I feel most powerful when

• I forgive
• I rock the balance between assertive and vulnerable
• I accept help before I desperately need it
• I honour my needs
• I indulge my wants- just a little
• I feel my creative juices flowing
• I enact a spiritual truth
• I help a friend in need
• I find the synergy between disparate elements
• I am in tune with my body
• my intuition is clear

Thanks to O magazine and this post for the inspiration

*image credit

7 things I CAN’T live without

The Universe has a sick sense of humour.

Over the past 5 years I have come to depend on food. I have always loved eating. (I’m a Taurean – sue me!) But it was my Stepford wife transformation when I moved in with my husband that inspired me to learn how to cook.

Cooking, ah I love to cook. I make fortnightly menu plans. I visit the green grocer, deli and butcher. I cook from scratch at least 6 times a week – not including lunches which can range from honey sandwiches to lemon Parmesan pasta. I even have a menu chalkboard.

Cooking is multi-tasking-goodness; relaxing, fulfilling, nurturing, practical.

Now I enjoy cooking more than eating. I love the process. I love hearing my 2-year-old say ‘Mum this is DELICIOUS!’. I love that when my husband is down he asks for a cake.

So imagine my surprise devastation when my morning sickness not only stole my appetite, but my desire to cook!

Cooking is almost a chore now. The smells of cutting fruit for my son is enough to make my stomach lurch and flip. Ironically (or sadistically) I still love my food blogs, reading recipes and food porn. It is just real produce that makes me ill.

This isn’t the first of my loves that the universe tampered with. Some I fight for – the ones I won’t live without – some I have willingly let go.

1. Sleep - Since half way through my first pregnancy a full nights sleep has been allusive. I compensate with naps.
2. Alcohol - You know the walk your talk thing? Self destructive behaviour and cocktails till 2am was fun, but not helpful for a natural therapist. Plus I have been pregnant or breastfeeding for 3 of the past 4 years. So a vodka to calm the nerves it out of the question. Thankfully I have also let go of hangovers.
3. Music – I still love it. This one I’m fighting for. Every now and then we get some real music in around Playschool albums and ABC Classical. I still get to concerts (about 2 a year) but I’m not on the dance floor these days. This is one I can’t let go.
4. Tea – I am still a tea-a-holic. In fact I probably should belong to TA (Tea-drinkers Anonymous). I can’t let go of my teacups, high tea, daily cup[s], but these days I am a connoisseur of decaf and herbal teas. Bye-bye caffeine.
5. Girlfriends - Never. Ever. Giving. Up! I have one girlfriend close by, one the other side of the city and one interstate. If it weren’t for Facebook, Email and cheap domestic flights I would be screwed.
6. Space - Personal space. A space for me in my house. Head space. I’m not prepared to let them go, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at me – if you can see me beyond the toddler crawling all over me.
7. Reading - I don’t really have scope to lounge around reading novels (or text books) any more. But I have my [sneaky] ways; I read late at night, I read blogs, I read Ebooks on my iPhone. My reading obsession is still alive and kicking.

What can’t won’t you live without?

*photo credit

Rant

Ok, I know I’m pregnant and therefore a little more volatile emotional. This isn’t about my pregnancy (one would hope no one ever makes this mistake with me). This is one of those ‘unspoken’ injustices that women face whilst pregnant. Something that makes my blood boil.

In the US a woman was refused a single glass of wine, on the basis that she was pregnant.

EXCUSE ME?!?

If you have ever been in public with a sizable baby bump you will have experienced the way society seems to consider you public property. People stare. People ask improper questions. People touch your belly without permission. People [try to] make decisions for you. It is ridiculous, ludicrous and at times offensive.

For some reason society at large hasn’t come to grips with what we won waaaay back in the 60′s; A woman’s body is her own. Full stop. No debate.

Adults are considered capable of, and responsible for, acknowledging and managing risks in their lives. To drink or not to drink. What diet and exercise is appropriate. To drive or not. To base-jump or not. What drugs (prescription and otherwise) to consume. How much sleep to get. Each of these decisions have risks, health implications and consequences.

