After about 30 days of blogging, my goal-oriented self started to determinedly question the purpose of Shout. I’ve always felt like this space should be dedicated to something more than my motherly musings or personal insanities, and that something should be niche specific. I’ve never been able to put my finger on that something, or that niche, and I’ve continued to muddy my way through several hundred posts with no clear purpose. I know many of us blog for the community, the fun, the search for a lighter, humorous moment, or we often say, I write for me. I love those pursuits too. Whatever you desire, I’m quite sure you can find it in the land of blog.

I’ve started to think of this place as an ongoing conversation with friends. Similar to meeting for a cup of leaded java in the local coffee shop, we jump from topic to topic. We question, inspire and support. We contemplate issues related to parenting, family dynamics, interpersonal communications, social norms and dilemmas, and varied other subjects that find their way from my mind to my keyboard to your screen. There are days when I write well and there are days when I throw up a picture of my child and pretend it’s a post. Most of the time my efforts net somewhere in the middle. Shout has a small audience. Most days that’s just fine. Some days I wonder why. I take it personally; shoot my Achilles heel and stomp bloodied all over my writer’s confidence.

I know it’s boring to read a blogger in crisis-waving her fist and questioning her intent. I’m not doing that. There’s a point here, it’s just taking me a minute to get to it. The process of writing for Shout has become sweet in itself, but every writer wants an audience. I happen to be a rather altruistic personality, sometimes naive, too often sarcastic, but always contemplative and full of desire to create change and to learn. I love debate and the process of communication, but most important I’m rather passionate about a few things and Shout has helped me to better discover myself, with your help.

Blog awards are like little hugs floating around out there and every now and then I’m lucky enough to bump into one. Like hugging a stranger, blog awards make me nervous though. Well, that’s not entirely true. I love receiving them—it’s a nod of acceptance, a point of bliss…actuality that someone really is reading labors of love. It feeds my writer’s appetite for audience. Just as I can never choose a favorite movie or song, the act of passing awards along to other bloggers always leaves me feeling inadequate, and that’s what makes me nervous.

Monday, Smart Mouth Broad presented an award to me and several other bloggers that included some interesting directions, and it intrigues me.

The recipient of this award is recognized for the following:
1) The Blogger manifests exemplary attitude, respecting the nuances that pervades amongst different cultures and beliefs.
2) The Blog contents inspire; strives to encourage, and offers solutions.
3) There is a clear purpose at the Blog; one that fosters a better understanding on Social, Political, Economic, the Arts, Culture, Sciences, and Beliefs.
4) The Blog is refreshing and creative.
5) The Blogger promotes friendship and positive thinking.

The Blogger who receives this award will need to perform the following steps:
1) Create a Post with a mention and link to the person who presented the Noblesse Oblige Award.
2) The Award Conditions must be displayed at the Post.
3) Write a short article about what the Blog has thus far achieved – preferably citing one or more older posts to support.
4) The Blogger must present the Noblesse Oblige Award in concurrence with the Award conditions.
5) Blogger must display the Award at any location at the Blog.

Of course being my sarcastic, self-depreciating self, my first instinct was to blow that part about achievement off and find some way to turn that little idea into a joke. But this morning I started thinking about it in a different light. I actually have achieved several things by writing for Shout and this is a great opportunity to remind myself that I’m making a tiny difference in my small part of the world and in my own life. That adds up to something. That matters to me, and really that’s why I write.

It’s not all been peaches. We had a rather significant dual in our immediate family over some early posts I wrote about people in my step family. My brother has stopped talking to me because of my blog, and it’s been more than a year. I miss him, but I’m going to keep writing.

With hindsight’s help and in no particular order, here are a couple of things that I’m pretty proud of and why I’ll keep blogging, regardless of audience size or family shenanigans. These are the kinds of things that make me tick.

