Lidia-Anain

Oct

22

playful parenting

One of the things that I am most grateful for about my ForteFemme experience is that I was reminded to be more playful about my parenting.

It was as we sat in a semicircle telling one another about the kinds of play that were approved and unapproved by our parents that I thought that I could definitely be more playful with my children.

It was in that semicircle that I almost cried because of the amount of heartache that having to be the one that disciplines the children most of the time causes me.

The thought scared me because although I do have so much fun with my sons and they bring me so much joy… I hardly ever am fully in playful mode. There always seems to be this burden on my shoulders of having to be in control. Guess that I’ve never felt permission to really let go of the responsibility of parenthood and join them in play without being in control. You can even see the difference between how they totally jump into playing with dad versus how they play with me. Mom plays but always at a further distance than dad. How he gets to be one of the kids sometimes but not me has always hurt. I am the guardian, the responsible parent, the one that usually has to be Debbie Downer and set limits on how wild and carefree the play gets.

Goal 1: Figure out how to challenge myself as a parent so that I could step out of my box as the “responsible parent” and be the “fun parent” more often.

It wasn’t strange at all, thinking about how my parenting would shape my own children’s sexualities while sitting in a room full of women that were discussing how their childhood play related to their adult sexual play. It wasn’t strange at all because almost everything that I do, think or think about doing usually stirs a thought or two about how it will help or hinder my children. Once you’re a parent you’re always a parent. So, it was in that room full of women discussing their kinks that I decided that I needed to allow my children more modes of approved play.

And when I thought about it, long and hard, I realized that I had always wished my mother hadn’t been so strict with me and that when she did play with me it had been more on my terms than hers.

That’s when I thought for a minute that maybe even as a child I might have been greedy and self-centered but instantly that thought went to…

Goal 2: Make childhood more about the needs and wants of my children and less about me.

I am the parent that has always said that children teach us how to parent them yet I had not always followed my own advice. Controlling Lidia-Anain has too often wanted for her children what she didn’t have for herself as a child and forgotten that her children are not her even if they are her own.

And there it is… the web that’s so tangled that I can’t seem to get myself out of it. My childhood shaped me and the way I parent, the way I parent shapes them and the way they will parent…

So instead of worrying about how to get myself out of this tangled web of wanting to give them everything I never had, keeping them in a perfect straight line towards happiness and success as adults and being the parent they need and want, I’ve decided that maybe being playful is just what we need more of.

I can let go some…

run around the park chasing the son that loves playing tag

create art with the son that loves painting, sculpting and all things visual art

have conversations with the make-believe friends that my other son has

I can master playful parenting as soon as I learn that it isn’t a goal to be mastered but a part of parenting to be enjoyed!

Lidia-Anain signature

Aug

01

Emotional Bandwidth

naked candor / sex love joy archives

I had a hard conversation the other day. A very dear friend and I had to come to terms with the fact that she practices mono-intimacy. She can really only have one important person in her life at a time- and that person usually defaults to the one person she is romantically involved with. We’ve been close friends for decades and this is her consistent pattern: have a best friend whom she is not romantically involved with but treats like a partner. You know, like a “play-spouse” doing errands together, attend events together, mixing up the mundane and the playful, all while casually dating other people. Then out of those casual dates she connects deeply with someone and then shifts all of her attention to that person. Suddenly she forgets to return phone calls or keep up those weekly traditions. Her friends will say she’s in a love coma, or a lust bubble- which can last for years at a time for her.

This goes beyond monogamy- this is about being unable or unwilling to devote attention to more than one connection at a time. And it is hard to watch a woman in her 30’s do. Maybe when you’re in your late teens or early 20’s it’s normal. Maybe age has nothing to do with it at all. Maybe this isn’t something she needs to grow up from. Maybe this is just how she is. And there is a lot of support for this type of relationship structure. There are a lot of ways we can look at this situation, but what I’m seeing is that there is a spectrum of intimate availability. Some people are more than just capable of maintaining multiple intimate connections- they need to do it. They need to have more than one person they feel deeply connected to, or are even romantically involved with, so they do the work to make sure they have that. They show up and they invest and they participate in ways that let their people know that they are loved. It is simply how they relate. Then we have my friend- who would be at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Jul

25

I want, I want! I need, I need!

