being authentic

I so enjoy reading authentic blogs like sensible living, a hippie in a minivan, this inspired life, granola girl and more.  I think what really strikes me is how much of themselves the authors share.  That’s something I’m struggling with.

Perhaps one of the biggest thing that makes my blog feel odd is that I don’t share my true name.  I’m not really comfortable with doing that yet since there are some unique things that might make it easy to track me down.   And as of yet it’s only my closest friends, their readers and wordpress bloggers that know they can find me here.  I’m happy to meet strangers but for some reason I want to protect this site from my parents and siblings.  I’m not sure why but that’s the way I’ve been with most things so far in this life.  It might not make sense, but I’d like to honour that feeling, at least for now.

Feelings of vulnerability are also making it hard for me to reveal my real self.  I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, trying to figure out who I am and what I’m doing here.  While I’m comfortable to share this with people I feel connected to I’ll never know all who read my blog.  What a scary thought!  I’m not sure why I thought it would be so easy before I actually started sharing this space.

One of the main reasons I wanted to start this blog was to cultivate relationships with other likeminded people.  Where I live now doesn’t really “fit” and I’ve gained so much from interacting with the online community of unschooling mamas.  I enjoy my relationships with these folks and want to grow more, perhaps add some other folks that aren‘t yet parents to my network.  To do this I need to be sharing my authentic self.

As I mentioned,  I’m not entirely sure who my authentic self is right now but I know that the reasons I feel connected to my favourite bloggers boils down to values and lifestyle.  I’m concerned about the health of the environment – not just at a global level but at a personal and local level too.  Healthy food and crops are high on my list but so are things like community and social sustainability.

I’m hungry to put better ways of living into practice.  I want to be more in tune with the natural environment and the other people in it, including myself.  I want to be able to do more things for myself and be a better communicator.  I’ve been working on improving my listening skills for years but I’m still a novice in things like nonviolent communication, storytelling and tapping into my internal self.  I have so much to learn!

Thank you for sharing your journey and here, in this space, I welcome you to mine.