Before I start talking about what the future holds for Mamademics, I want to thank everyone for the love and support I received after my last post, 2022: The Year of Emotional Damage. Every kind word; link to a job opportunity; purchase of a class or product; and donation to a fund that’s helping keep me afloat during unemployment means more than you will ever know. It was a reminder that the community that resulted from Mamademics is so much larger than I ever fathomed possible.
Along with processing the roughness that has been this year, I’ve also spent 2022 thinking about what I want the future of Mamademics to look like. When I first started this site in 2012, I did so because I couldn’t find very many personal stories from mothers who were also navigating graduate school or academia. And I certainly didn’t see many mothers of color going through the experience.
As many of you already know, I eventually left academia without writing my dissertation. While realizing the academy in its current form is not the best place for me, I do still want to finish my PhD at some point. I’m not sure when that will happen, but it is an experience that I intend to chronicle here when the time comes
Over the years as influencer marketing and content creation became a thing, Mamademics started to take on a life of its own and not necessarily the one I intended for it to be. Specifically, I never really planned for my children to become such a large visual part of Mamademics. And while we definitely had fun attending events and doing sponsored campaigns over the years, as I begin to think about the future of Mamademics, it is not one where my kids will be at the forefront of the story.
Mamademics started off as a way for me to chronicle how I navigated academia and motherhood, but over the next few years I intend for it to be a space to chronicle what it means to be an eternal student and also a parent. Simply put, I want this space to focus on the learning experience that is parenting. I’m still going to share things I’m reading and the lessons that have come from those books. I will still talk about how we can parent children who are advocates for themselves and others. I’m still going to challenge everyone’s thoughts on white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. Mamademics will always talk about the intersections that we face in motherhood be it race, social justice, books, or in my case, all of the above plus some art thrown in for good measure.
So, what’s changing? My children will not be a huge part of blog posts. Any pictures or stories I share will be with their permission, and still under their nicknames, but also likely only on social channels like Facebook and Instagram. It has always been unnerving for me when someone recognizes me in public, but it’s been even more unnerving when they walk up to my children and talk to them about things I’ve shared. While I’ve always been careful about what I shared publicly about my children, I will be taking that to the next level by only sharing publicly what they’ve said is okay.
As I look towards 2023, my biggest focus will be on making Mamademics Academy a full fledged online community where parents are able to learn from one another and together. Thank you to the three people who have pretty much been just donating to getting it off the ground with their monthly membership fee. In the future, all the courses I’ve created up to this point, will soon be housed in that one space. Any new courses will be there as well. There will be both free and paid spaces, which is different from how it is at present. Some of these changes will take time because sadly despite my disdain for capitalism, money still rules the world.
Once again, thank you for all your support! I hope that you will stick around through the growing pains of change and join the community in 2023.