We trust each other to make these decisions daily. Unless you are a pregnant woman.

Should we prevent pregnant women from buying Nurofen because it can seriously harm a developing foetus? Should Sushi Train discriminate against pregnant women? Should Coles prevent you from buying soft cheese if you have a baby bump? Some essential oils are considered an abortifacient, so should pregnant women be denied perfume in case they catch a whiff of Clary Sage?

Yes I am getting extreme. I am trying to make a point. My pregnant body is still mine. When my child is born it will be entrusted to me, it’s mother. I am capable of making proper decisions about my body and my baby. You wouldn’t dream of interjecting about what foods a mother feeds her baby, or what she consumes whilst breastfeeding so extend the same courtesy to her when she is pregnant.

Of course there are 2 sides to any story;

Do you feel a misplaced sense of responsibility for pregnant women (or the children they are carrying)?

Or do you wish people would leave well enough alone when you are ‘expecting’?

*This is the blog that sparked my wrath and I got the pic here

More certain, not more prepared

I was a super prepared mum-to-be. Borderline obsessive. My midwife commented a number of times during my labour that I was simply ‘too composed’ for a first time Mum. My birth was so tranquil that no one knew when I had hit transition.

I had done my homework and yet there were a million things I was totally blindsided by. The baby, for one. His Daddy placed him on my chest and I was shocked. Where the hell did this little person come from and why was everybody looking at me, waiting? Then there was the placenta. I have to birth that too? Now?! Can’t I have a rest first? Then there was the size of the placenta – it was over 2kg (that is over 4 pounds)! Then there was the blood, the hemorrhoids, the discomfort of the first feed – I thought I birthed a baby, not a damn vacuum - and the contracting uterus.

Then after it all, everybody went home. And left me alone, in a dark room, with a newborn baby. Suddenly my preparation came sharply into perspective; I was about to climb Mt. Everest in a sundress and my supplies consisted of glossy magazines and a picnic basket. I was beyond screwed – I had screwed up. I hadn’t had any sleep in over 24 hours, I had exerted more energy than I knew I had and I was now responsible for a human in its most vulnerable state. I did the only thing I could do.

Me: You can’t go. I have no idea what I’m doing!

Midwife: (Smiling) You will be fine.

Me: No, seriously, no-one would have trusted me with a newborn yesterday – what’s changed?

Midwife: Try to get some rest. When he stirs breastfeed him. Change his nappy if he needs it. Press the call button if you need to.

That night certainly wasn’t the last I have laid awake confused, overwhelmed, scared as a parent. There is no terror more potent than fearing for the health/safety of your child. And yet, I signed up for round two. Am I more prepared, you ask? No, not really. I have just come to realise there is no greater privilege, joy or fulfillment for me than to utter the first words I said to my son; ‘I’m your Mummy. I’m going to take care of you. And you can be anything you want to be.’

Goodbye foundation

Yesterday some of the bloggers I read religiously began “No Makeup Week”. Not as a protest, but as an exploration of beauty, makeup, self-esteem and the status quo. You can read their posts here & here.

Skin care and makeup is a timely subject for me. My skin at the  moment is absolutely radiant. So much so that it is fooling (much to my delight) people around me into believing that I am well rested, healthy and stress free. I am getting comments like ‘Gee pregnancy really agrees with you’ , ‘Look at you, you’re glowing!’ & ‘You look fantastic!’

No, I am not well rested. Yes, I still vomit every day. And I am certainly not walking on sunshine. But you would think so or why else would my skin look so nice? For some reason society has trained us to believe that healthy skin is the holy grail. Skin takes a beating when we are tired, stressed, run-down, not eating well, ill with the flu, on medication, exposed to polluted air. ’Good’ skin is hard to achieve it has become an unconscious barometer of how we are ‘doing’. With the odds against us most of us have given up entirely on healthy skin and instead invest in serums, foundations, concealers, bronzers, primers, shimmers, recovery gels and the list goes on.

