The Inklings

By On January 11, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Back in the good old days, you may remem­ber, when I first bought this domain and blogged all the time, I was a mem­ber of a book club. I loved it so much, even when I hated the book we read. I loved to blog about what we were read­ing at the time.

Since start­ing to work from home, I have keenly been miss­ing adult inter­ac­tion. Specif­i­cally talk­ing to peo­ple about things that mat­ter, and while trolling the net for like minds is all well and good, I have plenty of friends who love good lit­er­a­ture, and we’re always talk­ing about how the other should read this book or how we need to get together to dis­cuss another book. It just rarely hap­pens, so I took it upon myself to try and recre­ate some of that this year.

I decided that instead of wish­ing some­one would form the per­fect book club — filled with diverse per­son­al­i­ties like Chris, Jeff, Home­birth Honey, and Sarah, I would make it hap­pen myself. Since I already know every­one involved, I am a lot less likely to chicken out, any­way. So I invited 9 peo­ple, and asked them to invite any­one they wanted to join. Every­one in the group is a reader, though some of us sim­ply do not make the time to read that we should.

Our first book is Foucault’s Pen­du­lum by Umberto Eco.  Some of you know I’ve been ghost­writ­ing a book about con­spir­acy the­o­ries (just in time for 2012!) and I really like Umberto Eco.  I guess that is what appealed to me, since it’s on my mind, and I’m not about to waste anyone’s time on The Da Vinci Code.  Also, this book kept com­ing up on many of the “Best of” lists — Best SciFi nov­els, 100 Must Read nov­els, Best books of the 20th Cen­tury.  With such a large group, com­ing up with some­thing that the major­ity of us has not read was a challenge.

The name of the group comes from the orig­i­nal Inklings of Oxford, a lit­er­ary soci­ety which included both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.The orig­i­nal Inklings have inspired me through­out the years, both indi­vid­u­ally and as a group. Still, I don’t know half of those authors half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of them half as well as they deserve.  Or… some­thing along those lines. Per­haps this can help to change that.

If you can’t tell, I’m very excited about this. If noth­ing else, I hope to have, at the very least, 12 blog post top­ics for 2012, one for each book we read.

 

2011 in Review

By On January 1, 2012 · 1 Comment

Last year was a big one for me.  Most of these didn’t feel very mon­u­men­tal at the time, but I made some enor­mous changes and deci­sions in my life. Each of these deserves their own blog post, but at the rate I’ve been going, I doubt it’ll hap­pen. So, here’s the sum­mary of the biggies:

1. I quit my job. This is a pat­tern of behav­ior with me. I was unhappy for a num­ber of rea­sons, some that were the fault of with the work­place I was in, but many more that orig­i­nated with me. Basi­cally, though, I decided life was too short to be that freak­ing mis­er­able.  This one move was the cat­a­lyst for many other changes.

2. I wrote out a mis­sion state­ment.   After I left the job, I took a good month and a half, liv­ing off of vaca­tion time at my old job and other sav­ings, to decide what was next. A big part of this process was more intro­spec­tion that I’m gen­er­ally com­fort­able with. It turns out, love and free­dom are the two most impor­tant con­cepts in every­thing I do.

Writ­ing out my mis­sion state­ment helped me to finally get an idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Not just career, but what my ideal life would look like.  All things in my life will flow from pur­su­ing this set of goals. Because I finally gave this the time and effort it deserved, I got to the root of why my life looked so direc­tion­less. If I hadn’t taken the time for this step, I prob­a­bly would still be stuck in the spin cycle.

3. I decided not to go back to school.  One of the avenues I’ve con­sid­ered, his­tor­i­cally, is going back to school and get­ting that engi­neer­ing degree, or an MBA, or any num­ber of fur­ther edu­ca­tional goals, depend­ing on my cur­rent thought processes.  Writ­ing out that mis­sion state­ment helped me to see why I want to go back to school, and how to get the same ful­fill­ment that I’m seek­ing from fur­ther edu­ca­tion, with­out invest­ing sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time and energy to sim­ply put me back in some­one else’s work pool (and back to dis­em­pow­ered mis­ery) again.

