MamaBlogger365 - Take Me to the River by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

I am feeling regimented and controlled to within an inch of my life. It’s coming at me from every angle and I’m feeling a distinct desire to run. Or drive, anyway.

What I really need is a mountaintop, solitude, and a cool breeze. Or maybe a nice sunny spot at a river. Or… wait. A river running through a mountain range and no one but me and a thermos of coffee. Plus some water because coffee dehydrates... click here to read more!

BIO: Dr. Mama (Amber Kinser) is a writer, feminist mother, professor, and speaker who lives in Tennessee. Check her out on Facebook, follow her on Twitter @DrMamaWit, and see her webpage. Kinser writes for the MamaBlogger365 series each Thursday at the Museum Of Motherhood, Mamapalooza and Mamazina Magazine.

The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today! Visit the Museum of Motherhood, NOW OPEN in NYC - Tues.-Sun., 10:45-6:30.

MamaBlogger365 - Limits of Dreams and Gumption by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

I remember sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch of my mother’s mountain home with my infant baby, my second child, in my arms. I had just received a job offer in Tennessee, less than three hours drive from her. We were delighted when we got the news but this day we were there because my partner and I had travelled from Indiana with our infant son and 6 year-old daughter to find a place for our family to live and a job for my partner. Ours was a colicky baby and stress levels were high all around.

I was crying and rocking, myself and the baby, and my mother told me hesitantly that she wished I could get OK about where I was at this juncture because “it gets harder,” she said. It’s a statement that probably reads harshly; it feels a little that way as I type it, but don’t remember being put off by it then. And I certainly now understand the motivation to say it.

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The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today!Visit the Museum of Motherhood, NOW OPEN in NYC - Tues.-Sun., 10:45-6:30.

Photo Source: DuBoixMorguefile

MamaBlogger365 - Getting Rid of “The Talk” by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

I find it strange to still be hearing adults refer to “the talk” when they mention discussing sex with their kids, as if there were only one. As if you could possibly cover anything significant about the human body and desire and maturity and emotion and the entanglements of these in sexuality. Not to mention STDs, pregnancy, parenthood, sexual identity. And forget about constricting gender binaries. Or the problems of the notion of “virgin.” Or broken hearts. These are all critical elements in communicating about sex and they certainly can’t be covered in something as momentary and isolated and awkward as “the talk.”

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The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today!Visit the Museum of Motherhood, NOW OPEN in NYC - Tues.-Sun., 10:45-6:30.

Photo courtesy kfjmiller | MorgueFile

MamaBlogger365 - New Cooperative Workspace at M.O.M. and Meet the Experts This Week

We have a great line-up of programs scheduled this week at the Museum of Motherhood, plus, our new cooperative work space is available (sign up now to reserve your spot)!

Our MamaBlogger365 project continues online, where we welcome writers who share their stories about reframing motherhood. We are so grateful to Coach Julie, RN, who's celebrating ten years of Nurturing Your Success; Mindy Stokes, working to transform language into action; *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser, who shares how, for all of us, it's simply complicated; Shira Adler, Diva Mama, who realizes why everyone goes crazy for the big game; and Jax Resto, who continues to share with us her adventures as a mom-rocker.

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Our Meet the Experts series continues in February, featuring speakers, activities, mom and baby groups, and support groups. We're located at 401 E. 84th St. in New York (Tues-Sun 10:45-6:30, call 212.452.9816 l 877.711.MOMS for info).

Monday: Calling All Creative Kids; After-school creativity theater for kids with Lynn Schaul, artist, UES mother. Starts Feb.6th Mondays 4:30-5:30 $30 per class or $250 for ten weeks. Pizza included. Call Lynn for more info: 646.567.0818.

Wednesday: Circle Of Life a grief and loss group at noon (open to all, led by BirthFocus); BirthFocus's Meet the Doula at 1 pm, with Elizabeth Mangum-Sarach. Change-makers luncheon is 1:30-3:30 (preregistration is required; $20). Come enjoy sample Prenatal & Mama Rub Down Massage - Licensed massage therapist at M.O.M. from 4-6 pm (10 min for $15, 20 min for $20).

Thursday: Renee Sullivan – Babybites at 10 am (Meet the Pregnancy & Infant Leader); Babybites groups at noon and 1 pm.

