Musings on Motherhood
For a recent project at work, I found myself falling deep down the internet rabbit hole of “mommy bloggers”. This is a specific sect of bloggers whose identity is so tethered to motherhood, they have built a brand out of it. Their Instagram bios read something like “Wife. Mama of 3” or “Family of four and two fur babies Franklin and Simon.” (Mention of dogs contributes to the overall sense of domesticity they are trying to cultivate.) Some women go so far as creating Instagrams for their four year olds and tagging them in posts like food bloggers tag brands of crackers or indie olive oil.
So many of the blogs I see online, those run by women, are, at their core, mommy blogs. It’s not that all these accounts offer unsolicited parenting advice and they don’t necessarily designate a section for kid friendly recipes among those for the braised short ribs their husbands love or lasagna for a crowd. Rather, on these self-proclaimed lifestyle blogs, the women who run them predicate their lifestyles–and their identities–on motherhood. Even some of the most influential women, whose identity on the internet was born out of business or art or entrepreneurship, identify first with motherhood. Arielle Charnas, founder of the successful lifestyle blog, Something Navy, who has accumulated a following of over 1.3 million on Instagram for her sense of preppy-Scandinavian style, self identifies in her bio as “mom of 3. wife” first and “founder. cco'' second. Lauren Bush, the CEO and co-founder of FEED Projects, the impact driven lifestyle brand with a following of over 130 thousand, self-connotes as “mama” before citing herself as a social entrepreneur and hunger activist. Other female entrepreneurs who use their bios to call out their business are sure to keep photos of their children at the top of their grid in an overt celebration of motherhood and its aesthetic.
Mommy bloggers fall victim to the process of self objectification. When an individual treats themselves as objects to be viewed and evaluated based upon appearance. Mommy bloggers evaluate their success as mothers against the validation they receive for their particular brand of mothering which they showcase online.
However, the fact that many of these mommy bloggers have made livings out of their prolific posts showcasing Disney vacations and holidays spent in matching pajama sets, inherently suggests that motherhood alone is not enough for these women. That their need to seek community online, with other mothers, mostly, undermines the idea that mothers are totally and implicitly fulfilled in their role. That they feel isolated in their nucleus and are searching for a sense of connection elsewhere. And yet we continue to celebrate mothers online and elsewhere for fulfilling a purpose that may or may not have been of their own choosing.
It’s Mother’s Day and so these things have been on my mind. And this week we learned that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade as early as June, making it more difficult for women to choose a purpose and a path that isn’t motherhood. Nearly 1 in 4 women in the U.S. are expected to get an abortion at some point in their lives. Women of color will bear the brunt of further abortion restrictions. According to The Associated Press, Black and Hispanic women get abortions at higher rates than their peers. Women of color also experience higher poverty rates and could have a harder time traveling out of state for an abortion. Which is to say banning abortion doesn’t mean abortions won’t continue to take place. But rather that safe abortions will be harder to access, also disproportionately threatening the lives of women of color. The affects of overturning Roe v. Wade, stripping individuals of their rights to an abortion, are innumerable and devastating and continue to disproportionately affect marginalized groups, propagating already drastic disparities in wealth, health, class, and wellbeing even further.
Recently, on a postgrad trip to California with some of my friends from college, the issue of motherhood was brought up on a hike through Sequoia National Park. “I think motherhood is a woman’s highest purpose,” one of my friends said. What an interesting thing to say to a group of women right out of college who are so profoundly unsure of their purpose.
Who are we before we become mothers? And if we never become mothers, either by choice or by circumstance, are we condemned to an existence searching for a sense of identity, searching for purpose, that we will never otherwise find?
In my early 20s, trying to figure out who I want to become, motherhood isn’t the end goal. I think we struggle when we are young to find our purpose because purpose is meant to be nuanced. Finding purpose is not as easy as having children. Even mommy bloggers are searching for something beyond the identity which gave them a platform to begin with. In December, the New York Times Magazine published an essay titled “The Abortion I Didn’t Have”. “I couldn’t consider abortion or adoption, but the weird thing is I also couldn’t consider having a baby. I never decided; I never chose.” Who we are and who we become, if or if not mothers, should be a choice that everyone is entitled to. And how I wish to live in a world where this choice is protected equally and unequivocally.