Makeup was originally designed to enhance a woman’s natural beauty. Skin care was designed to maintain our natural complexion. Somewhere along the way we learned that a flawless matt finish constituted beautiful skin. At some point we began viewing freckles, lines, god forbid wrinkles as the enemy. And some clever marketer convinced us that to look ‘natural’ we needed 12 different products.

My glowing skin was not inspired by a marketing campaign, a beauty editor or retail therapy. I simply wanted to feel more feminine. I wanted to do something for me. I chose skin care that was natural and that would feed my skin in a deep way.  My whole skin care routine cost less that $70. As a result I am getting no end of compliments (after 1 week of usage), I really do feel more feminine and I have stopped using foundation entirely.

My relationship with makeup changed when I stopped trying to fake my femininity and started to honour it.

*Photo credit

Day from hell! Part 2

Remember Day from hell had last week? Well it was actually more hellish than I described. You see there was another minor complication that I wasn’t at liberty to discuss. So let me fill you in.

During the 2 hours of tantruming I was also vomiting. Nothing drastic, no food poisoning, my body just doesn’t seem to appreciate food at the moment.

Then there was the getting dressed. I was having the mother of all fat days! I thought my tummy looked podgy (more so than usual) and flabby and nothing fit me. I tried looser clothes and then I just felt like a slob. I slammed wardrobe doors and literally sat amongst a pile of discarded clothes and cried!

The carrying of the bleeding and broken child home was also more difficult as well, because I had a hell of a bruise on my right elbow. Not from being a klutz; though I am un-coordinated and I would forgive you for believing it was self inflicted. I had had a blood test the previous day and the pathologist had hyper-extended my elbow and stabbed me as deep as possible to extract the blood. It would have been quicker and less painful to punch me in the nose and try to catch the nose bleed.

Finally to top off the day my two year old called me ‘fat’. I nearly cried (again). He called me ‘Fatty-Patty’. To check that he wasn’t just rhyming nonsensical sounds I asked him what it meant. He replied “Means you eat too many cookies like Cookie Monster.” Nope, not nonsensical silliness, real two year old logic. *Sigh*

So if you haven’t yet put the puzzle pieces together I’ll spell it out for you; As of today I am 10 weeks pregnant. [Double points for those who guessed it from part one.] Pregnancy is not the easiest time for me. (Before you tell me its all in my attitude – yes, I am holding space for it to be easy and breezy.) I am certainly not part of the glowing skin, beautiful hair and radiant brigade. I am more of the vomit from dawn to dusk, cravings and moods swinging wildly type. You will get to hear all about it in the coming months – just you wait.

*Photo credit

Thank Fuck for girlfriends…

…and their ability to remind me that life is unedited. Long, labour intensive and full of challenge. Oh goody!

There is something special about a close female friend. Yes, I have close male friends (well had, but we will get to that later) too, and they are fantastic in a whole other way. Male friends give me the best hugs; remind me there is something solid and grounded and strong around to hold onto. Female friends hug me less and embrace my heart more. Sigh. Girlfriends love me enough to know they can call me on my bullshit and that I won’t be offended. My girlfriends know when to cry with me and when to point out the crocodile in my tears.

My girlfriends are my girlfriends precisely because they have similar hearts. They are ‘my people’. Similar but different – they have varied perspectives. Many of them directly contradict mine, but that is to be expected when you are the hippy leftist that hangs out with conservative lawyers. Sometimes i find it laughable that two of my besties (of over a decade no less) are lawyers who between them will have more degrees than the average graduating class. But I digress. They know how to talk my language, to direct my flow of thought; they reveal myself to me in conversation.

Heart conversation is such an intrinsic and divine feminine act, talking to each other’s souls through our personalities. There is no mistake when we feel some divine presence when we really share ourselves with girlfriends in conversation. We feel it, because it is divine. Sometimes I can see us as ageless crones passing divinity back and forth between us as words.

I cried. She laughed. I said ‘but’ and she kindly pointed out my resistance. She saw my claws and my soft underbelly and she recognized herself. She told me what I already knew. But hearing it from another, somehow, made it different. She told me I had to learn to be infinitely open and infinitely loving. She told me I needed to soften.

