It’s been a minute but I wanted to share that it’s in no small part due to life things taking place. My colleague and mom friend, Julie Turley and I have published our research work about musical mothers. It’s definitely not your usual convention of moms of rock stars or groupie moms. Over the course of several years (including the covid years) we interviewed mother musicians to investigate how they engage and navigate within the heavier genres of music (metal, grind, punk, heavy rock, etc.)— typically masculine coded spaces. If you’re teaching gender and music, or motherhood studies, it’s definitely a much needed text.
Here’s the excerpt and link to purchase the book from our publisher. Enjoy!
Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptionsis an exploration of women and heavy music and the ways in which women have historically engaged with musicking as mothers. Julie Turley and Joan Jocson-Singh, musicking mothers themselves, largely employ an ethnographic lens, foregrounded in powerful one-on-one original interviews as vignettes that narrate thematic patterns. Other chapters examine motherhood identity embedded in respective published rock music memoirs, discussions of rock performance as a site of maternal bonding, and themes that arise when heavy music mothers write about motherhood. Auto-ethnographic portions throughout give the book an intimate and personal tone: one such chapter presents the concept of vigilante motherhood within an auto-ethnographic context. The authors reference the book’s limitations, meditating on historically marginalized moms the authors predict and hope the focus will be on for the future. Heavy Music Mothers is a robust study of women and motherhood set within a music culture historically inhospitable to both women and mothers. This book, the first scholarly study of this topic, is just the beginning.
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” Truly yours, Albert Camus
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As I approach 40 this month, I feel like I can finally articulate the lush and emotional landscape that is my mind. Perhaps it needed this long to marinate in my body. I don’t know. But like I mentioned a few times in this blog before, so many changes have and continue to happen to me during this time.
I was often a child who felt displaced, or what my therapist today has labeled “abandoned.” It took me a lifetime to understand the implications and meaning behind that word. I’m the youngest of three children and never particularly felt like I was abandoned. It was the kind childhood where you woke up on Saturday mornings to fight with your brother so that you could watch your favorite cartoon, only to be bullied into watching yet another episode of GI Joe. Where were my parents? wasn’t really a question in the forefront of my lucky charms cereal-filled brain. My absentee immigrant parents were a normalized environment for me. What do you mean my 11 year old brother couldn’t look after his 6 year old sister? In the Philippines, much younger kids knew how to wash their family’s clothes in the ilog by themselves and walk home. “How hard was it to watch your kid sister?”, my parents would ask my brother.
But by the age of 13, I had been in three different schools already, mostly because tuition was just too much for my parents to send their littlest ones for a Catholic education. In the meantime, the moving into a new school every 3 years led me to honing my social skills of making friends – not realizing I was really developing skills to “read” adults, converse with older kids (like my brother’s friends), and develop the ability to let things slide and remain flexible – all types of survival skills. My sense of self was rooted in pleasing others in order to keep friendships, cultivate belonging and feel seen. This, however, only encouraged me to remain both inside and outside of the realm of real community. It’s perhaps this feeling of displacement that made me stay in situations where the illusion of control and stability seemed so strong. I stayed far too long in relationships that I had outgrown.
In reality, such a stoic outlook was naïve of me. But I had no real comparison from which to learn. So much of what we hear today regarding parenting strategies harkens to “generational trauma.” Yet, I’m not upset at my parents. How could I be? It must have taken them an enormous toll just to come to a new country and start a life and family. How were they to know about the psychology of free-range, helicopter, or authoritarian types of parenting?
I really don’t hold any particular good or bad feelings about the way I was reared. I was fed, clothed, educated and had a roof over my head. I knew even then that I was lucky. And while my father was unaffectionate and emotionally closed off, my mother more than made up for it with kindness and generosity. In many ways, I try to emulate her. The only difference is through my time. She wasn’t able to be around much because of two jobs and her health issues.
And so, with my two girls I promised I wouldn’t overwork myself to a point where I couldn’t be there for them. The goal is not an easy one, especially now during Covid, where it seems working remotely doesn’t always mean 9-5pm and being a single parent by choice leaves little room to welcoming healthy adult interdependent relationships.
