When am I NOT in the process of a make-over?

I’m obsessed with make-overs, and reinventing myself, and self-improvement, and life goals, and not just living better, but actually BEING better at life.  Life, in my righteous humble opinion is not about a sensible, chronological gathering of pertinent experiences to get us to a convenient and comfy position in our lives.  Life, as I have sensed it, is and can be a linear progression of growths and challenges where we get to incorporate an ongoing understanding of ourselves and our impact on others (and the world) as we age.

I decided to make some significant changes in my life and to document those changes here.

I began My Ecdysis to document the feathering and fraying pieces of my identity, to honor and laugh at the things that pound through my life, however lasting or temporary, and share them with the world from my tiny corner of the universe.  Over the past two years, I have mentally and emotionally struggled to truly define my life, post partum: what it means to be a working mother; what it means to be a constantly vigilant foodie concerned with health issues and high blood pressure, type II diabetes, cancer, and heart disease; what it means to co-build a uniquely loving and egalitarian marriage; what it means to be a Filipina American in the midwest; what it means to be a writer, a photographer, a digital and painting artist; what it means to forever battle healthy choices in food, drink, and general consumerism.

These things matter to me.  They truly matter in my daily course of existing, creating, and evolving.

Interwoven through all of that is my deepening and changing relationship to Catholicism, feminism, veganism and/or plant-based nutrition, yoga, prayer, and – for lack of a better description – the intuition restlessness to always do the right and loving thing.

For the past few years, I’ve written about my struggle with the world, the struggle to be a catholic feminist, the struggle to swim against the tide as an editor and activist.  And, quite frankly, I grew tiresome when it came to describing just the struggle.

It finally dawned on me (again) that life (as I know it) is only as sustainable as our spirits allow it to be and what feeds my spirit is what will, ultimately, feed my life.

Translation: I want to write about what I love most.  I want to write about the details of life that pronounce our freedom and community, rather than the pieces that hold us back from being ourselves.  Perhaps that struggle wasn’t prominent in the last two years of writing, but the brevity of my posts, the general sweeps and mysteriously shallow depth of them covered my personal struggle with what to write about. I want to let go of the hundred things I think are important to write about and focus on the two or three things that I absolutely MUST write about. In other words, I want to focus on what moves my life forward, not what holds me back.

As Nick once told me, “I’m not looking for a good life, I’m looking for a great life.”  The line between the two, I’ve found, can be just as subtle as it is significant.  Focus on the necessary, choose the great, let go of lukewarm, mediocre, so-so, and alright.  And so, here I am, trying to choose the great.  This is what I’ve come up with.

• I’ve outgrown the (capital F) feminist blogosphere.  After six years, I’m politely done with it.  As I’ve said before, “The feminist blogosphere is like earth day: recycling the same shit over and over again.”
• I’m into LIVING.  As in, “how to.”  As in, “quit your bitching and do something.”  As in, “laughing is good.”  As in, “Did anyone else notice that?”
• Showing what I’ve done.  Dusting off my camera and providing colorful illustrations is part of my liberatory practices
• Getting back to the basics.  Eating whole foods (limiting processed food and sugar), drinking water (soda like alcohol = special occassions), praying (spending time with Quiet and innermost thoughts), honesty (both in relationships AND self), simplicity (claiming what is most desirous), returning phone calls (keeping connections), being on time (the war on procrastination), and renewal (being unafraid).

Hence the new masthead above.  “Daily scopes of liberation” (with resistance scratched out) is my decision to live better and share it with those who are also trying to do similarly in their lives.  Often times, it’s the small things that elevate ourselves to a higher prescription of living, and we all need reminders of how we can do that.  I’ll still write about resistance, because it IS essential to understanding liberation, but my plan is for things to be a lot more concrete, positive, breathable, and liveable.

Daily practices in liberation living.   Sound good?

I hope you join me.