I washed the tears from my face when I washed my hands, because really, every life changing conversation is interrupted by a toddler crying ‘Toilet time!’ Isn’t it?

*Photo Credit

Making room at the table

Standing in the ruins of gender roles, nuclear families and male dominance I am experiencing a backflip that I never would have anticipated. I am a woman. I am a feminist. I am a mother of a son. I love my husband. I have been vocal and active in women’s issues since I was old enough to participate, much younger than many would have liked. Injustice irks me. I have a stubborn, and at times irrational, belief that the world should be fair, equitable, respectful, even and just. This was the fuel in my feminist fire.

Now 20 years later I am faced with the repercussions of a movement I have wholeheartedly supported since I was 6. The changes feminism & affirmative action yielded (increased rights for women, increased participation in the workforce, autonomy over their bodies, a belief that they can be anything they want to be) are positive and necessary but they aren’t the only consequences. Gender roles are crumbling and the traditional patriarchal power of the male is diminishing our men are lost and looked over or lashing out at women in insidious or overtly violent ways.

Since the 1980′s when women’s liberation started gaining exponential ground a few other things have been charging along aside it. Violence against women has increased since the 1980′s and no one has a clear indication as to why. The media’s generic ideal of beauty has steadily become less and less attainable while it has become more expensive and more painful to achieve. Popular culture has adopted a soft core porn sensibility and pornography has become more extreme casting women in scenes where they are sexually abused, unfulfilled and humiliated. Marriage is on the decline, perhaps because women feel less obligated to play their part, but perhaps because more women are tertiary educated and successful and thus find it difficult to find a suitable mate.

Why is it harder to find a suitable mate? This is my major concern as a mother of a son; as women have made giant leaps forward our men seem to be floundering. Boys are left in the dust by girls is all levels of education from primary through to tertiary. Statistically men were hit harder in the GFC than women and of the industries set to boom in the coming decades most of them employ a vast majority of women. Whilst women are more likely to become depressed than men, men are less likely to seek help and more likely to suicide as a result. Parents are, for the first time in history beginning to prefer girl babies than sons.

So whilst women still have ways to go to reach equality, I think all of our children would be better served if we looked to create a bright and equal future for girls and boys. Because the rights of one group should never come at the cost of another. If we haven’t learned this, then history has taught us nothing and we are no better than sexists and the bigots that fought to preserve the good life for white men alone. I have every intention of teaching my son how to respect a woman, how to appreciate her for what she is and not how she compares to props in porn videos, to listen to what she says and to acknowledge her boundaries. I will also be teaching him how wonderful he is in his own right, how to work, live, love and compete with his equals (male and female), how to ask for help when he needs it and to not accept injustice on the basis of gender.

*image credit

Is objectification a prerequisite for sex?

“I have no problem with women objectifying men in ads, or men objectifying women in ads. Because, really, the only reason we [humans] are still here after 65 million years, is because someone has been shagging.”  - The Gruen Transfer.

I’m sorry, did I miss something? Since when was objectification a prerequisite for sex? Is it because I am a woman that sex to me is more than visual attraction and physical possession?

Need I be terrified that men today subscribe to this theory that in order to perform a most intimate act, which is at its heart prone to our deepest vulnerabilities, they must first objectify their partner and presumably protect their manliness? Have I got it all wrong? Please tell me I have it all wrong.

I understand that sex isn’t always a beautiful thing. Sometimes is it about pure base attraction, heat, pheromones, friction, sweat and climax. Great sex for the sake of great sex, is still great sex. But can it really be great if it is essentially one object fucking another? Barbie and Ken in the sack was never the hottest idea.

Something tells me that our pop culture adopting the values and aesthetics of soft porn may have something to do with this theory. And really, the Gruen Transfer is a show about advertising and we all know that the advertising industry have been justifying the proliferation of the male gaze and over-sexualisation with the simple catchphrase ‘Sex sells”. The prude in me asks; at what cost.

