Nature v. Nurture
I don’t want to blow up my beautiful life but I don’t want to fall into the trap our culture has laid for the American House Mother Wife, either.
When I was in the 6th grade I invented the concept of nature vs. nurture. At least I thought I did. Boy, was I surprised to learn someone else had invented it before me.
In my 30s I wrote a column called Straddling the Line Between the Bohemian and the Bourgeois for a monthly women’s magazine. Here I was a wife and a mother in the suburbs living the life of a vastly underpaid artist with a liberal arts education. I wanted a domestic life and an undomesticated life, too. I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing. I don’t understand astrology but apparently, my chart is divided straight down the middle between the need to nest and the need to explore. I am incomplete without both
And now, once again, I feel tectonic plates shifting. I don’t want to blow up my beautiful life but I don’t want to fall into the trap our culture has laid for the American House Mother Wife, either.
Last week I started researching adventures that were feasible, affordable, and would make me feel wild and free. I’m not trying to recreate the feeling I had backpacking for a month through Europe when I was 20, but there is an essential quality I am using for inspiration.
Lightning struck when I remembered my friend Liza telling me about a Renaissance Faire in Maryland. OMG!!! I love the idea of wearing a medieval ballgown while watching duels and I don’t know WTF else happens at Renaissance faires, but I sure hope to find out!
Driving 3 hours away from home isn’t exactly a revolution, but it is a start. I don’t have to go far to break bad. Yesterday my roof and walls felt claustrophobic so I moved my meditation area outside. So simple and I felt so free.
Unsolicited advice is criticism.
—ancient Alanon proverb.
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