Yoga Rant

Recently reading two yoga memoirs woke me up to a terrible thought: some people go to the WRONG yoga classes!

This is a national calamity.

I thought Dederer's yoga memoir was lovely, moving, interesting and a beautiful patchwork of yoga, identity and motherhood. But the poor woman kept going to the wrong classes where teachers lacked any sense of humor and fellow yogis maintained the grim look of jilted lovers except wearing special hundred dollar yoga pants and hanging out on a squishy plastic mat!

                                                                                                     

 My friend, Brian Leaf, wrote this book. It's honestly funny (in other words, honest and funny). I love how he shares about Kripalu yoga. I think everyone should go to a Kripalu yoga class. No one is going to tell you you're "wrong" or a pose is "bad" or that some incredible, permanent rules of yogic alignment exist and you CAN'T FIGURE THEM OUT! He tells the story of healing, in all its forms, AND he was blessed with going to the right yoga classes.

My attitude to yoga is one of love and humor. I just can't see what everyone has their panties in a bundle about! Breathe and stretch, people! It may be both an art and a science (I think it is), and it may also be both a prayer and a meditation (I think it is), but it is also a release and joy.

So here's my contribution. Have FUN!

My Mother Is A Feminist Mother

She is. She really is. She always has been.

c. Sam Wilde/ Mom With Books, Chocolate, Champagne

I grew up in a house full of books. My mother, Nancy Thayer constantly reads (and constantly writes). Her house spills books. And in every book a new world. As a child, I'd sit in the library, surrounded by the names of women writers: Godwin, Rich, Wolf, Greer, French, Friedan, Robinson, Tyler, Chopin, and countless others. Of course, she had men, too. She has everything. She started writing before the days of walking into a Barnes and Noble and finding a novel about a mother's life, a widow's life, a step-mother's life, a grandmother's life. The proliferation of novels that tell the true story of women's lives did not exist when she began writing on a yellow legal pad. She taught me feminism by word, deed, and book--a broad, encompassing, empowering feminism (and never to the exclusion of style, flair or indulgence), but when I think of her as a writer, I realize that she wrote feminism by always telling the honest truth of women's lives. For 22 novels she has done this and it is what she does best. I love all her books. A recent favorite: Summer House. Her first three, in the era before all this chick lit, blazed a trail for the stories that have followed: Stepping, Three Women at the Water's Edge, Bodies and Souls.

We had a wonderful, fun time with this photo shoot. The night before we batted around different ideas. My original idea was to have her sitting on a pile of books fifteen feet high! Reclining on the books conveys what I wanted to without danger of falling (not that it was easy to lounge on stacks of books).

What does YOUR feminist mother look like? Submit your photo for the I Am A Feminist Mother Contest. Get creative. I want to see it all!

What's the matter with you people?

Okay, I made a video. If you don't laugh watching it, I want you to email me. Seriously.

I posted it on Facebook. Then one person who shall remain nameless (my mother) and another person who is anonymous (my brother) told me to take out the part where I change clothes off camera because NO ONE WOULD HAVE THE ATTENTION SPAN TO SIT THROUGH IT.

It takes me 15 seconds.

Also, it's called BUILDING DRAMATIC TENSION.

And, I think it's funny.

So, you tell me, have we all really lost our ability to WAIT for the good stuff? Is 15 seconds too long? I mean, are people everywhere just going straight for the orgasm these days? Does anyone go in for foreplay? Or is it like, "Sorry, honey. I don't have time. I need to go post on FACEBOOK!"

Tell me. I want to know the truth.

I Am A Feminist Mother Photo Contest

Are you a feminist mother?

What does that look like?

In preparation for the launch of my new novel, I'LL TAKE WHAT SHE HAS, a novel about envy, friendship and motherhood--

(One character says: “It’s scary, isn’t it? I’m like Laura Schlessinger 

trapped in a feminist’s body.”)--

I am calling upon every feminist mother to show the world the modern face of feminist mothers. I am inviting mothers from every country, all states, all places of life. Let the world see the wonderful diversity of mothers who claim the feminist title (by whatever definition).

c. Samantha Wilde/ self-portrait with laundry

Please submit your photo for the I Am A Feminist Mother Photo Contest and Virtual Exhibit. Your pictures can be funny, serious, with children, without children, and contain any content that you feel expresses the statement: I Am A Feminist Mother. Get creative!

