My thesis, Mothering with MS: Voice, Identity, and Empowerment, is being published as a book by VDM Publishers!!!!!!!!!!

Check it out:

http://www.vdm-publishing.com/

I get to design my own cover too!!!!!

Surreal

“Nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell resolved to reclaim her life by cooking, in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her Unexpected reward: not just a newfound respect for calves’ livers and aspic, but a new life- lived with gusto.”

Ok, that’s the back of the book and they are always trying to convince you this purchase from your local big-box bookseller is worth it. Real reason this book is badass, Julie is unhappy with her life and she constructs her own happiness out of a self-designed creative life project. No affairs, plastic surgery, binge shopping needed. What a cool chic.  And she’s damn funny. One of my favorite little hilarious snippets:

“If there are two kinds of friends in the world, those who inspire in you all that is great and good and those who’d prefer to get right down on their haunches and help out with the mud pies, Gwen definitely falls into the latter category. I call her the devil on my shoulder. Sally encourages me to find my inner greatness, to love myself and treat my body like a temple. She wishes I’d quit drinking so much and wants me to go to therapy. I probably should spend more time with her. But especially during the tough times, the days of aspic and freezing rain, I found myself craving not betterment and hope and an exercise partner so much as a fresh bottle of booze, a pack of Marlboros, and someone content to eat butter sauce and watch reruns on TV with me. It’s lucky for me, though perhaps too bad for Gwen, that I’m just a solitary outer-borough secretary with a taste for vodka and cigarettes, rather than, I don’t know, a bi-curious stripper with a small coke habit- I get the feeling that with such a wealth of potential disaster to work with, Gwen would truly come into her gift as some sort of Shakespearean corrupter of innocence ” (129).

I love life’s Gwens.

http://www.amazon.com/Julie-Julia-Year-Cooking-Dangerously/dp/B000Y8SDZW/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203883940&sr=8-1

Oh well my membership was precarious at best. No one is that trendy.

I

Am

A Twilight Fan.

This is so embarrassing, but I can’t keep it a secret any longer because I have been forcing my friends to read the books so I don’t feel lame.

Ok, for the hip, The Twilight Series is a book set of four (fourth and final book due in August) by Stephenie Meyers, young adult books, about vampires.

I don’t know why I like them, I don’t like fantasy novels/vampire/anything else strange (except Harry Potter but those books are laced with crack- you can’t not like them), I didn’t even like YA novels when I was a YA, they aren’t particularly feminist. I’m 10 years older than their fan base. You know, I’m not even going to attempt to dissect why I like them. I have few pure pleasures.

But in an attempt to develop a cool kid following, if you’re looking for some pleasure reading, check out (shameless ploy) Twilight.

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilightseries.html

Ok shun me now if you must.

Hopefully, some of you forever-students can sympathize with me and the non-graduate students won’t think I’m a whiney baby, although you are entitled, and will attempt to empathize.

Well, at least academia is isolating for me. I have moved 9 times the past 8 years. I feel root-less. And of course every time I seem to establish some type of community it is time to move again. At TCU, and at Brite, although the program and people are wonderful, the faculty far surpassing any expectations I ever had, I have felt more isolated than ever. I have just begun finally understanding that I should have seen this coming but I was still unprepared. Silly me.

I have experienced some major changes in the second half of 2007. I uprooted myself from a women’s studies community with shared dialogue and experience and I entered a completely new and different environment. One that I am not even completely connected to because most of the students at Brite are in a program I’m not in, most of them are married, and I live about 20 miles away in a completely different neighborhood. I am one of the youngest, most liberal, most weird people in that school and while it is an awesome opportunity for growth and reflection, and I know I made the right choice to come here, I feel just so damn lonely.

