Any of you mama's been to therapy? I am currently in individual therapy, hoping that I will get some help in going forward with my goals. I am feeling a little weird about it. I love my therapist, she's great. I feel that it is helping me, yet there is this little tiny part of me that feels like this is way to much of a bourgois (sp?) luxury. My mind keeps telling me to just get over it. Do any mama's struggle with this?

I went and stood in line and cried and voted and bumped fist with the only other sister in line
I felt like a real revolutionary
Then I went home and waited for the revolution
I am still waiting for it
Meanwhile trying to figure out how many more things I can make with ground turkey
Paying the electric bill later than I should have
Feeling relieved yet trapped each time I drive up to this tiny house in the suburbs.
I am still saying no to morning sex before rushing off to long days at work
In neighborhoods that I worry may never see the revolution (or is it Revolution?).
I still feel guilty when I hide my IPod and lock my doors when stuck at a light near the bus stop.
I spend too much time at the gym and staring in the mirror at stretch marks
and not enough time writing.
So something about the sound of my children watching Sponge Bob Square Pants on this
Saturday morning, while I tried to gather myself out of bed under my mortgage paid roof
for another Saturday of laundry, treadmills, and rented movies,
made me realize that THE revolution has not happened in my head.
I thought about how on NPR I had heard that Sponge Bob was the H.N.I.C.’s favorite show,
And I thought about all his speeches on CNN, and how many times I’ve SAT on my couch mesmerized ,
before getting up to wash dishes.
I walked by my Daddy’s picture on the bookshelf when I finally stretched out of bed and remembered
that The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

The bottom line as I see it:

Why the hell is it that everytime a black woman states her mind she is labeled as ANGRY or AGRESSIVE?

I am so sick as a black woman, a woman of color, a biracial woman, a nappy headed woman, (whatever label I choose to accept for myself this week) to notice that when myself and other black women or women of color challenge anyone on their beliefs which I hardly ever do on HM but often do IRL,
is it SO offensive to people? (whether it is directly and succinctly worded as such or not) Please stop feeling so defensive just because someone tells you they are somewhat exasperated of the experience of being a black woman on Hipmama! Every day of my life I wake up and I am a black woman. I cannot look away from it. If I log off the computer race does not go away for me. No matter what I change my screen name to...I am still black. It is tiring and exhausting, and whether people are intentionally trying to wear me or any other black woman out with what are often very innocent comments, it is still tiring, and damnit, I have a right to say so every once in a while.

I was wondering if any of the mamas had pursued their degrees through on line/ distance learning?
I am seriously considering this and have done some research. However I would like some more personal accounts/information of any mamas who have had the experience. I have taken on line classes but I am a little concerned about the idea of getting my entire Master's online. I have narrowed it down to a few reputable public universities that are also in my state (helps with tuition cost and I can travel there if I need to see someone face to face). If any mamas have done this tell me more...
Did you enjoy this process?

"Mama, we should have given the goldfish to someone who didn't have turtles..."

As I lay in bed this morning, consoling my seven year old middle child, traumatized after witnessing the 'Circle of Life' , I finally got it.

My husband, stupidly, decided to add left over goldfish from a booth at the school carnival where our family volunteered last night to the tank in Cory's room, where we keep our pet turtles.

" The fish was alive. I was having a perfectly good conversation with it, and the turtle just swam up and ate it, Mama, right while I was talking to it."

There was something about that moment, hiding under the covers, snuggling and crying along with him, in which I finally remembered that I could stop searching for my "real" life. What I Will Be When I Grow Up. The Important Thing to Change The World.