3. I went to work for myself. I per­son­ally can­not stand hand­ing over con­trol of my time, energy, thought processes, moral­ity, you name it. That is the biggest rea­son for my habit of quit­ting jobs.  I want to be in charge of myself. From now own, I’ll at least be able to blame myself if I have to work over, miss an impor­tant date, don’t make what I think I’m worth, or am bored or unfulfilled.

This is risky but huge in terms of my daily peace of mind. For years I resisted the idea that I’m an entre­pre­neur­ial type, because I craved secu­rity, and felt I needed some­one to give me goals.  Turns out a client can proved the sec­ond as well as an employer, and secu­rity is over­rated. The work vac­il­lates wildly.  I have worked on some really fun projects, and some really bor­ing ones over the past six months. Some weeks I dou­ble my old income, and oth­ers, I make noth­ing.  Some­times I get 4 hours of sleep a night because I have too much work, and other times I have noth­ing to do but look for more to do.  I have some things in the works right now that could mean a lot of money down the road, but lit­tle to noth­ing right now.  No mat­ter. I can sleep at night. I don’t cry on my way to work.

4. I wrote a novel.  Yes!  I did fin­ish NaNoW­riMo.  This is the one blog post I’m def­i­nitely going to write later. I learned so much from it.

5.  I decided to try and have another kid.  So far, no dice, and I’m okay with that, too.  We’ll see how that works out.

6. I painted my first paint­ing.  Really, I stopped pro­cras­ti­nat­ing, and started act­ing on those projects that I’ve always wanted to do. I bought a sewing machine and sewed some pil­lows, and then popped five nee­dles in a row and threw up my hands in exas­per­a­tion. I painted our fur­ni­ture to all look the same.  Chris and I put up book­shelves, which didn’t end up exactly like I imag­ined, but is still a source of great joy to me.

Paint­ing was not any­thing I thought I would enjoy, or have any abil­ity at, but I joined a girl­friend for her birth­day din­ner. She wanted to go to a Painted by U ses­sion where we made our own ver­sions of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I had a freak­ing blast, and while no one will con­fuse my art with some­thing actu­ally good just yet, it was amaz­ing to just do it. I bought some paints and can­vasses over the Christ­mas break, and painted my first orig­i­nal for the Spousal Unit for Christ­mas.  I’m going to keep this one up, for myself.

 

 

NaNoWriMo 2011

By On November 17, 2011 · 1 Comment

Yes, I’m doing it, and for real this year. Not like 2009 when I had way too much to deal with emo­tion­ally to write it, and got a total of 500 words down. That said, I have way too much to deal with phys­i­cally this year, but I’m up to 15000 words or so, so it’s much bet­ter than 2009. The pro­jected path if I go at this rate says I’ll fin­ish the last day of 2011, so I’m going too slow. Some­times it’s embar­rass­ing how far behind I am. I have no plot. It’s a huge time sink. I have no idea what I’m doing.

And really, all I want to do is read the next two in the Hunger Games series. I’m not allowed til I get this under control.

I will write more on it later. For now I wanted to post this to keep me hon­est and so I won’t back out.

 

Out of the Darkness

By On October 20, 2011 · 1 Comment

I wrote this Sun­day as a Face­book note. Most of the folks who read this blog know me in real life, too, but the Spousal Unit requested I post it here any­way. Here it is, only slightly edited, mostly to delete names, even though I know it would be rel­a­tively sim­ple to fig­ure out iden­ti­ties if peo­ple really tried.

 

We’re going to spend today in Tuscaloosa for the Out of the Dark­ness Walk. My brother’s birth­day is today, so I decided to do this one instead of Birm­ing­ham. The Out of the Dark­ness Walk is for those of us whose lives have been affected by sui­cide — those who have died, the sur­vivors, and even those who are plagued by thoughts of sui­cide. Peo­ple walk for many dif­fer­ent reasons.

