Following Foreign Footsteps

Living in Costa Rica, Japan, and Canada for two years each gave me many insights into other cultures. One insight, however, only recently came to the surface of my mind since returning to the U.S. and having my second daughter here: motherhood crosses many barriers, obstacles, prejudices and other challenges. It is its own language, completely universal, and even recognizable in other animals, not just humans.

While living in the rainforests of Costa Rica, I learned that the women living in the particular valley where my tiny hut was located had a deep fear of the forest. Their husband, sons, or brothers would accompany them if they had to walk through the forest before dawn and after dusk. Their daughters rarely ventured out of the house, especially once they no longer attended school (many didn't go further than 8th grade).

At one time I became ill with a serious infection. Unable to get up and leave my hut to report to the local research station where I worked, I remained secluded in my home in pain. Despite their reservations of the dark forest in the early a.m. hours, the local women who came to the station to prepare coffee and breakfast noticed my absence and walked through the forest alone to my hut. They came back and forth individually, bringing me tea made from over a dozen rainforest plants and checking on me. It was as if I was a sole chick with many mother hens hovering around me. At the time I was still in the early stages of becoming fluent in Spanish, so the language barrier presented an additional challenge that didn't seem to faze the women in the slightest.

I saw this capability of overcoming fear and hurdling obstacles while living in Japan. My husband and I had only been married a short time when we decided to climb Mt. Fuji. I had climbed mountains in the U.S. and Costa Rica before this, so I was taken by surprise at the tears streaming down my face as I faced a brutal hike full of sharp jagged volcanic rock and foot deep ash along a narrow path with a steep drop off. I cried because it was too hard. I cried because I was afraid I couldn't go up nor go down. Then along came a five foot tall grandmother. Without a walking stick she passed me up the volcano and continued passing others. She appeared to be at least 70 years old. My eyes followed her footsteps for as long as I could see them, giving me the courage to continue going.

While living in Canada I became a mother for the first time. I found myself missing my own mother even more as I was at a loss what to do to calm my very colicky baby. When I dared to venture out of our house to go on the two mile nature path by our house I often felt panicky if my newborn started to cry, because I couldn't get her to stop crying. It was on this trail among the late-summer blackberry pickers that I found smiles and words of help from mothers and grandmothers. I wasn't alone, and they didn't mind the sound of a baby crying interrupting their quiet solitude. I learned from them that all sounds are welcomed and loved.

We're now residing temporarily on the east coast in the U.S., and I find myself more often at playgrounds than in forests or on mountains. But the mothers surrounding me are no different than the mothers I encountered on foreign soils. We learn from each other just as much as we learn from our children.

A Natural Decor

As my toddler created a space rocket with her Tinkertoys and my baby squealed as she bounced in her Jumperoo, I rummaged through a box of fall decorations. I pulled out turkeys, pumpkins, gourds, cinnamon apple candles, and a few crumbled decayed leaves from last fall.

My box of decorations got me thinking about why I dress up our home for holidays. Decorations generate an excited energy in our homes. They add to the anticipation of an event, a day, a moment. And they especially help create cheer inside the home when we can't spend more time outdoors during the cold fall and winter months.

When I add nature to my decorations (like fall leaves, twigs, acorns, and more) it helps me make the connection between holidays and seasons. So often we find holidays lost in the commercial mainstream of materialism: shopping, buying, wanting, and forgetting. The act of adding bits and pieces of nature inside my home helps me to simplify my life. Seeing new buds on a branch place on my windowsill stirs my mind to look outside and recall childhood moments spent outdoors before we had computers, iPods, cell phones, and more. Those are the memories I want my children to have as well. So today we're going outside for a walk to collect Nature in our pockets and bring home for our windows.

What do you gather from nature to put inside your home? What does it mean to you?

