Re-entry to life...musings over feminism

Today ended up being a good day, but it's been a rough re-entry back into our real lives after coming back from our long trip. I was so sleep-deprived for the first week back that I remembered what I felt like after I'd spent my first 4 weeks of parenting a newborn. This morning I stepped out of the shower to realize that I had shaved only one leg, but it was too late to go back and fix it.

Nonetheless, things picked up. I got in contact with writer Miriam Peskowitz to let her know about the Mojo Mom Party Kit as a useful companion to her MotherTalk salon idea. Miriam embraced the idea of joining forces and letting our readers know about each other's resources, and she wrote about my party kit on today's edition of the Playground Revolution blog.

In related news, life at the intersection of feminism and reality is getting very interesting as more women write about it. I agree wholeheartedly with some of them and disagree vehemently with others. While I want to avoid fanning the generic, mass-media-fed "mommy wars," I am interested in engaging in vigorous critical dialogue about motherhood. As author Faulkner Fox noted, "feminism has always, and must, include judgments." While I do not always agree with Faulkner, that perspective rings true to me the more I read among the variety of recent literature about mothering.

While I am not surprised that I can't stand the harsh and unforgiving prescriptions of neo-traditionalists like Darla Shine, what is most interesting to me is how much disagreement there is among feminists about the current state of motherhood and feminism. I have been thinking about that for the past week, and I'm collecting my thoughts to expand on my brand of pro-mother feminsm, which I'll post here when I've had a chance to write.

My current state with one shaved leg and one hairy leg now seems like a weirdly hilarious unintentional metaphor for my effort to bring together the fields of motherhood and feminism!