Hello friends!
Welcome back to my corner of the Internet.
I am writing this during nap time, hoping to get a small note out to you all. I have missed writing and am hoping to work on my blog more frequently this upcoming year. In every video on Youtube, I introduce myself as Caitlin who "runs the blog called Mrs. Midwest," yet I hardly post here these days. It makes me feel sad and somewhat loserish, like I'm failing in some way, so I am going to attempt to remedy that this year.
When I try to think truthfully as to why I've kept a distance from writing, I think it's because I have changed and grown so much over the past couple of years, I hardly know where to begin. It feels like I need to start from ground zero, rebuilding my thoughts, my interests, and sharing all of them with you.
When I was pregnant, I really wanted to focus on serenity and peace, shutting out the world, the arguments, the news: and anything that would increase stress or infiltrate my little nest. After a tough birth, becoming a mother, and then doing it all over again in less than two years, I've actually changed a lot. I've also had some major changes in my personal life that have transformed my perspective on things, and I think I've just spent the last year or so reckoning with these changes and figuring out who I am and what I want out of this life.
It felt futile to write because I truly didn't have any opinions or things to share. It's all just been roiling and boiling in my mind and heart: unfinished thoughts and premature words, not ready to be spilled.
The truth is that I'm used to feeling out of sync with the typical monotony of modern living: hookup culture, delayed adulthood, and everything that goes along with fourth-wave regressive feminism. When I began my channel and my online work, a lot of my focus was building and creating a space for those of us who don't relate to modernity or irreligious living.
But since my birth and becoming a mother, I've noticed a new asynchronism with my surrounding culture: I no longer relate with many of the beliefs held in the traditionalism, homemaking, and femininity space.
And it's harder this time, to open up and share because a lot of the people in this space have become dear friends. I don't want to identify myself as an outlier because I don't want to hurt or offend, and I don't want to argue. But I also think there is value in my perspective, and if I'm going to share it anywhere, it might as well be on my own blog.
Last Spring, I shared my birth stories.
And the comments, oh the comments: so many people who could relate, who had been gaslit by the homemaking community about natural birth, and who had felt ashamed and traumatized, not just from their births, but from the idiotic superiority complex that the homemaking community purports regarding natural birth... it lit something within me. I've met women who have never talked about these things. Women who have had to sue midwives. Women who have held their secrets within their hearts, hiding their formula bottles and feeling like terrible mothers and women for "failing" at birth. I want to talk about these things.
If you're familiar with me, you know that I only discuss things in my rear-view mirror. When I was a young childless wife, I talked about dating: not marriage. After I had conceived and birthed my first child, I finally talked about my year of infertility. After five years of marriage, I've finally given some marriage advice. And now, after two years of being a mother, having a lot of distance from my births and the newborn stage: I'm ready to talk about mothering and birth.
I don't see my perspective offered in the traditionalist community, and I think there is space for it. So if you're like me, a decidedly non-crunchy mama, a person who has NOT had the magical birth in the woods experience: I see you. I'm like you. And we're still good mothers.
xoxo,
Cait