Last night, I was invited to an amazing gathering of women, to celebrate, reflect upon and act out the many faces of mothering.

The event, called Mothering: The Act Of, was the brainchild of two Austin mamas with a background in interactive theater. It was an evening of altar building and embroidery* and cocktails and potlucking and spoken word and blogging.

Blogging?

Yep. 
We launched a Mothering: The Act Of blog.

There was a laptop station where people could sit and type.
And the blog was projected on the wall so when people added posts, they’d pop up as part of this dynamic, intimate, but virtual conversation. Sometimes I just love technology.

So now I want to invite you to jump on over and read some of the bits from last night but also add your own thoughts in the comments section of the top post. We’ll then pull the text out and give your stories posts of their own so the conversation can keep on growing…

* But before you go, I just have to tell you about the embroidery element of the evening. Picture a circle of chairs… a wide swath of soft organic cotton… numerous emroidery hoops. Picture each woman in each chair tracing her hand onto the fabric and then stitching the lines with her colored floss. Now, today, imagine all those hands being cut down into small, sweet circles and stitched onto soft flannel backing and given to mothers in the neonatal intensive care unit at the hospital. The mothers, then, can put the fabric against their skin until it holds the particular scent that will speak to their babies at the most sensual level. And that’s what happens next. The soft sweet circles are put in with the tiny babies as their lungs mature and their skin and bones and eyes strengthen and they grow. Don’t you just love that?