Sharing some resources about the impact of overturning Roe v. Wade and how to help below.
https://www.guttmacher.org/abortion-rights-supreme-court
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-gets-abortions-in-america.html
I'll Bring the Wine: How to Never Show Up Empty Handed in Your Twenties
When I was studying abroad in Paris the spring of my junior year of college, I was required to take a beginner French class. It was taught by a woman named Alexandra, who was from the country side of France and who had a tongue piercing and who was perpetually late. I didn’t learn much French that semester. Alexandra would scribble vocabulary words in light blue dry erase marker on the board which she would point to and ask rhetorically, or rather state “you know what it means.” We never did. What the class lacked in a basic education of how to communicate, it made up for in teaching “the french way.” Classes consisted of trips to a local creperie, a morning spent at an outdoor market, a tour of the Latin Quarter, and a two-weeks long lecture on proper etiquette—an education which in some ways, was as important, and certainly more enjoyable, than a lesson on French numbers 0-60.
There are in Paris, or in France, generally—and I suppose everywhere, really—rules of etiquette, standards for being and interacting, that are specific and unspoken and which served as the crux of my French education during my brief stint living abroad there. These rules ranged from what side of public escalators to stand on to how many kisses to give when you greet someone to the exact decibel level at which you should speak when on the metro. Most importantly were two rules for arriving. Who we are when we arrive so often dictates who we will become if we stay. Thankfully, the french have devised the perfect rule for circumventing language barriers with this most crucial rule of etiquette: never show up empty handed. These here are my favorite ways of how to:
4 Drinks any 20-something can afford
pinot grigio
by Conte Fini
$17.99 a bottle on Drizly
Cabernet sauvignon
by Francis Coppola
$14.99 a bottle on Drizly
Canned cocktails
G & Ts have always been a go-to, but when Fleabag normalized canned G & Ts, I knew they were for me.
by Bombay Saphire
$12.99 on Drizly
canned cocktails
other wines I love:
and other gift ideas…
we’re not really strangers
this is the game that fosters connection. while a mutually spoken language is imperative to playing, nothing else really is, other than, perhaps an openness to others, a willingness to be proven wrong, and a general curiosity about other people.
locally roasted coffee
there is perhaps no gift that continues to give like a bag of local coffee.
Fresh or Dried flowers
because a home never feels complete without flowers.
loaf cake
simple and homemade, loaf cakes take on so many flavors and styles and are an inexpensive and easy last minute housewarming gift. See my recipe for the best blueberry coffee cake here!
On unsolicited advice and what to do with it
Selma Miriam stands at less than five feet tall. She is thin and you can see the bones of her sternum as they protrude from under her thin and veiny skin. She is wearing a blue and green short sleeve button down tucked in to green shorts that are held up with a green belt that is tied so tightly it nearly wraps around her twice. She is probably in her eighties, although her frailty, a product of her sheer size, makes her look older. What I would come to learn of Selma, in our brief conversation over lunch at her restaurant, Bloodroot, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is that she doesn't take shit from anyone.
When I asked Selma how she had landed on this particularly quiet corner of the world—in the worn shingled house with the blue door and the hydrangea garden which sat on the bank of the harbor—she said that she had come here "on a feeling". This notion of traveling through life on a feeling had the same enchantment as if she had said she had traveled by magic carpet or in the palm of some giant. Courses guided by feeling are often easily derailed but Selma's life in Bridgeport was exactly as she had imagined it. She weaved and cooked and spoke to the guests that she welcomed into the home-turned-restaurant which she had bought in the '70s with a group of women who shared a similar feminist conviction.
