a liberated life?
my post today is an essay i wrote for a fabulous blog project called “a liberated life.” vanessa and sarah solicit and post essays wherein women of every age and stage chronicle their joys and concerns along the path toward liberation.
here’s an excerpt, but you’ll have to scurry over to “a liberated life” to read the rest:
Liberation, as it turns out, is not as simple as a dream job or a grad school diploma, or a positive pregnancy test, or a happy home. In fact, I cannot even begin to envision what a liberated life might look like for today’s mothers, whose souls brim with enough passion and opportunity to fill a warehouse full of moon bounces and inflatable slides. There is an anxiety that comes with motherhood that has far outgrown the widespread dreams for balance and the tired juggling metaphors. Scientists study it, and talk show hosts allude to it, but this anxiety, for the most part, remains undefined.
how would YOU define a liberated life?
Tags: blog project, concerns, joys, liberated life, liberation, vanessa and sarah
March 10th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
at the moment… i have no idea. but, i really enjoy hearing what other people have to say. i have been experiencing more of the mothering anxiety lately than i normally do, and it is a difficult struggle to even know what to do with it, much less understand what it is fully. i do know when i experience too much mother anxiety at one time, though, that it begins to have a negative affect on me and the kids.
March 11th, 2011 at 8:57 pm
A story in lieu of an answer. Not even a story, but an account of one day …
I celebrated our Ash Wednesday eucharist and realized after it was over that I received neither communion nor ashes.
4 hours spent at the children’s hospital for one of my own kids, not a pastoral visit (all is well, but it’s a lovely place that I’d just as soon never return to).
An afternoon of post-anesthesia with two boys who wouldn’t watch TV because the clock on the dvr didn’t have a 5 showing. I wanted them to break our house rule, and they wouldn’t.
“Freedom” (is that the word?) to slip away from the family to sit in the back of a church for their Ash Wednesday Eucharist where I received ashes, eucharist, and somehow, surprisingly, a bit more.
March 11th, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Also, your piece is lovely. Moonbounces …
April 25th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Love the excerpt and I look forward to reading your whole piece.
I am not a mother myself, so I can’t speak to mothering anxiety. I’m no stranger to other kinds of anxiety, though, and my definition of a liberated life would be one where we’ve freed ourselves up from our fears and limitations. It’s a topic that’s near to my heart as well, and I’ve been exploring it on my blog, The Liberated Life Project.