I LOVE my sexuality. Sometimes I am extra "butchy" or masculine. I have no problem throwing on a mens shirt, jeans and biker boots. I can feel how I walk different, talk different, hold my shoulders differently. Then there are days that I love to throw on a pretty dress with elaborate earrings and have my painted toe nails showing to the world. Again, I can feel my entire demeanor change. Some people think this might mean I can't make up my mind if I'm girly or a tomboy. But this is just who I am and it's one of the things I have always loved most about myself. The flexibility to go in and out whatever I feel fits me for the day.
I am also incredibly lucky to be surrounded by people who actually celebrate this part of myself. I have so many people in my life who actually love that I have both of these sides to my sexuality and it makes me feel incredibly blessed to have their support. As such, it has made me incredibly passionate, as a parent, to not force a specific sexuality or gender identification on my daughter. I put her in traditionally boy AND girl clothes (especially if they were free hand me downs from my community!), I tried not using girly language or getting girly toys. I wanted her to choose for herself what she feels most comfortable identifying as or presenting herself as.
Unfortunately, no matter what I control in my daughter's immediate environment, I can not control everything else. I can't control the kids or teachers at her school. I can't control the other adults in her life that I am not associated with. I can't control all the other aspects of her life that I might not be able to be directly involved with that infiltrate and manipulate her mind into thinking that girls and boys need to look and act certain ways. As a result, I am constantly dealing with my daughter saying "I can't wear that because it's blue and blue is for boys!" Blue is her favorite color. Although she's now been saying it's pink.
It's breaking my heart. She's only 3 years old and she's already living in this world where she thinks she has to act and dress a certain way because she is a female. It has encouraged me, at times, to butch up my look even more. Resorting to my "boy clothes" on a more frequent basis so that she can have at least one female in her life that presents an alternate idea of what women can look like. But most of the time, it just makes her mad or confused. She gets frustrated that I'm wearing boy clothes and wants me to change. She often won't even play with her batman toys now, again, because they are for boys.
How do I break her out of this? Is it just something that she will eventually grow out of? I have no problem AT ALL if she is a "girly girl." But I want it to be because it's HER choice and not something she is essentially bullied into. I don't want her to lose her sense of wonder and self-discovery because there are people forcing their own ideals on to her.
I wish I knew the causes (or people rather) that were convincing her of these thoughts. I wish I could find these folks and discuss with them (read: BEG THEM) the important of a young child keeping their innocence. Let kids be kids and figure things out for themselves. They don't need the hurtful societal restrictions and prejudices of society to define their character or morality.
I know that I won't give up in teaching my daughter all the lifestyles a person can live; teaching her acceptance and tolerance of all people. But, as a mother, I feel desperate to protect her from the patriarchal enforcement of gender and social norms that might not work for her. I pray that I equip her with the tools and confidence to define herself and stick by it no matter what anyone says.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Friday, March 6, 2015
I don't want you
So, in the last year, one of the greatest challenges I have faced with my daughter is her frequently looking me in the face saying "I don't want you." I thought it was just a phase, but it's been pretty consistent for quite a while now. There have been times I've picked her up and she just starts crying "I want my daddy!!!!"
My responses to this have been endless. I've tried everything. Smiling through it and reassuring her that she will see him again. Letting her know that I am here for her and love her just as much. Informing her gently that what she is saying hurts my feelings or makes me sad. Now I've moved on to avoidance. But not because I'm scared. I just figure if I don't feed energy into what she's saying, perhaps she will just stop saying it. Writing that down makes me feel like a bad parent for some reason. But deep down, I know I'm not because after this new habit of her expressing her disdain for me, I've made a more proactive effort in trying to be a better mom. Not to prove anything to her or anyone. But I figure, if she's expressing this annoyance towards me, perhaps it IS because I'm doing something "wrong." Which is ok. I'm a first time parent who never grew up around kids, so I'm still figuring things out, and now doing so super solo. So I've put in extra effort in creating structure, activities, social gatherings, etc. I'm exhausted lol. But after a year, I think it is FINALLY starting to pay off.
We go out more. Which can be challenging to find free or low costs thing to do. But she always really enjoys the places I find for her. We read great stories. We meditate. We do yoga. We sing and dance. We create random art murals in our house. We attempt to play the guitar. We TALK. We're having conversations, which is just crazy to me. It's been quite the experience to watch my daughter grow.