This loneliness is new for me because……. well duh I’ve never been this alone. In the past year I also lost my partner in crime, my soul sister and companion, to the Eastcoasters. I prepared myself in the beginning for the crushing loneliness when she first left. I kept busy and had long talks with myself about this being an awesome opportunity for both her and myself so I shouldn’t wish it otherwise. And I was ok last semester, most likely because I was busy working so hard to find some commonalities with students in the new program as well as figuring out how to tailor my writing and speech to a new “not-so-feminist” environment. I didn’t feel very lonely, just confused. And at first being alone all the time was new and different. Not so much anymore. I shop, eat, study, walk, drive, do laundry, rent movies, sleep, alone. Well, ok so Mun Pai’s there but her conversation skills are sub-par. Trips to Houston and dinner with friends help but when I’m alone again it’s almost worse than before I spent time with those friends.

Why is it this way? I mean WTF, this is what adult life is right? People spend time alone. Well those of us who are single do. So why should it be such a big damn deal?

I think it’s because when I look at the choices I am going to have to make in the near future, I’m being presented with good/great/fascinating opportunities that also prove to be increasingly more isolating and therefore make me wonder if they are so good/great/fascinating. If I continue on the course I am on, one I feel that I am called to and appear to be similarly good at, I will have to uproot myself again from the only strains of community I have left. While my interests are best suited to programs on either coast, my family is here. And my family (and those I include as my family) have always been the number one factor in the decisions I make. My sister is well enough now that we all sleep easier, and everyone is happy/healthy/moving forward so I can no longer use crisis-mode as an excuse to not think about future hard-decisions.

I will have to decide if it’s worth it, to separate myself for this course of study. Of course the part that is real shite, is I won’t know until the decision has already been made. I’ll only know how much of a sacrifice it will be after I’m already too deep in it to pull out. In 2007 when I had to decide between Claremont and TCU I got a taste of what I was willing to/not to give up, and it was relatively scary but I was given two options, two choices, and I chose the one that was best at the time. I’m running out of options. The next time the choice will be to go forward or not, rather than forward in either direction.

I am lucky, because I am young and I don’t have to factor kid/partner into my decision making. And I am so spoiled by my freedom and privilege and believe me I am attempting to not forget that. But sometimes I wonder… are the goals that I have set for myself, things that I have envisioned as constructing future contentment, actually going to make me happy? Because role models in this area are scarce. The women I have seen follow a similar course have had varying degrees of success. Some I have seen balance choosing academia and having a personal life well. Others lives border on dysfunction, scary scary dysfunction. I get a bit worried when I think about which part of the spectrum I’m most likely to end up in.

This may not resonate with some because many see these choices as career choices, not meaning to trivialize them in any way, but the American work ethic seems to support sacrifice-making in the spirit of future wealth, security, and earned contentment. I have always said I don’t want to be about that. I favor communal decision making and shared futures. I don’t want to carve out an existence not impacted by those that are important to me. Additionally, my options won’t really offer tremendous wealth or security, unless I’m incredibly lucky. Theology, and to some degree women’s studies, I don’t see as a career choice but more a calling, one that is uncomfortable and difficult to take on but one that I am unable to separate from. It is so much a part of who I am that I wouldn’t be me without attempting to live out these commitments.

The issues we read, work on, and care about become increasingly more painful and complex, but when that’s all I have, if I have no other life constructed in which to fall back on to gain some sanity/perspective/joy, how exactly am I supposed to keep going? THIS is a big chunk of what has been weighing me down. Racism/sexism/heterosexism/classism etc. are heavy topics, vital, but not exactly lighthearted. In addition, I live and work faithfully in a religious tradition that contributes heavily to the constructions of these injustices we (my sisters/brothers fighting the good fight) are attempting to dismantle. Sometimes, I really wonder, how I became such a masochist.

In the beginning, when I first decided to change my life, or rather followed the Voice that plopped me confused and bewildered into this path, I envisioned this walk as an exercise in building a bigger heart, figuring out how to really love the other, and how to live that out. I don’t know if the growing-heart image is even correct anymore. Most often I feel like my heart is being chewed up and spit out not to build a bigger-stronger whole, but an increasingly more sensitive place. I am continually surprised by my capacity to love more and more (how sensitive it has become) yet also shaken at how easily I can’t control my composure, can’t go back to not caring, and can’t go back to anything I thought I was about before. I worry that I will lose control, and I’ll stop taking care of myself, and I’ll become mired in it, stop seeing the hope and joy that is present, and eventually become bitter and unhappy. Now if you think I’m being over dramatic, go to the National Women’s Studies Association conferences, what a bunch of nut cases, genius nut balls, (Laura and MJ I know you’ve got my back on this one) there are some seriously hurting women’s studied PhD’s. How much is too much? What does balance even mean anymore?

