I can’t believe it’s been almost a decade since SOAM began. It’s been a wild journey and look how far we’ve come! Thank you for being a part of it!
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Daughters Raising Mothers
My mom died almost four years ago. She had a lifetime of problems (that is probably a gross understatement) and she was a very broken person. Ours was a complicated relationship (also a gross understatement). At the time I brought all her journals, notes, letters – every paper that had helped to define her as a human – home and tried to order them as best I could chronologically into a box. This summer I’ve been working hard on a book about her that I’ve intended to write for at least a decade. It is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting work that is helping to heal my own psyche and that I hope will someday play a role in the healing of others.
The point being that I’ve been absent here because I’ve spent this last week living in the letters of the past.
I’ve brought out the box of documents to find quotes and fill in the blanks for me as I write her story down. I’ve scanned everything relevant and, as a child of a hoarder, tossed everything that didn’t matter anymore. I discovered some interesting things.
My mother never believed she was worthy to be human. She came barreling into the world loud and feisty and those weren’t qualities admired in children in the 1950’s. She tried to fit into the box society held for her – a different sort of shape for a woman, but one that is just as important to us as our physical shapes. If we spend our lives wishing we were a different shape, either inside or out, we forget to find the beauty in who we already are.
In the box I also found a 36-page (single-spaced) letter that my grandmother had written to her aunt detailing her 1958 divorce. On the first page she wrote, “I’ve heard so often how crazy I am, just like my mother and my grandmother, that perhaps I can believe it myself.” And I realized that we have a long family history of trying to figure out where our sanity lies in relation to our own mothers. I spend my life various amounts of afraid that I will lose it like my mom did, or that I will hurt people like she hurt me.
As young women and wives, they didn’t know their own value, constantly putting it aside for the words of another. Their notes and letters indicate that they slowly began to realize that they are allowed to take up space in this world and that this partly had to do with raising daughters.
As we parent our children, we reparent ourselves. Searching to protect our babies from that which hurt us the most, to fill the holes we need filled. We see our babies and want them to know from birth that they are worthy and are allowed to exist, just as they are, in this world. And, slowly, we begin to make those connections for ourselves as well.
So I’ve been thinking this week:
~To remember that anger is just as valuable an emotion as serenity. Anger gets shit done and we need shit to get done.
~That we are all beautiful, and our different gifts come together to make up this whole world that, if we allowed it to work properly, would function in harmony as we each employed our own talents.
~That it is a part of parenting to reparent ourselves.
~That we all walk the heroine’s journey in our lives, learning who we are as we go. And that it can be a lifelong process. And that that is okay.
Love yourselves, mamas.
And hopefully I’ll be back to regular Feminist Fridays next week.
Get Cliterate!
YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS. YOU. GUYS.
Or ladies. OR BOTH!
The Huffington Post has this AMAZING piece on the clitoris complete with the history of our knowledge of it, the anatomy of it, and the political aspect of it. Like. Seriously. You need to read this. And then you need to tell all your friends to read this.
Last night I went to see the Kids in the Hall perform live here in town and Dave Foley did a monologue that began with a statement about the assumption that weight loss is always a good thing (”I’ve just lost 25 pounds. *waits for applause to die down* Could be cancer!”) and ended with him describing a literal river of menstrual blood because he’s “a guy who’s comfortable with menstruation” and if he wasn’t already my hero, HE IS NOW.
I’m writing that bit partly because I’m still high from the evening, but also because GUYS SHOULD BE COOL WITH MENSTRUATION AND ALSO CLITS. And, honestly, so should most women.
So go read this and pass it on. BECOME CLITERATE!
and then they exploited the #mombod
After the weird and sexist #dadbod trend, women tried to take back their right to exist just as they are, mom bodies and all. Which is, you know, kinda the thing here at SOAM. So I have been hanging out on Instagram and Twitter in the #mombod tags and for the most part loving the movement.
But I’ve started seeing something more sinister. People are taking the movement and using it as a way to exploit the insecurities of moms and to make money off their emotional pain. I mean. This isn’t new. It’s the backbone of the fashion and makeup industry to feed off the insecurities of women. But it’s frustrating and makes me a little stabby. Kind of like that time they stole my picture and used it to sell stretch mark cream. SIGH.