• Writing here has helped me make peace with my infertility, and it has fostered friendships with people who share the same demons—people I’d never have met otherwise.
• Bare Naked, a 3-part series on family violence is one of the most-read pieces on Shout. More than three thousand people have read it, and extremely gratifying to me—many, many, many people have landed on the articles with Google searches for things like… my husband won’t stop shouting at me or I can’t control my anger toward my wife and I’ve seen them click through to the pages of Men Stopping Violence for resource links and help.
• I’ve received multiple emails saying I’ve touched someone’s life, made them think or to say thanks for my honesty about adultery, family violence, child sexual abuse, or infertility, and often the person has gone on to share with me their own story of grief or resolutions. I cherish those connections. They humble me, and I’m honored by your trust.
• I’ve already had multiple search engine hits on the posts for the Beautiful Like Me project as people look for information about helping children develop self esteem and embrace differences, which reminds me—we really need to add a list of resources to the project page.
• I’ve gained so much more than I’ve given and I’ve learned a tremendous amount. The people who stop by here always give me something to think about. I love that about you.
• Shout was a catalyst for my mom starting in therapy. No joke. I keep telling her I’m going to get her a T-shirt that reads, My daughter blogs so I’m seeing a shrink. Some of the conversations and things I’ve written about here on Shout opened a dialogue she and I needed to have for a long time, and as a result we’re closer, more bonded, and she’s doing some necessary things for herself. I’m incredibly proud of her for that, and really honored that she continues to read even when she probably wants to reach through the computer and strangle me (like right now).

I think most important to me, writing here has given me a voice. It’s a small voice and it rambles and starts and stops and sings off tune, but it’s a voice. More than just saying Life is too short to be quiet, I’m writing it, and that matters to me. I truly believe from my head to my toes that when one voice speaks, others join and collectively we make a positive difference in each others lives by the simple act of having conversations.

My family taught me to play my cards close, to keep secrets and to keep dirty laundry neatly tucked out of view. I know those were unintentional messages, but they were rampant. I know the exact opposite is what sets us free, creates change and fosters courage. Thanks for taking these little journeys with me, and thanks to Smart Mouth Broad for providing an opportunity for self reflection. Today, I’m pretty happy to be a blogger and to be in such good company. I’m honored that you read what I write and that you care enough to comment or email or to simply ponder with me.

I’m Wondering on Wednesday: When was the last time you were presented an opportunity for self reflection, and did you like what you see?

I’m Wondering on Wednesday: When was the last time you felt this happy and free?

If you want your shoes neatly aligned, he’s your guy.  He’ll gladly sort  your closet, your cupboards, pantry or bookshelves.

A Peek Into Our Week

• His father’s side of the closet is now color coordinated with stripped and solid shirts hanging in separate sections because Aaron needed something to do while I was taking a shower. Tackling his dad’s shirts was how he decided to entertain himself.

• Aaron and I had daily arguments about whether or not the reference books in my office should be standing with their spines facing front, or if they look neater flat and stacked.
• If I turn my back for a minute, he rearranges the silverware drawers, daily.
• I left him in the living room for a whole 3.62 minutes and when I returned, the coffee table was turned around.
• I went to get a clean dishtowel and discovered they had all been neatly folded, sorted, color coded and moved to a different drawer.
• While putting away his laundry, I pulled open his underwear drawer and found it was now full of socks and where I normally keep his pajamas is now full of underwear.
• He had a meltdown Thursday night because I wouldn’t let him take all the dishes out of the kitchen cupboards. He wanted to conduct an inventory and then to rearrange the plates and bowls according to a different scheme than the one I currently employ.

I’ve never seen anyone, especially a child, who thinks “cleaning day” is more fun than Christmas, but Aaron does, and the slightest hint that maybe we’ll move a piece of furniture throws him into a fit of happy skipping and anticipation.

You probably think this sounds like a wonderful attribute, and I’m sure it is. But it drives me a little batty when all the knick knacks, family photographs and books that I spent an embarrassing amount of time placing  just so (because I’m not obsessive) in the two enormous bookcases on either side of our fireplace are now in different spots. While I was on the phone with a client and trying to act professional while simultaneously performing mommy duty, Aaron dutifully took advantage of what he knew was a weakened state of authority and moved EVERY SINGLE object on those shelves. Later while I was on the phone with a friend, he decided his first interior decorating escapade wasn’t quite right, and he moved everything again.