Ok, some of you that are spiritually inclined are probably wondering, well where is her faith? Is she not in a theology program? Good question hypothetical persons. The hardest part is I also feel spiritually isolated, and I need to find my way back into the web. I am at the most spiritually rigorous point in my life so far, I feel the deep interconnectedness of everything around me. However, finding how my voice/life weaves into this picture is difficult. Think, think, think, it will take some puzzling to figure this out. Life long puzzle I reckon.

It is getting increasingly harder to, as Carol Lee Flinders suggests, reconcile a spiritual hunger and a feminist thirst. The issues have become much more complex than total abandonment or total surrender. I see Christian feminism as living in a continual state of one foot in and out the door, gluttons for discomfort the lot of us. Daily questioning intrinsic parts of my identity becomes tiring. I feel that as I rise to the challenge of continued spiritual development I also feel more used up, brittle, fragile, drained, and easily broken. Like if I hear one more comment about “those damn….. (something that I identify with, the list is long) I’m just going to lose it, say fuck it, and walk away. Of course I’m not without some renewed hope in this. Isn’t it interesting when something you need to hear just comes along and smacks you in the face? I was at a lecture Dr. Kwok Pui Lan, yea I know sometimes I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time, that woman is a genius, and she asked how do we keep our mind, body, and spirit vibrant as an act of resistance? Good god, that’s deep. That is resisting isn’t it? When I see some of the adversity humans around me are facing their very human existence is resistance. Surely, with all my privileges, I can work on taking some emotional and spiritual care of myself.

Another brilliant woman, lucky for me I chose to take her course, Dr. Namsoon Kang told us in class, on a particularly rough day for me, that we all have our own burdens to carry, how do we let it down in order to engage? We are required to respond to the world, how do we take this on?

I’m going to have to be gentler with myself and not pretend that these things don’t take their toll on the spirit or my patience. I’m going to have to attempt to establish an identity that is more comfortable with being temporarily alone, while at the same time rethinking what community is/means to me. And while I’m not going to be able to avoid the touch choices, I’m going to have to curb the panic somehow and have a little faith.

Unfortunately, on the way home from a lovely sushi dinner with my v-day depression rescuer Brandon, I saw a couple in the car next to me get in a huge fight. The dude in the passenger seat got out and started walking toward 5 mile  radius pitch black nowheresville corporate Las Colinas. She screamed out the window at him and he never looked back, just kept on walking.

So needless to say, that put me in an interesting mood. True love, will have to wait. Instead, I wanted to share a poem I really like.

Julia Alvarez, “Against Cinderella”

I can’t believe it.
Whoever made it up is pulling my foot
so it’ll fit that shoe.
I’ll go along with martyrdom:
she swept and wept; she mended, stoked the fire,
slaved while her three stepsisters,
who just happened to oblige their meanness
by being ugly, dressed themselves.
I’ll swallow that there was a Singer godmother,
who magically could sew a pattern up
and hem it in an hour,
that Cinderella got to be a debutante
and lost her head and later lost her shoe.
But there I stop.
I can’t believe
that no one but one woman in that town
had that size foot, could fit into that shoe.
I’ve felt enough of lost and found
to know that if you lose your heart
to anyone you’ve crowned into a prince,
you might not get it back;
that the old kerchief trick,
whether you drop a shoe, your clothes, your life,
doesn’t do much but litter up the world.
That when the knock at last comes to your door,
you might not be home or willing.
That some of us have learned to go barefoot
knowing the mate to one foot is the other.

Oh, and the future is not so dark for single gals my friends
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j9nJAskGY86vOF-xXidS68Iw0glAD8UPQFCO0

Teehee

Giving up items/things/behaviors for Lent has never really had spiritual meaning for me. I understand it works for others and I’m in no way trying to undermine the power that it can hold for some. I am actually kind of envious. My life would be a lot easier if some traditional things worked for me and I didn’t have to spend so much time and energy trying to carve some meaning out of this space… but I digress.

