Well. It seems I unintentionally abandoned this blog for quite a while. 4 years, to be exact. Life became far too hectic for a time, and somewhere along the way I fell completely out of the practice of being a homemaker for a number of reasons. Honestly, for a while there, I barely considered myself a Homemaker at all. I certainly wasn't doing many of the things I would have described as “housewifely”.
The first and largest complication was that my Mother in Law was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma around the beginning of 2020. Thankfully, however, the initial stem cell treatment she underwent during lockdown was successful. As a result, she enjoyed nearly 5 years of remission- though she remained on Chemo during that time
At the same time this was all happening, however, my own body seemed to outright self destruct as an after effect of my having caught Covid in September of 2020. In the early days of 2021 I was bedbound with weeks long migraine attacks and excruciating pain. My Anxiety was the worst it had ever been, and I found myself caught in an all encompassing sense of doom that was immediate and inescapable.
That February I was finally diagnosed with one of the worst cases of Fibromyalgia my GP had ever seen in our area. It took a great deal of trial and error to find a treatment and medication that actually worked for my Fibromyalgia. Eventually, though, I began to finally feel somewhat Human again ... Just in time for the spectre of my Mother in Law's Cancer to reemerge in 2023 during the Christmas season.
In January of 2023, just as my Mother in Law was receiving the news, I myself became bedridden a second time.
I had always struggled with chronic pain that I had assumed was merely Sciatica- or, later, an issue with my Sacroiliac Joint. Usually it wasn't terribly bad; a flair would only lay me up on the couch for a handful of days — sometimes even a week — and then I would be back on my feet again, usually no more tended than I was before the flair. This time was very different, though. What had been an intermittent problem became permanent, resulting in constant struggles with severe Lower Back Strain and Piriformis Syndrome that left me bedbound and unable to walk. Years later I now receive routine Lumbar Epidurals- which are now the only thing that keeps me walking day to day.
After her Cancer returned, but before I became bedridden the second time, I was responsible for much of my Mother in Law's daytime care. By the time I was recovered, however, my Mother in Law was too far gone; Radiation treatment was failing, Chemo was doing nothing. We were forced to watch her degrade mentally and physically as the early year went on.
The end of her life was rather sudden for all of us. She went into the hospital with for emergency surgery; her femur has sheered itself completely in half as she stood to turn in the bathroom. After surgery she was then sent to Rehab to recover. She was a patient at the rehab clinic for all of two weeks when she was released back to us on Hospice care with the expectation that she only had a handful of months left with us.
Once she came home on Hospice for the end, I took care of her day and night so everyone else could get some sleep. She spent only 9 days on Hospice, in our living room, before she passed. I wish I could say that those 9 days were painless for her, but they weren't. Mercifully, though, it was quick rather than drawn out- and for that, we are all grateful.
There were some beautiful moments between us in the time leading up to her death, however. Between the sleeping and the delirium, there were brief stretches when she was still herself and we could talk and laugh as if she wasn't dying. Toward the end, she began calling me “Her Ruth”; a reference to Ruth and Naomi from the Tanakh. I am beyond grateful that we shared those memories in the end, and I think I will forever read the Book of Ruth a little differently because of it.
In the end, though, she died in a Hospice bed, in my arms, as the Hospice worker and I attempted to clean and change her. Afterwards, my own health struggles continued marching onward, and for a long time, I genuinely thought I would never be able to do anything significant again; no gardening, no hiking, or anything else that I enjoyed doing outdoors- and certainly no significant amounts of Housework. Instead, my Husband had to take over the housework while I recovered, while continuing to work 8 to 14 hour days.
It isn't a life I would particularly recommend. But the years haven't been entirely made up of difficult things. There have been some very happy occurrences tucked in amongst everything else, too. One thing in particular has brought me an extraordinary amount of love and joy: I converted to Judaism.
Over the course of the last five years, I discovered some significant information about my family through genetic testing. I had grown up my entire life understanding our family as being mixed “American Indigenous” ... Except, thanks to genetic testing introducing me to a mound of new records I never would have found otherwise, that wasn't actually true; it turned out that we weren't American Indigenous at all.
What we were, I discovered, was Ukrainian Ashkenazim by way of Germany; my family came from an impoverished area of the German Rhine, immigrating to "New Russia" / "Little Russia" in order to escape famine. Generations later, in 1984, they would immigrate to South Dakota from what is now modern day Odessa in Ukraine; just one year before mass pogroms would break out across the Pale of Settlement. When I approached my Aunt with this, she admitted to knowing about our "Russian" heritage the whole time- though she still asserted that one particularly German looking relative "was really native".
Finding out the truth about my family was an enormous shock to me. Finding out the woman I'd always adored and looked up to had betrayed me genuinely shocked me even more. There is something particularly strange, though, about discovering that the lens you've understood yourself through for your entire life wasn't actually true at all. It did explain numerous inconsistencies with those original stories, however- and explained why I could never find the records that my family has always claimed existed but could never actually produce, myself when I went looking.
Interestingly, though, I had actually been interested in Judaism for quite some time already. Many of my own beliefs had seemed to align with Jewish ideals I gleaned through conversations with several Jewish friends of mine. After finding out the truth, though, I began researching Judaism much more thoroughly. I wanted to understand what my family might have believed, and what their lives may have looked like before they immigrated to America. What I hadn't anticipated was how much the study would effect and change me; I found an immense spiritual solace in Judaism myself.