So, you know, it’s finals week and I got burned out on graphing quadratic functions so I laid down on the couch and made this (GOD BLESS 2015 AND THE IPHONE). And I AM SO SORRY that it’s cheesy as hell, but it gets the message across. As always, aim for health. But, also as always, never forget that you are beautiful ALWAYS. You don’t NEED to change a thing to be beautiful. You already are.
Single Momming and College (Feminist Friday 5.22)
You probably saw this photo of this professor last week on the internet. A student in one of his classes in Israel had to bring her baby to class, and when the baby started fussing, she made to leave, but her professor took the baby and soothed him and continued teaching. Which is amazing. I think at least six different people shared it with me on Facebook since the photo went viral. Because the opposite situation of this one happened to me just a few weeks ago.
I’m a single mom and I’m trying to finish my degree finally, years after putting it on hold for many complicated reasons. I don’t have many resources to turn to for babysitting and on one particular day I couldn’t find anyone to watch my 10 year old son. Rather than miss valuable information in a math class, I decided to take him with me. I won’t go into the whole boring, overly dramatic story except to say that I had planned very carefully how to keep him quiet for a whole two hours, I understood I may have to leave if he was disruptive, and yet my college broke their own policy protecting parents and refused to allow me to attend my class. It became a kind of a big deal, I wrote letters to about 20 different people in charge of the college and was given several good apologies almost immediately.
But the whole thing taught me a really important lesson about being a woman, maybe especially a mother. You’re gonna have to struggle the whole way. Not only does the necessity of finding a babysitter for my children fall entirely on me, but there aren’t a lot of resources to help a mom through her education. (I also wonder how a father bringing his child to school would have been received – I suspect it would have been honored for being a responsible father. Honestly, the double standard there is just as harmful for dads as it is for moms. To be surprised when a man is a good father is an insult to men in general.)
So when this professor took that child and allowed that mother to continue her education he made a statement. He told her and all women that he values them, they they deserve the chance to learn, that he will help them succeed. He taught everyone in that class that kids are a normal part of humanity, that mothering is a normal part of humanity to be embraced and supported rather than shunted off, out of view of the world. I mean, really, when you look at it from a biological point of view, parenting children is the actual reason for the human race.
I get it that kids can be disruptive. Believe me. I get that. But think how much better the world could be if children were accepted and expected, if moms were supported in their endeavors to better their lives? We need more men like this. Standing ovation to you, Dr. Engleberg. Thank you.
Now. Onto other stuff this week!
Follow SOAM:
~TIAW on Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook.
~SOAM on Twitter and Facebook.
~Participate here on SOAM.
Links:
~People can have misconceptions about miscarriage, and that can hurt. An article from NPR.org that I think too many mamas here at SOAM will relate to. Love you mamas, and your angels.
~This is such an important list I’m gonna save it and link to it permanently.
~Don’t judge people you see based on looks alone. You can never ever know the whole story.
~Learning to love our bodies can be complicated in so many ways. Sometimes they don’t look the way you want, but sometimes they don’t work the way they should.
~Check out the #girls with toys tag on Twitter. Awesome stuff.
See something that belongs in the Feminist Fridays? send it to me either at my email address (theshapeofamother@gmail.com) or over on the Facebook page.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Motherhood changes a person internally and externally. The current societal standards do not accept the outward changes, and they don’t understand the inward ones. To become a mother is to change a person as much as metamorphosis changes a caterpillar into a butterfly. We become unrecognizable. We become beautiful.
Many times motherhood begins with a pregnancy, but as millions of mothers around the world know, that is not the only way to become a mother. And no matter what the method – adoption, birth, IVF, surrogacy – motherhood is the most incredible task we will ever face. And I know many, many beautiful women who choose not to have children by any method, and I love you for being who you are and for knowing who you are and I honor, you, too, on Mother’s Day. For being a mother to your friends or to their children or to your fur babies. Truly motherhood can look like so many different things to all of us.
And then there are mothers, like myself, who do not have mothers. Or mothers, also like myself, who have/had difficult relationships with their mothers. I know how much this can complicate your feelings about this day. I support you and I love you in all your various, conflicting, and very real, and reasonable, and perfect feelings about this day and about your mothers. As I learned while attending Al-Anon meetings many years ago, feelings are neither bad nor good, they just are. You are allowed to have many complex and conflicting and “bad” or “wrong” feelings about today. And you are allowed to talk about them today, on this day of celebration, if you need to.
