About the Blog

I started this blog as an early mom, intending to share thoughts about pregnancy and child rearing. I've sort of rethought that idea, as I've come to realize how important it is to maintain other parts of your identity as you go about the important task of raising your kid(s). So there will be posts about being a parent, but there will be other posts, too, that touch on the other parts of being an adult and all the liminal spaces that go with that. I will still delete trollish, willfully argumentative, or mean-spirited comments at will.
The Name of the Blog
I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation growing up, and it was one of my favorite shows. I still like to watch it on Netflix every once in a while, though I rarely watch TV nowadays. Thus, when I became pregnant and found myself writing again, it felt natural to call my thoughts the Captain's Log. I felt a bit like a ship carrying a little passenger. Now I feel that the idea of my life as a ship navigating through life is still appropriate. For the purpose of my writings, I am the Captain, and my husband will be the First Mate. I typically refer to the kiddo as Junior Mate (which I don't think is actually a thing, but it's my blog and my prerogative ;).

I chose the name Hecate for my starship. During my senior year in college, I took a class about ancient Greek religion. My final project for the class involved researching and presenting about an ancient Greek god/goddess, discovering the earliest presentations of this deity. The goddess I pulled out of the hat was Hecate (a.k.a. Hekate). Though she later became associated with witchcraft and some darker sides of spiritual experience, her earliest role was as the goddess of the crossroads and the threshold. (She also helped guide people across the border from life to death, which is where the darker side came from in later incarnations.) In more precise terms, she was the goddess of liminal spaces - those places where you are neither one place nor the other. (At a crossroad, you are technically on both roads; at a threshold, you are both inside and outside the house.) It was felt that these places were particularly vulnerable due to this quality of being between spaces, so Hecate played an important role in protecting the person who found him/herself there. As I have continued on my life journey, I keep finding myself feeling like I am again living in a liminal space. In fact, I have started to wonder if life itself isn't just a series of liminal spaces. I feel that it was fortuitous that Hecate was the name I drew; she feels like my own personal goddess at this point.

Credit for background image belongs to NASA's Image of the Day for 05292015

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