Each photo MUST have a sign somewhere in the image that is readable and says: I Am A Feminist Mother.

The winner will be chosen by viewers and will receive a signed copy of each one of my books. ALL contributors will make history by participating in the I Am A Feminist Mother Virtual Exhibit.

I am looking for every kind of mother! All ages! All stages of life! Take a picture of yourself, a friend, or your own mother.

When you submit your photograph, please send it by email to sam (at) samanthawilde (dot) com. Send it in the body of the email. The subject line must read: Photo Contest. In the body of the email please include: Your Name, the name of the photographer, contact information (can be an email), title, if the photograph has one, location where picture was taken, and if there is a story to your photograph, you may include that.

All photographs must be received by January 31. The winner will be voted on during the first weeks of February and the winner will be announced on February 28 on this blog.

When you send the photograph, you are giving permission for me to display it on this blog, on my author Facebook site, on my website, and in other online venues, as well as to have it in a video montage on Youtube.

That's right, imagine a video of thousands of feminist mothers! It is almost too awesome! Please be a part of it!

Share this with every feminist mother you know! And with all the mothers in your life; you never know who is a feminist! Let's see what we really look like!

I Have Dropped The F-Bomb

I said the day would never come and probably I will have go to therapy over it.

I joined Facebook as author Samantha Wilde.




I will post the most interesting, enticing, HEART-STOPPING, posts you can imagine. Maybe I will even be naked. Maybe YOU will be naked.

All you have to do is LIKE me. Yes, you, the person reading this. If you go and click on that link (here it is again so you don't have to scroll backward, www.facebook/AuthorSamanthaWilde.com) and LIKE me then maybe, just maybe, I won't have to sit on a therapist's couch every day for a week to process why NO ONE LIKES me!

Geez, did they have to make it so much like junior high school?

(If you really want to understand why this is hard for me you can read my Feminist Amish post.)

Confessions of a Mop Lover

Today, I mopped my floor.

With the mop and bucket I purchased from the Home Shopping Network (one evening, while morose and channel surfing for an uplifting program. Hey! I guess I find infomercials uplifting). For the record, I almost never watch television (unless the Duggar's are on. Yes, that's the kind of feminist I am).

I couldn't keep my son away from it. He REALLY wanted to mop and so I let him, but it was no small sacrifice because I want you to know, this blog being so deeply confessional, that I truly got a THRILL (for the first time in my life) mopping. (And let's all agree that this could mean something about my life OR it could mean something about this mop.)



Oh, yes, the modern face of feminism--microfiber ecstasy.

I just wanted you to know what kind of person you're dealing with here.

Something is Funny Here

My novel has sold almost twice as many copies in Germany than in America.
Please explain.

Here's the cover of the German book.


And the American book.

Would some of my German fans tell me what they thought of the book?

A Last Minute Political Advertisement

Hope you don't have a sh***y day!

Well, it's election day so we're all waiting for the sh** to hit the fan.

In my family, the sh** hit my husband.

This is a BEFORE picture.

It was an ordinary day for our family, shopping together at the grocery store and as such included screaming, grabbing, complaining, and arguing. As we went through the checkout line, I saw my two year old sneak off to a corner by the management door. This could only mean one thing.

Does this face make you think of anything?

But right when we needed to leave, I remembered what I had forgotten--wipes! I left my husband with the baby and my daughter and took my eldest to the diaper aisle but instead of hearing the sound of my little son's screams receding as we walked away, I heard them getting LOUDER.

In a matter of seconds, my daughter, my two year old, and my husband rounded the corner of aisle 18 moving at break neck speed. My husband spotted me and screamed:

"I'm covered in poop! I'm covered in poop! I've got poop all over me!"

In case I didn't believe him (and who could doubt such a proclamation), he held up his arm, his navy blue blazer decorated with, you guessed it, sh**!

The baby also had poop in some unusual places.

We double-timed to the bathroom. My husband had been forced to abandon the cart. "There's poop on the floor!" he told me, his eyes tearing with mortification.

My husband and I always argue about having another child. I want one. He doesn't. At that moment, he turned to me and said:

"This is not helping your argument."

Here's hoping that YOU don't have a sh***y day and that for this election day we all get just what we want.