Human beings are such a conundrum. On one hand, here we are all complicated and interconnected on this fantastic and profound journey through space on our teeny tiny blue green spinny rock, and yet, on the other hand, here we are just laughing at memes on the internet and watching garbage television and just living our same routines over and over again. I am no more or less conundrum-y than the next person. If I sit and think about who I am and this wild journey I am on, I feel so strong and so complicated, but really, I just want to watch MasterChef and go to bed before 10. I’ve spent 28ish years forging my identity and right when I feel like I have figured me out, I am faced with a new challenge and I surprise myself.
So, who am I? I’ll try to keep it simple.
I am a Chicago native living in Sacramento, California. I relocated my entire family here for a job, which I no longer have, for reasons that I am not really at liberty to talk about.
I am also a mother to two incredible little children, who I attempt to raise “Off the Binary” as much as humanly possible and as “Free Range” as I can manage without a CPS call. My oldest child, O, is 2.5 and has been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. He is the light of my life. His younger sibling, W, is 14 months old and is so amazingly different from his brother in every way. Experiencing them go from squirming little things inside me to human beings with feelings and opinions and willpower is a gift that I feel so lucky to have.
I have been a special educator for 5 years, primarily working with children with identified emotional and behavioral disabilities (the school system still calls them disturbed, but I digress…) and I have just taken some time away from the classroom to focus on my own littles. I’ll be honest, this scares the shit out of me. More about that later...
I am a partner to two amazing people. I’ve been with my male partner (Onyx) for almost 5 years. He is the father of my children and my partner for life. We’ve grown so much together and what we’ve built is really beautiful. I also have a female partner (MaryAnn) who I’ve been with for only a few short months, but we too have built something quite lovely.
I am chronically ill, but I won’t go into the gruesome details. I will say my plethora of issues can all tie back to gluten and my doctors' failure to recognize this until I was 22 years old, and by then a significant amount of damage had already been done.
Another large part of my identity is feminism and race issues. Having worked in a predominantly black school in the City of Chicago, I witnessed things many white people choose to remain blind to, and that experience changed me forever.
Other notes: I identify as bi-gender, I am diagnosed as having ADHD, and if I had any hobbies they would include art and/or insects.
I’m sure I am forgetting a lot, but those are really the basics. It all seems so complicated, but really, I am just another person getting through the day to day while waiting for bedtime.
TL;DR: As I embark on this new chapter in my life, this blog is meant to really function as something I can do for myself. I imagine it will primarily focus on navigating parenting in polyamory, autism, feminism and gender stuff, white privilege and other race issues. Stay tuned.
x
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