While bemoaning to my friend about how Aaron’s need for clean has turned into an insistence on reorganizing my world, she made a brilliant suggestion, why don’t you teach him how to alphabetize and then he can work in your office filing those stacks of paper that drive you crazy. Ah hah!  Project slave labor shall commence shortly.

I used to worry he was mimicking my sometimes OCD tendencies and wonder where he learned such behavior and if this need for clean is some sort of karmic slap (it’s not like I have to color coordinate the bathroom towels or anything), but this morning everything became startlingly clear, and as usual it’s all his father’s fault. While Aaron was repeatedly harassing Kim to get out of bed and join us in the family room so he could begin egg hunting, my husband couldn’t  join the festivities until he’d taken care of a small matter. That’s right, even on Easter morning with the promise of a a child’s chocolate giggles, my dear better half had to make the bed before he could leave the room.

I suppose I really shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when after hunting for Easter eggs and marveling over his basket full of loot, Aaron quickly went about the task of organizing his treasure. He raided the Tupperware drawer…one container for candy, one for the new play dough, one for empty plastic eggs, etc. Then he carefully disposed of all the grass lining (because, Mommy it’s really messy) and finally, he spent 7.4 minutes vacuuming his Easter basket.

Hey, it’s a tough economy. I may hire him out. How much do you think I could charge per hour for the cleaning services of an adorable 5-year-old with an organizational fixation?

I hope you all had a fantastic weekend, branded with your own style of organized chaos.

Well to further elaborate on my whole different is good thinking process, I thought I’d share on of many reasons my husband has decided he lives with a nut. I asked him to look through a very black and white lens at some rather difficult social issues and to pretend that he had to vote up or down, on the spot, without any hemming and hawing, no amendments or mucking up the discussion with all the normal gray matter where we happen to intersect.

I asked him to vote up or down on:

• Legalizing gay marriage
• The death penalty
• Keeping abortion legal
• Legalizing marijuana
• Mandatory chemical castration for convicted pedophiles
• Gay adoption

I was a little surprised that when push came to shove, we only cast identical votes on two issues.

These two have made it so there's hope, right?

It’s not that I don’t know where my husband stands on most issues, and I obviously know where I stand, it’s just that when we discuss  hot-button topics, we tend to get into all the gray area of personal decision making, and how we’d feel if this or that happened in our own lives, or to someone we love, but we’ve never really broken it down into a no nonsense, ya gotta take a stand and vote now kind of gun draw.

I suppose I don’t need to look very far afield to teach my child that differences can enrich our lives. I’ll just make sure he’s sitting in on more lunch-time conversations at home, and I’ll make sure to take him aside and explain that mommy is right and daddy is wrong, but it’s OK because it’s always good to at least have an intellectual understanding of both sides of an issue.

I’m Wondering on Wednesday: Is there something morally, politically, philosophically or otherwise that you and your significant other disagree about?

Completely different topic, but one of my favorite posts from around the blog world this week is here

I’m Wondering on Wednesday: What has been your favorite, most cherished surprise?

Don’t forget to check out WickedStepMom’s Beautiful Like Me project. The first round-table post goes up Monday, April 6th. Can we count on you to join in?

I’ve read many, many blog posts over the last year where moms and dads were lamenting because of a classroom bully.  WickedStopMom posted about an experience she witnessed amongst her daughter’s peer group last weekend. Vodka Mom broke my heart with this post (thanks Tara for pointing it out) and several months ago, I wrote an article about coping with bullies in response to another blogger who piqued my interest on the topic.

I’ve always wondered how children learn to bully. There are obvious precursors in many situations, but I’m also sure we teach children with our own, seemingly benign indicators as well. Do we teach it to them at home, in subtle ways that then manifest themselves on the playground and in the classroom? I heard Aaron call one of his friends a loser the other day. I wanted to throttle him, or slink away into a dark hole. I did neither, but we did do a fair amount of talking.