K:
Sunday Afternoon, and I am baking with my sons. We have no table yet, and the kitchen is a wide open space, calling my youngest, Gavin to drive his race cars across the endless squares of floor. A pot of red beans and rice simmers in the slow cooker. My house is full of small boys (a friend brought her son over). I am for some reason today, feeling like N again (insert high school nickname), remembering who I was. I am thinking of your family, sitting in my mother's kitchen on so many Sundays. Today has that feeling of a Sunday to enjoy food and family, knowing D will have to be taken back to College in a few hours. He will be sent back with hugs, kisses, leftover spaghetti, and baked goods to share with his team mates. Aretha Franklin plays on the radio, and I remember how we would laugh.You and your mother would be the chorus while T hammed it up in front of the video camera. Usually outgoing, I would hide behind the couch, my face hot and red from embaressment, avoiding the camera, feeling self conscious and clumsy, next to the two of you. My 10 year old is silly and overly energetic. He wants to learn to cook, but cannot settle himself enough to do so. He displaces the calm, female energy that comes from the kitchen, wanting the food to be done, impatient for the baking to be ready to eat, pouting, and going back to his video games, much as T would have. So it is Sunday and I miss you. I remember when it would have been hard for me to imagine a time without you in my kitchen on Sundays.

Husband,
It is Sunday Morning, followed by a week in which I spent too much time away from my children and searching for my keys, a bill to be a paid, or my brown slacks for work that morning, or perhaps a form that I have been told to fill out, hidden under stacks of workbooks and papers. I am exhausted and resentful of the endless forms sent as email attachments in the same way I resent laundry, both of them seem to be trivial, keeping me away from real life’s work, teaching and motherhood. I am also tired of being myself today. I am tired of being the sort of person who is in trouble at work because I have forgotten to sign out in the office, or in trouble with you for leaving my bobby pins and earrings on the entertainment center or talking too much at dinner. We are in the midst of a difficult time in our marriage, this time without the intensity of anger I have felt in the past. Perhaps it is the new home that has taken the sting out of my anger, with enough spaces for me to escape our arguments in the sanctity of my bathtub. (We have paid the home builder extra for the real tile instead of getting the pre made plastic shower stall which he have grown to hate from years spent in shitty apartment complexes). I am writing to you, inspired by a favorite black female writer’s published letters to her ex husband,* also a white man, which I have read again last night and this morning, while hiding in the bathroom pretending to be on the toilet, embarrassed at wasting time that could be spent cleaning or being somehow useful. The letters I read frighten me, the thought that you and I could one day be so distant from each other. In weak imitation of this, I am writing to you out of fear. I feel confused sometimes, and uncertain of our marriage, and more uncertain of what real love is. I believe it to be this feeling that I have often mentioned to you when you are shaving and I stand behind you, watching in the mirror. It is a feeling that it is my own face being shaved and that I can almost imagine I am able to feel the razor across my cheek. You nod whenever I tell you this but only look confused. I am thinking of this look in your eyes, and now realize what is so familiar in the quality of these letters that I have read, and what makes me feel as if the words on the page could have been my own. It is the certainty of the author in writing the letter that these are words that will never be read by the person who they are written to, or if read will not be answered. You have spent most of the past week after work in the garage, retreating from my demands and the noisiness of the children, refinishing a chest my mother bought for my sixteenth birthday, which has become scratched and dull from too many years spent in storage. I have asked you to write a love letter and place it inside the box when it is complete, and although you have agreed, I wonder what your internal reaction to this and to me must have been. I feel fleetingly guilty, wondering if in this like in so many other things, I have pushed you into a zone of discomfort. The guilt is growing from the same tree that holds my feelings about how normal you are, how truly white and middle class. I think often (and mention to you in a baiting way), how comfortable your life could be if you had chosen someone who was, if not blond and white, than perhaps not quite so angry, someone who was not boycotting the Wal-Mart.

This morning
I wondered
if I would spend
the rest of my life
searching for my keys.
Motherhood.

