perspective

My best friend sent to this me a while ago. First, it made me grumpy. Then, I was still grumpy and has a case of the "yeah, buts..." Finally, I have opened myself up to the possibility of another truth. Everyone needs a friend like mine - willing to point out your BS and challenge you, but also able to step back when needed. Thank you.

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Ho Mama! A Blog for Slutty, Single, Low-income Moms

There just aren't enough Mommy Blogs out there written by slutty, single, low-income moms. So here I am to fill in that gap.

One year to the day from meeting my daughter's dad, we had a three month old baby. How slutty is that?

I've been married twice, but have seen no need to coordinate marriage with conception. I mean, really, why complicate things?

When I got pregnant, I was living in San Francisco. Upon discovering my impending BabyMama-hood, my female roommate kicked me out into the street. My male roommate, her boyfriend, went along quietly. (She seemed to think he had a crush on me).

This action would have been illegal if I'd been on the lease. But I was merely a sub-tenant. A serf. And now a pregnant serf with an $8 an hour job in one of the most expensive cities in the world. A city with a 1% vacancy rate.

Never fear, though. Slutty, single, low-income moms are nothing if not resourceful. I brought my premature baby (all five pounds of her) home from the hospital to an SRO hotel in the Tenderloin.

My daughter didn't come home to a crib or a nursery. But you know what? She didn't seem to notice. Perhaps cribs and nurseries are more for parents than for babies. Hmmmmmm.

Anyway, I did manage to find some cardboard cut-outs of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet to tape to the walls. But my daughter was much more fascinated by my face and voice than by any baby toys or cutesy decorations.

Feeding her was cheap and easy. My breasts pumped out a steady supply of milk. Feeding myself was a bit trickier. It's quite a hike from the Tenderloin to Whole Foods, especially with a baby strapped to your chest. But we managed.

I couldn't cook in our hotel room - we didn't have a refridgerator or a microwave - so I had to eat a lot of raw fruit, roasted peanuts, and protein bars.

Anyway, the lobby of our hotel was filled with loitering male prostitutes looking awkward and vulnerable in their lipstick, dresses, and cheap crooked wigs.

The hotel was owned by a large extended Indian family who did a lot of cooking. They filled the building with the sweet spicy smells of cinnamon, cardomom, chili, and cloves.

Ruffled looking men and women, in various states of intoxication, knocked on our hotel room door at all hours of the day and night, begging for money.

It was one of the happiest times of my life. My daughter's dad was able to pay our rent at the hotel, so I was able to stay "home" with her. I was in seventh heaven.

Once a week I went to a new moms' support group in a neighborhood about 2 miles, and a million light years, from the Tenderloin. Only one of the moms in the group, besides myself, was single. But she seemed to want nothing to do with me. She was fairly high-powered. She had a first class nanny picked out and living-in with her already. She clearly wasn't one of "those" single moms. And certainly not slutty. I got the distinct impression her child was conceived both expensively and immaculately - with a sterile syringe.

The rest of the moms in my new mom support group were financially secure college educated women, happily married to magnificent brilliant college-educated men, who were the most eager and devoted fathers in the whole wide world. Gag.

As you can imagine, I felt right at home.

And this may be the trouble some people have with Mommy Bloggers. Because, let's face it folks, not all Mommys are created equal.

There are, in this culture, Good Mommys and Bad Mommys.

The Best Mommys are married, upper-middle class (or better), have a college degree, worked before staying home with the children, speak english, and are both white and heterosexual.

Good (not Best) Mommys may be black (non-ebonic speaking) or hispanic (english speaking), or Asian (english speaking, culturally assimilated). But the income, education and marital status is non-negotiable.

In "liberal" communities, the sexual orientation may be negotiable, but in too many parts of the United States, it is absolutely not.

What I ask Mommy Bloggers to remember is this: If you are a married, educated, financially secure, upper middle class mom writing a blog directed at other married, financially secure, upper middle class moms, please acknowledge the fact that you are in the minority.

And you are EXTREMELY privileged. Motherhood is never easy. In your case, however, it is EASIER than it has been in any other place on earth at any other time in human history.

When you are writing about the struggle to keep romance in your marriage while toilet training a toddler, or about choreographing your child's social life on the playground, or about trying to maintain the brain cells you worked so hard to accumulate in college -please take a second to acknowledge the rest of us. Acknowledge the vastly different levels of struggle we face. And if you can, acknowledge it without judging us.