If walls could talk, the walls of the one story building would tell of all the ways Selma and her feminist counterparts had stuck to their conviction. Books lined shelves about intersectional environmentalism, whose publication dates well predate the movement's modern manifestation. Socialist bumper stickers adhere to various corners of once-white walls. Images from feminist marches that the Selma and her co-owner Noel have attended over the years are pinned to one or another bulletin board.
"Everyone had an opinion," Selma explained as she took us on a tour of the space, pointing out things on the walls as she went, as if we were playing a game of I-spy. "They told us no one will come, to pick a house on the main road, to offer more than vegetarian fare, to advertise more, to be less political." What Selma and Noel did instead was whatever they so chose, mostly whatever was dictated by that feeling that had brought them to the coast of Bridgeport, Connecticut to begin with.
The New York Times described Bloodroot once as "A Salon for Activists," and the photos from the marches and the feminist books and the plant-based menu speak to the sort of activism that we all know to be impactful. But the other, more latent activism upon which Bloodroot was founded, the kind that forms from following a feeling, the refusal to be swayed by unsolicited advice, is a type of activism to which I aspire.
Unsolicited advice is always unprompted, never asked for, and tends to be inherently self-important. As one writer puts it, “holding a small shard of my story in your hands, how do you feel qualified to instruct me on the whole?” I have—like I'm sure you have, too—found myself often on the receiving end of unsolicited advice over the years and I have always wondered what to do with it and where to put it. Selma's frame was so small, I suspect she learned years ago that she would crumble under its weight, were she to carry the words of unsolicited advice on her narrow shoulders. To swat away at unsolicited advice as it lingers between "giver" and receiver, like shooing away a fly, seems rash and melodramatic. But to turn it over in one's mind, or worse, to let it seep into one's veins and take root in one's gut, gives it a power from under which it is hard to come out.
What I have found is that becoming resilient in the face of unsolicited advice, to handle it with grace and courage, to follow that illusive feeling of so-called “intuition”, comes not with age, but with practice. In a recent semester, I received an email from a professor with notes on my final essay. He explained that my writing, while good, still needed a lot of work. This came as no surprise and was, if not welcomed feedback, realistic feedback. But the advice which followed was a bit more jarring, harder to digest, and its feeling lingered on my tongue like drinking tea that's too hot. "Often writing like yours arises from a sense of insecurity: I have to sound smart. I have to be as high-flown as I can be. You're plenty smart enough for your purposes," he offered. (What those purposes are, I am still unsure, although I had the feeling mediocrity was among them.)
To write with less insecurity in a moment when I was feeling most insecure, felt like a nonstarter, a dark and deeply ironic catch-22. But I did proceed, carrying his comments about me and my writing in my gut as I went. I stopped writing for a while after that. I took down everything I had shared on this blog and shuddered at the idea that I had ever felt the conviction to share words marred by my own insecurity and insufficiency. And for a long time after that, I kept that advice in my back pocket. Quite literally, it was written in an email and stored on my phone and I would sometimes, often privately, before I sat down to begin writing, look at this professor’s words and I would stop.
What I have come to learn, some nine months later, is that I am entitled to my own, private activism that begins with shedding the weight of all the extraneous advice I have ever received. We have control over so few things in life, including the advice we receive from others, that we can only control where we put such advice and how we proceed in the face of its awkward and cumbersome presence. I have returned to writing (obviously), and although I haven’t (yet) figured out what feeling it is that I am trying to chase, I am at least a little lighter as I move in its general direction.
On Journaling
Can Bullet Journaling Save You? This was the title of an article published last fall in the New Yorker with the presumptuous and self-important appendage “save this for later”. Journaling, not unlike a collection of wool sweaters and a compulsion to offer food to friends, would for me be considered characteristic. However, it is something which until recently, I have largely avoided.