We’re walk­ing for more than just my brother, of course. C’s aunt inten­tion­ally over­dosed last year. We’ve lost far too many fam­ily mem­bers to sui­cide. It’s hor­ri­ble and uncom­fort­able, but I have to talk about it every once in a while. It’s impor­tant. Close friends have had their fam­i­lies ripped apart by this ill­ness. In part, it’s because sui­cide looks inten­tional. We’re pro­grammed for sur­vival, so the mind that can not only con­ceive of self-destruction, but actu­ally act upon it, is a dis­eased mind.

My per­spec­tive on life has vio­lently shifted since 2009. I am much more seri­ous. I no longer can laugh when peo­ple say they’re so frus­trated they want to kill them­selves. I notice with true hor­ror Hal­loween dec­o­ra­tions of peo­ple hang­ing from nooses. For about a year, I had actual PTSD symp­toms. There were times I couldn’t drive because of men­tal images. I still don’t like to dream. In the months fol­low­ing my brother’s death, C prob­a­bly lost his job due to the after­math of deal­ing with the loss and a wife who was absolutely shat­tered by grief.

My brother would have been 31 today. We should have talked on the phone about 4 times in the last month. He should be laugh­ing at all of the Auburn fans and cheer­ing for Bama. But he’s not, and I get sick watch­ing football.

I’ve lost more than a brother. My rela­tion­ship with my fam­ily has been wrecked. With my brother’s ghost haunt­ing every func­tion, I feel a weight on my chest every time I face any­one who knew him. He haunts us. I try to think of the right thing to say and sim­ply find myself count­ing the sec­onds til it is over. Church is also very hard, and as a result we’re cur­rently unchurched. We’re much more aware of the impor­tance of love and grace, and hyper­aware of how absent it is.

But all is not lost. I have learned so much. I have learned who my true friends are, and how to be a true friend. I have learned com­pas­sion and begun on a jour­ney that might actu­ally save my chil­dren from this anom­aly. It’s strong on both sides of our fam­ily, and that’s scary. It is espe­cially scary, since no one will talk about it. That silence per­pet­u­ates the cycle, because peo­ple do not know how to reach out when they feel this way. Even if they do, we don’t know how to pre­vent, cope, or deal with sui­ci­dal ideation.

Com­ing out of my own per­sonal dark­ness has been a hard strug­gle. Because of him, and los­ing him, I love harder than I ever did before.I am more mind­ful. I notice the beauty and pre­cious­ness of all life. I have real­ized that life is too short to waste on things I despise, and when it became clear that my “career” at a dead end job was a waste of time, I was able to walk away eas­ily with­out look­ing backward.

A few thoughts to leave you with:

  • Think before you joke about killing yourself.
  • Remem­ber me, and other sur­vivors. Treat us kindly. We don’t get to grieve the way other peo­ple do, because sui­cide is stig­ma­tized in our cul­ture. If we are excited to actu­ally talk about things, under­stand it is because we often feel we can’t.
  • If you’re about to start anti­de­pres­sants, please get some­one to watch over you and check in often. Don’t go it alone. Read those warn­ings and be truly advised. Sui­cide being a side effect is not theoretical.
  • Don’t be afraid to talk about sui­cide. It’s no more shame­ful than los­ing some­one to heart dis­ease. Lives can be saved when we don’t stig­ma­tize men­tal illness.
  • Most per­son­ally, remem­ber my brother today, if you knew him. If you want to write a note here in remem­brance, that would rock my world. :)

The out­pour­ing of love and sup­port I’ve got­ten this week has been incred­i­ble, and buoyed me up when I felt I was founder­ing. I’m very grateful.

 

Attitude

By On August 11, 2011 · Leave a Comment

This morn­ing I was in a real funk. I was mulling over the mis­aligned val­ues I often aware I have, and was feel­ing real guilt about it. Shad­owhelm had linked a clip of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson talk­ing to Bill Maher about “mort­gag­ing our future”:

I was won­der­ing where it had all gone wrong, and start­ing to indulge in a foul, awful, pes­simistic mood. And because frankly, I knew part of it was a bit of caf­feine with­drawal, I pulled into Seat­tle Drip to get an iced Amer­i­cano, cream but no sweet­ener (happy side note: I’m doing really well on cut­ting out the sugar!), and sat there stew­ing in my mood.

