The week before last I sent my daughter to school–a Waldorf school–with chicken fingers from Raising Cane’s in her lunchbox.

Walking through the neighborhood one day last week pushing one child in the stroller built for two, both he and I wearing the shirts we slept in the night before and him in a pink diaper and no pants, I realized what they said might be true.  Maybe I don’t much care what other people think of me.  Maybe I’m too old, too tired, and too focused on the unrelenting task of caring for two small children to have energy left to spend worrying about others’ thoughts.

I’ve been turning this idea, this self-acceptance, over in my mind, and I have yet to find it to be flawed.  Is it indeed true that at 33 years of age and after 10 years of marriage and two kids I finally just don’t care?

*****

Blogging is a strange beast.  My internet personality is not the whole of me.  I could change the “Who is Mama Raw?” or the tagline under the blog title to fit any aspect of who I am.  I could change it, and have changed it, based on how I’m feeling at any given moment in time.

*****

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” -Gustave Flaubert

Sometimes I’ve turned an idea over and over in my mind a thousand times before I write it here.  Other times I’m only beginning to consider it.

Sometimes I think everything I write should come with a disclaimer:

“I’m not saying you should have a homebirth.”

“I don’t think you’re a horrible mother because your baby is formula fed.”

“I’m not implying that your girlfriend/wife thinks you’re anything less than an absolute stallion because part of your sex organ was taken from you.”

“Maybe you’re more advanced in your thinking than I am, but here is where I am, and I am a work in progress.”

So maybe that’s my big fear, not that you won’t like me, but that I won’t represent myself accurately and then you won’t like me.

*****

FYI, I’ve really liked my kids for two days in a row now.