Hearing my daughter tell me she doesn't want to be around me or doesn't love me has been really hard. I have cried many a nights over it. But I secretly think this is just what I needed. Growing up as an only child, no cousins, and always moving around so not establishing relationships with young people makes it truly challenging to understand what a child need or wants. My child's dad is like a super parent; a natural born dad who obviously has some incredible parenting instincts that I have often envied which I sometimes attribute to him being raised around so many family members, including his 3 siblings. It's not the answer to everything, but I think it certainly helps. So now, through the separation, I have often felt lost and utterly alone. Especially when I have her for more than 2 days in a row. Something as simple as "what the hell am I going to make her for dinner" can paralyze my brain; luckily it has not impacted my ability to parent.
I'm very lucky to have an involved co-parent, but I'm also very lucky to have such an awesome kid. She knows what she needs and demands it...politely of course. She's not a complete jerk after all, lol. And she has been such an incredible blessing in my life because she teaches me humility, determination and persistence. She strengthens my self education (which is something I pretty much thrived off my whole life anyway), my courage, and my confidence. Granted, she can also make that shatter to the ground with just a few simple words. But this challenging experience has taught me to push past it faster because there are more good parts than bad. I really can't wait to see what this little girl teaches me next. :-)
My responses to this have been endless. I've tried everything. Smiling through it and reassuring her that she will see him again. Letting her know that I am here for her and love her just as much. Informing her gently that what she is saying hurts my feelings or makes me sad. Now I've moved on to avoidance. But not because I'm scared. I just figure if I don't feed energy into what she's saying, perhaps she will just stop saying it. Writing that down makes me feel like a bad parent for some reason. But deep down, I know I'm not because after this new habit of her expressing her disdain for me, I've made a more proactive effort in trying to be a better mom. Not to prove anything to her or anyone. But I figure, if she's expressing this annoyance towards me, perhaps it IS because I'm doing something "wrong." Which is ok. I'm a first time parent who never grew up around kids, so I'm still figuring things out, and now doing so super solo. So I've put in extra effort in creating structure, activities, social gatherings, etc. I'm exhausted lol. But after a year, I think it is FINALLY starting to pay off.
We go out more. Which can be challenging to find free or low costs thing to do. But she always really enjoys the places I find for her. We read great stories. We meditate. We do yoga. We sing and dance. We create random art murals in our house. We attempt to play the guitar. We TALK. We're having conversations, which is just crazy to me. It's been quite the experience to watch my daughter grow.
Hearing my daughter tell me she doesn't want to be around me or doesn't love me has been really hard. I have cried many a nights over it. But I secretly think this is just what I needed. Growing up as an only child, no cousins, and always moving around so not establishing relationships with young people makes it truly challenging to understand what a child need or wants. My child's dad is like a super parent; a natural born dad who obviously has some incredible parenting instincts that I have often envied which I sometimes attribute to him being raised around so many family members, including his 3 siblings. It's not the answer to everything, but I think it certainly helps. So now, through the separation, I have often felt lost and utterly alone. Especially when I have her for more than 2 days in a row. Something as simple as "what the hell am I going to make her for dinner" can paralyze my brain; luckily it has not impacted my ability to parent.
I'm very lucky to have an involved co-parent, but I'm also very lucky to have such an awesome kid. She knows what she needs and demands it...politely of course. She's not a complete jerk after all, lol. And she has been such an incredible blessing in my life because she teaches me humility, determination and persistence. She strengthens my self education (which is something I pretty much thrived off my whole life anyway), my courage, and my confidence. Granted, she can also make that shatter to the ground with just a few simple words. But this challenging experience has taught me to push past it faster because there are more good parts than bad. I really can't wait to see what this little girl teaches me next. :-)
Thursday, May 15, 2014
I hate grapes!
One of the things that I have always feared as a single mom is, what if something happens to my daughter where I need to rush her off to the ER? Do I REALLY have to do that by myself? I can handle sickness, cooking, laundry, grocery shopping, daycare, and whatever else. But the thought of having to deal with something tragic with my little girl, on my own, is a terrifying thought.
This recently resurfaced the other night as my daughter was enjoying her post-dinner dessert of purple seedless grapes. I was washing dishes, chatting away with her, as she enjoyed her snack at the dinner table. All of the sudden, it got really quiet. I looked up and she was turned to me with very large eyes, tears streaming down her face, red as a tomato, waving her arms around her face. I can't even begin to describe the look of panic that was on her face. And her expression was so contorted she almost looked like a creature from The Ring or one of those creepy movies with a distorted ghost-like girl figure as the main character.
I immediately rushed to her, leaned her forward with my left hand around her chin, patting her back with my right hand; something I had seen on a youtube video years ago. The grapes came out of her mouth pretty quickly. My little hungry warrior princess tried to shove 5 of them in her tiny mouth at one time, hence the choking. As soon as the grape was out of her mouth, she quickly grabbed another one to eat. I looked at her in disbelief. Did she even realize what almost happened?
