Feature Interview link
February 8, 2010
For those of you who may have more questions about me and what I do, check out this link to an interview I did recently for the livemom site …
Motherself goes local …
January 26, 2010
Recently, I have felt myself drawn to creating a community of like-minded moms, women who desire to become more conscious and more present to their lives. If you live in the Austin area and feel this same yearning, check out the new motherself group forming soon.
Interfaith Holiday Parenting
December 14, 2009
Feeling the pressure of the holidays yet? If you are involved in an interfaith relationship, this article I wrote recently might be of interest to you …
Appreciating the strangeness
November 26, 2009
Do you ever have moments where you step back and reflect, “Wow, my kids are going to have memories of the holidays that are done this way, with me as the mother.” It sounds like a very obvious statement, but there is something really strange about it, when you allow yourself to fully inhabit this reality. We all grew up with our own family traditions, and we associate the holidays with how we were raised to celebrate them. But as adults, it is not always possible, or even desirable, to recreate or continue these family traditions when we now have in-laws, distance, divorce, or other factors that change the way we do things. So I stop this Thanksgiving and take a look around me: this is the way, so far at least, my kids will remember this holiday.
And I am the adult in this picture. Somehow when I think about Thanksgiving, I still picture myself as the child, sitting in the backseat for the long drive to my grandmother’s house, running around with my cousins and putting on plays, eating lots of dessert and passing out on the way home. I am lucky to have nice memories of this holiday, and I will always treasure them. But now it’s my kids’ turn. It is truly amazing to try to step into my children’s shoes– see the world through their eyes. Wow, I think, they are just taking this all in, going along with whatever plans we have made, finding their place in the way of things. What an incredible experience, to be a child. You never know what’s going to happen next, not really. You understand some, but not all, of what goes on around you, and while you can’t articulate exactly how you feel, you know when you feel complete and happy.
Maybe it’s not so different from being an adult after all.
The difference, though, is that now we do have some choices, which, of course, come with many responsibilities. My intent is to not get lost in all these responsibilities, but to still feel the wonder I felt as a child, realizing again and again that, wow, we are really the actors on somebody else’s stage, not only the central character of our own.
Book Recommendations
November 18, 2009
There are so many great real-life mama stories these days, but some really stand out to me. I will update this list as I find more, but I chose these because they all look at motherhood a little differently–
Momma Zen, by Karen Maezen Miller
Wonderful to read anytime from pregnancy through parenting a young child, this author faces the fear and uncertainty we all feel with compassion and real wisdom.
Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, by Judith Warner
A more sociological and political view of our current culture of motherhood, this book is consciousness-raising and sure to strike good book club debates.
Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, by Catherine Newman
Funny and honest. Definitely a good read while pregnant with a second child.
Confessions of a Slacker Mom, by Muffy Mead-Ferro
I love how these “confessions” give us permission to do what’s easy, instead of always trying to follow the dominant culture’s more perfectionist ideals of motherhood.
