It is a sacred rite It is a sacred right It is a maddening career It is a controversial choosing It is an extension of your woman-hood It is a teaching of the totality of Life in too few semesters It is a heart-wrenching loss of control It is a seething curse of protective urges It is a withering of hope with age It is a longing for timelessness It is a longing for less time It is unsettling It is grounding It is everything It is separate It is pain It is grief It is light It is life It is love It is hurt It is silent It is deafening It is hard It is hardening It is softening It is soft It is. Mothering is mine. -Moni Padula copyright 2016

                   (My proposal to a local school board near my town) I am a woman who is a descendant of the Saginaw, Swan Creek, and Black River tribes of Ojibwe. I am a mother of five children, I have a college education, including a graduate degree. I work professionally in the community in a role that adds diversity to the institutions I occupy. I am a self-professed lover of urban culture, coffee, popular music, dancing, and an information and book-collecting nerd. One thing I am not, however, is a mascot. I am also not a redskin. I belong to a racial and ethnic group who was admittedly, by the US government, an experiment for forced assimilation, which enabled Hitler to gain inspiration from America for the disgusting self-declared supremacy that resulted in the annihilation of innumerable Jewish people. I am a member of a group of racial and ethnic people who were forcibly remov...

Last year, I asked a photographer friend of mine to take some photos of my son and I, who was still breastfeeding to celebrate a year of breastfeeding and also to follow up after having a picture of my pregnancy with that same son entered into an  art exhibit by an artist friend who had painted a portrait of me after giving her a picture my husband had taken. I find in this society the beauty of how the woman's body was created to grow a child, give birth, and nurture and nourish the baby is vastly underplayed. I wanted to capture that beauty and celebrate it. This year, to celebrate World Breastfeeding Week from August 1-7, I contacted that same photographer who agreed to do another shoot for me, with the same son and my infant. My son Kendrick is tandem nursing, meaning nursing at the same time as or together with his baby brother. I never knew about tandem nursing before seeing it on Instagram and reading about it on Facebook breastfeeding support group forums...

I created this space as a space to detach from the scrutiny of social media and to dissolve a little bit into the vast anonymity that is the Internet. Here, everyone writes, even things that aren't true, and everyone reads and discards continuously what they don't want to take in. This space was for me to have a journal of honest growth in the areas of my life, but I haven't been very honest for the past year of my life. For that I am sorry. Why haven't I been honest? In part, of fear. Okay, cut the crap, 99.9% out of fear. Fear of losing the respect of others, fear of what others would think about my put-together outward appearance. If others knew there were times I had doubts about my life, my personality, my marriage relationship, my family size, certainly they would see me as unstable and questionable and maybe two-faced. And that would be terrible, since I want nothing more than to be taken seriously. But part of those fear-driven secrets are just that...create...

I feel like I keep writing the same thing over and over again, possibly because I'm thinking the same things over and over again. The same thoughts and questions about existence, God, spirituality, raising children, being a good partner, what to expect from my partner, how to resist being unhealthy in mind and body...these thoughts pervade my mind constantly, and I never know if I find acceptable answers to them, or find peace about them. Take the first three for example: If everyone has a thought about What Is, about Who Is, and about inevitable death and the afterlife, the question remains as to who is right? But my question has been, does it really matter who is right? We all end up at Death's door in the end, and we will all have to pass from this life to another, where we don't really know what will happen from experience. After our spirit passes, we will all find out one way or another, but we won't be able to share that with those who are still on this side of ...

I am writing this subjectively, which is good, because it shows just how much a woman can be shaken to her core when her womanhood is questioned, threatened, demoralized, and abused by other woman because of exercising her right to physically breastfeed in public...without a cover. Let me begin by getting out all of the things that have been freely said to me as I voiced my questions to the common social mores of today regarding this highly-uneducated area of sensitivity. "Women have a responsibility to stay modest while they breastfeed." "I'm all for public breastfeeding, but I don't want to see your breasts." "It's fine, but she shouldn't let it all hang out." "That's what blankets are for" (from a gay man). "That's private." "You will cause men to lust" "How would you feel if a woman just walked up to your husband and exposed herself to him?" These are all generalized statements...

But what good Is a dream But to tear down A wall of finite Stability But what good Does a faith That no one else Sees As a stronghold Where you need to huddle upon being shaken Why does a vision Exist abundantly When the feelings Of pursuance Feel close to Imminent Death For what do we Live If we can't have Assurance That hopes and dreams Are more than myths Why should we dream Why should we have faith Why should we envision Why should we LIVE If not for hope