naked candor / sex love joy archives

As parents, we’re forever caught in this dilemma of whose needs and wants get prioritized. How far down the line we put ourselves can cause a lot of problems in all of our relationships. I see the connection to my children as very much a living, breathing relationship. Kind of like the U.S. Constitution– yes the fact that I am their mother is set in stone, but how that plays out and what that looks like it subject to amendment. It’s election season so my metaphors are all a little political. There are three people in my family so it’s an easy allusion to the branches of the federal government. If I’m the President, then one son is Congress and the other is the Supreme Court. Yes, I do feel like I’m constantly being judged and the threat of impeachment is real. Look at what happened to Bill Clinton’s presidency due to his sexual behavior… tell me there’s not some similarity there. Are you raising a Kenneth Starr? What about a Newt Gingrich? Is there an aspiring Neo-Con in your household?

I worry about that a lot; how to balance my sexuality with my parenting. How to meet my own set of parenting standards while prioritizing my sexual health? The bar is high for both of those aspects of my life. I’ve definitely had times when my sexual needs fell far down the ladder of priorities. And I’m totally okay with that. In fact, it lets me know that I’m a responsible adult. But I also know that taking care of myself is crucial to my being a healthy parent. Part of being sex-positive to me, is that I can say no to sex whenever I need to. I don’t have to perform for anybody and I don’t have to meet anyone else’s standards as to what my sexuality should look like. And when there comes a time when sex is just not a priority, I’m confident enough with my own judgment to be at peace with it. Even as a person without a primary partner, there is no panic or rush.

Jul

11

Parenting Instincts, Resources and Assumptions

naked candor / sex love joy archives

You know what’s been difficult for me when it comes to seeking out parenting resources? Believing that the person who wrote the book or the article or the blog post had me in mind while writing it. I want information and suggestions. I want expert opinions and well thought out guidelines. I want to commiserate and nod my head in agreement while reading. But are the things that make me different from those authorities and scholars insurmountable barriers to my accessing their suggestions about how to raise my children?

Sometimes it feels like it. Like I just know they’re not talking to me. I’ve felt like many parenting resources have a little invisible asterisk by the title: Does not apply to Queer parents, single parents, kinky parents, poor parents or sexually active women. Do I really want to read yet another parent how to book that assumes I’m straight, middle class and married? Do I have to ignore the lump in my throat when the baseline assumption in the article about time management and intimacy is that I wish I had more time to be alone with my husband? Not that there is anything wrong with that article, or having a husband, we’re just over-saturated with that perspective. The assumption that just because I had heterosexual sex at one point in my life means I’m heterosexual all the time is aggravating. The theory of sexual fluidity has existed for decades. It’s not new or shocking or trendy. It’s real. People’s sexuality shifts and changes, exists upon a continuum and spectrum of lived experiences and attractions, opportunities and challenges. We know this. So why does this understanding about sexuality suddenly come to an abrupt stop when it comes to parents?

Jul

04

My Path to Becoming a Sex-Positive Parent

naked candor / sex love joy archives

Hello Sex Love Joy readers!

First off, thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my little survey. I am honored to be a guest writer for Lidia-Anain and wanted to make sure my posts here are as useful to you as possible. Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing my own stories with you as well as providing links to other resources that I can confidently recommend as sex-positive for parents.

I want to share with you a series of conversations that I had many years ago that set me on the path of becoming The Sex-Positive Parent. Like many women, I have embraced the feminist mantra that the personal is political. And our family ties, while deeply personal, can also be the microcosmic metaphor for the larger political context we find ourselves in.

My family tends to reproduce every 20 years. I was 21 when I gave birth to my first son, my father was 20 when I was born, my mother was 23, her mother was 20 when she had her and that mother’s mother was 21 when she became a mom as well. I’m definitely hoping to bump that age up by about 10 years with my own children, but for now, I have more examples of young parenting than I do anything else. Being only 20 years apart from my dad, and the fact that his mother was a primary caretaker in my life, meant that he and I had a different type of dynamic. He felt like an uncle more than a dad a lot of the time. So I know that the conversations my dad and I have aren’t conventional. I am his only child. We are very similar.

Jun

27

Airial Clark of The Sex Positive Parent here!

motherhood / sex & sexuality / sex love joy archives

Children are a blessing that can renew our love for life and bring out the very best in us but damn it is hard work being a parent! Maintaining our sense of autonomy, remaining the sexual beings that created babies and leading our children towards making the right choices often can be a daunting juggling act which is why I am grateful when I find resources or people that can help me become a better parent.

