Carrot Flowers, Rattlesnakes, and Religion

Hi! I’m Courtney! Most of my days revolve around my toddler Felix, who is not far from two. I am doing professional organizing once a week so that I can stay at home most of the time with my son. I may become a psychotherapist one day if I return to work and pursue licensure in Social Work. I had Felix right after getting my Master of Social Work and was like “peace out, I want to be with my son for all of early childhood.” I am absorbed by the following interests, which are likely to appear in ensuing posts:

-minimalism

-parenting, especially peaceful, conscious parenting

-the Enneagram of Personality and other tools for understanding personality and temperament, such as the construct “HSP” or highly sensitive person

-parting ways with the religious group of my past

-building a community and processing a semi-recent split-up with a former friend

-and just general navel-gazing…

Today is my birthday, and I’m devoting this year to the idea that I am a creator. I am the creator of my life. I am getting this idea from the thought leader I’m currently into, Avital, or The Parenting Junkie. I want to get intentional and active about making my life what I want it to be. Part of what I want to do is write, and I’m starting this blog to motivate myself to do that. So I want to thank you, Reader, for being here because you’re part of my motivation.

I’ll include a stanza in every post from Neutral Milk Hotel’s album “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” I’m sharing the stanzas in order, so here’s the very first of the album:

“When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers
And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees
In holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet”

When I was young I was the king or queen of carrot flowers. I was devoted to the religion from which I hark, which I’ll abbreviate to C— Science, or CS, due to the media control they wield—not ready to face that. Like a carrot flower, CS seemed alluring, almost beautiful, but was pretty useless and did much more harm than a carrot flower. Yeah, I “built a tower.” I built a mind tower—shaped my mind to look like how it was supposed to look. The tower’s going to be “tumbling through the trees” for a while. Slowly but surely I’m breaking these “holy” patterns of thought that turned out to be rattlesnakes and coming to claim my life as my own. Seriously, just going to thank you again for being here and witnessing this. I appreciate your attention and time.