Friday: La Leche League Toddler Meeting at 10 am; Sara Lise Raff, Arts Education Consultant answers questions 10:45-noon; Meet Psychotherapist Mariama Duncan from 3-4pm: Where Is The ‘I’ In Family?

FEES – All programs include regular day-pass fee of $15 per adult, kids free, students $13, unless otherwise noted.

Disclaimer – Our ‘Meet The Expert’ series demonstrates our intention to be a community gathering place and offer great information to spark conversations. Volunteers, artists, experts and just plain folk are invited to sign up to participate at M.O.M. This is not intended to replace medical advice or to offer anything more than an opportunity to connect and inspire.

For more information about each of these programs, visit our Meet the Experts page!

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NEW! Cooperative work space available Monday 1-4 pm and Wednesday 6-9 pm, with the opportunity for additional hours:
• Share cooperative workspace in a female-friendly environment that nurtures your business and empowers your personal vision.
• Access to group bulletin board (online and onsite)
• Shared table space with WiFi access / or private desk rental
• Opportunity to network and blog cooperatively through our sister sites: Museum Of Motherhood, Mamapalooza, Mamazina Magazine and even Working Mother Blog.
• Opportunity to interview about your project, passion or business on MediaMom.com, featured on MingleMediaTV.com; between 300-3,000 viewers per show.
• Networking and discounted vendor & exhibitor opportunities
$10 per hour for co-op workspace / $40 Monthly storage (optional)
ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED and space is limited; apply by e-mailing MOMmuseum@gmail.com.

MamaBlogger365 - It’s Simply Complicated by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

Mothering is both harder and easier than we make it out to be. It’s tricky trying to figure out, in a given moment, whether this moment is the kind where you should lean toward: this is really not that complicated… breathe… just move forward with purpose and trust what you already know. Or whether this moment is the kind where you should lean toward: not all answers are evident, get some input from people you trust… it feels hard because it IS hard… you are going to make mistakes and this is OK but search beneath the surface to find what isn’t volunteering itself to you. Most moments are probably the kind where we should do a little of both, and this bothness is the great intellectual puzzle of parenting, through and through.

Our children are not going to turn out the way we thought they would. It’s exactly that simple. Even if you are a solid planner and executer of the plan, even if you’re one of the incredibly hip and open-minded parents who thought your plans or hopes for them were loose and totally open to their interpretation, even if you’re otherwise really good at “letting go” and “releasing it.” And, admit it, this fact is pretty disappointing.

And then that other fact—that you have the gall to be disappointed (it’s so some other generation)—is disappointing. You worked so hard to avoid “disappointment” in your mothering practice. It sounds so trite when you hear someone say your children will go their own way that it’s nearly impossible to grasp that you haven’t already accepted it. (I mean look how YOU turned out, relative to what your parents had imagined for you, for heaven’s sake).

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The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today!Visit the Museum of Motherhood, NOW OPEN in NYC - Tues.-Sun., 10:45-6:30.

Photo credit: Ducks in A Row by beglib |MorgueFile

MamaBlogger365 - Fine; I'm Flawed by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

OK, so fine. I’m a flawed human being. I don’t always act in my own best interests. I don’t always act in my children’s best interests. But I do try. Sometimes this mother in me comes out who is more like what I think my own mother was like. Resolute. Directed. Consistent. Grownup. And other times, well. Let’s just say less so.

I’ll grant, for example, that shooting whipped cream into my mouth directly from the can is one of those things you do when you’re, say, nine. And I’ll grant that teaching my children this uncouth habit by poor example, to my partner’s complete and total dismay and probably disgust, is something that… well something my mother wouldn’t do for one thing. And OK, yes, me walking through the grocery store with my two children when they were younger, all of us trying to not be seen spraying whipped cream into our mouths is, it could be argued, less than stellar mothering practice. But I’d like to say in my own defense that… well, I don’t actually have a defense for that one.

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The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today!Visit the Museum of Motherhood, NOW OPEN in NYC - Tues.-Sun., 10:45-6:30.

Photo credit: vilhelm | MorgueFile

MamaBlogger365 - With Relish (please) by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

I’ve written before about the importance of not being too invested in the “highs” of mothering, about how mothers clinging steadfast (or frantically) to the feelings of “success” is unwise, not fruitful, not empowering. It’s an unkind thing to do to yourself, really, to let your sense of self-worth hang on standards that are dictated by absurd mothering standards at one end, or your children’s ridiculous and naïve standards at the other, or false but no less sensationalized images of motherhood that surround us at the other (and yes, this continuum has three ends -- just go with it). I do think that this is so very important, and so very very difficult. So I want to write today without losing sight of this.