While I’m sit­ting there cussing myself for spend­ing money on cof­fee you could have made your­self, even if it is only $1.91, that’s how many min­utes of work time, is it worth that, T, is it? But you gotta have your fix, don’t ya junkie? Oh, shut up, it’s not that bad, not like your brother. Oh, I had for­got­ten that part of the equa­tion, I gotta make sure the kids don’t get into drugs and under­stand the impor­tance of a clear mind…

See? The mood was really spi­ral­ing out of con­trol, and I was latch­ing onto every lit­tle neg­a­tive thought I could. This is a bad cycle that I allow myself to get trapped in some­times, but then the enthu­si­as­tic drive thru barista dude snapped me out of my thoughts–

“Hey, look!”

“Huh?”

“Look at this, it’s so cool.” He indi­cated the pat­tern of swirly that the cream makes in the cof­fee. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

I laughed; he laughed. He shrugged, “Sorry, I just had to share it.”

Then he walked away to fin­ish the drink up and swipe my card. When he came back, he con­tin­ued, “It’s just so much fun, and the peo­ple out in the cars, they don’t see the neat things that hap­pen in here. So I try to let them see sometimes.”

I nod­ded. “I imag­ine it gets bor­ing in that lit­tle space all day, and you have to find your fun how you can.”

“You know, it’s funny, you can do some really awe­some things with foam. I’m get­ting quite tal­ented with it. But since this is a drive-thru, no one gets to see it, because I have to put a lid on it. You looked like you’d appre­ci­ate it.”

Funk bub­ble burst, just like that. A kid like that lov­ing his job, and putting his all into it, and find­ing joy and beauty, and shar­ing it with me. How can I hold on to that neg­a­tiv­ity?  Yes, those higher, more weighty top­ics, they have their place.  But so does beauty and laugh­ter and joy.   Even if the foam is friv­o­lous, it serves a purpose.

 

Freelance Writer for Hire

By On August 9, 2011 · 1 Comment

Since the last blog post, I’ve fur­ther refined my long term plans and how to get there.  I am doing an old, out­dated ver­sion of Dan Miller’s 48 Days pro­gram, which really has helped me to focus this whole process instead of my usual route of sec­ond guess­ing myself every step of the way. I knew I really wanted to cut the crap, and get to what I wanted. I’m 35, after all. I don’t want to wait until retire­ment to start really liv­ing my goals and dreams.

Writ­ing has always been a part of my long term agenda, just the same as home­steading has.  Unlike being self-sufficient and grow­ing my own food, writ­ing is some­thing I can do imme­di­ately. I’ve got my own per­sonal writ­ing to do, but in the mean­time, why not try my hand at free­lanc­ing? Part of the rea­son I don’t write for plea­sure is I’m not in the habit of it. The more I work on writ­ing, the bet­ter I become, just like any­thing else.  If I am not cur­rently employed on a project, I’ll be in the habit of writ­ing any­way, so odds are, I’ll write.

I’ve had really phe­nom­e­nal results so far. Out of the first 10 jobs I applied for, I got three gigs. I’ve cov­ered a car note so far in earn­ings!  In this amount of time, I had expected maybe $25–50, so I’ve made ten times the amount I pro­jected for the first month. I’m cur­rently booked for one long-term, up to 15 hours a week job.

I have had the oppor­tu­nity to bid on some amaz­ing jobs, too.  Even though I know my odds right now are pretty slim for get­ting some of those awe­some jobs, I still keep apply­ing. I know that after I’ve got more 5 star feed­back, I’ll be more than a resume with a blank port­fo­lio, and more jobs will come in. I’ll be at the top of the com­pe­ti­tion for these neat, cre­ative writ­ing gigs soon enough.

But still — while I’m wait­ing for this busi­ness to grow to a full time job, I am absolutely thrilled because I’m get­ting paid to do some­thing I love.  I’ve never had this feel­ing before. I won­der why it’s taken me this long.

 

Just a phase?

