2 year blogiversary & celebrating the vicarious embarrassment of catching glimpses of your past self

It's crazy to think I've been doing this blog for 2 years now. When I started this thing in February 2023, I was a complete mess and felt unmoored upon trying (somewhat unwillingly) to close the door on a fairly intense period of my life. My behaviour was slightly manic—not in the clinical sense—but you know the rudimentary kind of shit you do when you're so lost that you act a fool? In any case, I was in desperate need of something to ground me. This is the place that helped me do that. I got so much out in this space. Now I'm in such a wildly different head space that I have a sense of vicarious embarrassment looking back at those older entries because of just how much of myself I laid bare, and I feel so far removed from that moment in time, and from the person who was writing those things. But the truth is, I WAS her, and she was me, and life do be like that sometimes. It's a part of my story, and it needed to be excavated, or it would have stayed buried only to continue to crop up in unhealthy ways later on. I had so much to work through—from the storms of 2022 to the early years of my mothering journey and to unpacking the remnants of a childhood of being unseen, etc. I am grateful I was—and am—able to unpack all that here in this place. I feel braver and saner not having let these things fester.

Writing these days feels soft and intentional—even if I’m working on long stream of consciousness pieces—there’s always a purpose behind the madness. Who knows? Maybe it'll end up in my poetry book one day. I think deep down I always knew I was going to make it out of the darkness, but I had things to process first, and I STILL do that constantly, because I am always growing and evolving. I wish I could've told the sad girl from back then to be patient. That it would all sort itself out. That in two years time you'll be celebrating your baby girl's three months of being Earthside as you kiss her deliciously chubby cheeks and dance to Sparklehorse in the kitchen.

Cheers to two years here, and to finding a new purpose. It all makes perfect sense now.

As always, thanks for being here.

Raising child comrades

I mean, one can only hope. Being a progressive parent involves taking many different roads in raising your kids, you know. Our dinner conversations look different. The things I expose them to often look strange and outwardly questionable to those without an inside view. Last year, while still in Kindie, my son went to Lorax day at his nature school and preached to the class about how The Lorax is a tale illuminating “how capitalism is killing the Earth.” He asks about modern day colonizers. We talk about the people of Gaza. We discuss how prisons and laws are made to punish the underclass. We know the real life bad guys are billionaires, colonizers and corporations. We discuss overconsumption and we’re mindful of our environmental footprint. They’ve been exposed to social movements and picket lines from an early age, and often hear us heatedly discuss the grievances of the working class.

This is the stuff I want them to fully understand, not merely how to be polite and deferential to those in power, like good little soldiers. I want them to use whatever privilege and access to resources they have to make the world better for everyone, not just themselves. If that’s radical or extreme, then so be it.

Burn the witch

Batten down that bolshie brain, you’re always in trouble for the things you say. In another life, you’d be a revolutionary. An anarchist angel, like Vera Zasulich. Or a ‘lady death’, sniping fascists like Mila Pavlichenko. Or perhaps a sister of the resistance, à la Simone Segouin. Or maybe a martyr like Joan of Arc, moved by voice and vision to lead men into battle. You’d ride for the cause, enshrined alongside all the other radicalized heroines.

But in this world, you’re nothing more than a voodoo vamp, bewitching men into concupiscence and shouting socialist shrill about status quos and splintered systems. If you existed on any other timeline, you’d be put on the pyre.

If only there were potions to do away with poverty and prejudice. If only there were spells to obliterate oligarchies and root out regimes ready to destroy the Earth. If only you spoke the incantations necessary to extinguish inequality, and possessed the magic that would set the underclass free. If only you were able to assure your descendants would inherit more than the shattered remnants of what could have been.

You’d burn for that.