So, this feeling of restlessness and unease troubles me. I keep wondering what the hell my purpose in this life is? I often think that my ideal life is me knitting and sewing and cooking and baking and volunteering and feeding my neighbors and working in the garden and volunteering at school and doing some professional organizing. I say, "if i had all the money in the world, what would i be doing right now!?" and then, as i washed dishes for the 15th time today, i said, "wait a minute, i DO have all the money in the world. Or, at least, there were times in my life when i had all of the money in the world, yet i was still, at the time searching for more." I guess, when i was in the throes of serious attachment parenting and early motherhood when my babies and toddlers needed every single second and moment of my life (author of Hump calls it the DARK DARK days of motherhood), I always yearned for "more". Probably because there was nothing more than nursing, changing diapers, washing faces, cooking meals, making beds, folding laundry, changing diapers, wiping bums....i constantly yearned for "more" because motherhood, in and of itself, the monotony and exhaustion every single day never felt like "enough". What is enough? And now, single and with even less time each day than i ever had before (no breaks in any 24 hour periods now til weekends)...the meaninglessness of it seems overwhelming at times.

Why is this?

Is it because I gave up my career and put all of my focus onto my daughters and my husband and our home and making things comfortable and beautiful and simple in our lives? Was it my lack of connection? Is it my superiority complex, maybe? I just read an interesting book - Positive Discipline - and i see that i have a constant urge for a "project". If i'm not knitting, i'm baking or planning my menu or dreaming up the next home renovation project or doing some kind of a profitability spreadsheet for a new "dream business" or figuring out the numbers on going back to work versus staying home with my kids. I guess i'm a project kind of person. I don't like to sit, idle, unless i'm in the throes of some deep conversation or meditating or knitting or reading.

Being a single mother fucking sucks. There. I said it.

I look around at women who are devoting their entire lives to their kids and their homes and their husbands and i think "what the fuck are they doing?" I wonder if she's ever anticipated what it would feel like and look like when her husband falls in love with a more "suitable" mate and leaves her and the kids. What is her plan?

And just what is one to do when there's no backup family support system and working full-time isn't really an option? I tried to go back to work and lined up all of my daycare with backups and more backups and two weeks into it, had a crisis at home and had to leave work to put out the fires. What happened to my career? It suddenly, abruptly, unhappily, ended all over again. I'd only been there for 2 weeks. I had no seniority. I had no benefits. I had to go home to take care of my children. So, here i am again.

my first post

So, i'm considering starting a blog...i need to write...and i've wondered what to call it? Considering my budding career as a professional organizer, my past career as a scientist, my experiences as a doula and a La Leche League Leader, my interests in environmental education and policy and voluntary simplicity and Living a Not So Big Life and sex-positive education and Attachment Parenting and Positive Discipline and knitting and sewing and cooking and baking....hmmm...where to start?

So this first post will just be a random explosion of thoughts and ideas. It'll be a place to start organizing some thoughts. Maybe from them, i'll post differently each day.

Right now, i'm a mama. I make lunches at night and set the breakfast table for the morning and run the dishwasher and bath and lotion the kids, brush my teeth with them and lay with them and read stories and talk through the day til they fall asleep. It's an easy nighttime routine. I wake up, i make beds and get dressed and make a fabulous cup of coffee for myself and M and make breakfast and pack lunches and clean dishes and wash laundry and drive kids to school. And i knit a bit. I get little A at school early and big E a bit later. I fill the gap with special time with A. We do a fiber arts class some days. Some days we read in the library. Somedays we do little.

I'm at a place in my life (aren't we all?) when i'm wondering just what the fuck i am doing? Where am i headed? Where have i been? Is this all there is? I try to embrace being a mother and doing this mostly on my own (with M by my side) with parenting breaks on the weekend when i'm essentially living the single life. It's a shitty dichotomy. It's unexpected and sometimes i'm just not sure what to make of it. I try to embrace the change and enjoy the many unexpected gifts that come with and from it. But some days it just smacks me in the face and it's overwhelming. And i wonder how i got here....and where i'm headed, and how i fit into this whole picture.

I'm reading a book called Positive Discipline by Jane Nelson. She has her Ed.D. and she's a mother of 7 and she's "done it" many different ways...parenting, that is....more on that later...

And i've always been of the "Intuitive Parenting" mindset, meaning i thought i'd never read any books, i'd just parent intuitively. It worked and sometimes it didn't. I listened to my babies and my heart and i parented my daughters intuitively. We slept with our babies in between us and E told all the other fathers he encountered that cosleeping and breastfeeding was really a great thing for families. It felt right to me and they seemed to thrive. But, somewhere along the way, it really all fell apart. Somewhere in it all, i got lost. It wasn't the babies or the parenthood or the kids, i now realize. But it certainly contributed.

So this is a place where i'll write and sort things out and forge some new pathways. I'll vent. I'll write really edgy things that will make lots of people uncomfortable, which is why it might have to be called tmi.blogspot.com or something like that.

Perhaps i can give appreciations to all of the people who need it and don't ever get it. Maybe i can help a bit. Give guidance and reassurance to others. I'll explore the ways i could have found support and ventured into uncomfortable places. I'll try to own the nasties. I'll imagine how couples and families relate and communicate and what lessons i've learned, the models i had, the turns and twists where it can go downhill.

I try like hell to live in the moment and not look at yesterdays with regret and try not to worry about the future. It's always interesting to spend days with someone who tells you "not to worry" yet also tells you that you're always dwelling on the moment you're in yet also tells you not to live with regrets. It's challenging to hear shit and criticism every day and not really know how to get up and above it and out of it, yet always be bearing the weight of the sadness and depression at the same time.

I guess this'll be about believing in who I am and exploring all of the ways that I'm in the right direction and place in my life. I started that sentence with an "i guess". That sure doesn't sound terribly confident. Hmmmm....it's time to get out of here and pick up little A. Another day of putting the needs of my children first in my life. Isn't that what being a parent is really about most of the time? We choose to have babies because we want to enjoy them and watch them explore their world and be kids and grow. They're here to remind us that life is really about spending time with people we love and to eat and drink and tell each other how grateful we are for all that we have and sit in the comfort and discomfort of the interactions we have with them. We can escape it all by going going going and working working working and shopping shopping shopping but the projects really just take us away from ourselves and our families. And really, at the end of the day, who's there for us?