By On June 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Today I’m work­ing on my Mis­sion State­ment. Two years ago I had A Plan to go back to school and get my engi­neer­ing degree. I was gonna work for NASA! Or even bet­ter, Richard Bran­son. What­ever. Don’t get me wrong, I was deadly seri­ous about it, despite my own appre­hen­sions. I really felt like this was it, though, even though most every­one around me nod­ded in sup­port but I could see they doubted. Because of that doubt, my resolve strength­ened. And then, around that time Real Life kicked the CRAP out of me, and I spent a good year reel­ing as my brother died, my youngest got seri­ously ill and spent a cou­ple of weeks in the hos­pi­tal, my hus­band got laid off, and I took on the role of pri­mary Bread­win­ner in the family.

Now I’m back to being at home while the Spousal Unit brings home the bacon.  Bacon is a pri­or­ity, after all, but I’ve never really been com­fort­able being the one who is sup­posed to fry it up. Right now, though, I’m much more con­tent to be at home, for the first time. How­ever, I’m still fac­ing issues of being unful­filled intel­lec­tu­ally, and feel­ing I’m wast­ing my tal­ents. So over the sum­mer, I’ve been dust­ing off my resume, look­ing at mis­sion state­ments and revis­it­ing those dreams and try­ing to take a good long hon­est hard look at myself. It’s uncomfortable.

How­ever, in look­ing at these things, I’ve pulled out old mis­sion state­ments and jour­nals — years’ worth. It’s easy to see, look­ing at it objec­tively. I’ve got themes run­ning through my dreams, and inter­est­ingly, engi­neer­ing (or other career paths) are always obliquely referred to at best. By that, I mean, I’ll say “I will apply myself to my stud­ies and choose the right path” but I never say “I will go to school to become an engi­neer.” I find this very telling. I wasn’t will­ing to com­mit to any of these goals completely.

What is ALWAYS there is fam­ily, writ­ing, and a farm. If you ask me what I would do if I inher­ited 3 mil­lion dol­lars, I know with­out hes­i­ta­tion I’d buy land and learn to work it. I’ve always been envi­ous of those peo­ple who for­sook the city life, com­plete with the rat race and all, and did the Lit­tle House on the Prairie bit.  It just recently occurred to me, which actu­ally strikes me as kind of pathetic, that being a home­steader is actu­ally a job. No, it doesn’t really make income, unless you choose to be com­mer­cial, but it cre­ates food. It feeds your fam­ily. When I was a kid, we had a gar­den, not a farm, but I doubt my mom had to buy any veg­eta­bles all sum­mer. I know what kind of work it entails, and I know I’m woe­fully unpre­pared right now to take that step imme­di­ately, but I’m cer­tain that’s where I’m heading.

To be absolutely hon­est with myself, though, I have to ask the ques­tion: how do I know this isn’t another phase?

To be truth­ful, there is a cer­tain extent that I’ll doubt until I do.  I know that.  Still, I’m cer­tain that want­ing a home in the coun­try, with a gar­den and the trim­mings, is some­thing I want.  I can look at years, decades even, of jour­nals and see the theme. I can remem­ber the pangs in my heart when my Great Grandfather’s land was sold and I was never told it was up for sale, because it was exactly the start­ing point I had hoped for.  I have hoarded bits of info on plant­ing and ecosys­tems and per­ma­cul­ture that I’ve read for FUN!  I didn’t do much actual nuts and bolts read­ing about aero­space or mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing unless I was on track.  I didn’t read about any of many career paths I’ve con­sid­ered, unless I was actively con­sid­er­ing them.  I’m just fully aware now that this is the direc­tion my soul has been YEARNING for. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to me, how blind I was to all this.

As soon as I allowed myself to put the dream into words, every­thing clicked. I knew it was some­thing that could be accom­plished, even though it will be hard, but also that it was right. I had that thing that every­one talks about — true inspi­ra­tion. I sud­denly knew.

