Three Years???!!!

Not to voice an oft-repeated cliche (is that redundant?--isn't "oft repeating" what makes something a cliche?), but I have no idea where the time has gone.

elle, abd/elle, phd is three years old today. It began as an attempt to catalogue my journey through grad school as a single mother and someone affected by and writing about oppression of women, people of color, and the poor. I have grown so much in three years--I think I've learned as much from other bloggers as I did from some grad classes.

One of the biggest benefits for me personally and academically has been the encouragement of critical analyses by radical WoC--particularly things that I wouldn't have necessarily thought fell within the scope of my narrowly defined conception of race, class, and gender, and the expansion of my work and my mind to examine other systems of oppression like heterosexism and ablism.

In many ways, I'm still learning, still struggling, still saying shit that makes me bite my lip and shake my head later (I want to erase so much of my archives as I re-read :-). I've become so discouraged with my ignorance that I've had to take time off to reassure myself this space is mine to make mistakes and show knowledge gaps and be flat-out wrong sometimes. I am always encouraged by a quote that BFP left for me once, from Maya Angelou--"You did what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better." And I can comfort myself that this is true.

I finally feel as if so many things fit, in terms of my beliefs and politics and this blog gives me room to pursue my love of writing and my examination of self and the world at large.

I tried, so much as an adolescent and a young woman to keep a diary. And while this journal is not as unvarnished as a private one would be, it is still intensely personal, still full of my thoughts and dreams and fears and frustrations.

And I'm so proud that I've stuck with it.

Happy Blogiversary to me!