I’d like to invoke the memory and/or recognition of how sometimes, it just works. Sometimes, it’s easy. Sometimes, it just flows. I want to sit down to that, chew on that, taste that. With a little relish, and for just a few moments. I mean look, I’ve been dragged through it as a mother. Slammed doors, cops, crushed morale, total disregard, collusion, lies, eye rolls, hospitals, perceived judgment from my peers, actual judgment from my peers, insensitive demands from the people I work for, taxing demands from the people I live with, dinners dinners dinners, the relentlessness of it all.

But then every once in a while....

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The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today!Visit the Museum of Motherhood, NOW OPEN in NYC - Tues.-Sun., 10:45-6:30.

Photo credit: sideshowmom | MorgueFile

MamaBlogger365 - You're Not the Boss of Us by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

If we had a nickel, collectively, every time someone told a mother what to do, we’d have enough money to really change things. Because there simply is no shortage of such people, no absence of such advice or admonishment, no end in sight to the ways that others get all up in our business.

Take for example something as seemingly simple as that totally unhelpful charge to “enjoy every minute” because it “goes by so fast” that Glennon Melton wrote about in her blog at the Huffington Post this week*. Of course “every minute” is far from simple in motherhood, and enjoying each and every one of those is even farther. So now I can feel inadequate not only about how I mother but also about how my day is full of moments I am not enjoying, Melton suggests. Nice. That’s helpful. Thanks. You know what, I’m going to invoke a retort I’ve heard my kids and lots of other ones deploy in one form or another over the years: Quit bossing me around!

And then there’s the family dinner example....  click here to read more!


The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today! Visit the Museum of Motherhood, NOW OPEN in NYC - Tues.-Sun., 10:45-6:30

Photo credit: alvimann|MorgueFile

MamaBlogger365 - Sticking to the Issues by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

Last January, inspired by the Jewish Near Year tradition, or more specifically that of Yom Kippur’s solemn day of atonement that follows the new year, I wrote several posts, beginning with a piece on food, and followed by pieces on work and time, in which I plotted out what I saw to be my “wrongs” of the year previous. My goal, of course, was to then right them in 2011.

I had thought this post was going to be about how I was rather unsuccessful; I think these will always be core points of struggle for me. But after writing out the post, I’ve had to come up here to its beginning to say that I’ve not done a bad job of working on some of my “issues” overall, though I do have some work to do on them in 2012. I feel uplifted, and sort of caught by surprise, by the realization that I did, in fact, make progress last year. I think I’ll turn my focus toward celebrating that and away from critiquing myself for the areas where I’ve seen less success. So hooray for that (my friend Lori Ann tells me she appreciates my participation in bringing ‘hooray’ back.)

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The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today! Visit the Museum of Motherhood, NOW OPEN in NYC - Tues.-Sun., 10:45-6:30.

MamaBlogger365 - My Girlfriend, Cooking by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

Cooking and I, well, let’s just say we have a complicated relationship. I mean I do love her, I do. But when calling up descriptors of us as a couple, clichés like absence makes the heart grow fonder and familiarity breeds contempt seem to fit better than, say, you’re the light of my life or you make everything make sense when you’re near me.

What I like, as I’ve noted in a previous post about good intentions, is planning. I like thinking about Cooking and planning what our time together will be like, but once the day finally arrives to actually DO something with her, well, I have a harder time with that. We work better long distance, I think. Do you know a couple like that? They’re fine as long as they’re not together all that much? Maybe you ARE part of a couple like that, so maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about. I mean there are occasions, when we’re together, and especially when we’re alone, that I can really get into her. And it’s those occasions that I try to keep in mind on days when a meal I’ve prepared rather tanks, or days when everyone in the house is suffering from some spat of sorts she and I have had. I feel like defending our relationship by saying, Hey, it’s not always like this! Sometimes we’re really good together! You don’t know her like I do!