I don’t make friends easily. I’m guilty of not making room in my life for new relationships, but in the last year I’ve met two women who I’ve come to adore. They also have 5-year-old boys and we just seem to be, in many ways, at the same place in our lives at the same time. They’re smart, funny, politically up-to-date, socially conscious and active, they have huge hearts, and they strike me as the kind of women who’d have my back in any situation. We have similar lifestyles and these are friendships I want to nurture and grow. They make sense. The fact that Aaron goes to school with their boys, and they all love playing together is a slice of suburban heaven.

It takes a lifetime to grow an old friend, and I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the process of friendship, its creation and sustenance. We make new friends, most likely, because we meet at a specific time in our lives where the relationship makes sense. It feeds some part of our soul and as time marches on and our circumstances change, the test of longevity is the ability to accept and rejoice in the choices we each make, regardless of how different we become.

My friend Amy came to visit Saturday. We’ve been thicker than thieves for 24 years and as we make our way through our late 30s, we couldn’t be more different. In fact, if we met for the first time today we’d probably not give each other a second glance. Almost every choice we’ve made over the last decade is polar opposite and I think we’d have difficulty finding common ground. It amazes me that we can spend hour after hour discussing everything under the moon, including all our reasoning for making different choices. We continue to gently challenge each other, to provide opportunity to question and debate, to relentlessly chide each other, and I think we’re both more contemplative as a result.

My friendship with Amy and my understanding that it’s not a relationship that would bud today, also begs me to wonder how many wonderful people I don’t give a second thought simply because their lifestyle or views are opposite of my own. The dismissal isn’t purposeful, but I’m sure it happens.

I had never thought of Amy and I as yin-yang resource for our children to draw upon and see that people who make different choices and who have different belief systems can actually enrich each others lives, but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I hope I’ll open my heart to find more enrichment opportunities by adding new friends, both those that make sense and those that don’t. I hope I can provide an example for Aaron to intertwine circles rather than complete them singularly.

I’m Wondering on Wednesday: what ideas do you have to help keep yourself from becoming a bully, and to teach your child to embrace rather than ridicule differences?

PS: To see my new favorite photo essay, take a look at this post from Melanie at BeanPaste.

Just before we moved, a good friend pulled me aside and explained that in order for Aaron to make friends, I actually have to be nice to the other mothers…I actually have to be social, and I actually have to participate in playground mommy chats, oh my. I was kind of hoping I could simply drop him off by the swing sets and he’d take care of the rest.

I’m not very good at the social mommy thing. I’m an introvert who has to morph in social situations. It’s been brought to my attention more than once that I have a tendency to come across as a bitch when really I’m simply quiet. Yes, I know, none of you are surprised by the bitch reference. I’m working on it.

I’ve had to learn-as-I-go and one thing that’s become very apparent over the last year is that Aaron doesn’t really choose his friends at all. I choose them based on whether or not I like the other parents. Other parents are deciding whether or not they want their child to play with Aaron based on what they think of me…yikes!

When I host a play date or schedule an outing with one of Aaron’s buddies, it’s more likely that I enjoy spending time with the other parent than whether or not Aaron initially showed interest in the other child. Thankfully, the moms and dads I like the most have children Aaron seems to really enjoy.

So, I’m wondering on Wednesday—how long will this utopia last?

When do children start choosing their own friends, regardless of whether or not the parents like or approve of each other, and will I really have to let him?

I’ve despised onion since I realized I have taste buds. I don’t like the texture, the flavor, the smell, the anything. I delete the nasty little things from recipes. They are banned from my refrigerator and I even avoid looking at them in the grocery store.

The problem is that onion is in everything. It’s just about impossible to order in a restaurant without having to ask them to please hold the onion, and if it’s soup or something with a sauce, forget it. My friends and family have tried to disguise them. In their various efforts to trick me they cut the little devils up smaller and hope I’ll not taste them, which just seems follish to me. If something powerful is small, it’s still powerful.

The thing is—I wish I liked onion. It’s in everything and life would be that much simpler if I could develop a taste for onion, scallion and chives (they’re all the same to me). When I was a child, my parents weren’t very sympathetic and kept threatening promising that one day my taste buds would mature. I just had to keep trying. Yea, well, I’m still waiting.