My first journal was given to me by my grandmother and it was less a journal than it was a spiral-bound notebook from CVS with my name inscribed in black sharpie on the cover. In the kitchen of her house in Cape Cod, my journal sat in between a basket of blue ballpoint pens and an always full box of tissues. In the mornings, while my grandmother made us breakfast, I would sit on the porch opposite my grandfather while he read the paper, and I would scribble in this notebook thoughts about the present or the future. (Never as children do we harp on the past because relative to the almost indefinite expanse of the future, it seems meek and unimportant, as if everything important is yet to come. This ends up working against us when we grow up only to realize that it is that past that shapes so much of our future, but I couldn’t have known this at age six). Thoughts of the present looked less like a pensive reflection and more a recitation of the moment’s goings-on. “I am sitting across from my grandfather while he reads. I am writing.” Hemingway-esque brevity but lacking in inspiration.
Notebooks were eventually replaced by diaries, the pink leather-bound books complete with a lock and key that I would hide from my parents more out of theatrics than necessity. What we are taught when we are gifted our first diary—probably at some Christmas yankee swap orchestrated by the parent leaders of our Girl Scouts of America troop—is that there are some thoughts whose burden must only be borne by the pages of an empty book. What these thoughts are and how they are articulated is privy to a confidence that can only be established between a person and an inanimate object, like gossip once shared over tea with our stuffed animals. The things that I would write in my diary were not the same things that I would whisper hastily into the ear of my friend on the bus to school. But I didn’t find catharsis nor exhilaration in the quiet rendering of my innermost thoughts. In hindsight, this was a reflection of two grave misunderstandings. The first thing that I misunderstood about journaling was that having a voice does not come exclusively from being heard. The second, was that the type of thoughts intended for a diary are not to be kept secret because they are somehow shameful—because ultimately the difference between having thoughts and having secrets is shame, we are taught—but because they are powerful, because they represent a unique sensitivity that helps us navigate the world. Shame was largely a reason that I avoided diaries and journals for years. In addition to the shame attached to the things one writes in a journal, there is also a guilt attached to not recording these things with some regularity, and the intersection of that guilt can almost be too much to bear. So I avoided the guilt attached to journaling by not journaling at all.
I did, however, end up saving that aforementioned article for later, aspirationally bookmarked among a sea of other New Yorker articles I might one day return to. When I began my journal in January of this year, I did return to the article in search of something, if not inspiration then maybe just sheer motivation. I was going abroad for the spring and I wanted to somehow keep a record of my experiences. I was also guided by some hope that journaling is in times of change what chocolate is in times of heartache, a crutch. Bullet journaling, the general category under which my journal falls, offered a unique alternative to the traditional journaling I had long avoided. “The real appeal of [bullet journaling] lies in the illusion of control it offers; anyone might be saved.” From what we need saving I suppose is up to the discretion of the journaler. Guilt is one thing from which bullet journaling saves us. With my own journal, my original intention was less to record my thoughts and more to document the weeks’ goings-on in a way similar to that of the entries in my first journal from childhood. In this way, my bullet journal also seemed to save me from the constraints of time that I had been using as an excuse not to journal. According to a series of inspirational posts I collected on Pinterest, I would outline my weeks on Sunday and make notes, either at each day’s beginning or end about the things I had hoped to or had achieved. Where journals can often read like novels, bullet journaling is more like a choose your own adventure tale. Ridding myself of the expectation that each entry would look or sounds a certain way, I increasingly felt compelled to expand upon the fragments of my life in stream-of-consciousness-like entries. Although, when unmoved by this desire, I stuck to the list-like entries and brief anecdotes upon which my journal was originally founded. I also filled the pages with bad art, meant for my eyes only, and the cards of restaurants or cafes I visited during my time abroad. In this way, my journal became not the rendering of my guilt, but the inconsistent and often incoherent mapping of a once current mood. And now it serves as a reminder of some of the year’s best moments, and a means by which to navigate some of its hardest. Below is some inspiration if you, too, feel so compelled to begin a journal or a bullet journal, now or at any point.