We spent a very sexy evening together before the holidays, making gifts for some friends, mixing it up, rolling it out, you know, things were getting pretty hot. Lots of attention to the details, if you know what I mean, not rushing anything. My hands all up in that business, taking the temperature of things, taking a taste now and again. A little sweet stuff, a little instrumental holiday music playing in the background—some Celtic and some jazz, and boy was I ever in the mood. We just stretched it out like that for hours. Not a single thing on my mind but Cooking and whatever she needed to make things work, you know?

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MamaBlogger365 - Little is the New Big by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

I’ve been struck, many times and especially lately, by the way that the feelings of childhood stick with you. It could be argued, I suppose, that this isn’t all that striking, since we’ve long known that the early years of anyone’s life profoundly shape the later years. We know from studies of the psychology and sociology of family life and from studies of human interaction in family contexts that what we process as children sticks with us in some way for many many years, maybe even all the ones we have.

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Our Year-End Giving Campaign is going on NOW! The Museum Of Motherhood is the first and only facility of its kind, celebrating the “her”story of mothers around the world. We need your help -- please make your tax-deductible contribution today!

MamaBlogger365 - The Road to My House is Paved with Good Intentions (Part 2) by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

In last week’s post, I sang a song of respectful melancholy about intentions that never made it to the execution stage, having lingered in the idea stage so long that they just ended up taking up valuable psychological and physical space and were better served abandoned. Most of those were about meals that never got cooked but for fear of misleading my readers into thinking that a single post could possibly represent this issue of unspoken but no less broken promises to my self and my family, I offer up another one.

My problem, in part, is that I am a planner. I’ve always been weak in classroom math (though I was awesome in geometry, so much so that when I got my first exam back from my teacher in tenth grade I got up to hand it back to him thinking he’d given me someone else’s. Oh sorry, you gave me the wrong… hey, how’d my name get… oh… wait… this is mine? Anyway, I think of planning as my math. It feels like math to me anyway, except that I like it and enjoy the mental workout—more geometry-ish than math-ish for me I guess.

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MamaBlogger365 - The Road to My House is Paved with Good Intentions (Part 1, I think) by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

This is an ode to unfinished business. Broken promises. Good ideas that never made it past the idea stage. Starts whose stops came prematurely. Beginnings with unimpressive endings. If you’re thinking: Wait. That sounds suspiciously like Amber’s life, you’d be right. If you’re thinking: Wait, that sounds suspiciously like my life, you’d be my new best friend. Like AimingLow.com, I’m working here to raise mediocrity to a new level.

First I want to thank my family for staying out of the ingredients that I marked with SAVE FOR RECIPE, like that package of Swiss cheese, even though the cheese molded, I never made the alleged recipe, and I have no idea what recipe that cheese was even for.

But let’s don’t start talking about recipes that never made it past the print stage...

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MamaBlogger365 - Noting the Unnoted by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

Last Wednesday, my Facebook post read “I’m grateful.” I was thinking that day about the people in my life, especially my partner and children, and about our good health and life promise. Then Thursday morning my colleague and friend, Karen Cajka, died, and pockets of our campus were racked with pain and turmoil.

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MamaBlogger365 - Gratitude in the Face of Loss by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

I am choosing to face my day today with gratitude. Sometimes I choose gratitude proactively, because it’s a good way to live, and sometimes I choose it reactively, when I don’t know how else to face what I have to face. Today, my father was taken again to the intensive care unit of the hospital, with difficulty breathing and potentially with pulmonary emboli. I’m worried about him, and I’m worried about what the deterioration of his health or loss of him altogether will do to my mother. She’s an emotionally and psychologically stalwart one, she is, and this “ain’t her first rodeo,” as she would be sure to remind you lest you forget and start to fret over what she can handle and what she can’t. But the loss of him will have great impact on her life in any case, not just emotionally or relationally, but in terms of complicated things like pensions and finances and property and living in their home in the mountains by herself. But he is with us today, right now.

Also today, my friend and colleague, Dr. Karen Cajka, Associate Professor of English and Director of Women’s Studies at ETSU, passed away from complications stemming from pulmonary embolism. She was forty-five years old. I need to take a moment as I write to wrestle with the fact that I am writing of her in the past tense; I’m going to do it deliberately in this paragraph, despite how ridiculous it feels, in an effort to clear some of the fog that blew into my head when I got the phone call this morning. We are all quite rattled. We can’t get it to make any sense at all for any of us. She was an advocate for women’s studies, a champion for social recognition of women’s literature and the ways it has impacted and continues to impact women’s lives and broader social understandings of them. She had a keen mind and sharp wit, often flavored with a sweet dose of sarcasm and blended deliciously with wry humor. Her students were and are true devotees whose lives were changed and paradigms were shifted and visions were sharpened. Her physical presence is gone from us but her mind and her passion for women’s writing and perspectives in the lives of her students and colleagues.

