A Return

After many years, and many life changes, I have decided to try blogging again. I need a less academic, less structured space to practice articulating my thoughts. A place that is more free, with the only peer reviews coming from whoever might stumble upon this space and frankly, I don't anticipate many visiting here. 

While I have had several posts stewing over the past few years, none of them are floating to the top of the pot so this will simply provide the life background updates. 

After the miscarriage that centered my last post I had another miscarriage and then immediately after a successful pregnancy and delivery. Two years later I had another kid which means I now have a 4 and a 6 year old. They have made life full of delight and also just plain full. I struggled for many years or maybe it was months with a deeply ambivalent motherhood. Now, while I don't always love it, I am at least more at peace with it and am able to delight in the humans beings my children are becoming. 

Seven or eight months after the first kid was born I successfully defended a dissertation that had been largely typed one handed while nursing with the other arm. Then I started a tenure track position is social studies education at Kent State University. And yes, it is the same Kent State University where four student protesters were shot and killed by the National Guard on May 4th, 1970. 

We have now purchased a home in Kent OH and our lives have become quite mundane perhaps, particularly when I compare it to the times I lived in Washington DC where most of this blog was written. I still care deeply about many of the issues I wrote about in the past but now channel that energy into my teaching, research and service. Kids, it turns out, can take a lot of time and energy and I confess to not being a terribly courageous mother. The first Women's March happened when my daughter was a few weeks old. I could have put her into a carrier of sorts and driven up to Cleveland to join others but the thought of trying to nurse a newborn and changer her diapers in the cold persuaded me to stay home and watch my facebook feed. While I have made it to a few BLM protests they have been in Kent, mostly on  my own without the kids although we do talk about the protests. 

Somedays I feel like laundry has taken over my life - but that could be a blog post all its own. For now I will leave this here in hopes that it will commit me to writing more and soon.