge and I felt uncomfortable that I could see so much of this girl's underthings and went to that familiar, ingrained place of "has she no shame??".

I then hung my head in my own shame.

..........

This week my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been filled with story after story of young girls being shamed and punished for what they are wearing. Tank tops seem to be causing the most issues, because of those terribly distracting bra straps. Last week, 28 girls (and two boys - just so no one feels the need to point this out and then tell me this was not about gender discrimination) were sent home from a high school in Newfoundland because they wore tank tops to school on a hot day and this was distracting to some of the male students and teachers. A 17-year old was kicked out of her senior prom because her dress-code conforming fingertip length sparkly dress was making a bunch of 40-something dad chaperones feel uncomfortable and a Utah High school decided to arbitrarily photoshop year-book photos of female students who were showing too much skin.

All of this is happening in the wake of Elliot Rodger and the UCSB shooting and numerous posts being written about the insidious levels of sexism and misogyny that exist in our world. We've spent the last few weeks trying to come to grips with this tragedy and the very real fears that #yesallwomen have for themselves in this world that continues to want to make sure that women know their place in it and know how to dress and behave appropriately in that place, and now this. This shaming of teenaged girls. For what?

Having boobs?

And legs?

And skin?

The message here is loud and clear. YOU, oh girls and women of the world, must be ever conscious of your evil, tempting, womanly ways of instilling lustful thoughts in the minds of others (mainly men), by merely existing in this world. You must do this by covering your bodies, because otherwise, what is presented to the world is obviously meant for the taking. Or the judging, or the leering, or the cat-calling, or the grabbing, or the assaulting.

All these dress-code issues are really just thinly-veiled perpetuations of the kind of culture that we live in that blames girls and women for the thoughts and actions of other people. We have a name for that you know. It is called rape culture. It's the line we often hear that goes... "well, if she didn't want people to look at her like that/touch her like that/make rude comments to her like that, she shouldn't dress like that." It's the cop-out that many people default to when they say, "In an ideal world, it wouldn't matter, but we don't live in that world, so just be smarter about what you wear/where you walk/how much you drink, and those things won't happen to you."

The thing is, we are not talking about dangerous alleys in the dead of night here, we are talking about supposedly safe places like the hallways of high schools and parent-chaperoned prom dances and the pages of school yearbooks. And the people who are having issues and condemning these teens  for their attire are the grown-ups in these situations.  People who are having all kinds of "uncomfortable" feels because they are being turned on by, or disgusted by teenaged girls bodies. So, who exactly is the problem here??

One particular quote from a school board administrator in the Newfoundland case really made me ponder this issue. He said,

"Our focus would be around wearing clothes that's appropriate for a learning environment, making sure that we help students learn that as you transition through school and onto the workplace that the clothes that you wear respects the values of people around you, respects the diversity of the community that we live in ... so it's really about respecting others, as well as respecting yourself," said Pike. {emphasis is mine}

The clothes that you wear must respect the values of the people around you. Hmmmm....

I can see where this statement is true to a certain degree. When my husband and I visited Zanzibar in 2005, I was well aware that the area we were visiting was primarily Muslim. Out of respect for the customs and norms of the local people, I did not go out without covering my arms and legs and with a scarf on hand if I needed it to cover my hair, even when it was well above 30 degrees Celsius. So yes, I admit that there are situations that call for a certain kind of dress code, but the above statement also made me wonder. At what point do people around you respect you as a person, REGARDLESS of what you are wearing? Or is it as Mark Twain said, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."?

Personally, I have to disagree with Mr. Twain on this one. I think that naked people, or naked women to be more exact, have had a big influence on our society. Pick up a magazine, watch TV commercials or browse online for a bit and you will find images of naked women, or parts of a naked woman (because it's not like women are ever portrayed as whole human beings), being used to try to sell you something.

Need a new suit guys?

{image credit: Suit Supply}

A constant barrage of images and messages constantly showing us and telling us that any or all of a woman's body is primarily a sexual "thing", makes it hard for society at large to see women as anything else. It is the reason that Facebook and now Instagram too, consider breastfeeding photos nudity and pornography and routinely remove them and ban the users posting them, yet will leave pages like "Big Boobs", which contains photo after photo of breasts in all states of undress, well enough alone. It is blog post after blog post telling women that leggings are not pants, and tumblr and Pinterest sites shaming women with people posting pictures of strangers to illustrate their arbitrary policing of others bodies. It's Robin Thicke thinking it would be "fun" to objectify women in his Blurred Lines video and not understanding why people were upset about that. While so much of this kind of thinking may be commonplace in our world, none of it is OK or acceptable and we should be doing all we can to challenge and change this status quo.

..........

This past weekend in my city it was the 4th Annual Slutwalk, an event that since it's inception in 2009 following remarks from a Toronto law enforcement official that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized", is pushing out the message that there’s nothing a person can ever do to deserve sexual violence. I did not attend the walk this year, but heard from the organizers about a group of angry teenaged girls walking who got all up in the face of a member of a men's rights group protesting the event. I can't help but feel a bit of hope when I hear about things like that or watch videos from the young, bold, and super smart Laci Green, or read Claire's story about her prom experience, or know what Malala Yousafzai is doing for girls all over the world. Girls are speaking up, are saying ENOUGH and fighting back against a culture that is so reluctant to change the status quo. This new generation of young women, of young feminists, are giving me hope and teaching me a few things as well.

Back at the cafe, once the voices in my head had finally had it out with each other and there was a clear winner - I realized how much I still have to learn and UNlearn in this life. My thoughts were my own and I had to own that and admit my own shortcomings in this regard. And I know I have to do something about that. I have to do it for my children, because they are watching me and like the tiny little sponges they are, they are absorbing all the messages I am sending. What I say and do matters more now than it ever has before. And today's message is this: NO, clothes do NOT make the {wo}man, the person she {he} is does.

Now, go ahead, tell me that my bra strap is too distracting for you.... I dare you!

natasha~

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.