We're your sisters, too: the single, the slutty, the low-income, the illegal, the lost, the struggling, the uneducated, and clueless. We love our children just as much as you love yours. We want every bit as much for our babies as you want for yours. We are exactly the same in those ways. We just don't have (or get) all the props.

Can you be a good mother if you can't afford a crib? Can you be a good mother if you can't figure out how to find a good husband? Can you be a good mother if you never finished high school? If you can't speak english? If you live in a developing country? If you're homeless?

If not, why not?

How much is the ability to consume related to the ability to mother?

These are the questions that lurk between the lines of the typical Mommy Blog.

The Mommy Blogger's voice is privileged and rare. It can be a funny, entertaining, and enlightening voice. But it mustn't be used to drown out the voices of the vast majority of mothers on this planet.

Most mothers on the earth today are poor, uneducated, and deeply in love with their children. And they are buried in shame and silence.

So Mommy Bloggers, please - take a moment to look and see the mommys who ring up your groceries, who clean the toilets at your children's preschool, who empty the waste baskets in your husband's office. See them, notice them, reach out a hand.

They are Mommys, too.

Is Your Marriage Making You Sick?

Is Your Marriage Making You Sick?

I think this is highly relevant to step-moms. I like the idea of thinking about hurtful comments as preventing healing.

'I need to think about what I'm doing to my health and my partner's health and make sure I'm fighting well to stay well.'

*waves*

So I'm still here... Alive and kicking. Things are better. I upped my anti-depressants, and even though it's supposed to take a few weeks for things to start working, I feel 100% better. It's made a huge difference. Even though my goal was to go off of them, I have to recognize when I need help. I was miserable before.

Thank you for all of you comments, support and suggestions. Husband and I are in counseling. We actually share a counselor - sometimes we go together, other times in separate. It's pretty unusual to have the same therapist for each person AND to see that person for couples counseling, but it works for us. I've made a commitment to go every week for the foreseeable future. I think it's what my brain needs. Husband went two weeks in a row, and then will be going back next week. It might be time for another session together - because while we aren't fighting all the time, there's just this lack of energy that I don't like.

I am ready for change in my life right now. I'm currently on a waiting list for nursing school - at which time I will have to give up my full-time job. Not having income worries me, but I am so anxious to get back into school. I spent 2008 doing pre-requisites for the program and before that I was in grad school for 2 years. But I haven't really gone to school every day since my undergraduate days. I think it will be a nice change of pace. OF course, homework and tests will be icky - but I will be one step closer to my career goals. Crossing fingers for an earlier start date for nursing school - I'm ready to dive in.

I was catching up on my step-mom blogs today and read something from The 3-for-1 Deal. I really liked it and it summed up how I feel most days:

I started talking about how hard it is for me to feel like an outsider at times, and uncomfortable in my own home, not having control over schedules and my life.

I feel very powerless many times in my role as step-mom. There are things that I can control, but many things that I cannot make decisions about. I've been more open about talking with the older kids about this feeling and how challenging it is to be a step-mom. I'm trying to find that balance between sharing my experience with them and overburdening them. I generally let them come to me and ask questions, and then I take the time to educate them. One day at a time.

mistake

What if I made a mistake? A huge unalterable mistake? One that I can’t take back… ? People might say that it’s reversible, maybe you just got it wrong. But it feels as permanent to me as if I killed someone. That finished. That done. That complete.

He says I’ve given up. That I’m not trying. Are you kidding me? I’m trying everyday. Maybe it’s the meds. I pretty much off my anti-depressants now. The smallest possible dose that they make – split in half. Maybe that’s why things are so sideways. Maybe it’s my fault for trying to go off them. Maybe I was fooling myself into thinking that I could live without them. I just wanted to see what my brain, my mood, the real ME was like without the drugs in my system. Is it my fault? Or were the cracks already there? Is there anyway to repair them?

It feels like there’s no release valve. No way to stem the pressure. Like there is this rush of water coming, and I’ve got nowhere to direct it and I have to just stand there while it rises around me.

Am I really that demanding? That insensitive? That unaware? I don’t feel like I am. Ugg.

How did this get so out of hand? When did it go so wrong? When did I stop being happy in this marriage? And love? It’s buried somewhere underneath, and that’s why I don’t give up. That’s why I don’t just throw in the towel and say that we tried but it’s just not there anymore.

Maybe it’s the depression.