My approach for Lent has usually been about taking on something and working on a part of myself that needs work, perhaps healing some relationships or expanding my mind on some issue. When I was beginning to think about Lent this year, I realized that if I was going to attempt to do anything it would be to deal with this emotional mess I have been mired in for weeks but have only recently begun to dig myself out of. In the past couple days I have realized that I have been deconstructing pieces of myself and that I may not know what to do with the pieces or even what to construct out of what is left.

Deconstruction is always painful, always. Whether we are talking about dismantling huge systems like racism/sexism/imperialism etc. or even in the personal sense that I am attempting to wade through. We have to deconstruct to reconstruct. Unfortunately, I think in the middle of all this it is hard to see when you can start reconstructing, or if you will even make it to that point.

Bottom line, I knew/know that something was wrong with me. As a loud mouthed perpetually happy person, I first started feeling wrong when I would go to bed unhappy and wake-up still unhappy. Usually, I can go to bed pissy and my mind forgets most of it in REM cycle. But for weeks this hasn’t been the case. More disturbingly, I found myself going days without really speaking to anyone. I would occasionally pipe up in class when someone said something to get me riled up, and I of course talked to friends and family on the phone but I wasn’t really speaking about anything. I was mostly choosing the words that didn’t reflect that I was stuck thinking about unhappy things. Even more disturbingly, I was/am experiencing mind-body interactions that I am not comfortable with. I have said before, to Andrews amusement (love you Roo), that sometimes I live so completely in my head that I don’t even notice I have a body until I run into something and then I’m like shit, I have legs/elbows/weak ankles. But my mental unhappiness has been manifesting itself in a desire not to eat (so foreign to me, if anything food has never lost its pleasures), insomnia, angry spurts of anxiety that nothing seems to calm down except for too long too cold walks around my less than interesting neighborhood dragging super-suited Mun Pai in-tow. And then there have been feelings of fear. I have been fearful to watch TV afraid that something will upset me and I’ll just loose it. I’ve stopped reading the news online, and I’ve strayed away from the kinds of dialogue I thrive in. In the past few days these feelings have become manageable in part to me realizing that I was ready to start interrogating their source and taking some action.

After a discussion with a very smart and close friend this evening, I thought about previous forums for me to work on personal issues and of course the great blogs of yesteryear came to mind. I have been unfortunately putting off rejoining a blogging community because I don’t do anything half-assed and I knew I would be talking about things that were painful and at times embarrassing if I made a return to personal introspection. But if I was going to do some healing this time it would be working on myself emotionally that was needed. Unfortunately, you often need the reflection of others in this healing process and the isolation I currently live in, most friends and family miles away (and in the case of my oldest friends so many states away I can’t think about it) so obtaining said reflection can be difficult. But a blog can be very therapeutic and sooo much cheaper than therapy right?

Back in the day, I used to belong to a blogging community with some real power. I was in dialogue with a group of women who questioned their beliefs and the world around them so fiercely that it helped me really define who I was at that point in my life. When that community started coming apart, mostly because everyone was moving on to new and exciting things which were awesome time consumers, I killed that blog with a steady diet of apathy and song lyrics. I have attempted to make several returns to working again but was afraid. Why be afraid of a blog? I think airing your personal issues in such a public forum brings up a lot of tension involving loosing control, privacy, and vulnerability is not something I relish in. In fact I go to painstaking lengths to avoid it, even to the point of avoiding actual physical contact-Courtney’s not a hugger. Maybe I am giving up something for Lent, my carefully constructed self and safety. But I’m needing some community, even if it is imagined community so blogging it shall be.

We’re never gonna survive unless we get a little bit crazy right Seal? I’m going to unleash the crazy.

Here is the link to the new baby blog: http://fatbottomedgurl.wordpress.com/

I am going to post to Myspace and Facebook as well.

I am hoping some of you long time friends bitter about my former blog-icide will ignore that hiccup and come back to chatting with me. But even if no one responds there is something significant about fearlessly speaking out into the void.