The true extent that I’ll be liv­ing as a home­steader is yet to be deter­mined, and how long it will take to get there. There’s land to find and acquire, and there’s bills to pay to get to that point. There’s so much to learn! Skills, knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence, it all seems like it should be so daunt­ing. But I’m not dis­cour­aged or “maybe” about it at ALL. How weird is that? It’s an amaz­ing feel­ing. I don’t know that I’ve ever had it. I’m fully con­fi­dent that it’s a huge part of who I am, and who I will become in the years to come.

 

Buncha meh

By On June 23, 2011 · 1 Comment

I waited for this? She’s launch­ing an offi­cial inter­ac­tive fan site? Oh, she’s par­tic­i­pat­ing in it, so there will be some exclu­sive con­tent. But it doesn’t sound like a web series, even. Also, nat­u­rally, you can buy stuff. How on earth is this as excit­ing as another book? Maybe I’m miss­ing some­thing, but I’m a bit underwhelmed.


The offi­cial press release doesn’t excite me any more than the video. Yet here I am, blog­ging about it, and I’ll prob­a­bly at least explore the site pretty thor­oughly once it’s up and mov­ing. Maybe I should just hush.

 

I defeated Moby Dick

By On May 16, 2011 · 1 Comment

This week­end I accom­plished some­thing that I’ve been half-heartedly attempt­ing for half my life. I fin­ished read­ing Moby Dick! The book was tor­ture, but I read every last word.  (I refuse to skip or even skim the bor­ing parts of books like many peo­ple do.  It doesn’t count otherwise.)

When I grad­u­ated high school, my Grand­daddy, whom I adore, gave me a beau­ti­ful, leather bound, gold embossed copy of the book. He wrote, in his shaky hand, a lov­ing ded­i­ca­tion, and I truly wanted to read and love this book as much as he did. It was my most cher­ished gift that day.  And I’ve tried ever since the next morn­ing to fin­ish it.

At one point in the past week, the Spousal Unit was try­ing to be funny and quipped, “That book’s really your white whale, isn’t it?”

I was glee­ful.  “Uh, no, you just totally mis­used that phrase!  And I can offi­cially mock you for doing so now!”

Or some words to that effect.  Moby Dick wasn’t elu­sive at all. It was sit­ting on my stack of books for years. I didn’t mono-maniacally pur­sue it despite all rea­son, super­sti­tion, and logic announc­ing my doom if I achieved my goal. I avoided it, pro­cras­ti­nated on it, and pulled out every trick in my under-achieving slacker hand­book not to fin­ish that wicked, spite­ful book.

I’ve tried to find peo­ple to com­mis­er­ate with me.  Most peo­ple I know haven’t tried to read Moby Dick, or, if they did, dropped it very early on because of the tedium. I’ve met a few who say they love it that I don’t believe read more than an abridged ver­sion, or saw the movie. Why? When I ask how they got through the ency­clo­pe­dia of whale anatomy, the whal­ing indus­try, and the his­tory of whales in gen­eral, they give me a blank look, or say, “Oh, that wasn’t that much of the book.”

LIES! The over­load of infor­ma­tion, the school­ing in ceta­l­ogy that he forces his reader to sub­mit to before they find out what hap­pens next com­prises at least a third of the book, prob­a­bly half. Ishmael was a bit obses­sive, though I sup­pose he had good rea­son. The bor­ing, relent­less pur­suit of exhaus­tive detail for back­ground infor­ma­tion still could have been con­densed to a few chap­ters, had Melville not insisted on turn­ing every chap­ter into an ode or a dirge.

There are a few souls out there who have actu­ally read Ishmael’s tale all the way through and sin­cerely love it.  My Grand­daddy is one of those peo­ple.  I appre­ci­ate that, really I do.  Don’t tell him, but you can’t con­vince me that it’s not an evil book. Melville admit­ted it him­self, in a let­ter to Hawthorne,

…I have writ­ten a wicked book, and feel spot­less as the lamb. Inef­fa­ble socia­bil­i­ties are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome’s Pan­theon. It is a strange feeling—no hope­ful­ness is in it, no despair. Content—that is it; and irre­spon­si­bil­ity; but with­out licen­tious incli­na­tion. I speak now of my pro­found­est sense of being, not of an inci­den­tal feeling.

