What do Mom bloggers do when their kids grow up?
That magical end-of-summer day has arrived for us–the first day of school. As Mojo Girl starts Middle School, this week feels almost as much like graduation as it does a new beginning (I guess that is why they also call it Commencement). I am relieved, happy, and yes, feeling bittersweet as I see my daughter growing up so quickly. The last two years feel like a time-lapse movie of development stuck on fast-forward. The other day my family was at a store together and as I caught a glimpse of Mojo Girl across the room, it took me a moment to pick her out among the crowd of adults. She’s that much more grown up all of a sudden. When we talk about seeing “eye to eye,” it’s almost true on a literal level now!
So all this brings up a question that has been on my mind all summer, “What do motherhood bloggers do when their kids grow up?” In many ways I feel ready to declare my own personal graduation from motherhood blogging. I don’t see this as better or worse, but just honestly the next step in where I am right now in own my life. It is impossible to hold on to the early years of motherhood forever, and I don’t want to try. I feel like I have been at this for quite a long time, writing about motherhood for the past eight years, and now it’s time for the next generation of Moms to start looking at the same issues though their own unique lenses.
Back when I came up with the idea for Mojo Mom, my daughter had started three-year old preschool, and blogging hadn’t even been widely adopted yet. When I started my website I posted “occasional articles” that had to be uploaded by my website developer. I embraced Blogger as a writing platform as soon as I learned about it, and my first Mojo Mom blog post was September 13, 2003.
As one of the early motherhood bloggers on the scene myself, I have had the chance to know and follow many talented writers, wondering and watching to see what my fellow bloggers do as their kids grow up. Two of my favorite writers, Karen Maezen Miller and Joanne Bamberger, have daughters about the same age as mine, and I can see them evolving and moving forward too. Karen’s first book was Momma Zen, and her new book is a Zen memoir Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, which addresses her parenting life but is not focused on it. Her author website has also progressed from a Momma Zen “Cheerio Road” focus, to a more holistic KarenMaezenMiller.com.
Joanne Bamberger blogs as PunditMom as well as writing through MOMocrats, MomsRising, Huffington Post, and Politics Daily. This year, Joanne created the new book Mothers of Intention: How Women and Social Media are Revolutionizing Politics in America. (In a nice bit of synchronicity, Joanne contributed to Courageous Parents, Confident Kids and I contributed to Mothers of Intention.) She has come such a long way since the early days years ago when I remember she wrote her Column Quest blog (amazing how 2006 feels like The Olden Days now). She had the last laugh with column quest as she blazed a trail that transcended “old media” and shaped the landscape of New Media. And she’s kept her motherhood angle but she has ramped up and reinforced the “Pundit” aspect of her writing as she has developed impressive media credentials.
So I feel my own evolution stirring as my life changes. My daughter is a lot more independent and I don’t define myself by motherhood the way I used to. My defining question in Mojo Mom was discovering “Who am I, now that I am a Mom?” and I know the answer to that now. I am a writer, an activist for social change, a media producer–someone who has many ideas and needs to channel and focus my energies to figure out how to best move forward on all the causes I care about.
I had lunch with my friend Melinda Abrams of the other day–she is a life coach and we were getting together to talk about possible future directions for her work. As we talked over possibilities and strategies, I realized that every word that was coming out of my mouth was advice I needed to act on myself as well. So interesting to see how much more clarity we can get when we look outside our own lives and into someone else’s work–I am glad that I realized that our discussion definitely reflected back onto my own life.
So two things to share out of what I learned that day: Melinda was thinking about the age-old question of “How do I chart my own work when there is so much to do in the world–and I can’t do everything?” My answer from the heart is that each of us has to figure out the work that only we can do, what won’t get done if we don’t contribute, and put our energies there and trust that the other work will be done by other people. I don’t mean outsourcing motherhood but realizing that if I make a dedicated contribution to ending violence, I can trust that other people will work on eradicating hunger, and I don’t have to feel all the weight of the world on my shoulders. I still manage to feel that way a lot of the time anyway, but that perspective helps direct me.