So today for all the mamas holding your newborns, or calling your grown children, or waiting with baited breath to hold your own child or to hear that a child is waiting for you, for all the mamas calling your mamas, or unable to call your mamas, for all the women who do not call themselves mamas but love their mama friends and family just as fiercely, I want to wish you a beautiful Mother’s Day.
You are beautiful inside and out. Your story is beautiful through and through. Happy Mother’s Day to you, my friends.
Feminist Friday Catch-Up on a Sunday
Found this on the wall at my doctor’s office. <3[/caption]
Posting here at SOAM has been sparse lately for a number of reasons, not to mention the fact that we were hacked awhile back and it's taken a few weeks to get everything back to normal. In the process the site needed a design update which my friend Jen took on because she is amazing – isn’t it gorgeous now? I have some things planned coming up to celebrate Mother’s Day and the beautiful bodies that come with it so keep your eyes open for that, mamas.
~TIAW on Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook.
~SOAM on Twitter and Facebook.
~Participate here on SOAM.
Around the Web:
~People who do not know how the female body works should cease to speak about the female body. Here’s a refresher course on what IUD’s actually are.
~A list of typical “well-meaning” statements aimed at overweight people and what they essentially translate to.
~I am here to ruin your life with the idea that Lloyd Dobbler was behaving totally inappropriately. I KNOW. My heart is also broken.
~Modcloth’s first trans model. LOVE.
~Rebel Wilson is amazing.
~And so is Pink.
~Looking for some ideas for painting your pregnant belly? Check these out!
See something that belongs in the Feminist Fridays? send it to me either at my email address (theshapeofamother@gmail.com) or over on the Facebook page.
Feminist Friday 4.3
~TIAW on Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook.
~SOAM on Twitter and Facebook.
~Participate here on SOAM.
Around the Web:
~18 Inventions By Women that Changed the World
~This woman refused to remove her birthmark. And you know what? She’s gorgeous just as she is.
~This photo was removed from Instagram despite not breaking any rules. Why? Uteruses, man.
~There is a lot of controversy over the word “feminism” these days and most of the time I feel strongly that everyone should make a stand for feminism. But this comic has shown me that things are not quite as black and white as they might seem to me. I hope that someday the word “feminism” doesn’t alienate anyone it should protect.
~These nude portraits of women are stunning. Always remember that bodies come in so many shapes and sizes and all of them are amazing and beautiful.
~I love this.
See something that belongs in the Feminist Fridays? send it to me either at my email address (theshapeofamother@gmail.com) or over on the Facebook page.
Spring Break Feminist Friday
It’s been a crazy week and I’m so sorry I haven’t posted anything. I have a lot of great links for you today, but still no time to make up a post here. Hopefully I will get to do a makeup post on Sunday. But in the mean time I wanted to post a link to this article about a mama who lost her baby. It’s poignant and she says a lot of really important things to keep in mind. Things like the fact that there isn’t a right or a wrong way to look after a pregnancy, and that there isn’t a right or a wrong way to be a mother. Like how even if your child dies far too early you will always be a mother. And how we should stop judging each other. Take a moment today to open your mind to the experiences of others and hold them in your heart. Lift each other up, mamas.
Feminist Friday 3.13
~TIAW on Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook.
~SOAM on Twitter and Facebook.
~Participate here on SOAM.
Around the Web:
~With Leonard Nimoy’s passing, we take a look back at his photographic art featuring plus-size women.
~Emma Watson (actual real life Feminist Queen) said some pretty great stuff on feminism. I’m so glad girls have her (and Hermione!) to look up to.
~Something called a “gentle cesarean” sounds like a beautiful thing.
~A series of photos of roller derby women – fitness can come in all shapes and sizes. And every one of these ladies is BEAUTIFUL.
~This is beautifully written. And if you haven’t yet read Eleanor & Park (or any of Rainbow’s other books) PLEASE DO SO. Eleanor is fat and it’s not, in fact, the focus of the story. She doesn’t become thin or want to. She’s lovable and beautiful just as she is. But grab your tissues, okay, because this book has a lot of FEELS.
See something that belongs in the Feminist Fridays? send it to me either at my email address (theshapeofamother@gmail.com) or over on the Facebook page.