This goes out to all the kids
With busy mamas
And mamas with nappy hair
And protesting mamas
And mamas who sometimes
drink too much red wine
Or burn the food while
reading you Shel Silverstein
And writing mamas
And not so good at being a Vegetarian mamas
Mamas who lose their tempers
And sometimes dress bad
And have too many bumperstickers
And order you cool t-shirts that you don’t quite understand yet
From their weird friends they met on the internet
And book making mamas
And pawn shop mamas
Who sometimes buy into the American Dream and have
To sell your Gamecube
Cause they don’t believe in video games anyway

During my recent trip to New York, I met for the first time, my cousin Jeremy who has been estranged from my family for most of his life. I am still working through it, and here are my thoughts on it so far, as they unravel. Our fathers, the two oldest in a large, black, Southern Baptist family of nine children, were brothers. Jeremy stops by briefly to visit me early on Memorial Day at my grandmother’s apartment. He is tall and broad shouldered, his height is closer to that of my father’s than his own. Immediately, there is a familiarity about him, something in his manner that shows a gentleness of spirit and confident walk that is always present in the Pelt men, something that I see in my oldest son. He walks through the doorway and for a fleeting moment there is a pain in my chest and my breath catches in my throat. It is the same feeling I have sometimes when I look at my uncles or when my cousin Donalda tilts her head or a smiles in a certain way that reminds me of my father.

Hey Mamas!
Anyone else having log on problems?
Until today, I haven't been successful in logging on since my last entry.

Trula...after spending a week in Harlem...My Nappy Club Membership has definitely been renewed. I did not give in to the Chemical Fire Cream ( or the power suit:) I have never seen so many beautiful natural crowns in one place! Time to get out of the South!

Went to NY for a week to visit my 90 year old Grandma, without the ninos. It was either go visit Grandma or check myself into the hospital for a week..as I was so stressed out after everything last school year. There is just nothing like good old fashioned wisdom, plenty of walking, and healthful eating to get you back where you need to be. Grandma is a long time veg. (pretty hip for a 90 year old black woman originally from a small town in South Carolina) so we also checked out Uptown Juice Bar's carrot juice and veggie buffalo wings, which are her new favorites. Got to see my cousin Jeremy play at Cleopatra's Needle, which made me cry...because I am a dork. Feeling invigorated...ready for weight loss, ready for a great summer at home with the kids. All that.

Although I have not been blogging much lately, I still have the hipmamas in my head constantly editorializing on my life. (This is a good thing) Gigi happens to be the current hipmama voice in my head, so I am somehow thinking that she must have some words of wisdom, for me at this point. I am currently repeating a little self talk negativity thing that has been going on for a while. I am back to work, as a teacher, which I am enjoying despite the B.S. with the administration. (Thank you for the support Mamas...I imagined all of you there with the choice words you would have had to share with the admin today as I sat in a meeting:) Unfortunately, I have continued to have this little mental conversation with myself in which I start obsessing over the fact that I clearly cannot be whoever I should be or perhaps who I am until I do something more. Usually, the obsession surrounds graduate school and finding the perfect master's degree that will somehow propell me into becoming Claire Huxtable or some other fictional idea of what a modern mother should be. (I am sure much of this resurgance in the obsession is my lack of reality grounding from falling out of touch with the mamas) The administration is screwing with me, and although I have much support from other directions, I have still allowed it to affect who I see myself as being. I have totally let go of my writing, exercising, cooking for my family...and laughing. Instead I spend hours researching/obsessing about how I can make my life easier and failing to commit to anything, including the writing classes I can now finally afford, because I am overly concerned about "fixing my life". Furthermore,my coworkers, who have never seen anyone actually fight back when screwed over, are now pushing me to go back to graduate school, and become a principal so that I can "Fight the Power". In reality, I in fact have no desire to further exhaust myself and miss out on the next few years of my children's life, when I am perfectly happy in the classroom. I have noticed recently that I have begun to lose sight of the original goal which was to get a job that I could enjoy doing, pay some bills, get in a house (we just got approved for a mortgage Yeah!) all of which was to help me support my writing and being a Mama. However, I have once again fallen into the mental trap that if I don't do things in the traditional way...I suck. Several of my friends have gone back to graduate school..and of course having that sick competitive mentality that I do, I am thinking "If SHE can do it I should be able to! She has kids! She has a full time job! What the hell is wrong with me?" The result being that I am not at all mentally present in my day to day life, because my mind is constantly in the future. I become annoyed when others try to have a conversation with me, about normal everyday things...(Can't they see I am busy worrying for God's sake?) I seem to remember having a similar conversation about this last summer, and I believe that Gigi seemed to be well grounded in that regard. Thus, she is the current hipmama voice of wisdom in my head.

