A new and different sun

So lately I’ve been thinking of renaming my blog. “All My Pretty Ones” was the perfect name for my journey to becoming a parent. I was so many kinds of mom in the last few years: foster mom, single mother by choice, known donor TTC-er, pregnant, baby loss mom, and adoptive mom. Those pieces of my identity will always be a part of me, but lately I’m just this: a mom. My journey has now moved past the point of “becoming” something and is settling into what I am. My blog is no longer about attempting, or becoming, a mom. Now it’s about the little details of what makes my life with M unique, special, and challenging to us.

My blog is now about raising a daughter, having adventures with her, figuring out how to best educate her, how to inspire her, how to guide her, and how to help her be her best self while also trying to be my best self. It’s about a mother’s relationship with her daughter, my relationship to my own identity as a mom (as well as as a woman, citizen of the world, and part of the universe). It’s about the lifestyle options that we consider or take on, such as unschooling, raw and natural eating, and world traveling. It’s about navigating the nuances that come along with maintaining a relationship with M’s biological family and with growing a child who does not have a father or second parent.

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
― Christopher McCandless “Into the Wild”

I hope that it’s going to be a blog about finding a life that blooms in the sunlight of discovery and adventure, rather than one that wilts in the shadows of conformity.

Thanks to all my pretty ones, the one who has gone home to his first family, the one who has gone back to the source of being we all come from, and the one who has stayed to be my daughter, I am on this path. Without all of them, I wouldn’t be who or where I am.

Author: Mother of All Things

Mother by fostering, adoption, and marriage... wife to my best friend... Bay area critical care nurse... travel in my blood, reading in my bones, clean food on my mind! View all posts by Mother of All Things