Conversion initially seemed unlikely, however. There isn't much of a Jewish Community where I lived, and our tiny little Synagogue had no Rabbi. I assumed that meant conversion wasn't going to be possible for me. And so for a time I became a Noachide instead, figuring that if I couldn't convert, I could at least live adjacently as a believing ally. In the meantime, I trusted that HaShem would make a way for me if Judaism proper was actually meant for me. And eventually it did.
I found a wonderful, loving Rabbi that accepted interfaith marriages (my Husband did not want to Convert, and I supported his decision) in my preferred movement (Masorti / Conservative), and who accepted me wholeheartedly- warts, Paganism, and all (though not without many deep conversations to explain my magical practice at the time; I no longer practice now as part of something I'll get to a bit later). I am now very happy to say that the 1 year anniversary of my Beit Din was this June, shortly after my 36th birthday.
It was a long and fraught process; conversion isn't supposed to be easy. You aren't simply adopting a new religion ... You are entering into an entirely new culture; an entirely new way of life; a new way of thinking, even; and you are absorbing all of the deep and sometimes terrible history that comes along with that. The process asks quite a lot of a person- and rightfully so.
Being Jewish has changed so much about me that it is difficult to put into words, however. The shift has been rather extreme in many ways, but not undesired in the slightest; I find myself being softer than I was before, and with far fewer things to say- though I'm certainly no less opinionated, no less quick to anger, and I very much still have my absolutely terrible moments. I'm trying harder than I ever have before, however, to retain that softness and quietness.
But there is also a renewed beauty and solace in my life that I had been desperately searching for, for decades prior to this; I have genuinely never been happier in my life, other than on the day I married my Husband.
I am also no longer any sort of “Traditionalist”, either. Though that particular change actually began early enough that you can see the beginnings of it in some of the later content on this blog (before I stopped writing here altogether).
What I discovered as I continued attempting to mold myself into the perfect "Vintage Housewife", was that the “Traditionalism” I had been participating in (as what I incorrectly called "Modern Gender Traditionalism") was heavily intertwined with modern Christian Nationalism, and Conservative ideas about gender roles, motherhood, and womanhood — and had roots in Neo-Nazi and Right-Wing ideologies, White Supremacy, and the German Homefront Propaganda that I had been studying.
In fact, quite ironically, studying that history was part of how I initially began connecting the dots. Thankfully, I also had a wonderful and patient support system around me at the time, who was more than happy to smack me upside the head when I started becoming ridiculous. Between those two things, I finally recognized what was happening before I fell any further down the Alt-Right pipeline myself; it was a terrible wakeup call.
I have been very vocal, for a significant amount of time now, about the ways in which Neo-Nazis intentionally target motherhood — and the fact that being a "Tradwife" (as TikTok popularized it during the Covid pandemic) is very different than simply being a Homemaker (something I especially wish I had understood much earlier). TikTok, however, unfortunately erased those boundaries. As a result, trying to explain it has resulted in people screaming at me and calling me a bigot more often than not.
It is distressing, certainly. But there is only so much you can really do about it. As the saying goes: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink"; I can say it. I can explain it. I can provide sources galore. I can hope someone will listen ... But that is all I can do, and I've made peace with that. My focus now is largely on being less judgmental of others (a wretched trait I inherited from my mother), and trying to make room for more plurality in my life.
Needless to say through all of this longwinded nonsense, though, that it has taken me a few years to find my way back onto the homemaking wagon for a variety of reasons. And I do think I owe quite a bit of that return to a recent “Crisis of Self” that crashed into me like a steam engine as I approached my 36th birthday this year. It truly started about 3 or 4 years ago, though, if I think about it.
The last 3 to 4 years of my life have been a panicked flail as I've tried to figure out "what now?". I felt like I needed to do something with my life- which felt so very pressing and urgent. Because of this I was reaching for literally anything that might give me some sense of direction or meaning in my life. Everything I tried, however, was a jumbled, inconsistent mess that lacked any follow-through. They only got more ridiculous and disjointed as time went on, and none of them were things I was truly interested in doing. I was simply just trying to make myself into something- anything.
When I tell you that such flailing does absolutely nothing for your sanity (nor your behavior towards others), I tell no lie; it is not a pleasant state of mind to be in, in the slightest.
Leading up to my 36th birthday, that feeling returned in force. I unfortunately spiraled into another deep and chaotic depression, questioning everything about myself from my interests, to how I speak, and more. I spent a great deal of time thinking about which parts of my former life were genuinely mine; who I am myself, what I actually enjoy, and what matters to me.
Somewhere in all that thinking, I realized that I want to bring vintage and historical homemaking back into my life. Not in quite the way I once imagined it, though; I don't want to return to the 1950s ideal. I'm simply not that person anymore, and I don't connect with that particular period nearly as much as I once did. And before everything came tumbling down, I had already begun leaning toward the 1910s through the 1930s in my research, anyways.
There is something about the early 20th century, prior to the 40's, that speaks to me much more deeply now as a fully disabled homemaker. I think that may be the direction I return to. Though I don't exactly know what incorporating that lens into my modern homemaking will look like. I'll figure it out as I go. But in the process of that, what will ultimately come of this blog remains to be seen.
I don't actually know whether I will pick it back up properly. Still, I can say this much: A great deal of the information on this blog prior to 2019 is now out of date, at least where my personal opinions about Traditionalism, Paganism, and related subjects are concerned. The history itself, however, remains solid.
For now, I have removed the worst offending articles that I don't believe can be salvaged. I will probably rewrite many of the remaining ones eventually, removing references to Traditionalism and some of the less savory ideas I once carried about Homemaking and Womanhood. Until I decide, though, it is worth being careful when reading the older entries here. They were written by a very different version of me.
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