Johanna: An introduction

I recently found this site via one of my favorite bloggers, Ophelia Rising. I am so excited and honored to be joining such a creative, diverse, and supportive network!

I stopped working after the birth of my first child two years ago to become a full-time mother. I loved being a stay-at-home mom, but also wished to better integrate my creative and intellectual sides. I missed the intellectual and creative stimulus of my former job as assistant publisher of a wine trade magazine. I started my blog, Ecology of a Woman, in an effort to maintain a sense of self and coherent thought! I needed a forum in which to express myself on another level.

My goal is to become a successful freelance writer and author. Writing has been calling me for a long time now but I have never had the time for it because I was too busy working! I did publish a couple of articles in the wine magazine but, because it was a wine journal, my voice was dictated by its style. I am now in search of my own style and unique voice.

I thought motherhood would be the perfect time to begin a freelance career, that I would have the freedom and energy to find my voice and begin. I can hear the laughing now — freedom and energy? Not words that rhyme very often with stay-at-home mom! I am now wiser, but I am determined to integrate a successful writing career into my life as a mother.

Although it is a challenge to integrate the two, motherhood and writing, it is truly the life I have always wanted. I have always wanted to simply live life in an interested and curious way and write about it. And here is my chance, truly, but it is more challenging with a child. But also more conducive, in a way. There’s a lot of writing material in motherhood!

As for who I am besides mother and aspiring writer, I am also passionate about plants, gardening, wine and food, nature, running, and other cultures and traveling. I am planning my first-ever trail race this June! My husband works as an underwater construction diver which is not a regular 9-5 job, as you can imagine! His work requires quite a bit of travel. This presents yet another layer to our lives as I am alone quite a bit of the time raising our daughter, and we also spend quite a bit of time traveling to visit my husband on various jobs. When my husband is working, he is generally gone for weeks at a time. The upside of this is that when he isn’t working, we get the entire stretch of time together as a family. We also have a very energetic golden retriever!

My family is huge, it’s a tribe! I have nine brothers and sisters, four full sisters from my mom and five half brothers and sisters from my father’s previous marriages. My father is 87! Gives one perspective! I am very frugal thanks to his Depression upbringing. He was a designer and built some beautiful homes in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, lots of redwood and glass. Very Zen, Big Sur, California style. My mother is a recently retired Latin teacher who comes from a literary background. She home taught all four of her daughters. She is very elegant and European. I also have a tribe of friends and am very social, although I find increasingly as I get older that I need more and more time to myself.

We grew up in a very bohemian lifestyle that included a stretch of time living out of our VW bus, traveling around California! You wonder where I get my gypsy tendencies! I grew up half the time in a central California beach town and the other half in a tiny town in northern California. We were camped there on our extended VW road trip when it turned winter and, instead of heading back home, my father and mother instead decided to buy a house right there and then and that is how we ended up having two homes from living in a third (bus)!

Again, I cannot believe my luck to have found this site. It is just what I needed to get more serious about my writing and it is just the environment in which I think I can grow as a writer. I so look forward to getting to know more about each one of you and exchanging creative thoughts, ideas, and plans!