But in just 22 days I will be celebrating my 40th circle around the sun and thinking about how different my life is now. Had I known that I would lose certain people in my life to get here, would I have made different choices, would the outcomes even have changed?
I often reflect at losing Julia to her sudden aneurism. How she died around this age that I’m turning. Would she have given me advice about how unhappy I was in my marriage prior to moving to California? Would she have talked me out of it? It wasn’t until I left NY that I had to confront my own realizations of what I wanted. I had to stop feeling ashamed that my love language included a want of romantic gestures. That I wanted to feel appreciated and adored. For too long, I thought it was frivolous to showcase love like that, to ask for it. Wasn’t writing little love notes, or receiving flowers and hearing sweet nothings every now and then simply the actions of “young” love? Didn’t spontaneous romantic weekend plans or dinners exist for those who were just “falling in love“? And wasn’t what I had more than those actions? Wasn’t what I had “established love?” – The kind where you can comfortably grow old together? Shouldn’t it have felt enough, been easier?
Yet it was all the gestures and actions that I listed which were exactly what I needed to feel like I could thrive. I’m not sure where it got lost in our 20 years of coupledom, but like any plant that doesn’t get watered, we simply started to wilt.
Moving to California made me finally see the forest from the trees. And for the first time in a long time, I felt alive. I could follow the rivers; I couldsee the ocean. And it wasn’t because of new love or new friends, or even the wonderment I saw in my children’s’ eyes. It was me.
I woke up one morning looking at the early sky and for the first time thought to myself, “I don’t want to just exist, I want to live and be grateful for having a life – one where I can choose to be happy.”
In that moment, I found something that made me stronger.
Hi friends! Here’s a recording of a recent lecture I was invited to give for M.I.T. about my research work with Women in NY’s extreme metal music (EMM) subculture, Vigilante Feminism, and Motherhood studies.
On a personal note, this was a much-needed and beautiful opportunity that allowed me to re-center. You can go here for more MIT related lectures on Heavy Metal. Joe Diaz – the metalhead responsible for this wonderful endeavor has organized a really great slate of speakers for this year’s lectures. Enjoy!
Love: “It’s a verb. That’s the first thing. It’s an active engagement with all kinds of feelings—positive ones and primitive ones and loathsome ones. But it’s a very active verb. And it’s often surprising how it can kind of ebb and flow. It’s like the moon. We think it’s disappeared, and suddenly it shows up again. It’s not a permanent state of enthusiasm.” – Esther Perel [New Yorker]
I’ve been reading a lot lately. Something that as a librarian most people would think comes naturally. Yet for me, it’s been so far from the case. Giving birth to two kids in the last ten years, going through separation/divorce, and moving cross-country has left me with little leisure time until now. And yet, you’d think now would be an even busier time, but so many instrumental changes have changed my life and given me space for self-care. And that includes space to read, research and have fruitful and important discussions.
Among reading books like The Body Keeps Score, Mating in Captivity, South of the Border/West of the Sun, Clarity & Connection, and Milk and Honey, I think I’ve found thematic concepts that have been resonating with me – those are of change, authenticity to self, and the ability to love and bring abundance.
Part of these insights have been brought about because I’ve been fortunate to really get to know myself this year. With that on-going learning experience, I get closer to where I want to land in the area of love and friendships. And with Esther Perel fresh in my mind, several concepts have impacted the way I see meaningful relationships. For one, I’ve come to learn that a deep sense of love, at least for me, is not simply one based on shared experiences and years spent together. Instead, growth and communication are key. Conventionally, people on the outside would look at the ending of my marriage as a failure. For a time, I did too. Given this past year, I’ve sat with reflexivity and I’ve reframed it as a learning experience in which I learned new things about myself and my previous partner. I still love him but I’ve also learned to love myself, something I hadn’t realized was lost in the last ten years of our marriage. I had stopped listening to my inner voice about my needs and instead gave myself to everyone else as a mother, wife and daughter-in-law.
