MamaBlogger365 - Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

More Than Marriage

They all met up for dinner – parents and teenage son, along with two of the son’s friends. Nothing unusual about the parents buying dinner, passing off a little advice and extra cash before the kids went to the dance. Nothing unusual except that there was no eye rolling from the boys, no slouched texting as the adults talked, no fidgety ready-to-go behavior. They seemed to me -- new friend of the family -- as polite and jovial as Beaver Cleaver’s family. Really good to each other, kind and interested in each other’s comments. Yes, that’s what set them apart from many modern families.

Oh, and the parents were two women.

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Photo credit: Wedding Rings by Petr Kratochvil

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MamaBlogger365 - Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

“You guys just never modeled any heterosexual double dating, so I’m still figuring it out,” said my son Caleb as he relayed his recent experience with his girlfriend and another male/female couple. And this was no mere dinner-date. The two couples went away for the weekend -- and apparently their destination was the Land of Unexamined Gender Roles.

Especially now that he’s in college, my son offers a perspective on queer parenting that I could never muster on my own. I appreciate his views, and thankfully, he’s not usually crippled by his lack of hetero-socialization. We were quirky in other ways, of course, and quite mainstream in a load of circumstances, too. And, call me optimistic, but I’d like to think that growing up in a queer family was a good thing. I think my son has a broader awareness of possibility than most. After all, not everyone gets to grow up in a family where genders and gender roles are just spread out like a magician’s deck, where the mother wears a big theatrical grin as she cajoles, ‘Come on, pick a card!’

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MamaBlogger365 - Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

Always Let ‘Em See You Cry

My son, like a lot of men, doesn’t cry easily. On rare occasion, he does it though. Things affect him deeply and I’m grateful for that. It’s not big news that by the time a boy becomes a man, the tears don’t come as easy as they do for most women. Crying is not the only way to signal deep feeling, but it’s one way. Letting others see you cry is vulnerable – it can make the pain feel worse to have it witnessed. Sometimes, if we make conscious connections with other openhearted folks, witness eases pain.

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MamaBlogger365 - Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

Butches, Bullies and Community

Little kids take reality as it comes. They know what they feel and something like appearance only becomes a problem when someone makes it one. Until they reach school and the socialization of the big media-world, it doesn’t matter if mom is pretty or if dad is tall or even if the genders match up. It matters that they feel loved and cared for.

I was privileged to attend the Butch Voices (www.butchvoices.com) conference last weekend in Oakland, CA. This event, begun in 2009, celebrates and explores the lives of those who identify themselves as butch, masculine of center, aggressive, boi, dominant, trans – and a host of other terms I may not even know. Individuals seem to use whichever term they first found in a community that cared for them – that varies by time period, race, class, and education. Loads of things affect the language with which we're most comfortable. One of the important things people at this conference seemed to offer one another was an understanding that the dominant culture can be brutal to those who don’t fit it. So they offered each other support and revelry – because being different is also really fantastic. Kindred outsiders have a lot of wisdom to share.

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MamaBlogger365 - Avalon as Motherworld: Loving and Letting Go by Patti Ashley, Ph.D.

"Avalon is a motherworld. It is a shadow of patriarchal consciousness, repressed and thus feared and distorted, as are many contents of the personal or collective unconscious that are denied." Jean Shinoda-Bolen, Crossing to Avalon

The essential, but often excruciating part of mothering is the inevitable need to let our children go out into the world and make their own choices. Mothers who are able to trust and allow children to live with their own consequences are less apt to be influenced by the shadow aspects of the too-good mother. Examples of some of the unconscious aspects of letting go might include: the fear of what other people think about them as mothers when their children are not perfect; feeling rejected as children no longer value their opinions and guidance; feeling abandoned, and other challenges.

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MamaBlogger365 - The Set of the Sails by Patti Ashley, Ph.D.

“We all choose what we wish to be. No one impels us or compels us. The same wind that can blow a ship onto the rocks can blow it into safe water. It is not the wind; it is the set of the sails."

The Set of the Sails

Lori, a thirty-nine year old mother of three children ages sixteen, eleven and six, shared the above quote with me, which she paraphrased from the book Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell. Lori believes that it is extremely important to teach her children how to take responsibility for their lives. She wants her children to know they are "captain of their ship."

