I started Multitudes as a place to explore and share my thoughts about motherhood, identity, women and culture, and, well, the multitudes of experiences, feelings, challenges, and joys that I’m navigating as a mom to two awesome little dudes as well as so many other things.
I am a university professor of wildlife ecology of many years who is leaving the academy for many reasons, the most prominent of which is that work as a full-time tenure track faculty member at a research university is, in my experience, not especially compatible with the kind of motherhood I have come to feel is right for me. In the course of working as a scientists in training, graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, and faculty member on the tenure track at a research and teaching university, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have wonderful, challenging, enriching experiences in science, teaching, and mentorship. I’ve also struggled with barriers, policies, procedures, and work cultures in systems that were born without women (let alone mothers) in mind and have not changed many decades.
Since my first son was born, I’ve struggled with reconciling what have felt like dueling (and dual-ing 🙂 personal and professional identities, responsibilities, and priorities. I’ve struggled with the sense of losing my sense of myself that I know so many women experience at points in life. Of course, I would love to be able to use my experiences and observations to incite changes to our institutions and culture to better support and value capable women and mothers, but those are big cosmic dreams. More down to Earth, after many years of pretending so many things to satisfy others, just telling my truth and putting it out there in the world is a primary goal for this blog. But also, I know that the rare solace I’ve found in challenging moments has been in the words of other women who’ve shared their thoughts and experiences, enabling me to feel a bit less alone. Marcus Aurelius’ meditations on handling his struggles have so influenced others and I have no such bold ambitions with my meditations, despite the blog name. But perhaps, if I may be so bold, I also dare to think, to hope, that sharing my experiences, thoughts, and observations about motherhood, women, work, identity might not only serve to help me reconcile, to re-integrate my rather dis-integrated self, but maybe just maybe make even just one other mom feel a little less alone in the world.
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