I totally agree feminist mum- we need to embrace partriarchy in order to overcome it, not sit around weighting for perepetia. However, what if the son isn’t yours but you have to live with it? I’m currently in quite a serious relationship with a man and his son is already starting to gender…

Abby and I have developed this highly elaborate game, which combines the childhood games of Hide & Seek and Tag, with a vicious attack scene reminiscent of Alien. It goes something like this: Abby runs up to me with that crazy, “I’m frisky! Look at my dilated pupils and bushy tail” look in her…

You have never seen The Color Purple? :shock: Beloved I can understand because it was brutal. Seriously. So NOT a date movie. With my mother’s permission I read The Color Purple when I was 14. I will never forget the first page. Ms. Walker let you know from the beginning what you were in for and…

Books help to normalize what some would sensationalize. It helps to take the taboo away from what the mainstream calls different and makes children in less conventional families feel validated, which is so important. Children thrive the best when they feel validation. Also, I get very uncomfortable…

I had both prenatal and post-natal depression. I actually did have a home-birth and my midwife’s behavoir during the birth was what started a really terrible bout of ppd (I blogged some about that in this post – http://musings-musings-musings.blogspot.com/2008/06/ah-happiness-myth.html). And I so…

Well, yesterday was blog for choice day and I missed it. But by the power of twitter, and thanks to blue milk, I’ve managed to get my act together in time for today. I have a confession, which is that I haven’t always been pro-choice. To be fair, I was raised as an evangelical Christian and my…

In part one of We Are All Alloparents, I talked about how difficult it can be to get through the day even as a TAB mother of one without the help of alloparents. I’m very much of the opinion that alloparenting is one of many ways to stick two fingers up at the kyriarchy, and probably a feminist act…

I was born to a father who chose not to stay, his departure the resounding chorus of my young life… Why not? Why? The lesson I learned from him was this: we can’t wish someone into being who we need them to be. At fourteen, I was gifted with a stepfather who made a different choice. The one who…

As a writer, I face rejection on a daily basis. People love or hate my work — or worse, they’re indifferent to it. Agents say no, publishers say no, magazine editors say no. What that’s done for me is thicken my skin. (Not thicken my rear end, although some would beg to differ.) My point? Sticks and…

I’m cleaning again today. For the 8,734th time (roughly) in the past three months, I’m cleaning. I’m scrubbing my floor on my hands and knees, I’m vacuuming dog hair, I’m making my toilets sparkle, I’m eradicating any random boy-pee spray from the base of the potty. I’m fluffing pillows,…