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MamaBlogger365 - A Beautiful Life Despite Self-Doubt by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

I’ve had a few conversations lately about self-doubt. And by that I mean I’ve had a few conversations out loud, and with other people, lately. I actually have conversations on a regular basis with myself about it. And I’ve been thinking about how we trouble ourselves so with it, pay so much attention to it, give it way more credence than it deserves.

Now, I say “we” here, but I don’t necessarily mean you. I guess I mean lots of people, but maybe you aren’t one of them; maybe you aren’t plagued by self-doubt, or have learned to wrestle it to the ground. I rather hope you aren’t and you have, so you can reply to this post and tell us your secret. From what I’ve been observing though, plenty of people struggle with doubt, and plenty of mothers among them.

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MamaBlogger365 - It Can Start with an Email by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

Much of the time, life is complicated. Much of the time, initiating change feels impossible. The wait for change, interminable. The status quo, intractable. I think of Susan B. Anthony who agitated for over 35 years for the U.S. vote, and died 14 years before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. I had a picture of her above my desk in my home office for years as a reminder of what fortitude and persistence look like... I wonder where that photo got off to. There still is so much work to do, as groups like MomsRising and Mothers Acting Up and Welfare Warriors well know. Intractable indeed.

But sometimes. Sometimes, change happens before its advocates wear out. Sometimes the marginalized don’t have to fund the solution. Sometimes, those with power and finances hear the rest of us. Sometimes change can unfold beginning with a simple email.

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MamaBlogger365 - Don't Let Me Be the Decider by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

Look. I’m a pretty good decision maker. I make decisions slowly and mindfully; I try to gather as much information as I can and I consider it carefully before settling on a course of action. I am mocked at times by my family for never being able to pony up a decision except after a time. “We thought maybe we would all do X together. It’s not till next month but I know you have to THINK about everything,” my sister will say.

I like to spend hours looking at cookbooks and planning. In the early spring I like to look through gardening books and research which flowers are best for xeriscaping, or which grow in clay, and which of those come up when and which combinations will offer both various heights and various blooming periods. When I’m taking a trip I spend a lot of time looking through options on the Internet — flights, hotels, the proximity of my lodging to restaurants and whether or not the place has — hope against hope — a regular stinking coffee maker or one of those blasted single-cup numbers (and I’m not talking Keurig either). And lots of times I emerge with outcomes I’m happy with. But sometimes, well.

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MamaBlogger365 - Motherhood is Otherhood by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

Mothers are, no more or less than anyone else, flawed human beings. We move through life, sometimes at a clip, sometimes more mindfully and cautiously, and sometimes we slog through life junctures and phases. And, not less but probably more than many, we are positioned to make decisions that affect other people, often profoundly, even though we rarely have all the information we need before we make those decisions, since so much of it unfolds slowly through time, becoming most readily available only in retrospect.

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Photo credit: Ladyheart|MorgueFile

MamaBlogger365 - Ruse, Regulation and Older Motherhood by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

This week, New York magazine’s cover features the captivating Maye Musk, fabulously "pregnant" and posed in a manner reminiscent of Demi Moore’s equally captivating photo on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991. What makes this photo the subject of so much hot topic discussion? Ms. Musk is in her sixties. The question thrust at readers from this cover is “Is she just too old for this?” I find the question, and the one that opens the feature article, “Is there anything wrong with being 53 and pregnant?” troubling. Insulting even.

I'm going to push aside the fact that May Muske is actually NOT pregnant in this photo, and the questions that thus emerge about why it is New York couldn’t show an older woman who actually IS pregnant to make their point and pursue instead the questions on the cover and that lead the article. These questions echo a couple of centuries of "shoulds" and "shouldn’ts" that have been aimed at mothers in the U.S. and that have functioned to regulate women’s bodies and sexualities and movement in the world.

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Support MamaBlogger365 and help the Museum of Motherhood secure a permanent home in 2011! Your tax-deductible donation in ANY amount will help us make our September POP-UP exhibit in NYC a permanent reality - visit our Members page to learn more.

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