motherhood seems to come with inherent questions to be faced daily, whether we realize we are facing them are not:

are we to measure the truth of what we read against the truth of our own experience, or are we to measure everything we experience against the truth of what we read? motherhood is not without its sacred texts or its powerful experiential learning. how can we weave these things together into an authentic version of motherhood, or moreover, an authentic way of being human?

on most days, for me, experience trumps book knowledge. i tend to draw much of my parenting tendencies from my own experience of being a child. there are many things about how i was raised that i want to duplicate for my children.  i expressed one of these ideals in my post about neighbors, in which i called to mind a time when “there were no scheduled play dates or activities. our parents simply let us loose to waltz through each other’s back doors and live out our days covered in sweat, mosquito bites, and melted popsicle juice.”

but a comment on this post reminded me that we cannot simply transplant the parenting habits of decades past into our lives without having wrestle with our fair share of questions. lane writes:

“I am challenged to find a balance between encouraging the friendships and life lessons of playing outside and the very real dangers that lurk in the spaces that we cannot supervise. How old to ride a bike on the street without a parent? How old to walk four houses down alone to play? How reliable is the adorable dog playing in the yard across the street? How well should you know a family (neighbor, classmate, whatever) before your child has unrestricted access to their house?

A Lebanese coworker of mine commented how Americans are the most generous nation of people to respond in a crisis, but as individuals, we keep our doors locked tight (figuratively and literally!). We DON’T typically know our neighbors, and we often don’t bother to try. I wonder how we can manage to be both at once?”

these are excellent questions, lane, and ones that move me out of the state of idealistic nostalgia and into a more real and complicated place. in fact, this is the place to which i keep returning, whether i want to or not. this place seems to be on the way to everywhere else i want to go. it’s a place of CONSTRUCTION.

what's a blog post w/out a cheesy stock photo?

i started this blog because i perceived that there is a gap between our cultural models of motherhood and the kind of mother i aspire to be. after looking high and low for models, mentors, and reading material to fill this gap, i realized that no ready-made solution exists. i will have to build one to suit me. we all will. so much of a mother’s job is construction.

and here, in the gap between the outdoor play of past and present and in response to all the questions about bicycle boundaries, strangers, and yard dogs, no ready-made solution exists. again, i will have to build one to suit me. we all will. so much of a mother’s job is construction.

i admit that i would often rather settle for a ready-made model and avoid the messy work and on-the-job training involved in building something new. but just knowing that there are other women out there donning their hard hats, scaling towers of literature, and descending into their own histories, actually makes this motherhood experiment fun. i’m so grateful for the company of so many who are committed to crafting something that is good and real.

there are exciting things in store for this blog. my graphic designer is working hard on a custom header, background, and avatar (what the heck is that?). my html literacy is also a HUGE work in progress.  so… please pardon the chaos while i orient myself to the strange world of “tags,” “widgets,” “plugins,” and my new best friend: “wordpress for dummies.” and stay tuned for some aesthetic improvements.

this is a MAKESHIFT revolution after all!

the mothers of invention segments of this blog will feature moms who are using the resources they have (tin foil, computers, education, intuition, empathy, scotch tape, etc.) to do everything from potty training toddlers to excelling in their workplaces. their common thread is the search for balanced lives for themselves and their families, not the lives prescribed by the narrow models of motherhood that currently exist.

this is revolutionary for two reasons:

1)the people highlighted on these pages are not (nor do they aspire to be) martha stewart, sarah palin, hillary clinton, or june cleaver. they are a far cry from the iconic mothers, homemakers, and business women whose lives have become the fabric of many women’s self-expectations. our mothers of invention do not necessarily see themselves as revolutionaries or radicals. they are simply authentic and at peace with a middle-ground sort of life. the real revolution comes when these stories become the cultural norm, and these types of women are recognized for their innovation.

2)the mothers of invention series will display a variety of life-giving models for motherhood in hopes that these models will be used to construct new, more realistic expectations. often, women are our own worst critics as we try to patch the gap between our ideals and our realities by putting one another down. there will be no deconstruction here. this is a space for building each other up.

stay tuned to learn about the real lives of moms who are also, among other things, yoga teachers, counselors, potters, fitness instructors, photographers, and writers. if you want to nominate yourself or a friend for our mothers of invention series, check out the sidebar to the right of this post. there you will find links to our questionnaire and instructions about the nomination process.