Rabbit Write is a blog focused on self-improvement through finding your personal identity and understanding your history. This blog is written for the introspective who want to make positive changes in their everyday lives and find lasting happiness. The tools used for this are philosophy, psychology, and self-exploration. The focus of the writing is on women’s experiences but men have found the perspectives helpful as well. Rabbit White started RabbitWrite.com in 2008 is now a full-time blogger, freelance writer, and editor. She has a passion for communicating and connecting on the internet, exploring her home-town Chicago, and slowly developing her own brand of feminism.
More Rabbit Write
Rabbit Write is a celebration of self-exploration, learning and living a self-aware lifestyle. This is a personal blog but it is also for intellectual explorers, for mental and emotional adventurers. The goal is for us to discover the balanced beautiful people we were meant to be, to get the most happiness and fulfillment out of our brief and sparkling lives. The compass that guides this journey is psychology, logic, science and rational philosophy.
Who is Rabbit?
Rabbit White is a freelance writer, editor and blogger. Rabbit is also the foremost expert on her own life experiences which makes her perfect choice for authoring this blog. She lives in Chicago with her husband Ned and cat Finn.
The Road to Rabbit Write dot com
When I was growing up I didn’t have an older sister. I always thought that if I had one to show me the ropes, that I would fit in, I would understand life and myself… and everything would just be okay. Literally I would day-dream about this, picturing a pretty girl with brunette permed hair, softly knocking at the door of my elementary school classroom, showing up to forever take me away. I can remember staring at the wooden entrance during class, almost sure it would happen. When I became a pre-teen the need to fit in suddenly reached emergency stage, I looked to teen magazines to try to make my middle school existence more bearable. But Teen, Seventeen and YM just made things all the more confusing. I was left feeling even more uncool and alienated.
I’ve been kind of a lone-wolf woman my whole life. This reached a peak my senior year in high school when I decided to embrace my intelligence, curiosities and beliefs. I spent a good part of that year submerging myself in the feminist library and online communities. In that year I chose journalism as my college major. I had dreams of speaking to young girls like me, dreams of filling the glossy vapid magazine racks with empathy, intelligence and a strong culture for women. My dream was to provide an alternative source that would help girls like me learn about and find themselves. This was the road that led to Rabbit Write.
The Three Keys
Rabbit Write is a blog about self identity and reflection, the unquenchable thirst for knowledge and finding your place in the world. There are three main keys that this blog uses to unlock those doors:
- The first of these is Self Exploration: digging into your unconscious, your psychology and the experiences that have shaped you. With this, the blog focuses on how to grow and become the whole person that you were meant to be. It is about breaking patterns and in turn breaking the chains that keep us as slaves to our histories. On this blog, I often share the personal experiences that have led me to where I am today. I greatly encourage readers to also dig into their pasts. One of the goals of Rabbit Write is for both the reader and I to learn, explore and grow together. We all have blind spots when it comes to our own psychology and experiences. This is a safe space where we can help each other with those blindness’s by sharing what we see and feel. The journey toward self-exploration is the journey to inner harmony, balance and true happiness. This is a key to taking direction over of your own life.
- While Rabbit Write is not solely a woman’s interest or feminist blog, I am always curious about what it means to be a woman or man and the inherent issues that come with being born in either sex. This reclaiming of gender and sex includes topics like sexuality, relationships, gender, body identity, and many more. I think that once we have a solid self identity, we can then figure out how we want to be seen, what our sex and gender means for us rather than what society dictates based on what we were randomly born into. My sexuality is something that is also very important to me, I think exploring one’s sexuality is a part of living a self-aware lifestyle.
