I dreaded all the childbirth classes I signed up for once me and my ex broke up. I had yet to realize how much I had internalized society's ideal of the two parent family model until I was struck with stomach wrenching nerves walking into the class. Why do I have to have tattoos and look young and be single, I thought to myself last night. I don't want all these cute older couples to judge me, judge my baby, judge my tattoos... Look at them, their nice clothes, their white smiles and manicured nails. I bet that lady is looking at my chipped black nail polish. Look how carefully that dad swaddles his baby doll...

On and on it went. I'm struck with how deeply I've allowed my own self to believe that  there lies real safety and real stability in raising a child within the model of a nuclear family/two parent household. Even despite being bombarded daily with the reality of that ideal only being a broken delusion, I'm still fighting and judging myself, having to remind myself often that single mom's do it and do it well.

My deluded beliefs on child rearing are revealing themselves to me in extremely subtle ways. In my fear of facing the other parents at the birthing class, in the way I divert looking fully into the eyes of the well-to-do parents I serve at the wine bar I work at. Don't get me wrong, most days I do walk with great pride in being single, pregnant and extremely independent. I dance in it, feeling lit up and inspired by my newly blossoming future. But the nights of judgement are there- and what really hurts when I find myself swept up in this wave of judgment is not the judgment itself but how hard I am on myself afterwards for feeling poorly. I'm realizing I've been holding myself to an extremely unrealistic standard. A standard that says I should only walk around empowered and inspired for my soon to be arriving daughter and for myself. Very, very, very unrealistic.  

So today I'm learning I really just need to be gentle with myself. I need to allow myself the room to grow and fall and slip into this new and uncomfortable role as a soon-to-be single mama. A radical single mama. A radical single mama with naked ladies tattooed on her arms and chipped black nail polish.

I assumed the moment that 2nd pink line appeared on the EPT stick that naturally so would a slew of radical feminist parenting ideals. I mean c'mon, it has taken me years to even begin to grasp the reality of sexism and its massive detrimental impact on my life as a young woman.Then even more time to find what being a feminist really meant to me, a meaning that went further than just a label but became an actual way of life. As Bell Hooks states about feminism, "[it is] a movement to end all sexist oppression."

 I was not born into a world that cradles young women and men and teaches them the beauty of their own self. I was not born into a world that teaches little girls and boys that they are not their gender stereotype. I did not wake up with feminist ideals, and I have yet to wake up with parenting ideals. It took years, and a severe case of bulimia, to find a place to grow into as an Anarcho-Feminist. And now I begin this new process of becoming a mother. A sometimes empowered, sometimes liberated, but a lot of the time extremely scared and nervous mama.

What will this mean to me? To my daughter? To our tiny yet beautiful family?

We'll just have to wait in see. But in the meantime I'm reading a lot of Ariel Gore.