Beyond the Window

A few days following the birth of my first daughter, the Canadian health care system gave me (and all new moms) a gift bag full of useful items for newborns and new moms. This bag full of surprises was only the first of many metaphorical bags full of surprises that come my way as a mom.

Motherhood is a eternal spring of new experiences, fresh perspectives, and changing beliefs.

One surprise that caught me off guard was the decrease in time spent outdoors. Before I became a mom I spent many hours a week hiking on trails, walking through parks and gardens, sitting on my porch, and biking through neighborhoods. Since becoming a mom, I stay indoors more often and when I do get out it is usually in a car. Our time spent outside is most often at a playground.

Of course I miss being so actively engaged in nature. It did more than heal my mind's racing pace and my body's stress accumulated after a day's work. Being in nature shaped me and gave me answers to questions I didn't even know I had.

Fall and Winter days, for those of us living in temperate regions around the world, bring the cold and wet to our world. It's easier to stay inside with my toddler and baby. Although we get out when the sun is shining, we often see nature through the glass window.

While playing in our family room I point out to my daughters the female spider in her web, the vivid blue fall sky, the golden trees, and the broken branches dangling down all beyond the window. Sometimes my toddler crawls up on to the window ledge (its low and wide) and looks at these things. Sometimes she just gets up there and shouts "Shake it baby shake it" while dancing for the world beyond. And sometimes she just glances up from her spot among the toys on the ground and resumes playing.

But I continue gazing at nature. Missing it yet finding tiny pieces of calm entering my mind and body. I may not experience the little things beyond my window with all of my senses, but my imagination can take what I get and expand on it.

How do you see nature through your window? What does it bring to you?

Little Fish, Big Sea

Guest Post by Lee at Moms Without Blogs

In high school, I wasn't the super-popular chick, the homecoming queen, the lead in the musical, the track team star, the valedictorian or anything spectacular like that. But even though I wasn't THE best, let's just say I was one of the best.

I was known by many, attended the homecoming dance, played many supporting roles in theater, ran the back stretch of the 4 x 100 relay team that competed in the state meet placing fourth, and my graduating GPA placed me like 10th out of class of near 600.

I felt, I guess you could say, like a big fish in a little sea. But I didn't even realize the sea was little then. In retrospect I guess I felt like a big fish in a big sea.

I remember pretty darn vividly what it felt like to go from my high school in Phoenix with my list of semi-decent achievements and enter my freshmen year at the University of Southern California. To leave a campus of over two thousand and walk around a campus of like thirty thousand.

It didn't take me much longer than sitting in on a few of the classes in the college honors program that I somehow qualified for to realize uh, I'm not that smart.

I thought I wanted to major in drama, but after an acting class or two, I realized I'm not that talented.

And even though I played four years of competitive soccer at USC, I realized even there, I'm not that good.

It all hit me like a ton of bricks a few months into my freshmen year.

I am totally and utterly average.

Sure, there were plenty of people below me in a variety of ways, but there were also a bazillion people above me, ahead of me, just uh, bigger than me.

And with a huge dry gulp, I began my lifelong journey as a little fish.

In a big, deep, thrashing, never-ending sea.

I've been reflecting on this big fish idea as I've cruised around in recent weeks reading all kinds of posts from what I would call bigger fish in the blogworld expressing feelings of disappointment and confusion as to where their community was heading with the onslaught of new blogs on the scene that focus on, I guess, the business side of mommy-blogging as opposed to the creative side of it. I know that's boiling it down to one particular angle but it seems that's the general point of the stuff I've read. I've tried to understand where they're coming from, I really have, but I just don't get it.

The way it seems to me is that, to put it simply, the sea is getting bigger and with all of these little fish swimming around, it's just tougher to be a big fish.

Feeling like a big fish is cool. It seems part of human nature to want to harness that big fish feeling. Easier to swim amidst all those choppy waves.

But when it all shakes down in the end, we all are little fish. And I kinda wish we could all swim around together a little more peacefully.

