Why is it still socially un-acceptable to discuss your personal financial security as a married woman?
I’ve had two conversations in the past couple months that have set off a bit of a lightbulb in my brain when I realized that it still isn’t socially acceptable to discuss your personal financial security as a married woman. I will tell you why that’s not cool. (Beware of gendered language ahead…)
How do I navigate the murky waters of family-of-origin stories?
I loveloveloooove my big wonderful blended family, but I get weary of the conclusions people jump to looking at us. That’s a whole lot to explain, but sometimes people jump to conclusions that downright offend me — sometimes they feel like micro aggressions. Anyone else out there with wild and wonderful families that have found a way to navigate the murky waters of introductions/family-of-origin stories?
Breast pumps & messy rooms: The newborn photos I wish I had taken
When my son was born I was already a photographer. I knew I wanted and needed to capture these first few precious weeks. So, apart from arranging for a photographer to come and take a few, I also prepared all my gear and resolved to practice taking the most perfect newborn pictures.
What I didn’t know then was those “cute-baby-on-a-white-blanket-curled-up-in-a-perfect-pose” pictures would not be the ones I will treasure in five years time.
How to communicate with your partner when you’re bad at expressing yourself
I’m bad at communication (like really, really bad). Even if I can bring up the courage to talk to someone I never know exactly what to say and I struggle to figure out how to express what I’m feeling. That’s when I started to write letters to my partner.
Postpartum anxiety, devastating prenatal diagnosis: What to expect when parenthood isn’t what you expected
The thing is, no one really knows what you should expect, when you’re expecting. More often than not, the things you experience as a parent are not what you expected. Sometimes they’re beautiful. Sometimes things are not so wonderful — Postpartum Anxiety. A devastating prenatal diagnosis. An abortion… So, what do you do when pregnancy or parenthood isn’t what you expected?
Becoming a wife and mother: What’s going to happen to my identity?
The kind of questions my husband and I get are totally different. People ask him, “Are you ready to lose your freedom?” while people ask me, “Are you ready to be a mother?” Maybe it’s just the way these jokes and comments and questions stacked up, but it doesn’t feel like I can just “lighten up.” Any confidence I had in myself to ignore what people were saying quickly dissipated, and one of my newest and biggest worries was born.
As I grow in my relationship with my husband and future family, what’s going to happen to my identity?
How a deceased fantasy writer helped me explain death to my 4-year-old
Death is a scary question. It is the scary question. It’s your first real encounter of the inevitable as a child; the day you realise, because you live, you are going to have to die. Petrifying! I didn’t want to dismiss it with the old Catholic one-liners that I was fed as a child, but I didn’t want to traumatise my child any further with whatever half-baked, uncharted belly flop into the pool of hippy parenting my brain was feverishly trying to piece together.
Do my interactions with strangers shape my toddler’s view of gender?
Three years and a thousand miles away from my graduate program and the endless discussions on what it means to resist dominant discourses of heteronormativity, I find myself tempted to cut the curls I adore. I believe that little boys should be able to have flowing tresses and that rosy cheeks and pink pajamas are not the property of femininity. And yet, I get tired of correcting all the well-meaning strangers who compliment my child with the wrong pronoun. And despite myself, I wonder what message Morgan learns from their confusion.