Recently, I met, Airial Clark, a woman that not only is a great resource about all things sexuality but she’s also a sex positive parent that walks the walk too. She’s also not afraid of being vulnerable and sharing her struggles as well as her successes via the writings on her website which I can only describe as revealing eloquent prose.

Y’all know I wanted to pick her brain on the spot but because we were at a conference I had to contain my excitement at that moment. After seeing her again last weekend I read some more of her blog posts and decided to ask her to write a series of posts for Sex Love Joy and she said yes!

Mar

05

vulvas vs. violence – episode two

motherhood / sex & sexuality / sex love joy archives

This post is the conclusion of a story that began here.

The vulva war began with him taking down my vulva poster without asking me first. It would escalate with days and days of me bringing up how persistent violence on television had to be far worse for our children than one collage of a few vulvas on the side of our fridge. It would end with me putting my vulva poster back up exactly where it once had been but in between there were a lot of conversations about vulvas and violence.

When you are raising children together you spend a lot of time making compromises. Raising children is one of the hardest most joyful things two people can do together but it requires total collaboration and communication because even if you share similar beliefs and usually agree there will be times when you oppose one another. In my household we pretty much are always in agreement on everything. My spouse might be my opposite in many ways but when it comes to the important things we always agree – or so I thought until the topics of sexuality and violence as they pertained to our children started coming up.

My spouse, like me, was raised in a household where violence on television wasn’t a big deal. We were both allowed to watch violent television shows and movies. Sex scenes or even implied sex scenes were a no-no in our households. His mother had him leave the room when the scenes were about to come on and my parents allowed my brother that was six years my junior to watch but not me. Our parents completely avoided talking about sexuality – in any form whatsoever. It was as if violence was okay and natural but sexuality was dirty, unnatural and not to be spoken in our households. Yet, we both knew our parents were sexual beings, we learned to masturbate on our own (feeling guilt and shame for it), and we both eventually started having sex before we became adults. The only influence our parents had over our sexuality was negative and censored but when it came to violence our parents were open and approving.

Feb

02

vulvas vs. violence – episode one

motherhood / sex & sexuality / sex love joy archives

In November I went to Joani Blank’s Femalia book signing and picked up the poster you see below. Joani in passing suggested that it should be placed somewhere public. I can’t remember for certain if she said something about wishing people would have them on their fridges but that’s where I put mine when I got home; the side of my fridge.

There’s nothing gross or graphic about this poster; it is a beautiful collage of vulvas. My oldest son, he was eleven at the time, commented on it being a cool looking kaleidoscope as his dad cringed knowing what made up the beautiful collage. As time passed and my oldest kept examining the poster he said that parts of it looked like organs to him. He specifically asked me, “Mom are those people’s insides in the poster?”

I was honest and told him that the poster was a collage made from photographs of different women’s vulvas. I asked him if he remembered what part of a woman’s anatomy that was; his answer sort of. That was a perfect opportunity for us to have another conversation about sex, sexuality and anatomy. I popped open some of the sexuality resources that I have that were age appropriate and we had a great talk. My son asked questions again, shared his concerns about his developing body and told me that he wasn’t too sure if he was going to like going through puberty.

Oct

31

motherhood a selfish act

motherhood / sex love joy archives

One of my girls says that choosing to bring children into this world is a very selfish act. If you are parent that knows the amount of selflessness required to always do right by your children you might disagree with her. But when her theory is argued using a different statement you might agree that there is some truth behind her theory.

“When Darwin used the term survival of the fittest he was not referring to your good looks or your bank account; he was counting your children. If you raise babies that have babies, you are what nature calls fit. You have passed your genes to the next generation and in terms of survival you have won.” – Dr. Helen Fisher

When my husband saw the two blue lines on the home pregnancy test he asked if we were really ready and my answer to him April 30, 1999 was, “I just want a little pocket version of you that I can spoil, love and protect! I want to see what we created from our love and lust! We will figure it out and I’m sure we will manage.” We selfishly choose to bring our first son into the world even though I wasn’t done with college, my husband didn’t have a well paying job and we barely had enjoyed being a married couple because we both agreed that we wanted living proof of “our love” in this world.

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