As a trauma response to life changes (losing both my mother and a very close friend), I buried myself into work and research – not really healing over all these pains. When combined with feeling unappreciated, passive resentment grew. Through therapy, I had to confront this. I had to take ownership over my own hurt and non-communication. Paired with a partner who also didn’t know how to communicate, we simply learned that our path was one not in which we had traveled together. I think that was one of my hardest lessons. 20 years of young love, then adult love was something I had no other modeling or understanding to emulate. Because I met my ex at 17, I didn’t realize how much our love could change, evolve, or grow. I only wished we were able to evolve interdependently and not codependently.
Most importantly, I’ve learned and am still learning the changing nature of my idea of love. I’ve been told by friends to not close the door on love, that I am both healing and grieving my marriage and so I shouldn’t take such a strong stance on wanting to be alone. I think it’s sometimes scary for my friends and family to hear that I’m at a point in my life that I never want to remarry. I think it scares people because we’ve been socialized to pair-bond, that we’re social creatures, that companionship is a life goal. The thing is, I’m just not that brave. I hope one day I will be again, it’s just not today.
With all the self-work I’ve had to do these past two years, I’ve learned (am still learning) that being alone does not equal loneliness. I applaud my friends who have found the one and are making marriage work, don’t get me wrong. I’ve simply seen that it’s not the only way to live life. I don’t have some epic love story, or even some narrative or guidance of what’s right or wrong. I’ve just come to realize that love really changes from person to person. For me, it’s bringing a more empathic and authentic self to the table. It’s ensuring that I meet my own needs as well as a partner’s. It’s about talking about why one person can’t be 100% of everything to me and vice versa.
Most of all, I’ve found that we are in constant negotiation with love and our surrender to it.
One of the craziest things to have happen to me this year has been meeting the new friends I’ve made in California. I don’t think I could have found better teachers to show me what good communication and patience can look like. I’ve never felt courageous. I’ve spent mornings dropping off the kids and just crying. I felt sadness in hopes that my ex would communicate and co-parent like the friends we used to be. And then I realized I just can’t manage other people and their feelings.
These experiences have taught me to ground myself. To really unpack how love and support works for me. To really look at abandonment and loneliness. It’s taken so much work, so much vulnerability to voice feeling like I’m undeserving and not enough. All to realize that those feelings were valid but not defining. Once I had this epiphany, it was like my body and mind changed. I saw a liminal space in which I could move fluidly between; where I was allowed to make mistakes, change my mind, even fail at love. All of this growing, the pain and joy are not definitions of who I am. They were and are just part of the process.
“Got the music in you baby, tell me why Got the music in you baby, tell me why You’ve been locked in there forever And you just can’t say goodbye”
This has become a space in which I’m often coming to post rare and infrequent writings, sometimes personal, sometimes reflective, usually academic. Today’s post is aligning more with the personal.
Wednesday was my 39th solar return and I’ve had a whirlwind of a year to reflect upon. The biggest event for me was moving my family of four cross-country for my new job. A job which feels like coming home but also like filling impossibly big shoes.
As of late, I’ve been thinking about my snake tattoo, one that I got right before my move to California. Its symbolism for me has been one of transformation – the shedding of skin and the rebirth of self. Getting tattooed has become a deep and moving experience each time for me. It is my body and it tells a story. Our bodies hold space for us. It embodies our culture, trauma and joy. It carries us, sees us through sickness and forms our identity. Its mass is visible and often the recipient of judgement, pride and sometimes hatred merely because of its color or size. And yet it’s these markings, blemishes, and scars that also carry a history of love and experience. It is our skin, our consciousness, our womb. Over the years, I have learned to love my body and mind and to infuse it with the abundance that is reflective in how I want to love others.
But coping with the pandemic amidst a life changing move and trying to settle in and get to know my new home and environment has left me, dare I say it, a little lost. Among all the invisible work it takes to plan such a move was the anxiety with getting Covid, grieving the death of my good friend just a year before the pandemic hit and then losing my best friend after the move. How did I ever manage all this before my move to the west coast? The answer was the trauma response of burying myself into work and volunteering. To add, I relied heavily on my social network of trusted friends, family and colleagues. Prior to California, you could find me “dinnering” with friends and off-loading the stressors of work and mom-life. My research work kept me busy with deadlines and participant interviews. But when covid hit, all these things sort of died in the water. It took some time to get back into the swing of things once we had moved, and even then, it had to pivot into new workflows that have forever changed the way we do work. To this day, I have only been on campus a handful of times.