Everybody with two grey cells to rub together knows that the brain is our sexiest organ. If it weren’t then natural selection over the past 65 million years would have produced an aesthetically superior race by now. And that simply isn’t the case. So, how is it that a comment about objectification on a national TV program so flippantly accepts objectification as a part of sex?

For me all I hear are warning bells. Are our young women growing up understanding the in order to be attractive (and receive physical love) they must come pre-objectified; spray tanned to within an inch of their lives, hair highlighted, teeth bleached, hairless except for that on their heads, carefully styled to appeal to the narrowest possible idea of sexy? Are our young men growing up understanding that in order to be a man they must act like the degrading assholes you see in most porn these days (professional or amateur) and order women around, ‘take’ all three orifices available, include ‘light’ bondage and spanking and end ejaculating on her face?

How oh how can we restore intimacy to sex? I think it begins by reversing the over-sexualisation of our youth, introducing instead real sexual education (i.e. something more than sex is bad and dangerous don’t do it), by adding erotica to challenge the stronghold [mostly] degrading porn has on the ever-growing market, and by individually asking more for our partners. If it is normal these days to objectify, demean, humiliate in our sex lives then I say let’s do something radical like honour, respect, and worship in our sex lives too.

*Photo credit

Writing mojo

I am finding it really difficult to write at the moment. Interesting that my writing mojo seems to evaporate directly after 21 days of the Bindu Wiles 21.5.800 challenge.

Part of my difficulty writing is because recently I have been afraid to write. Terrified of noting down that was knocking around inside, words are power you know. Part of it is that it’s not appropriate to share what is in my mind and heart at the moment. Part of it is that my creative energies are being funneled off in a different direction. I already know what happens when my creativity finds a muse.

It happened a few years ago. I thought there was something very wrong with me. I was young, in a blissfully happy partnership, loving my work. My creative juices were flowing in my work. I had just begin teaching meditation and leading a spiritual development group. Spiritually and vocationally I was alive; on fire. Sexually, I was dry as a bone.

I couldn’t work it out. I knew this happened sometimes to women. But older women, right? Not me. Not at 23 for fucks sake! Yeah I have some crappy sexual history, but it wasn’t the cause. Though my body betraying my mind and refusing to become juicy, that sure and hell bought it up. To this day I find it ironic that being unable to be sexual bought up sexual shame. (But that is another post for another day; how women seem to take responsibility for, and find shame in, our sexuality regardless of whether we are over or under sexual.)

I was lucky at the time to have a sage on my team. A wonderful woman who has decades of learning (and teaching) on me and is all too generous in sharing her wisdom. I had her to go to. She taught me to heal my sexual shame, with my partner, by tapping into our collective shame embodying it completely. A truly harrowing and healing experience. She also explained to me the nature of my creative feminine power.

I learned then that my creativity can do more than one thing at a time, but it [I] can’t serve two masters at once. Instead I do one well and feel stifled in the other. Then it was grow into my new role and vocation I did well and sex that was stifled. Now, my creativity is busy and writing has become the other.

Uncomfortable bedpartners: Motherhood and Feminism

There is nothing about this subject that isn’t controversial. Everybody has an opinion. everybody has a mother, everybody knows mothers, everybody has direct experience with working mothers, stay at home mothers and children. Everybody has a vested interest in the next generation being large, healthy and productive members of society.

Despite everybody’s vested interest, we are willing to lump the responsibility of raising the next generation in the laps of the few willing to take on motherhood. Any yet, despite this seeming imbalance everybody seems to have an opinion, a judgement on how those mothers are carrying out their role. That makes ‘Motherhood’ dangerous territory.

With, quite literally, millions of people judging you and your performance as Mother and no KPI’s to guide you, except for pleasing everybody and their disparate demands of what Motherhood should look like (and even what motherhood feel like), being a ‘good’ mother is inherently impossible and ultimately guilt ridden. How can it not be when we fail in every single moment, by someone else’s standards?

