"I'm so excited - I'm pitching a tent!"

Several years ago I rolled up The Red Tent in Venice to focus on sorting out my new life with children.  Once I took off the HEAVY mantle of "teacher" and its even more daunting badge of "healer" - I found that I had a much more to sort out than just how to handle my new role as mother.  For years I had been on the front lines of the war against women and in the midst of the carnage I hadn't noticed that I, myself, was bleeding out.  By the time I left our particular theatre - in-patient eating disorder and chemical dependency recovery for women - I was in need of my own rehabilitation.

 
My time off allowed me to figure out how to help my children stay whole while coming to my own senses about how I might be of service in the world with them.  I am excited to say that I've got the beginning of a plan even though it's nothing new.  (It never has been. )  Yep, it looks like I'm raising a red tent again!

This time around I'm changing a few things.  I'm redirecting my  energy from recovery to prevention.  I'm focusing on writing and I'm making this tent a traveling one.  Most importantly I'm not offering to teach or heal anyone.   I'm simply offering an opportunity.  I'm raising a red tent because I am raising a girl child and she needs it - as does the whole world.  I believe, that now more than ever before, we need girls who will be the living answer to Judith Duerk's long standing question, "How would your life have been different....".   I'm planning on staking the main pole and bringing the old fabrics but I need other women to pull (and reclaim!) the "guy lines" with me.

Which gets me to the subject line of this post; "I'm so excited - I'm pitching a tent!"  Yes, the pun is intended.  With me, the pun is ALWAYS intended.

What I am decidedly NOT changing this time around is what I've learned to be one of my most valuable strengths - I'm punny.   And, as it turns out, that is pretty important.  It might actually be the most important thing about my work.  I'm punny, and occasionally funny, while trudging alongside other women through our common depths.  What I discovered working with women in recovery is that an undertaking as serious as reclaiming one's sense of authentic self requires a fully functioning funny bone.  Otherwise, it can all be to much.  It can be fatal.  From where I'm standing, in the trenches of a common culture where sexual assault is excused with the label "locker room talk" - it looks to me like we are going to need a steady and strong source of levity in this most grieveous time.

A while back I started the Red Handed blog as a place to keep questioning and to keep lightening up as I navigated some personal issues born of patriarchy.  It is my hope now to share this platform with other women and girls as we communally question, confront, and rise.  And, together raise our next generation under the protection of a red tent.