Second, an image came to my mind. (I feel like I am ramping up into a creative time because I have been thinking in visual metaphors lately.) I visualized life as a treasure chest that needs to be moved forward, and all my actions as horses tethered to that chest. If I align my interests close to the same direction, I will make progress forward. Distractions go out to the side as a waste of energy, and bad habits pull backward. But the main insight I needed right now is that even if my activities are all meaningful, if they pull too much in different directions, I won’t get anywhere.
That was one of those “things that make me go Hmmmm,” and the challenge I have been thinking about all summer.
What’s next? And how do I get there? With 24 hours in the day, many family responsibilities, an active and distractible mind (a blessing and a curse when you do internet research), and the work I want to get done, how do I align those priorities in a way that makes sense? The Polaroid image is starting to develop in my mind–and MojoMom.com will continue to be part of the big picture. That is my jumping off point that I will address in my next post, “The Evolution of Mojo Mom.”
Spring Cleaning
Goodbye, crime against fashion, iridescent high-heeled Candie’s shoes from the 1980′s
The past year has been very, very heavy emotionally, 2010 was like a steamroller. It has been seven months since I lost my Mom. I had faith that I would eventually feel better, but it was still as surprise when I actually stopped feeling 100% awful all the time. After six months, when the clouds started to part, I felt like telling people I had been on another planet but now I was back. So I am feeling better, which is great, but I haven’t felt like writing much, which I don’t like. There is still clearly work to be done in the recesses of my mind, but don’t confuse my relative silence for depression.
This week I took a step forward by lightening my load on a literal level, hoping it would help me generate a fresh start in my mind. At the very least I would sublimate all my grief energy into something productive. It was time for a major spring cleanup, and I finally let go of more than 1000 pounds of lifetime accumulated possessions that just we didn’t need any more.
Notice I didn’t say “junk.” My family’s stuff was still not junk to me–these were things that meant something important to us at one time, but now it was time to let go. Throughout my life, I have never lived in one house more than five years, and those moves always prompted major periodic cleanouts, so living in my current house for more than ten years has been a novel experience in accumulation. When we moved to North Carolina in 2000, I was a mother of a newly toddling baby, I expected to teach psychology or neuroscience again, and a second baby was definitely a possibility. It was being a writer than was just a twinkle in my mind’s eye and a few dozen pages of experimental writing that I had freewritten as procrastination and a creative outlet while I was supposed to be finishing my Ph. D. thesis. (That later became my first book, the young adult novel, High Water. And I did finish the thesis on time, too!)
Happiness is a warm puppy...in a newly cleaned mud room
So, the final tally of what we let go was more than enough to fill a small moving truck: a tied-down pickup truck bed plus a minivan load of donations, four bins of paper recycling, two bags of shredding, and an 11-yard dumpster filled to the brim with trash! Yes, the trash felt bad, like a Time magazine article about how much stuff Americans have, but at least we’re not carrying it along unnecessarily in our house any more. Part of me feels like I’ve just won The Biggest Loser: the result feels like freedom, and space to bring in new, good things into our lives.
So look at the snapshot I took of the dumpster load….goodbye, Nancy Drew Cookbook from elementary school, goodbye broken alarm clock, and gross old sneakers that weren’t nice enough for the donation pile. And goodbye, crime against fashion, iridescent high-heeled Candie’s shoes from the 1980′s. I accomplished this clean-out in two days with the help of two talented organizers. I could not have done it without them, and I would not want to try to do it on my own! If you are looking for help in the Raleigh area, I highly recommend Marsha Stayer of Stayer Organizing and Stefanie Watkins of Clever Spaces.
I am ready to move forward while staying in place here in our home, enjoying this feeling of peace and possibility.
For a compassionate, intelligent exploration of related issues of mindfulness, attention as love, and letting go, read my friend and Zen priest Karen Maezen Miller’s lovely book, “Hand Wash Cold.” Karen, your wise messages are finally starting to sink in.
Writing the next chapter as Mojo Mom
My mind has been churning for about six months now, grappling with the question of “what’s next as Mojo Mom?” It has been such a big question that I have hardly been able to write about it yet. I tried to take the summer off but in the process, family caregiving duties became very intense and refused to let up. We don’t always get to choose. (This entire experience opens my eyes to the fact that the illusion of choice is magnified to a blinding glare in our society.) I will write more about that specific issue another time–while I could probably write a book about elder caregiving, honestly, I don’t want to.
