Normally I get hives when I see a mom-word like momtrepreneur, but I've been using momoversary for a few years now. What does it mean? It means today is the day I became a mom. It's a way to acknowledge that my daughter's birthday isn't just about her, it's also about me. Yeah, I'm selfish like that. Honestly it came about because one of my best friends said something a few years before I became a mom that we should give our moms presents on our birthdays, not the other way around. She's not only crafty, but whip smart too.
So now that I have a ton more mom friends, I tell them "Happy Momoversary" on their kid's birthdays. I do try to aim for the eldest, but hey, each kid is a new anniversary of motherhood.
Yup, you read that right. This week's featured mom blog, NonCustodial Parent Community, is written by a woman who doesn't live with her son. I was lucky to meet Rebekah Spicuglia last summer when I participated in the Progressive Women's Voices training program. She's the media manager for the Women's Media Center and introduced herself to me the first weekend. I immediately knew she really was...The woman who broke my heart just weeks before with a moving Mother's Day piece on her decision to "give" custody of her son to his dad.
This past weekend was Blogher 2009, the largest gathering of women bloggers. And I believe that is the key to the many tensions that hovered over the otherwise amazing conference. Women are not one cohesive entity. While there might had been 1500 different visions for Blogher, a few key issues did surface over the weekend.
For me Blogher 2009starts tonight as I attend the speaker training session and I get to meet my fellow panelists. I'm pretty nervous, but equally excited. This is my second Blogher conference, but that was two years ago. The world of blogging has exploded since then. The world of women blogging has changed A LOT.
A new documentary, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg! shares the story of "Gertrude Berg. She was the creator, principal writer, and star of 'The Goldbergs,' a popular radio show for 17 years, which became television's very first character-driven domestic sitcom in 1949." It's not just a story of a woman making her way through Hollywood; you also get a sense of how entertainment was changing as it went from radio to television.
Mandy wrote a great post on the upcoming Ms. magazine cover last week that I've been meaning to respond to. First of all, I'm in this issue, so I'm a bit biased to think that y'all will judge the issue based on the cover and will skip the great article on mom blogs. But that cover...
Mandy makes some great points that there are those of Hindu faith that see the use of multi-armed imagery as co-opting their deities. Her post really made me think and consider my own religious blindness. As a recovering Catholic, I tend to ignore religious imagery and how it gets used in pop culture. It's not something that pops up in my head of the many warning signs that set off my alarm. So I appreciate it when I can read something that makes me think, "I'm so ignorant!"
The confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor have mostly focused on race and how she may or may not allow her Latinidad to impact her judicial rulings on the Supreme Court. Today Linda Chavez, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and regular on FOX News, took the cake. But they have also highlighted something that's been picking at me since becoming a mom.
This week's featured mom blog, Hijas Americanas, is written by another mom whose family is crafted by adoption. It's also a blog that didn't start out as a mom blog, but as Rosie Molinary's life opened up for her son to enter into it, her blog morphed as well.
Much of the feminist movement has been wrapped in a maternal bow. Suffrage was sold to naysayers as a way to give mothers a say in government, not to mention the view that women would clean up politics. Organizations like Moms Rising and CODEPink appeal to women as caregivers and moms for ending wars and realizing universal healthcare. But a funny thing happened on our way to a feminist society - we also impacted the way boys and men are viewed.
I had to take a screen shot of this ad on Facebook. 
