ABOUT NYMPHE
Hullo, I'm Tiffany Lee Brown. I've written about childfree living for Bust magazine, UTNE magazine, and the Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (Penguin Books, 1999). As a writer and artist, I deal with childless and childfree issues in my creative work, such as the recent theatre/installation/film piece "House Bound" at Performance Works NW, and my current work in The Easter Island Project.
I'm interested in the roles women are expected to play in our society, as mothers, as notmothers, as career women, as artists. I'm interested in how those roles are dissolving and changing. I'm also interested in dialogue about these things -- encouraging, honest, interesting, positive dialogue among and between women who are occupying any number of roles, positions, and archetypes in our culture.
As for my own role: I was a contented, happy, intentional non-breeder and childfree by choice woman until my mid-thirties. I became a part-time stepmother with an *awesome* stepchild, and eventually got clobbered, very heavily, by the biological clock. This blog, Nymphe, followed the wrestling matches (personal and cultural) I went through, trying to accept biological childlessness and move through grief.
Now, spring 2010, things have changed. I am pregnant. The fate of the Nymphe blog is uncertain; there's a post called "vote" asking people whether I should leave the blog here, continue telling my story here even though I'm in a different place in my life, or what. I'm still not sure.
Back to what I'd previously written:
A lot of Internet communities and support groups delineate themselves pretty thoroughly. You're invited to participate only if you hate all children; or have zero children in your life at all and have never considered having one; or if you are desperately spending all your time and money on infertility treatment; or if you are a smug and defensive parent. YIKES! What a nightmare! So I'm just exploring my Issues right here in public on the Nymphe blog. I have also requested that RESOLVE, an infertility non-profit support organization, start a new forum devoted to childless/childfree living. NOTE: They did do this! Come join the conversation at resolve.org.
CONTACT
Send email to the following address, only remove the Z's first: zzzmagdalenzzz23 at zzzgmail.com.
ABOUT ME:
I'm a writer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist. I co-edit PLAZM magazine and I'm the editor/director of the non-profit New Oregon Arts and Letters in Portland, Oregon. I also teach at Prescott College in Arizona.
* My site: www.magdalen.com
* New oregon Arts & Letters - media - arts - culture - Portland: 2GQ.org
* PLAZM: plazm.com
* NYMPHE, my childless/childfree living blog: magdalen.blogs.com/nymphe
PHOTO ABOVE: Photo is of one of my recent street art project thingies -- "interventions," as the fancy art people call 'em. Jan 2008, moss on stone, at Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, Oregon, approx 3' x 10'.
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