The issue of what’s next has come to a head for me, and, I suspect, other writers who started out five years ago or more as “Mom bloggers.” Today I joined in a very interesting talk about The Future of the Mom Blogosphere on The Motherhood.com where I posed my defining question and first reaction:
What happens to Mom bloggers when the kids grow up? What does that feel like, and how do we write next chapters?
Since I have been blogging for about 7 years, life has really changed for me. I have always written about motherhood in the big picture more than my family stories. But even the 10,000 foot view of what it means to be a Mojo Mom looks very different as the mother of a Middle Schooler rather than a toddler. Interesting times–definitely lots to write about. Both of us are getting ready to head out in new directions.
So far there are almost 20 comments in reply, so I felt I had hit a nerve with the question. You can still read the archived chat and even add your perspective there, or here on my blog, of course.
A couple more thoughts for now: one of the first signs that this issue could be a global phenomenon among a certain “generation” of Moms came to me from talking to Karen Maezen Miller, whose fabulous first book was Momma Zen. She could have ridden that wave for a long time, but as a Zen priest her newest writing, her memoir Hand Wash Cold, shows her naturally gravitating more toward Zen and less specifically toward Momma.
Karen’s daughter and mine are almost exactly the same age, so Karen and are hitting similar stages of motherhood at the same time. If you have not hit “age 11″ yet, it’s a trip. They are still kids, yet grown up in ways I could not imagine, and ready to learn so much, and be independent if we can just let them and teach them how to be safe in the world.
Last month, on her blog, Karen wrote more about her daughter Georgia and also reads out loud the Last Chapter from Momma Zen. Karen makes me smile because she reminds me that the Last Chapter is also the First Chapter, the Next Chapter.
So please know that I am incubating the Next Chapter of Mojo Mom. It may come in a form that is slightly surprising, but not unexpected for anyone who has been following my path as a writer. I will give you a hint that tells you a lot about me: I see myself as a writer who aspires to be not Dr. Benjamin Spock, who wrote a parenting column into his eighties (hat tip to Melissa Stanton in Courageous Parents, Confident Kids for that fact), but rather I would like to be more like Gail Sheehy, who wrote Passages in the 1970′s, and many more books on the seasons of life, up to this year’s Passages in Caregiving. (Both authors’ paths are valid. I can just feel it I my bones that I am more of a “write the book I need to read now” kind of writer. Both Spock and Sheehy reached the top level of writing success in their own ways. I should be as lucky!)
I have a good idea of what the next chapter will be, and it is developing in my mind like a Polaroid Picture. I hope to be ready to share more details with you soon.
I am interested for you to tell me, what are your major turning points as a mother right now? What makes you feel differently about life and writing?
Mojo Mom calls 9-1-1 on Moms’ Self Care
I’ve always hated the iconic image of a mother juggling the baby, keys, and briefcase. (In my opinion it was only original once, on the cover of Allison Pearson’s book I Don’t Know How She Does It.)
But I am posting this crazy photo here precisely because IT IS AN IMPOSSIBLE image. We don’t have six hands yet we continually set up unrealistic expectations as if we do.
Right now I feel like I have to make a 9-1-1 emergency call on behalf of all the Moms in America. I have covered a lot of topics as Mojo Mom but I have a continued interest in mother’s self care because I have not seen the needle move very far, if it all, on Moms’ Self Care Reserves in the seven years I have been talking about it. So many of us (myself included, I will admit) find ourselves on square one, trying to find time to eat a nutritious meal without gulping it down, and getting a good night’s sleep on a regular basis. (Now my friend “Momma Zen” Karen Maezen Miller can tell you how to come to terms with the fact that we are always on square one, and how to work with that, much more eloquently than I can. I will accept my own limitations on that topic and recommend that you read her!)
It helps to talk honestly with other women about this issue. My Courageous Parents Confident Kids collaborator Renee Trudeau is a wonderful expert on the topic, providing lots of great advice, motivation and inspiration, as well as guidance on forming your own Personal Renewal Group. And recently I have connected with a new kindred spirit, Dr. Christine Carter of the Greater Good Science Center at U. C. Berkeley. Her new book Raising Happiness covers the science of raising happy kids, including the fact that parents’ self care is an important foundation for any family.