products you’ll want to begin
I'm Starting Over
At nine-fifteen this morning, I was sitting at a coffee shop with my computer open, about to start a day’s worth of work. The weather had been misty since I had arrived home on a Sunday sometime in July. It is no secret that over the last year, or has it been two, time has ceased to move in a way that it once did. Now, large chunks of time will pass with little warning, and sometimes, like at nine-fifteen on a Wednesday at a coffee shop in the suburbs of Boston, the presence of time demands to be known and you become so aware of the goings-on of the present moment. I was brought to the present by the sound of a conversation happening between three older men with thick Boston accents that sat at the table next to mine. They were discussing the ways they had been coping with what could only be described as a period of general and wide-sweeping change. (At this I couldn’t help but ask, does there come a point in each of our lives, especially in a sleepy New England town such as this one, that things stop changing? I could hardly imagine it, but I suppose they call this contentment, or maybe—cynically—complacency. But as these men spoke about their friends who didn’t wear masks, and about their wives, and about work, I wondered when was the last time these men experienced change prior to the pandemic? I digress.)
“My ex-wife tells me I’m a trying guy, and I tell her ‘that’s right, I try my best,” one of the men says to the others. It took me a second to realize the ways in which the word “trying” was being used differently as he spoke. Although, subconsciously, I think I have recently been navigating their distinction in my own life as I continue to figure out the person I want to be.
To be trying is to be difficult, hard to endure. To try is to simply endure to attempt in the direction of forward. What change seems to present is two options, predicated on the difference between “being trying” and simply “trying”. The former is resistant, at times violent. To be trying is to exert effort against change, to push back. The latter is to move with the change, to be swept up in the tide, exerting effort, at times, just to stay afloat, like treading water, allowing the swell to move you, allowing yourself to be moved by the change.
an early iteration of the blog i am continually starting
These days I am trying, to move with the tide, to wade into this time in my life—post-pandemic, post-college—marked by unrelenting change. I’m focusing more on becoming, and less on being. I’m trying to listen more, to judge less, to read and to write and to ask better questions. I’m trying to cultivate a sense of style, one that belongs to no one else. I’m trying to find purpose and to laugh more and to establish a system of values and spend more time with the people I love. I sometimes try to eat healthy and most days I try to go for a run. But some days I have a cigarette, or two, with dinner and some days I can barely get out of bed. These are the ways that I brace myself for what’s to come, the ways I am trying to be more present, the ways I am being in time, and taking up space, and being okay with taking up space.
This blog has been my corner of the world for almost two years now, since I first decided that there were some thoughts I wanted to write down, some recipes I wanted to share, some voice I wanted to let speak. This is my space, and yet I have felt, for so long, unsure of how to move in it, how to define it, how to mark it as my own. Because I think I have been going about things all wrong. Or, at the very least, I have been overthinking. To be sure, I am still just shouting into the void, hoping that something resonates, hoping to make an echo, which I know will, overtime, eventually dissipate into nothingness. So I am starting over, and I invite you, whoever you are, to move with the change. Thank you for your patience. xx
On Building the Perfect Cheese Board
There are certain things in life that I have longed to capture, not unlike a child tries to capture fireflies in a jar. The blue grey color of the sky right before the twilight on an evening in June. The feeling of being kissed unexpectedly. The smell that lingers in the doorway of a French boulangerie. The familiarity of my hometown. I grew up in the type of small town in New England that you might encounter on the backs of postcards sold at a kiosk in Logan Airport, with its white church steeple that pokes out above the tree line and a town hall with a stone facade. I often think of my hometown as being in perpetual state of late autumn, when the leaves on the trees take on a series of oranges and reds and yellows that are almost impossibly radiant. To try to capture these colors would be an exercise in futility, and yet I have nonetheless tried.
Against the backdrop of everlasting fall, thoughts of my hometown are in other ways non-changing. If you drive down the one lane ride that intersects the town’s center, you would bear witness to a scene that I have come to know like the back of my hand. Cars will fill the parking spots that run parallel on both sides to the wide sidewalks and the man in the khaki outfit with the safari hat will be pacing the curb looking for expired meters. People coming back from soccer games will be grabbing their morning coffee from the café on the corner. The man who owns the toy shop will be standing in the doorway of his store engaging in casual conversation with the older gentleman who runs the adjacent watch shop, standing in his respective doorway. And a line will be forming at the Cheese Shop with people waiting eagerly to get their fresh cheese and pairing wine for the typical Saturday night dinner parties which will be taking place that evening on every block.
