Your passions define you.

That is a rather bold statement. It is a statement I never understood properly, until I became a parent. Oh sure, I felt passion before parenting. I passionately adored my first crush in 8th grade, I passionately loved my favorite bands, and passionately followed those bands around to every live show available. I passionately fell in and out of love with several people, until I met my husband and even more passionately fell in love with him. We passionately made love, passionately professed our undying devotion, and then passionately planned the rest of of lives together.

And then we had children, which was not necessarily part of the the plan.

I knew I would love my children. I knew I would be a mother someday, and love that, too. But nothing, and I mean nothing, prepared me for the absolute fierceness of the passionate love and preoccupation of being a parent. No, nothing. Not all of my prior interests and crushes in the past, not even the amazingly passionate and beautiful connection cultivated with my husband could even come close. Not the need I felt as a child for my parents, not the desire to fit in with the other kids in all my childhood years, not the first love of my life. Nothing, nothing, nothing compares.

I didn't feel this immediately. My first birth was rather conventional. I was in the hospital, I had an OB, I had a bunch of annoying medically-oriented nurses. I had a worried mother and a well-meaning best friend. I screamed. I took some drugs. I did not have a peaceful moment with my daughter when she came out. When we left the hospital, I sat in the car and wept with the overwhelming truth of it all. But a few days later, when my mother was banished to her hotel room because of having a cold, and my husband went back to work, and the friends in town went back to their daily lives, I felt it.

I felt the singularly enormous and overwhelming feeling of pure, passionate, parental love.

It was so huge, so big; it spilled out of my heart and chest like a mystical wave. Sparkling and rainbow-hued, it washed down over my nursing newborn with such force it created a mist that followed the flow as it rushed out and around the house, the mist curling into every crack and crevice of our home. It shone so bright and beautiful that it made my eyes water; my tears of joy spilled down my face as I looked out of our picture window to gaze upon the spring blooming dogwood tree. I felt in that moment the pulse of the earth, the energy of nature, the feeling of well being that ancient mothers must have felt having successfully brought a live creature into this world. I felt the miracle as if I was a mother of primitive times that was part of continuing the human race, rather than the mother of modern times, whose race's existence is not only assured but has become like a cancer on the Earth. The moment my tiny, tiny newborn daughter revealed her cue that she was hungry, and I responded with pinpoint clarity and knowledge and helped her latch onto my breast with the experience of the ages and suckled the life-giving fluid that my body already knew how to make and regulate for her very own existence...I got it. I got life, and love, and passion in that moment.

The moment ended when the inexperience of the modern times caused me to allow my daughter to slip back on my nipple, thus focusing the vigorous sucking on the end, which made me yelp in pain, which startled her, and made her cry. My tears of passionate love and clarity of purpose turned into tears of pain and frustration as I sat alone trying to position her properly so she could eat. The next few minutes were so exquisitely painful and frustrating, that I had visions of pitching my beautiful newborn out our picture window. It was that bad. In my haze of inexperience and confusion, pain and frustration, I was somehow able to tap into the wondrous feelings I was experiencing just a short while ago.

I took a deep breath, refocused, and lovingly, patiently, repositioned my daughter back onto to my cracked and bleeding nipple.

I have thanked the Universe, any and all Gods and Goddesses, spirits of the mothers of the past for that blessed moment of Purpose. Had I not felt it, I know in my mother's heart that my parenting would have taken a different path. Had I not had that moment to tap back into, my desire and purpose for breastfeeding would have continually been diminished. I was surrounded by people who were not active and alert in birth, who chose not to feel their birth, who quickly gave up breastfeeding in favor of bottle feeding. With the exception of my mother and husband, my peer group encouraged me to give up, take a break, get away from the baby for a while. And, had I not felt that moment, that passion of purpose, what I know now to be my essence of a mother...well, I think I would have taken their advice. It would have been so easy, you see, to take a less painful, less frustrating path with parenting. But my core, my essence, would not allow it. The dam of modern times that had been built around my heart had been breached, and the flood of parental passion had washed over me, and drenched my soul with purpose.

I was determined to continue on this purposeful path. Modern times and conventional parenting be dammed, instead.

SO...what IS an Alternative Parent?

Interestingly, it depends who you are talking to. When I am speaking to parents who are complaining about our local, crappy school, who are mourning their horrible hospital birth, or are wishing they had had more support while trying to breastfeed...the term "alternative" often prompts these parents to look at me quizzically and say; "Alternative options? What do you mean?"

When I am in the company of a mother nursing her toddler, or another homeschooling parent, or chatting with strangers at one of the local farmers' markets...the word alternative has already been visited and acted upon. I am in the midst of people who saw the possibility of something different, and decided to act on it.

I am no fan of Jeff Foxworthy, but his beat-to-death comic topic "You might be a redneck" offers up a logical opportunity to modify this line to:

"You might be an alternative parent, if..."

During pregnancy, began questioning the logic of tossing your helpless six week old infant into an industrial daycare center.

During pregnancy, decided to go and check out a certified nurse midwife, rather than an OBGYN. You further ventured into checking out the closest birthing center, and even secretly googled "home birth".

You checked out every possible book about breastfeeding. After having the baby and dealing with all the inept hospital personnel, you ran as fast as you could to your local La Leche League meeting. At that meeting you got recommendations not only for the midwife you should have had, but also the Certified Lactation Educator you didn't have access to in the first place.

You flat out refused to circumcise your son.

In order to avoid an episiotomy, you and your husband learned how to non-erotically massage an area of your body you never imagined massaging (non-erotically, that it is).

In order to avoid being induced, you and your husband had lots of sex when you felt not only very un-sexy, but actually felt like a beached whale. And played with your nipples to the point of distraction.

You asked your OB/midwife to save the placenta...then stored it in the freezer to later be buried at some undisclosed location.

Yeah, that just might make you an "alternative parent"!

Stay tuned for more of what makes you an alternative parent.