I snatched up the remaining grapes and proceeded to chop them into quarters before returning them to her; emphasizing to her to eat one at a time. She continued finishing off the grapes as if nothing happened. What is wrong with her!?!? (lol)
I went back to the sink, my heart pounding, and continued to wash the dishes. My hands were shaking and my brain was on fire. The thoughts that were rushing through my head in the short moments after everything had happened were not pleasant. What if she had died? What would that feel like? How could I ever survive without her? Her father would never forgive me. If she died, I might as well be dead myself.
I kept playing out different scenarios of rushing her to my car, calling an ambulance, giving her CPR. My imagination was on overdrive, and not in a good way. All of this, from her choking to me having these crazy thoughts, literally happened within a 3 minute timespan. It's interesting how fast the mind works. And after that 3 minutes, I just began to cry. I looked over at my daughter, enjoying her little fruits, and just silently cried. She looked over at me, smiling, holding up one of her grapes and said loudly "Mommy! The grape was stuck in my mouth!" She was just glowing with pride over it. Pushing back my tears, I kind of just laughed and said "That's right sweetie. That's why we have to eat one at a time! No more grapes being stuck in the mouth please!"
And that was that. That was the end of my daughter's "near death experience." Of course I am probably overreacting. But it was scary, and I have been super on guard since then. It's also just impacted me in a huge way. You never think of children passing away because we often relate death to age, and of course young children never die. But the reality is, as we all know in our subconscious, that death can happen at any time, any where, for any reason. This incident really helped me realize that. There's not much else I can do with that information besides continuing to love and spend time with my daughter as much as humanly possible. There's part of me that wants to constantly smother her and protect everything she touches or things that go near her. But the truth of it all is that I can't control anything, and I certainly don't want to wrap her up in such a tight cocoon that she doesn't get to experience life; even if that means the more negative aspects of it. However, this was an incredible profound parenting experience that I just thought I should share.
Thanks for reading. :-)
This recently resurfaced the other night as my daughter was enjoying her post-dinner dessert of purple seedless grapes. I was washing dishes, chatting away with her, as she enjoyed her snack at the dinner table. All of the sudden, it got really quiet. I looked up and she was turned to me with very large eyes, tears streaming down her face, red as a tomato, waving her arms around her face. I can't even begin to describe the look of panic that was on her face. And her expression was so contorted she almost looked like a creature from The Ring or one of those creepy movies with a distorted ghost-like girl figure as the main character.
I immediately rushed to her, leaned her forward with my left hand around her chin, patting her back with my right hand; something I had seen on a youtube video years ago. The grapes came out of her mouth pretty quickly. My little hungry warrior princess tried to shove 5 of them in her tiny mouth at one time, hence the choking. As soon as the grape was out of her mouth, she quickly grabbed another one to eat. I looked at her in disbelief. Did she even realize what almost happened?
I snatched up the remaining grapes and proceeded to chop them into quarters before returning them to her; emphasizing to her to eat one at a time. She continued finishing off the grapes as if nothing happened. What is wrong with her!?!? (lol)
I went back to the sink, my heart pounding, and continued to wash the dishes. My hands were shaking and my brain was on fire. The thoughts that were rushing through my head in the short moments after everything had happened were not pleasant. What if she had died? What would that feel like? How could I ever survive without her? Her father would never forgive me. If she died, I might as well be dead myself.
I kept playing out different scenarios of rushing her to my car, calling an ambulance, giving her CPR. My imagination was on overdrive, and not in a good way. All of this, from her choking to me having these crazy thoughts, literally happened within a 3 minute timespan. It's interesting how fast the mind works. And after that 3 minutes, I just began to cry. I looked over at my daughter, enjoying her little fruits, and just silently cried. She looked over at me, smiling, holding up one of her grapes and said loudly "Mommy! The grape was stuck in my mouth!" She was just glowing with pride over it. Pushing back my tears, I kind of just laughed and said "That's right sweetie. That's why we have to eat one at a time! No more grapes being stuck in the mouth please!"
And that was that. That was the end of my daughter's "near death experience." Of course I am probably overreacting. But it was scary, and I have been super on guard since then. It's also just impacted me in a huge way. You never think of children passing away because we often relate death to age, and of course young children never die. But the reality is, as we all know in our subconscious, that death can happen at any time, any where, for any reason. This incident really helped me realize that. There's not much else I can do with that information besides continuing to love and spend time with my daughter as much as humanly possible. There's part of me that wants to constantly smother her and protect everything she touches or things that go near her. But the truth of it all is that I can't control anything, and I certainly don't want to wrap her up in such a tight cocoon that she doesn't get to experience life; even if that means the more negative aspects of it. However, this was an incredible profound parenting experience that I just thought I should share.
Thanks for reading. :-)
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