The Cheese Shop has all of the epicure of a French fromagerie and the quaintness of the town in which it operates. On Christmas Eve, you can expect there to be a line of people waiting eagerly in the bitter cold of a New England morning to place their orders. When you reach the front of the line and step up to the marble counter on which wheels of cheese are stacked and piled at random, you are greeted with a friendliness akin to that of two neighbors who meeting to exchange sugar for eggs. And although you are one in the front of a line of dozens of cold and hungry people, you are treated with all the time in the world. For each cheese you order, and even for some you don’t, you are offered a sample, and if you don’t know what to order, suggestions are made in the way of consecutive tastings until you try something you like. The experience is at once wholly personal and simultaneously uniquely communal. In that way, cheese and it myriad forms, flavors and textures serves as the vehicle for the type of small talk that in no way feels frivolous. Food is meant to foster a sense of familiarity among the people who enjoy it. This guide to making cheese boards, above anything else, serves as a means for making connection, and is an attempt to capture its importance in my own life.
getting started
picking your board
The first step in any cheeseboard is picking the right plate as your “canvas”. What you choose will depend on how many people you’re serving, how many different cheeses you have, and the aesthetic you are trying to achieve. I have linked some of my favorites below!
products
grocery list
Soft Cheeses (Pick 1-2): Brie, Chèvre, St. Agur, Harbison, Taleggio
Semi-Soft Cheeses (Pick 1-2): Gouda, Fontina, Goat Cheddar, Gruyere
Hard Cheeses (Pick 1-2): Sharp Cheddar*, Parmesan, Pecorino, Aged Gouda
Crackers: Mary’s Gone Crackers original, homemade crostini, FireHook crackers, sliced apple
Fruits and Nuts: dried figs, dried apricots, seasonal fresh fruits (berries and figs in the summer, apples and grapes in the fall, citrus and pomegranates in the winter, grapefruit and apricots in the spring), Marcona almonds, salted cashews, sesame sticks, craisins
Snacks: olives, stuffed grape leaves, artichoke hearts in brine, caprese skewers, cornichons, salami, prosciutto, fresh vegetables (cucumber, bell pepper)
Dips and Spreads: honey, olive tapenade, fig jam, pesto, quince paste, stone ground mustard, hummus
*I always go for a cheddar on my cheeseboards because it is a cheese that most people are familiar with and like.
assembly
classic cheese board
A few basic guidelines:
Always cut up your hard cheeses—this makes it easier for people to grab a piece without having to saw through a hard cheese with a cheese knife. To do this, I often take the pronged end of my cheese knife and chunk off pieces to give them a more rustic and less uniform look. You can also slice hard cheeses or cut them into more uniform pieces and pile them.
It’s easiest to put your largest items on the plate first. I usually put my bowls down and my soft cheeses first, then fill in the space around them with crackers, meats, and fruit. I add dried fruit, nuts, and little snacks last.
Don’t be afraid to move things once you have put them down. A cheese board is a work in progress until everything has been added!
Fill every space! This can be done by using nuts, berries, herbs, or dried fruit (anything with a pop of color) after all of the larger items have been placed and the board has been mostly filled. This is what will ultimately elevate your cheeseboard!
Have fun with it! At the end of the day, a cheeseboard is meant to be eaten, so make sure to add the things you most enjoy. I like to make sure my cheeseboard it filled, but if you like more space to maneuver, leave some things off. These aren’t rules, just some tips, but ultimately do what makes you happy!
summer snack board
summer snack ideas
crostinis with taleggio
1 baguette sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 clove garlic
1 block taleggio, sliced
Add garlic to olive oil and paint onto baguette. Top with sliced taleggio and bake at 350 degrees for 12-18 minutes.
caprese bites
10 large toothpick
10 cherry tomatoes
10 slices fresh basil
10 mozzarella balls
cocktails
(because what is a cheeseboard without cocktails to go with)
