Mind Body Mama: Clarity Through Chemistry

I’ve been really down about the demise of mamazine.com. It was so flattering that other mamas liked Raising a Strong Voiced Girl, and so exciting to see my work in an explicitly feminist publication. It’s unlikely that I, personally, exhausted the bright and energetic mamas who have been editing this venture for the past three and a half years—but it is possible that my puppyish enthusiasm was the final straw. I e-mailed them about errors in my piece before they had finished posting the issue, for god’s sake. And even though I hadn’t pulled it together, I’m sure they were steeling themselves for the pitch I was about to throw for my ongoing column: Mind Body Mama.

It was going to be a swell column—one week addressing age-appropriate self defense education, the next describing how an athlete’s highly trained reflexes respond during a child’s bout of projectile vomiting. Anger, theology, ambition, poetry, pop culture and exercise—it was all going to be grist for my mill. I had a good fantasy going, one with a lot of Pierce Brothers coffee, a shiny new laptop and readers who posted their comments right on the blog, instead of on Facebook. And then Amy and Sheri decided to stop publishing.

So I’ve moped around for the past two weeks since I got the news. Spent an afternoon surfing through other mama-related writing sites online, looking for the clone of mamazine. Lots of good stuff out there, but nothing with exactly the same sensibility of course. And more than one friend has suggested that I take over editing mamazine if the current editors are burnt-out. (If I haven’t freaked them out already, I’m sure that level of enthusiasm from an unknown, once-published author would do the trick. “Hey, remember me? Can I have your magazine?”)

But today, hopped up on cold meds, I had a better idea—which is the obvious idea anyway: I’ll write the column here. In fact, I’ve decided that An Open Letter to Rachel Maddow was the first installment. Once a week I’ll submit an entry, cultivating the voice of Mind Body Mama. Blogging is good writing practice—I got that first-rate advice from the funny, prolific and delightful Martha Brockenbrough, one of my role models. I don’t entirely understand what I’m up to with this endeavor but I’m sure I’ll find out. Thanks for coming along for the ride.