"A philosopher couldn’t be my mother. That’s a very important point. Because the figure of the philosopher is, for me, always a masculine figure. This is one of the reasons I undertook the deconstruction of philosophy... My mother as a philosopher would be my granddaughter, for example. An inheritor. A woman philosopher who would reaffirm the deconstruction. And, consequently, would be a woman who thinks. Not a philosopher. I always distinguish thinking from philosophy. A thinking mother—it’s what I both love and try to give birth to."

—Jacques Derrida, responding to a question in the film Derrida

ABOUT THE BLOG

My name is Kristin Prugh, and I’m a poet and thinking mother of four. I’ve met a lot of other thinking mothers along the way, mothers who question and search after true ways to raise their children and to flourish as a family.

I believe that thinking mothers are cultivating the ground of a new culture, a natural culture, a way of dwelling poetically on the earth.

They’re the medicine women. They’re the healers. They’re the thinkers living their thoughts in the forms of daily life they envision for their families.

On this blog, I’m going to share my thoughts on a number of topics that have affected my life as a mother: from food, health, education, money, and technology, to philosophy, poetry, and film to traveling as a family and raising teenagers.

There’s nothing prescriptive here. I’m not going to tell you how to live, how to eat, or how to raise your children. I’m only going to share the thinking that has shaped my life as a mother in the hopes that it might be of some service to you in yours.

In all of my searching, I have benefited from the ideas, research, and encouragement of thinking mothers who have helped me to believe in the creative power of love and intellect working together to make a home for us, in the world and in the life of the mind.

This blog is dedicated, with gratitude, to them.