Why a(nother) Mommy Blog?

I have been asking myself, why a mommy blog? Why motherhood, to launch me into this world of blogging. I am much more than a mother, aren’t I?

Motherhood has changed me. It is easy to be radical and to forge your own way when its just you, no strings, no responsibility. Deciding to be the primary steward and nurturer of a new human life, to actually choose to create that life and take all the responsibilities that go along with it is taking a nose dive into the meat of life. It has been about learning what it takes to be a part of a multi-generational community while holding my own; living in the real world, not just within my radical cohort. It requires soul searching, at least for me it does.

I am all about change. But no longer can I take off when I want change, crashing on couches, hopping on boats headed to Alaska, living on the road in Latin America, drinking myself silly. Now I take responsibility. Now I grow roots. Now the change changes course toward the inner. My hero’s journey has moved inward, into private life, no longer discovering myself out there, but in here. Now that is some hardcore work.

Then comes this sort of feeling of isolation, but the funny thing is that I am isolated with millions of other parents. Who said the private had to be so private, anyway? It is a whole new sobering perspective, an eye opener. It is a new site to from which to struggle. Even growing up in poverty with a single mother, I did not really know this life until I lived it. But then my life as a single parent is not the same as my mothers.

What are my intentions with this blog? It isn’t documentation of Ramona and my life, that would be too boring. It is not to rely on this forum as my sole writing practice or my primary source of dialogue and wisdom-sharing between friends and strangers. Hopefully these things will happen to some extent spontaneously, but my main reason for starting this blog is to empower myself as a cultural critic and activist. More and more, I feel the need to shore myself up against certain elements of society and social norms that say and do the darnedest things to those of us raising kids. I also write because I am a natural born philosopher. A brain can go crazy with too much philosophy and theory swimming around. I was going to try to spare this blog, but I just have to let it out!

I write because I wonder if there is anyone in the world like me. The discourse I hear in the world isn’t me. I don’t connect. So I write a different discourse in privacy, and fling it anonymously into the cyber world. Are there any other parents crazy parents like me? The funny thing is that when I open my mouth, with conviction about who I am and what I do, I am almost always surprised to find how uncrazy people find these thoughts and ideas. Maybe all the rhetoric is just rhetoric and maybe I can connect. Of course I live in Northern California.

Today is the first Petaluma Park Day for Unschoolers and Homeschoolers. Somehow I spearheaded it. I tried to plan it for months and never was able to pull it off. Then it happened organically, spontaneously. That is sort of how my writing is, I try to write and am not able to pull it off, then one morning I sit down and crank out a blog post in 40 minutes, like right now. I think it is about self-acceptance. Writing from the heart, not what I think I should be writing. Philosophy from the heart. Inner wisdom more than outer wisdom…