Their Bad Mother

So Sandra Bullock adopted a child. I’m happy for her. I am, really. I think that I might have actually welled up this morning, when I saw the headline and clicked to see that picture of her, smiling as she nuzzled her brand new baby boy. I’m not usually moved by stories of celebrities giving…

Today is Earth Day. I am, personally, feeling a little bit irritated with the Earth, the Earth being the source of the pollens that have attacked me and clobbered me into an allergy-ravaged mess, and so I am not feeling particularly motivated to go outside and hug a tree or collect recyclables or what have…

A four year old ninja hugs her little brother. There’s a metaphor here about the kick-butt power of love, but I’m having trouble putting it into words, so I’ll just let the picture speak for itself.

I’ve been struggling with depression. I’m always struggling with depression, in some respects, but it feels harder, these days. My husband asks me if I’m sad, and I tell him no, because depression is different from sadness, but there’s an element of it there. I’m struggling with depression, in part, because I’ve been struggling with…

I posted yesterday, at my other site, about the child abuse scandal afflicting the Catholic Church. I said that the Church’s seeming unwillingness to accept full responsibility, not only for the abuse but for the covering up of the abuse and for protecting the priests that perpetrated the abuse, was rattling my faith in the…

“Who are you?” is a better question for directing a spiritual journey, I think, than “where are you?” All the more if we direct it at ourselves, rather than at God.

The Easter Bunny, Emilia informs me, is a fighter. “He can fight, Mommy. Because he’s big.” “Santa’s big, too.” “Santa doesn’t fight, though, because he doesn’t need to.” “Oh?” “He just has elves around him, and they’re happy and nice, and Santa doesn’t need to fight them.” I’m almost afraid to ask who or what…

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.  ~Mark Twain My mother recently broke her blog silence to write about being betrayed by her brother. It’s a long story; you can read about it at her blog. What I’m struggling with, vis-a-vis her story, is this: her unwillingness to…

I don’t care which side of the fence you’re on when it comes to health care reform in the U.S. or abortion rights in the U.S. or the place of either debate in the context of the other: shouting “baby killer” at anyone who doesn’t tow the hard pro-life line is stupid. It’s stupid because…

Catherine Connors
about

Catherine Connors

Catherine Connors is a mother, writer and recovering academic who traded the lecture hall for the playroom and discovered that university students and preschoolers have much the same attention span. She still dips her toes into academic waters by writing the occasional scholarly article about the place of motherhood in Western philosophy, but mostly now she changes diapers and wipes noses and indulges in long reflections on whether Yo Gabba Gabba is a harbinger of the decline of western civilization. Oh, and she blogs: in addition to Bad Mother blogging at BeliefNet, she is, among other things, the author of HerBadMother.com, the moderator of Her Bad Mother’s Basement, the co-founder and co-editor of WeCovet, a contributing writer/editor at MamaPop and BlogHer, and most recently (deep breath) founder of and contributor to Canada Moms Blog. And in her spare time… oh, wait. She doesn’t have spare time. But she’s okay with that.

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