All that’s to say – life is so different now. Understatement of the year, right? And it’s only February 2021. Some days, I crave the feeling of being alone. With two kids in tow and everyone zooming from home, private time can be eluding. Reading books and painting have been regulated to late night or super early morning self-care routines. Carving out time to find peace and solitude have been key to my mental health, especially with so many on and off again lock-downs. And yet, even with the positive attitude towards creating a space for just myself, from time to time, loneliness creeps in, when mattering to others, irrespective of whether one is in a relationship or alone gives a sense of connectedness. And so I think part of my path in this world is to be a healer through friendship and empathy. To share my own vulnerability so that others might know they are not alone.
I’ve been lucky enough to be self-aware. It’s what therapy and being able to reach out to my social network has allowed me. But I can’t argue about the bouts of loneliness I’ve experienced since moving. While I believe it’s both natural and a part of my building a new tribe here, it’s made infinitely more difficult because of the state of the world. Journaling has been an unexpected godsend. I hadn’t realized how helpful it was to work through emotions and expectations about myself. Through writing, therapy, and my research work, I’ve learned there are things I want to explore and take a deep dive towards.
More than ever, my anthropology work seems kismet. While I will always feel I have a home with my NY family and friends, I’m slowly finding friends who support this new authentic side of me that’s been emerging here. It’s ironic in a way when I think of my friends in NY who have stayed by my side. I’ve known many of them since before I got married and had kids so in some ways I feel like this “me” emerging in California is closer to the version they knew before #adulting took over. That’s all to say, in my 39 years, I feel like a soul resonating on its true spiritual journey. And I’m slowly gaining the courage to live life accepting that being misunderstood is part and parcel with the work towards self-love. Experiencing rejection and pain has motivated me to take bigger risks. I know there will be mistakes, that I will unintentionally hurt others and I will be hurt as well. In the end, compassion and empathy will move us forward.
I’m often reminded by the Nietzsche quote: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
At the beginning of 2020, I was a completely different person. Only a year ago, but less emotionally strong and unaware of what the year would bring. The last decade I lost many parts of myself, including beautiful people who graced me with their friendship and love. I lost them to sickness, to growing apart, to death. At the same time I managed to gain immense insight, advice, kindness and love from my friends who remained in my life.
I learned more about myself in the last year than in the last decade. I realized that the loss of my mother in my 20s remained a pivotal moment of abandonment that never went away, and I dealt with it by giving myself more to others than to caring for myself. I gave myself to working hard, being too available, and volunteering too much. And I lost a little of myself to motherhood, wifehood, and conventionality. Halfway through the year, I was running on empty like so many others.
I have re-discovered the light that used to shine through me. My friends and family helped me along the way, always continuing to believe in me, even when I doubted myself. I began crafting a vision of myself that was happier, healthier and bright; I started running, drawing, getting therapy, and eating better. I was given an invitation from the universe to nurture myself and I wasn’t passing by it this time. I learned to forgive myself.
This brings me back to my tattoos and the last one I received in 2020 was an art nouveau inspired take of the Strength Tarot card. I transitioned from snake to lion and came into my own. It is with this notion of fortitude and authenticity which I hope pushes me further within my strength as I prepare for another cycle around the sun.
I hope 2021 continues to manifests forgiveness, acceptance, and moving forward. I hope everyone can listen to one another, be kind, and lead with empathy. I welcome all who are going through transition, transformation and are feeling pain and loss, and who are ready to lead fuller lives filled with intention and care. I am here for you and YOU ARE ENOUGH.
A recent interview over at Jezebel was just published that validates the research my colleague Julie Turley and I have been studying in the last two years regarding Motherhood – and that is – the story of how women, particularly women who participate in the musical subcultures of rock and metal feel a multi-faceted sense of loss, grounded in the expectations of what motherhood looks like.