You did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you under­stood the per­vad­ing thought that impelled the book—and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imper­fect body, and embrace the soul.

I think I’m with Hawthorne.  I appre­ci­ate the soul of the story, but the whole of the lit­er­ary work was not to my taste. The story, the phi­los­o­phiz­ing, and the lit­er­ary devices are all inter­est­ing, but so ragged and uneven . The lan­guage is fluid and beau­ti­ful. It’s a black, tragic tale of twisted fate, which I appre­ci­ate with all of my soul.  I’ve never had such a love-hate rela­tion­ship with a book, and I hope to never expe­ri­ence it again.

 

 

 

Educational toys rock!

By On May 10, 2011 · Leave a Comment

When an actress takes off her clothes onscreen but a nurs­ing mother is told to leave, what mes­sage do we send about the roles of women? In some ways we’re as com­mit­ted to the old madonna-whore dichotomy as ever. And the madonna stays home, feed­ing the baby behind the blinds, a ves­tige of those days when for a lady to ven­ture out was a fla­grant act of pub­lic exposure.

~Anna Quindlen

Boing­Bo­ing had an arti­cle today about a breast­feed­ing doll. Appar­ently, peo­ple are get­ting all shocked and worked up about it. I still don’t under­stand this. I got bom­barded with it through­out both of my boys’ infan­cies, so I’m well aware of the phe­nom­e­non and the arguments.

“Kids might see and ask questions!”

“My hus­band might see your breast!”

“It’s just gross.”

I never just bared all and plopped my breast out to nurse, not once. I fed my chil­dren every­where, even in the audi­to­rium in church, and usu­ally no one was the wiser. If some­one did, it was because of how loud the kid was, smack­ing and gulp­ing. (Oh, that pre­cious sound. It makes my heart ache to remem­ber it.)  I was dis­creet more out of respect for other people’s sen­si­bil­i­ties than my own, though.

I will admit, though, that there was the time I did acci­den­tally flash some­one one time when I dropped the coverup. The man in ques­tion just laughed it off and looked the other way, no big deal. It’s not really shock­ing that we are mam­mals. If you really feel that EGADS! We must hide the lady bits and not allow the chil­dren to know the shame­ful way we feed the baby! then tough (ahem) cook­ies. You sim­ply can’t nurse a baby with a tod­dler in the house and hide it. You can’t avoid those ques­tions. Plus, you want to teach them about being a human, not let them learn it from some­one who thinks breast­feed­ing is dirty. Being uncom­fort­able with the human body is YOUR prob­lem, not your child’s. Please don’t pass it on.

Yes, breasts are gor­geous sex­ual items. Mine have been worth hours of plea­sure. No mat­ter the shape or size, they are objects of extreme plea­sure and often great visual stim­u­la­tion to your part­ner. But breast­feed­ing? Not play­time. It’s not sex­ual, nor dirty, or shock­ing. It’s beau­ti­ful and won­der­ful and amaz­ing, and to fear it, to loathe the female body to that extent is piti­ful. To not under­stand that your breasts could have dual pur­poses is flat out stu­pid. Other mam­mals are able to grasp this sim­ple concept.

A woman comes equipped to feed her child, and even to the sur­vival of that child when she’s starv­ing at times. So many good things come from breast­feed­ing that chil­dren who get it are smarter, health­ier, and emo­tion­ally bet­ter off. Moms who feed their chil­dren the way they were made to get less can­cer, resis­tance to osteoper­o­sis, a faster recov­ery from child­birth, and a chance to save tons of money and time. It’s some­thing we should cel­e­brate, not hide! No one com­plains about baby dolls com­ing with bot­tles, even though it’s not the opti­mal form of feed­ing. Maybe if more dolls were breast­fed, more lit­tle girls would grow up to breast­feed, and our world would be hap­pier, health­ier, and smarter. Heck, I’ve got lit­tle boys, and they’ll never actu­ally grow up to nurse a child. But if chil­dren see this toy and learn to respect a nat­ural process, and a lit­tle more love and pos­i­tiv­ity towards the female body in a world where body loathing and harm­ful atti­tudes are the norm, all the better.