Hey all.
Sorry bout that silly title. This has been a really difficult post to put together. It's taken me a couple of days, so I'm a little loopy. The above mentioned beer is definitely deserved.
Let's get started, shall we?
I've been a reader of mommy blogs for about two years now. I read other varieties of blogs too... I read teacher blogs and food blogs and gossip blogs and fashion blogs. Sometimes I even read finance blogs, but that's only because I have this false vision of myself as a well rounded person so I force myself to try to care about things like finances and stocks. (Which, by the way, never works. After years, I still don't know what NASDAQ stands for and I'm still not totally confident that Dow Jones isn't a person.)
ANYWAY, in my 2 years of blog reading, I've noticed that somewhere in their archives, most mommy bloggers have a post that either proclaims or rejects themselves in relation to the term "mommy blogger". It seems that the term carries a negative connotation- like we're all just a bunch of silly smitten mommies who feel a need to share with the world the mundane routine of life with our wonderful snot nosed brats.
So, mostly because I am a smitten mother who feels the need to share with the world the mundane routine of life with my snot- nosed brats, I don't have a problem with the term mommy blogger. In fact, I'll go ahead and piss off a couple of feminists and say that in my opinion, it's partly the fault of the feminist movement if people perceive modern day mommies as bubble headed martyrs. I'm not sure when it happened- maybe when more women began entering the work force, but I believe that it started becoming so that just being a mother wasn't good enough anymore. I think it became this larger than life thing and mommy martyrdom took over. Maybe it was because the traditional stay at home mothers felt excluded when mothers began entering the work force. Or maybe it was because the feminists felt that the stay at home mothers needed validation. Or maybe the feminists and all the working mothers wanted to include the stay at homers. I don't know. All of a sudden it seems that parenting was being defined, and studied, and theories were built on it, and there were books and magazines and methods and kids no longer just played at each other's homes, no, they had playdates and parents had to worry about quality time versus quantity time and blah blah blah blah blah.
I think it's all silly. If you know me, you know that the only method I follow is the KISS method- Keep It Simple Stupid. I feed my kids, I bathe my kids, sometimes I play with them, sometimes I tell them to leave me alone, I laugh with them, I take them to school, I help them with their homework, and I keep my fingers crossed that I am raising polite and pleasant children who will hopefully become happy and productive members of society. I do all this with the knowledge that it's all a crapshoot anyway, because you know...... The Butterfly Effect and all. My power is limited. My control is limited. It's in another's hands.
Anyway. Back to my point.
Since the term didn't bother me, I wasn't going to write a manifesto-like post defining myself as a mommy blogger or not. But then I read this post at HerBadMother, and I am telling you, this woman always makes me think long and hard about things. She pointed out that historically there has not been a public forum for women to discuss their experiences of motherhood- in most cultures it's been silenced in one form or another. She pointed out that when people sneer when speaking of mommies and mommy work, it's because historically this was not usually work that was revered. It's been labeled as silly, mindless, endless, not life important- just necessary. And I started thinking, "Hey! Yeah! What is up with that?" I thought about all the times that the "sneer" is obvious- from snarky radio dj's to people in the grocery store rolling their eyes at me when I'm trailing a load of kids, to the most loathesome reference to kids that I've ever heard: "crotch droppings". (Actually, that'd be kind of funny if it wasn't so derogatory.)
So, for the sake of standing up to the sneer, it looks like I'm writing that post after all, the one where I claim the term "mommy blogger". Here I am. I am a mommy blogger, but don't you dare sneer at me. You can sneer at my content, that's fine. But don't sneer at who I am. Because this is really the hardest work I've ever had to do. It requires the most patience, the most risk, the most fear, the most willingness to, as the quote says, "let your heart go walking around outside your body". I'll spare you all the speech about what parenting takes out of you, partly because most of you have kids and you already know, and then partly because those of you who don't have kids don't need the whole martyr speech.
I hate the martyr speech.
Can I just end also by saying that I live everyday with the full awareness that someday the children in my life are going to grow up and leave? I know that this is just what I'm doing now. In the long term, this is just a little precious piece of time. I know I have to keep in touch with that other person inside me, the one that was there before the kiddos came along. The one that likes to read and think and be creative. She's really the reason why I write- and she's the reason why I don't just write gushing posts about my kids. I write about cooking and books and faith and loss. But yes, I write about my kids too, because they happen to be my job (my heart) right now (forever). But when they leave I'll need that other me around. Until then, I feed the beast with the writing of these stories. So don't sneer at this mommy blogger okay? Because there's nothing sneer worthy about motherhood, just like there's nothing sneer worthy about any job that anyone takes to their heart. If it's in your heart, then the story is worth telling.
I think that's my new motto.
You all have a good night.
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