The interview is with musician Jasmine White-Gluz (those of you probably know her sister, Alissa White-Gluz, death metal vocalist of Arch Enemy) and discusses her solo project as No Joy. Her new album, entitled Motherhood is an exploration of shape-shifting, at times heavy (though heavy is relative), dream pop songs. While I usually post about women in the extreme metal music subculture, Jasmine’s album explores an area that mixes said dream pop elements with concept and layers of motherhood both through composition and lyrics that had me intrigued.
The album’s opening track “birthmark” has your standard poppy arrangements but with the second track “dream rats”, multilayered vocals catch my attention and preference for more complexity. Finding out that the additional vocals were provided by Alissa White-Gluz was a plus, as I’ve always been a fan of death vocals.
Another highlight of the album is the track entitled “four”, which starts off with a bit of a shoe-gaze feel that slowly implements dream pop rhythms and repetitive vocals mid-way. I kept wanting the song to go a little darker/heavier but was pleasantly surprised with how the interchanges between dream pop and guitar play kept my ear at just the right level of interest.
While other reviewers relate this album to a 90’s noise-rock feel, some songs felt like I was back in the NY club scene, circa 1988, dancing with goth rain dancers, especially their song, “ageless”. Overall, I loved White-Gluz’s focus on Motherhood; the album offers a trippy road trip through her experiences and vision in discussing a concept so overlooked in the music industry.
I’m late in posting this – blame it on the pandemic and my move cross- country but here it is. I got published in the Metal Music Studies Journal back in Fall 2019 (Volume 5, Number 2). This short paper comes out of my graduate thesis work and discusses the all female death metal band Castrator and how they engage in vigilante feminism – a theory put forth by scholar Laura D’Amore.
Enjoy!
Members of NY-based band, Castrator Photo by Jorge Riaño
Hi world! I know it’s been some time. I’m still mired in the life of a tenure track librarian but I’ve got some nice news. My IRB was approved for the study – Rock and Metal Music Mothering: The Role of Musical Parenting So if you fit the criteria, which is – be female or female identifying, age 18 and up, a mother, and involved in NY’s Tri-state Rock and Metal Music subcultures – please take the survey or SHARE widely.
For this study, involvement within the Rock and Metal music subcultures consists of being a fan, musician, or related music industry worker. Participation is voluntary and you can choose to end your participation at any point during the survey.
In addition, I’m looking to do one-on-one, in person/email/phone interviews, so if you’d like to do that, I’d love to meet you! Please message me. Thanks so much! And enjoy the Instagram pic deatured [at] @designingmotherhood, artist: @dustdiablo
There’s a nice thought piece over at the Atom Smasher Music blog titled, Women in Metal: I Salute You, written up by Serena Cherry about the continued marginalization and sexism towards women in the Metal scene. I’m glad to see that folks are still having a dialogue about this and realizing that the rampant sexism emerging from Hollywood isn’t the only place where misogyny and abuse are thriving.
Not surprisingly, many of the comments that Serena listed in her post aren’t unlike the ones I encountered back when I was doing my research on Women in NYC’s extreme metal music scene. The constant testing of authenticity happens in almost all genres of music, and, as many folks can agree is just tiresome. While great strides have been and are continuing to be made by women, there’s still a long road. One aspect to keep in mind for these authors writing about women in metal are the intersectionalities – let’s not forget about race and sexuality – still challenging areas within metal to navigate and full of political polarizations. Having been woke by colleagues of mine about racism in the metal genre, it’s hard not to see the many problems that still exist in metal on a daily basis.
Jo Bench – I added this pic simply because I love her.
In addition, we can’t forget the “girl on girl” maliciousness which does exist. From my own experience, I’ve met women who were insular and ostracizing in their fandom as they were already the token woman in that scene. I’m sure one might think this odd, but it’s happened more than often for me to notice.
Finally – while I agree it’s important to not tokenize women, we need to find new ways to show representation (it still matters!) without categorizing ourselves into areas like “female-fronted”. How best to do that? – I’m not sure.
ontheshelves 