Year End

It is spring time in San Antonio
The weather has dropped to a “cool� 75 degrees each morning
My student’s file inside the classroom,
wearing sweaters over khaki uniform shorts.

The bell rings, class has ended,
and they are reluctant to step outside,
knowing that the ripe smell
of left over cafeteria breakfast
is baking in the
dumpster standing just outside my classroom.
They think of excuses to linger,
“¿Necesitas ayuda Maestra?�

I read aloud to them for “just five more minutes�
in our little tin can, portable classroom
where we bake like so many small brown tropical flowers

I had a Moment today
of reflection,
brief,
so subtle as to almost
go unacknowledged,
sitting in the back of my mind,
on the drive
from work to the babysitter
enough to keep me from filling the space
with cell phone calls to friends

Met a woman today in passing
we paused briefly,
seeing something familiar
in each other's faces,

I seeing I
She seeing She
Her seeing where she's been
Me seeing where I can go...
we shake similarly soft
and cinnamon colored hands.

Remembering, she reaches up about to touch my hair,
but knowing it would be too intimate
for strangers,

My 22 year old brother has been evicted from his apartment and is sleeping wrapped in a blanket on the floor in the living room of my already too small apartment. I am annoyed he is using the pillows from the couch I paid for on layaway for 18 months, our first that was not a hand-me-down. I am allergic to cats and have paid no pet deposit, so his cat sleeps on the patio. She sits at the glass door watching him and hissing at my husband when he opens the door just to slide out on the patio and smoke a cigarette. She is annoyed because he has not opened it wide enough for her to slip through his legs and inside. She takes it personally, not understanding my allergies or his worry that the sliding glass door will get off its track again if he opens it too wide.

Do we have moderators? How do we get in touch with them. I really want someone to take that rude mean, and offensive photo posted by SecretHipmama off of batgirl's blog. Is it impossible?

Hey Mamas!
I've been really busy for the past month or so, but I wanted to let y'all know I got a job. My contract was signed as of Friday July 9. I am clearly being watched over by the universe because I got a job at the first school I interviewed with. I was so happy because when the prinicipal called to schedule my interview and told me about the position it sounded like exactly what I was looking for. I am also very excited because I was desirous of working at an inner city elementary school, but concerned I would have to work out in the suburbs where I live because it would pay more, and my budget is squeaking right now. However, I was excited to find out that the school district pays quite a bit more per year than the one where I live. It is also not very far from me, even though it is in another district, it is on the outskirts of downtown, and in the same direction as I live, so I don't actually have to pass through downtonw to get there...which was another concern (if that makes any sense at all). Things are looking up for the Freedafamily. Sometimes patience pays off. So as leighanastasia says Freedamoma can now freeda children's minds as a special education resource/inclusion teacher!

I ordered this book for my kids a few weeks ago,having no idea what it was. It turned out to be great, and then one of my teachers today was mentioning it and said that her school, and apparently several schools are basing their curriculum on it I think is called "Core Knowledge". It is very user friendly for homeschoolers, and my kids love it. It is thorough without being tedious, and the lessons are really easy to use. All of the information (even the stories, poems, and photographs)is right there in the book, so basicly all you need to do is read it to your child, and do the activities outlined, it is geared towards parents, so the activities are very usable for one on one. I am unable to paste the Amazon link but the name of the series is:

Hey Mamas, I gotta go get my score report from the Teaching Certification people. I passed the test. There is much Jesus praising is going on around my house! I am so excited. Thank y'all for all the support you've been giving me. I wanted you all to be the first to know. Trula, I hope I had your correct email address, because I actually forwarded my results to you! I am so relieved and excited.