I’m wondering on Wednesday—is there hope? Did your taste buds mature and you now like a food item you never thought you’d like?

While journeying across the blogsphere, I often run into people’s truth, nuggets that are contradictory to my own.

Commenting on a post regarding a family who has eight children, six of whom were born from the same pregnancy, a woman wrote, “It’s been proven that nobody puts four embryos back inside during an IVF procedure unless they’re trying to have multiples.”

Her absolute truth and proven hypothesis completely opposes my own experience. We were advised to place four of our embryos into my uterus during IVF, and we were hoping with all the strength of our marriage and the desire of Aphrodite that maybe, just maybe, one would survive.

Commenting on a post I wrote at The Imperfect Parent someone shared, “…My children know where the phrase, “rule of thumb” came from and that they can’t use that in my presence because of its history.”

She is referring to an urban myth of feminism perpetuated by influential activist, Del Martin who wrote in 1976 that ‘the rule of thumb’ originally referred to a British law limiting the maximum thickness of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife, but this has been discredited. The law never existed.

These comments and others have left me to contemplate some of my own truths—items that once were clear, but that over time have been exposed and disintegrated. I’ve realized there are many. Here are a few:

• I’ll be your friend forever, no matter what.
• Marriage doesn’t take work, and two people who truly love each other never argue or fight.
• I never had acne as a teenager, so I’ll never get pimples as an adult.
• To become pregnant, or not, is simply a matter of birth control.
• People who incessantly complain about their children don’t really appreciate them.
• Someone who loves me would never intentionally hurt me.
• Being married means you get to have sex all the time.
• Given enough time, justice will prevail.
• If he or she can just hear my reasoning, they’ll understand and think like I do.

I’m wondering on Wednesday—what was your truth?

“I’ve been terribly lazy,” I said. “Plus, I really need to start going earlier in the morning. If I wait to work out until after I drop Aaron at preschool, it’s 10:30 before I get back into my office, and I feel like half the day is gone.”

“Oh.” she paused. Her tone of voice noticeably changing. “Where’s your office?”

“I have an office in my home.”

“So. You work?”

“Yes,” I hesitate picking up on her new, all-of-a-sudden hostile tone and body language. “I’m self employed and run a marketing communications company,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said again, crossing her arms in self defense and obvious discomfort. “I guess I just thought you were one of us.” And with the dismissal only a stay-at-home mom can wave in the face of another mother, she pivoted on her sneakered-heel and walked away in search of common ground with someone else.

First confused, then angry, I thought about this conversation for days. After my anger faded I started to wonder if this woman had difficult experiences in the past with other women. Had she been the victim of a verbal assault for making the decision to stay at home with her child rather than pursue a career? Maybe her obvious change-of-heart for me had more to do with her own experiences than with my choices. I’ll probably never know why she turned away so abruptly, but the interaction brought a multitude of questions to my mind about what I expect from other women, professionally and personally.

Do we expect women to help each other in the workplace differently than we expect men, or differently than men expect from each other? Do we expect mentoring and fellowship based on shared gender?

Add motherhood to the female-to-female equation and expectations seem even more complicated. Motherhood adds another dimension to the experiences women share, but nothing seems to bring on a cat fight faster than a disagreement about how to mother. There is absolutely nobody who can cut a mother down like another mother, and we see it happen all the time across the blogsphere, in the media, in popular culture and in our daily lives.

Much has been written about The Mommy Wars, including a book of the same title by Leslie Morgan Steiner, which is still on my reading list. The thesis of the general argument has been that women who work outside the home and women who choose to stay at home with their children routinely do psychological battle. Each feeling slighted by the other.

We talk about “girl power,” unite around common causes and hold each other up in times of crisis, sometimes, but do women only empower each other when we share the same desires, or philosophies, or politics, or religion, or what ever? It often seems that the idea of women standing on the shoulders of women is a fallacy. Just because we have the same female anatomy doesn’t mean we owe each other anything, or do our shared experiences, unique to the female journey, mean we do in fact owe each other something, and if so what?

I’m wondering on Wednesday—what do you expect from women?