You know how, when you buy a blue car, all of a sudden you see all the blue cars on the road? Apparently this phenomenon has a name, it’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or frequency illusion. It occurs when something you've just noticed or learned about suddenly seems to appear everywhere. It's not that the thing is actually more common, but rather that your awareness of it has increased, making it more noticeable. THIS IS MY LIFE RIGHT NOW. (No, I didn’t buy a blue car, but I've always WANTED...
about 2 years ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader! It's Susie here, and I've got some exciting updates to share with you all as we head into the summer months. As you may have heard on today’s podcast episode, Raising Boys in a Patriarchal Society, this will be the last full episode of Rebel Mothers before I take a break for summer! I’ll release another short episode next week to let listeners know what I’ll be up to this summer, but I wanted to let you all know first. First things first, I'm thrilled to announce that next week...
over 2 years ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, Last week on the Rebel Mothers podcast, we discussed boundaries in motherhood and I shared a few questions that I have when thinking about boundaries: How do we maintain boundaries without shutting people out? If humans need MORE connection, what role do boundaries have? Is there necessarily a conflict between the good of the individual and the good of the collective? And if so, are boundaries the way to go about solving that? How much is our obsession with boundaries influenced by...
over 2 years ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader! When I was deep in my mothering crisis (questioning why I felt like my work had no value, why I felt so invisible in the world, and why motherhood was so freaking hard), I knew that in order to go forward, I had to start by looking back. I wanted to look back at all the unconscious lessons I had learned while growing up, recognize the conditioning I had absorbed about what it meant to be a woman and mother, and uncover deeply held biases. (Sometimes I wish I had just taken up...
over 2 years ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, My daughter was doing homework recently on the structure and elements of a story. She had to point out the setting, plot, conflict, and of course, the main characters. In her homework, the main character is defined as “The star of the show. They are the most important person or animal in the whole story. Just like how YOU are the main character in your own life story, the main character in a book or fairy tale is the one we follow and care about the most.” The main character gets...
about 3 years ago • 3 min read
Reader, I'll be honest, in the weeks approaching Mother's Day, I felt a lot of pressure to write something meaningful about the holiday. Maybe examine the emotional labor of mothers, or talk about how what we really want is policy change (have you been following the #phonecallsnotflowers campaign on Instagram?), or just express my appreciation for all the mothers in my life who inspire me. But Mother's Day continued to loom and I continued to dither instead of write. Well, that's not entirely...
over 3 years ago • 2 min read
I love watching certain TV shows with my 13-year-old son because they easily introduce some potentially challenging topics for conversation. He and I went through the entire series of Friday Night Lights series last fall and it sparked so many excellent talks about high school, relationships, respect, hard work, sex, drugs, abortion, racism, and more. We would sit side by side on the couch, sometimes I’d be scratching his back or playing with his hair, and when a topic came up he’d either ask...
over 3 years ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, There is a quote that I refer to freqeuently in my work: "In order to collectively figure out how to sustain and support our evolving species, in order to participate in and demand a society where people help to create each other instead of too ofern destroying each other, we need to look at the practice of creating, nurturing, affirming, and supporting life that we call mothering." ~Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines This is it. This is what...
over 3 years ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, When I talk about the social structures that shape motherhood, I’m talking about the cultural beliefs that affect our everyday mothering experiences, whether we know about them consciously or not. It’s the ideas and conditioning we grew up with that define how we behave as mothers. And often, with the structures of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism, these cultural beliefs end up making motherhood harder than it needs to be. So what about religion? Religion itself is...
over 3 years ago • 2 min read