Mamas,
I do not know how to sew and I really want to learn. The worst part is my Grandfather(deceased) who was a minister earned extra money for the family as a Tailor! He made all my mom's clothes. Anyway, I have no one to teach me, and I wondered if there is an inexspensive route to learning the basics. I believe myself in my heart to be a Quilter, and really want to learn. Can't shell out big bucks for lessons, but I could probalby afford some inexpensive ones. My MIL gave me a sewing machine, but she can't really teach me. Help! Is it really difficult to learn the basics? Can I teach myself from a book? Is there some place that has inexpensive lessons?

Hey my mom's friends that have kids:

you should tell your kids about this cool science site. It is called the yuckiest site on the internet. It tells you about worms, and cockroaches. I liked it because it has interesting facts and its funny.

I am going back to the site now. Bye!

Robert

http://yucky.kids.discovery.com
(
OK, Mama's I found this site, and it was pretty cool, so my kid thought we should let the mamas know..)
We don't know if it will work but we are going to try to paste this soundbite that the kids for some reason find hilarious:
http://yucky.kids.discovery.com/n

I am not a Strong Black Woman. In fact, I don't really even know any Strong Black Women. When the rest of the world finds her or them, and reveals their true identity, I truly hope that they will let me know, because apparently there is some confusion. I am caught in a trap of mistaken identity, causing me to go through my life with a label that causes people to see me as someone I truly am not. Perhaps there is a tribe of them living somewhere, or maybe she is a mythical superhero. I am not "tough" or "strong". I can't "deal with it". I am not going to "make it through this" and no I don't "know what you mean because I am THAT kind of person" and I rarely if ever, "tell it like it is". I am referring to the cultural phenomenon of assigning near superhuman emotional strength to me and for the most part to entire group of women, without really having any knowlege of myself or my personality. I have begun to have a sneaking suspcion that I have been duped. Perhaps, giving me this label allows others not to have to acknowledge my feelings, or treat me with the same respect that they would give to others when dispensing what in any other context would be considered rude or insulting but instead is labeled ADVICE. Unfortunately, I really believe that the "Strong Black Woman" for most people trancends racial boundaries and can include any woman who dares to have an opinon on any subject. Apparently this gives people Carte Blanche the opportunity to openly share there rude commentary about you, your hair, your life, your eating habits, and your child rearing in a way that they would never do to the iconoclasticly (sp??) Nice White Woman. I don't know her either...maybe they are neighbors???

Could you email me please? I have some ??? for you.
freedamomma@aol.com

Hmm. So as most of you mamas know, my middle child is being recommended for kindergarten retention and I am in a quandary about it. YOu see I took him to the developmental pediatrician today, and after two hours of testing she states that he has "sensorimotor integration disorder". She wants me to send him for a test for Central Auditory Processing Disorder at a En&T specialist. She also referred me to have his Adenoids checked out. She did an IQ test on him. His nonverbal was really high. The verbal was low. She also did "achievement" testing, and says that she thinks he is definitely first grade ready, but will need supports. However, she's not a teacher and doesn't see him everyday. His teacher was never disputing that he was intelligent. The teacher thinks he is being overdiagnosed, and just needs a year to grow up. The doctor wants me to take a letter from her along with his test scores to the school and request that he not be held back, due to having an IQ in the high-normal range, but having a learning disablitiy. ..So do I trust her opinion? Does anyone know anything about sensorimotor integration disorder? I read some stuff in my research that says it may be quackery, and in some ways it does sound like a diagnosis to diagnose all those kids that they can't find a diagnosis for. However, maybe he is having some processing problems, since there is such a big difference in his verbal versus nonverbal IQ? Maybe it's normal for some kids to have a big difference in the two at this age, and maybe it will straighten itself out with age and time. The doctor was very strong on not wanting him to be held back and believing that he clearly has a learning disability, and I kinda felt at the end that if I didn't go with her diagnosis, I would be neglecting my child (she never said that to me). Help mamas!!!!