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Model Boat 360 by Vince Mig

MamaBlogger365 - Good Reviews on Breaking Taboos by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

Warning: Portions of this post may be offensive to some viewers. Though I don’t know why.

One of the best things to happen to my summer was the release of the Adam Mansbach’s new bedtime story book, Go the F**k to Sleep, illustrated by Ricardo Cortés. Debuting in June as a New York Times bestseller, the book has received popular acclaim and was picked up by Samuel L. Jackson, who offered his narration to the work.

I cannot imagine that I need to explain what the book is about. Any parent who has ever tried to put a child to sleep has failed miserably at it, so the title and the gist of its contents are self-evident to most. If you’re still curious, you can listen to Samuel L’s rendition of it. Even if you’re clear on what the book’s about—in fact, even if you’ve read it—go ahead and enjoy it again, bathed in that wonderfully nasal voice of Samuel L.

Perfectly encapsulating the struggle of what one reviewer on the book’s back cover called parenting’s “rawest point: bedtime,” Mansbach’s book offers a rare but welcome view of the great emotional and physiological investment that parents have in rendering children unconscious through sleep and sweet dreams each evening. Wait a minute—what am I talking about? “Evening,” my a**. I mean each night. My kids never went to bed in the “evening.” Far into the night, maybe. Middle of the day maybe, like right when I got to the grocery store maybe, prompting some other kid’s mom to croon all over us about how my poor little thing just wants to be home in her bed. Uh, yeah. So does her mother. And believe me, her mother has NO interest in the stinking grocery store getting to suck up my kid’s sleep time, which means no chance of me sitting in silence for twenty minutes, or getting a little shut-eye myself. So don’t even.

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MamaBlogger365 - Legislating Maternal Emotion by *Dr Mama* Amber Kinser

If only Casey Anthony had had Billy Flynn as her attorney. You remember Billy Flynn; he’s the attorney who represented the women on “murderer’s row” in the musical and film Chicago. “Give ‘em the old razzle dazzle,” he’d croon in his song to the accused, Roxie Hart, about how the people of the courtroom and the general public were so easy to play if you simply “give ‘em an act with lots of flash in it.” If only Billy had prompted Casey to consider, “How can they see with sequins in their eyes?”

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MamaBlogger365 - Pool Privileges by Kimberly Dark

As I sit writing this column, I have just finished teaching a creativity workshop at a gay-popular retreat. I’ve taught here fairly often over the years. Kalani Honua is not all gay, of course, though the pretty bronzed men parading around the pool naked do seem to be a fixture.

But not today....

There aren’t many places a person can go to witness queer parents congregating en masse. We’re pretty isolated – except in some big cities where support groups and children’s play groups are popping up. When my son was small, a group of parents started a Children’s Garden at the San Diego Pride festival. At first it was cool, and then I wondered what we were doing – other than our sexual orientation (which also varies widely within the category: queer) we don’t have much in common as people and as parents.

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Photo credit: Water by Anna Cervova

MamaBlogger365 - An Invitation to Queer Parenting, Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

Kimberly Dark;
© Kate Mayne

“Do you have to use that word?” My mother made a face that looked slightly ill and despite being a bit insulted, I feel compassion for her plight.  I know my mother loves me, but she hates the word “queer,” and really wishes I could BE a little less odd, too.
 
“What word? Queer?” She nodded and her face looked like she was holding back a heartburn belch.
 
“It’s just so crude. And unkind.  People think unkind things when they say that.” She added.
 
That can be true.  And people think unkind things when they don’t say that -- and sometimes, people make unkind comments and policies, regardless of whether they ever articulate a word like “queer.”
 
I understand what my mother’s saying though.  The word “queer” has been used as an insult -- the kind of thing a person says as he’s kicking in your teeth.  It could be hard to hear something like that said of your child -- even if your child’s the one saying it.  I get it.  And she’s not re-claimed the word as I have.  Not only does using the word positively deprive it of its negative power, I think it’s accurate.  I am odd -- and not just in my sexual orientation.  Queerness is defined relative to the way things are usually done -- and sometimes difference is cause for celebration.  I am queer, and the family I’ve created is queer too.  Indeed, I hereby extend an invitation for you to engage in queer parenting. (See, it’s true what the homophobes fear: I am here to recruit you.) Read more...

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