Christine has offered to give a copy of her book to one lucky MojoMom.com reader. Leave a comment either here or on my Mojo Mom Page on Facebook, telling me one specific rejuvenating and kind activity you will do for yourself over the next week, that is, before Memorial Day Weekend, and I will enter you in a drawing to win a free copy of Raising Happiness.
You can also check out recent Mojo Mom Podcasts with Christine Carter and Renee Trudeau.
A quick palate cleansing, brain cleansing, soul cleansing blog post
It’s Friday, the end of a long week. Not really the end, but a milestone reached on the calendar in any case. Yesterday I felt okay but I’ve been going through a soul-draining time. So it was delightful to go check my mailbox and find not one but two wonderful books waiting for me, review copies that I gathered heartily.
I have read Momma Zen author Karen Maezen Miller’s new book Hand Wash Cold as an e-galley, but having it to hold and read as a paperback is a gift. Now I can cozy up with warm paper rather than a cold laptop and read it again. Karen’s writing always helps me reconnect with and appreciate the life I have–ups, downs and all around.
And after all the Frank Deford sexist commentary musing this week, it was a breath of fresh air to discover Courtney Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan’s new book Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists.
We really need more voices from women, young women, and feminists in particular, as recent reporting indicates, including recent Newsweek coverage of the reproductive rights movement that didn’t get nearly enough input from young women themselves, so I can’t wait to dig into this treasure trove.
[I know that Newsweek did a follow up to that piece and I am behind in following the story as it evolved. For more commentary from young feminists, check out Jezebel's coverage and related links.]
Mojo Mom Podcast with Karen Maezen Miller
Karen Maezen Miller has described herself as an “errant mother, delinquent wife, reluctant dog walker, expert laundress, and stationmaster of the full catastrophe.” She’s a Buddhist priest–but she could also be the Mom next to you in the school carpool line.
You may already know Karen as the author of Momma Zen, and now she has a brand new book Hand Wash Cold–Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life. Her writing will help you enjoy the life you already have, which is such a wonderfully sane and comforting concept–just what all of us need in today’s over-scheduled, distracted world.
She’s my guest on this week’s Mojo Mom Podcast, so I hope you will listen in, and watch her lovely book trailer video, too. You can also learn more about Karen’s work at her newly-redesigned website, www.KarenMaezenMiller.com
Here is this week’s episode of my podcast, which is also available through the iTunes Podcast directory:
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Karen’s book trailer is one of the nicest I’ve seen. I feel better just watching it!
Getting my head back on straight!
This past week has been a real head-spinner. I am so proud that we got the new and improved MojoMom.com website launched, but I have not had much time since then to blog or even think!
For the past two weeks I have been in the final, intense phases of book production for Courageous Parents, Confident Kids–nailing down every last detail on the contents and design elements. We’re going to press this week to meet our April 19th paperback and e-book release date. The schedule is coming down to the wire, which was part of the plan to create a timely book, but I really started to feel the effects of the stress this week when I hit a wall of insomnia. When I did sleep I would dream about the book, and when I was awake I would copyedit everything I saw. I walked by a movie poster for the new release “She’s Out of My League” with the tagline, “How can a 10 go for a 5?” I immediately thought, that’s the wrong tag line. It should be “Why does a 10 go for a 5?” (Because you know it would work for a hot girl to go after a not-so-hot guy.) You may agree or not with my edit but the point was that I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about it!
I came across a passage from Henri Nouwen that mirrored how roiled up I am feeling inside. Fortunately this feeling has begun to calm down for me:
As soon as we are alone…inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shuttering the door, therefore, does not mean we shutter out all our inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings and impulsive desires. On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distraction, we often find that our inner distractions manifest themselves to us in full force. We often use the outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises. This make the discipline of solitude even more important. –Henri J. M. Nouwen, Making All Things New and Other Classics
Don’t get me wrong, I love finishing a new book! But it’s such a busy time that it stirs up the mind and challenges me to settle down again. I am hoping to get my wise friend Karen Maezen Miller to come on The Mojo Mom Podcast soon to talk about these issues, which she discusses so lyrically in her new book to be released April first, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life.
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