When I look at my three little ones cruising around in their small worlds, I am reminded of the natural transition that occurs as our brains twist and grow and we come to the intellectual realization someday that we are simply a pebble of sand on the beach of life.

But emotionally, that's the rough part. I think it's hard to wrap your heart and feelings around the fact that in the sea of life the one person that's really gonna care the most about you and make you feel like a big fish, even though you're not, is you. But I think that's the truth.

There is so much in the current online social structure that is screaming at the part of us that innately yearns to be a big fish. Again, the awards and the numbers and the followers. Yada yada yada. And not that long ago when the sea was much much smaller, it was a hell of a lot easier it seems to feel well, like a big fish.

Now, I want to be clear. I totally acknowledge the pioneers of this field. The ones who paved the way and began settling the wild west of parent blogging. I feel anyone who has been blogging since 2004 or earlier is one of those pioneers. And right on to you. And I don't even think you're average. You are actually way above average in my book. You harnessed an idea early on, created a community and became a sea of voices. It's just getting a little harder to hear your voice with the rising din of all these fishy fins splashing around.

Basically the landscape is a' changing. As it always does.

Sometimes when I'm driving on the jam-packed freeways of Los Angeles with red brake lights and white headlights as far as the eye can see in all directions, I wonder how these gazillion drivers stuck behind their wheels think about their place in the grand scheme of things? Are they still holding out some hope that somewhere, someway, somehow, they will be a big fish? Even though the reality of their little fish existence is smacking them right in the middle of the forehead just beyond their windshield?

I look through the traffic and feel grateful that I already know I'm a little fish. I had my revelation years ago and even though there have been times in my life when that big fish feeling came flooding into my being, I knew it was fleeting.

It always is.

And really. I'm totally and utterly fine with being a little fish.

You?

About the Author:

Filled with too many ideas and too little time to execute them, Lee lives in LA taking care of three children, three dogs, one husband, one goldfish, and one blog. Moms without Blogs is a creative space dedicated to the message that "Being a supermom is simply a state of mind..."

Top 10 Reasons Why I Created The Motherhood Muse

10. Ants.

One morning while my toddler refused to eat her breakfast (again) by throwing her pancakes and scrambled eggs on the ground, I discovered a trail of black ants winding around on the kitchen floor. Last night's dinner crumbs were being evacuated by the ants. A more normal mother (who gets out often) may have simply disposed of the ants with one graceful sweep of her hand. Perhaps she would have swept floor and polished it the night before, so there would not have been any crumbs in the first place. But I'm a mother of two under 2 and deprived of the outdoors (how does anyone get out of the house with a newborn and toddler is beyond me), so I stared at the ants, intrigued by their pattern of marching lines. My toddler's whimper called me back to reality. She didn't know what ants were and they scared her. My first thought: We need to get outside more!

9. Zook Book Nook.

I began this personal writing blog in 2008 as a way to describe my experiences as a writer and a mother. A few months before my second daughter arrived I began to invest more time in writing on my blog and reading other blogs. I soon realized that the network of mother writers enjoyed reading about everyone's adventures and thoughts on life from a range of literary blogs. I decided I wanted to create a site and blog that would serve as a portal for these mother writers to share their stories with each other.

8. Birth.

My second daughter was born in June 2009. By early July I had developed the idea of The Motherhood Muse in my head. What happened during those initial weeks that led to the creation of this venture? I stayed inside almost every single day with my two daughters, because I had to learn how to manage two children while doing my best to keep them both happy and healthy. I realized I wasn't alone. Many parents and children stay indoors more often compared to the generations before us.

7. Cement.

Vast empty parking lots, deserted and full of grass growing in cracks, paving the way to the front door of abandoned stores sitting only blocks from newly constructed buildings with even bigger parking lots really bother me. Our view of the horizon consists more often of cement than it does of green plants. Not only do we stay indoors more, but when we do go outside it is harder to find a piece of nature to play in.

