RSSWhy I Keep Reading
You can leave a response below, or trackback from your own site.Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.
These are the stories of our lives as women….
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I don’t tend to read Dooce often, simply because I’ve never been able to feel any sort of connection to her, but I’ve never quite understood the animosity that she receives. If people don’t like what she writes, well, the answer to me seems simply enough: Stop visiting her site!
I do hope she’s right though and that Leta doesn’t resent so much of her childhood being given over to the internet. I think, if I’m completely honest, that that’s the part that bothers me. It’s one thing to put your life out there, it’s another to put your child’s when he/she has no say in the matter. I guess we’ll see how it all plays out, huh?
Yeah, hi. Me again. Actually took the time to read the linked entry and now I see that my comment, written before I did something so bold as to actually understand what the hell was being discussed before commenting, doesn’t really make much sense. Anyway. Part of my sentiment does still stand, and I do sincerely hope all those thousands of pages don’t cause too much trouble with their relationship.
But still, whatever it does say about me, so much information about the child’s life being on the web makes me uncomfortable. Would I make that choice? I sincerely doubt it, but whether other people choose to do so is not really any of my business.
A few weeks ago someone told me that estimates of the revenue brought in from her web site is almost half a million dollars. Hard to imagine. But I do hope it’s true.
The post was great! Thanks for sharing.
I can’t wait to see what will be said about the child once they start their own blog and trackback to their mother’s. That’s when the relationship will start getting interesting.
Writers breed writers!
I loved this! Being a mother comes with so many beautiful moments, and sharing them, or just keeping a written record of them is wonderful. Her daughter may resent her for it, but that resentment could be traded for any number of things that daughters blame their mothers for. I say keep going, it’s a great thing to do!
I think one of the coolest things as a mom and daughter is knowing that there’s that time in late adolescence when you realize that your parents are people — THEY ARE PEOPLE! OMG! — and suddenly, despite whatever issues you’ve had in your interpersonal relationship, you want to know more about their internal lives. One thing I’ve always wished I had is a better idea of who my folks were when they were younger. I can get an occasional story, something vague and descriptive, but I think it’s really something special when you get to the meat of who your parents are. Shit, up until then they’re just your evil, oppressive parents.
You can get to know your parents when you stop looking at them as just that. They are not parents. They are people. Calling them by their first name usually helps melt that away.
I have also found if you share some intimate moments, they are more likely to do the same. If you can’t be vulnerable around your own family, who can you then?
@TP: I know. I would have loved to have been born later—-to have grown up in the 1990s, in the Internet era.
@Katie: I obviously agree. If I had a child, I would totally be blogging about our lives.
@Lauren: Just wait until E looks you up on the Internet, or the Internet archive.
@TP, again: Hm. I think it depends upon how you are raised, and how you, as a child (and now as a parent) were raised, as to how you would want to interact with your child. I would still, at this late an age, feel strange with calling my mom by her first name, as opposed to “mom”. You’re bringing in a totally different psychology.