Welcome Home

Welcome to The Write Mom. Here, I'll wax not-so-poetically about nearly everything, from being broke to changing diapers, writing books and reading them, watching movies and eating vegetarian dinners, discovering blessings and exploring this amazing universe called Parenting.

While there are scores of "mom-blogs" out there, this one is different. To me it is, and hopefully to you. I'm a mental case and I know it. I'm a quasi-hippie and I love it. I am torn between living my own way and doing what is deemed the "right" way by society or what I'm told to do. I'm still learning what my own way is. I'm an older mom who struggled to have her babies. I have been a vegetarian most of my life, yet love a meat-eating man and raise quasi-vegetarian kids. I grapple with faith issues, money problems, trying to find a balance between family and work (seriously, how do women keep a clean house, happy kids and a thriving career?), and feeling guilty about having "Yo Gabba Gabba" babysit my kids as I nail out lesson plans and articles in my office. Or screw around on Facebook. I am owned by three rescued mutts and my kids' first word was "dog." I teach college journalism, and I love it. I spend most days feeling like a fraud and wondering what I'm doing, then wondering how I got it done.

I have many dragons, and most of the time, I fight with them. But sometimes, I ask the beasts to dance. Those are the good days.

And through it all, I write. It's as important to me as breathing. Without the ability to live on the page, I struggle to have enough oxygen to survive. So I live out loud, and try to make sense of it all somewhere along the way.

I practice yoga and have for years. What I love about it is how we're never really done. No pose is perfected. There's always a bit more we can stretch, a new variation we can take, a way to breathe more effectively in the pose. In short, there's always somewhere to go to get better. I feel that way about parenting. We're never done or perfect. We're always practicing. A work in progress.

As I enter a new decade of my life, I'm embarking on a journey. I want to figure out how to be as crazy as I am, but in a peaceful, yogic way. I want to be the person I want my kids to grow up to be. I want to figure out how to live in the moment, be present, feel faith and peace, yet all the while going deeper into that pose, striving for one step closer to perfection, closer to home.

I'm embarking on this journey. And I'll write about it. Welcome. Welcome home.