6. Books.

The writings by several authors have contributed to my desire to create The Motherhood Muse. From Mother's Nature to Last Child in the Woods to Hunting for Hope to literary magazines such as Brain, Child, Literary Mama, Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, and WOW! Women on Writing, the authors of these literary works have all inspired me along the way.

5. Passion.

I've always been a bookworm, and my fingers are usually smudged with ink from a pen. Reading and writing are two of my three passions in life. The third, nature, is more than just a passion, it is a need.

4. Voice.

Mothers around the world have so much to say! I have learned so much by hearing and reading the motherhood stories. To give back to this community of mother writers I wanted to establish a site for them where stories can be shared about the nature of motherhood.

3. Mother Nature.

Storytelling across time is another way mothers learn from one another. Our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and beyond have all influenced us as women and mothers. Mother nature is another storyteller, sharing with us her history and the history of mothers. I want The Motherhood Muse to be a way for stories from Mother Nature to be shared visibly with others.

2. Love.

My toddler runs around with my heart in her hands. My baby's eyes reflect the love in my face. I know now the profound love parents everywhere feel for their children. This common bond of love we have for children unites us. I want to share this unity here.

1. The Future.

We need nature, but our children need it even more. How will our children develop a relationship with nature if we don't have one ourselves? The Motherhood Muse is a first step in sending the message to ourselves and to our children that we need nature, now and tomorrow.

The Motherhood Muse: Mother Nature

Mother. Nature .

Two words we grow up hearing linked together. They hold a certain mystic awe that quietly lingers in our minds over the years.

Mother Nature.

At times we as women may feel we understand her, know her intimately. At other points in our life we may only catch a wisp of some remote idea of what these two words mean.

We don't grow up hearing the phrase "Father Nature," so how does the name "Mother Nature" impact us as women and mothers? Do we feel a certain obligation to be intimate with nature? Are we carrying a responsibility to exhibit qualities of Mother Nature?

Mothers today range in their connection with nature. From living under the stars to watching the changing of seasons through windows, from growing butterflies with children to squishing every bug and spider in the pathway of children, from eating-breathing-sleeping a green life to telling a child the fast food hamburger he is eating comes from a cow... all mothers across the globe have a personal relationship with nature, unique in its depth, love and appreciation.

No matter what your connection is with nature, one thing is true for all mothers: we send messages to our children, and right now many of us might not be sending a strong enough message that a relationship with nature is valuable.

Parents, educators, other adults, institutions--the culture itself--may say one thing to children about nature's gifts, but so many of our actions and messages--especially the ones we cannot hear ourselves deliver--are different. And children hear very well.
- Richard Louv ("Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder")

We as women, mothers, and/or writers also need nature. With not enough hours in the day, nature may be pushed aside in order to get food on the table, do the laundry, write a few lines, or stay caught up on the latest technological inventions. We may feel a twinge of guilt in knowing that Mother Nature is somehow supposed to be expressed in us, our bodies, minds and souls. How can our children perceive it if we as women aren't completely giving ourselves the time and space to reconnect with nature?

We need nature just as much as our children do. And nature needs us.

Welcome The Motherhood Muse!

This is your first step in developing a stronger relationship with nature through your body, mind and soul by the visual sharing of literature on motherhood, nature and children. Although reading and writing on these topics may seem like a small step in reconnecting with nature, it is an important one because it expands our minds. Literature awakens our senses. It gives us the freedom to stretch our imaginations over the frontiers in our minds. And that is where we can begin to rediscover nature.

The Motherhood Muse is a community of women, mothers, and writers all coming together with one common interest: to pursue our connection with Mother Nature through literature and more in order to show our children the importance of nurturing our relationship with the environment.

Our community offers an exciting range of possibilities and resources! If you are interested in learning more please come back tomorrow for the details. In the meantime, be sure to check out The Motherhood Muse!