Feminism and motherhood have always had a rocky relationship. Motherhood really is at the heart of many of the difficulties women as a collective face. These difficulties have led to imbalance and feminism seeks to eliminate the imbalances in society based on gender. So, Motherhood seems to be the elephant in the room. If women didn’t have burden of motherhood then their participation in the workforce would be higher, it would be more continuous (no pesky maternity leave to contend with), we could just tackle equal pay and housework and everything would be dandy. Oh, except if women as a collective didn’t have the capacity to bear children we would be men – and masculinity as the sole focal point of society is what Feminism is fighting, isn’t it?

Feminism is fighting for the rights of women; for the recognition that women are equal to men, irrespective of the inherent differences between the sexes. Irrespective of our responsibility to birth the next generation.

I am a feminist. I am a mother. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. It is possible to be a ‘good mother’ and a ‘good feminist’. We just need to get on the same page. Feminism doesn’t just serve women by eradicating ‘gender roles’ and making way for women to enter the workforce. Feminism serves women by highlighting the injustices women face in gender roles and in the workforce and working to eliminate these injustices.

I was sent a link by the lovely Elle from GenYElle to an article in The Australian about Elisabeth Badinter’s book Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, that will soon be translated to english and available in Australia. Badinter raises some excellent issues that plague motherhood. But, for me, many of her conclusions are ill thought out and some downright selfish. She points out that extended breastfeeding ‘deprives [couples] of their romantic relationship, and especially their sex life’ as though we are comparing apples and oranges. As though romance and WHO recommendations for child nutrition are equally important.

The decision to have a baby naturally is also not always a ‘moral’ either; there is more to natural birth than elevating oneself in the eyes of fellow mothers. Natural childbirth has drastically lower complication rates for both mother and child. And I see nothing unliberated about making an educated choice about our bodies and following it through with conviction. I agree with her assertion that we over police women during their pregnancies, but stop short of suggesting it is a sound or even liberated decision to smoke or drink whilst pregnant. It also strikes me as odd that she is almost flippant at the ineptitude of fathers ‘Of course men are deficient. So we expect the state to fulfil its duty as equally responsible for the wellbeing and education of the new child.’ What the? Isn’t it the role of feminism to encourage equality?

All in all Badinter raises issues that I believe need to be discussed. Society at large needs to be aware of the real experience of motherhood. The truth of motherhood that isn’t all sunshine, lollipops and Huggies ads. Liberation is being valued and recognised for who we are and what we contribute, not putting our wants (alcohol, partying, romantic trysts) before the needs of our children.

Having said all of this, I simply cannot wait for her book to be released so I can read it in its entirety. It is no doubt a book worth reading.

Bulletproof

‘I’ll never let you sweep me off my feet’ - Bulletproof, La Roux

I love old movies. Especially film noir. The femme fatales, like their compatriots in other films of the era always fell in love, but unlike the other heroines (Audrey, Marilyn) they fell despite themselves. These women didn’t want to fall in love.

Actually the femme fatales (my favourite of which was Rita Hayworth) actively tried not to fall in love. They schemed, they evaded, they manipulated, they two timed, they played men off one another, they emotionally withdrew. The whole time, despite themselves, they wanted a man (a good man) to sweep them off their feet. They wanted a man to pass their tests, to see through their false bravado, to love them more than they loved themselves, to love them into who they could be.

There is a lot me can learn from these women, and I am not just referring to their elegance, grace, wit, beauty and class. They teach us also what it looks like when a woman falls on her own sword in love. It isn’t pretty. They usually ended up dead, in jail, in an awful marriage or miserably alone. Before I continue please let me clarify; a woman’s worth isn’t in her marriageability. Single is not a fate worse than death for a woman. My point is these women ran from, denied and fought what they really wanted and symbolically they ended up dead.

These women wanted Love with a capital ’L’. They wanted to be swept off their feet. They wanted a love that would deliver them from their confusion and fear so viscous it had teeth and ate them whole. We do that a LOT don’t we? We are so terrified of what we really want that we make ourselves impermeable, we try to become bulletproof and repel it. It is safer that way, or is it?

In the words of my favourite Femme Fatal, The Lady from Shanghai Elsa ‘I’m not what you think I am, I just try to be like that.’

*Photo credit