- The final key that Rabbit Write gives is Self Awareness and Lifestyle. Self Awareness is about gaining true happiness and self care in your life. It is not enough to dig in and understand our psychology, there is an action that comes with it, making changes, creating boundaries, taking ownership of self, improving relationships. This is where becoming your whole self happens. This is all about the choices that we make with the knowledge acquired through self exploration. It is about moving forward and choosing to live a healthy and virtuous life…and exploring what that means for you. Through my personal journey and love affair with philosophy, I have found that we live in a world of upside down ethics. These so called “ethics” are often used as an incredible barrier to freedom. I use the principles of rational philosophy in this blog. This is why Rabbit Write is about living on the other side…through the looking glass.
These keys come back to the goal of happiness. Your happiness is in your own hands, and I’m aiming to help you find the key to bliss, which lies in yourself.
More About Rabbit White –
I’ve been blogging off and on since 2007 but it wasn’t until about the Summer of ‘09 that I really began putting my tears and blood into Rabbit Write. I am also a professional freelance writer, editor, proofreader, content manager and social media guru, so if you are interested in working with me, drop me a line.
I’ve been a writer since I was old enough to start recording the fantastic stories that constantly swam around in my head. These stories usually involved space and time travel or were period pieces about a group of sisters whose names all began with the letter V. My love for the pen continued in high school where I tackled short stories and poems and cranked out home-made ‘zines which I sold online. It was in college that i entered the realm of non-fiction while earning a degree in journalism.
Rabbit’s Self Exploration
I began my self exploration journey around 2008 and my search for finding balance within is still going strong.
I recently read that people in their twenties are split into two groups when it comes to the question of what it means to be an “adult”. Group 1 pays the bills, does dishes, flosses their teeth, gets a job right out of college. Group 2 are left with more of a Pipi Longstockings idea of what happens when you leave your parents. They binge drink, party, don’t clean their bedrooms, and make poor decisions. In my early twenties I lived the group 2 lifestyle, bordering on the extreme. When we “go crazy” after moving away and leaving home, I don’t think it is because we fall into an irresponsible personality type, but rather we are re-playing emotionally what it was we left at home. For the record, I am sure many of those group 1 people are also living negative patterns, perhaps just not in an obvious way. I was playing this out to an extent that bordered on unconscious suicidality.
In 2007 I began to want to change my life. I made this decision consciously and left my old lifestyle and habits. My self exploration journey has included traditional psychotherapy, art therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS) work, alternative therapy, journaling, meditation, reading gads of books, listening to tons of podcasts, work-books, using the RTR method and taking an active role in communities dedicated to self-work. On this blog, I am sharing what I have found on this journey, and recording the steps I make along the way.
Rabbit’s Ladyisms
It was in high school that I first identified as feminist, after reading every book I could find on the topic. But if you really want to get specific my first foray into feminism technically might have been from my obsession with the Spice Girls and the “girl power” philosophy — years before I would blast Bikini Kill from my punk-sticker covered Volvo. During college I continued this interest taking gender studies as a minor. I don’t consider Rabbit Write to be a feminist blog in any sense of the structured waves or as internet-feminism as it stands today. Unlike most feminists, I am anti-government and steer away from feminism’s support of government programs and radical feminism’s gender divides. Yet even though I don’t see a clear-cut place for me in current feminism, exploring sex and gender issues is a passion of mine. I am always looking to re-claim my own sex and gender and explore the large spectrum of my own sexuality.
Rabbit’s Lifestyle
I don’t think it is enough to just do the psychological work on oneself. While self-examination is key, we also must live in the conscious, in the now. My own lifestyle choices have been greatly influenced by my fervor for philosophy. This is a fairly new love of mine, that started with a seed of intellectual shyness and grew to consuming all of the ideas I could. To me, living the lifestyle is about building the best life you can, which almost never means taking the easy path. It is about questioning what your morals are, what your virtues are then actually living them. As far as my “lifestyle” goes, I am all about building my mental, physical and emotional health. I have strong-core beliefs in addition to methods philosophy and ethics including the conclusions of atheism, and personal and political voluntaryism.
Participation
The idea for this blog is to be a communal project. You — yes you — are the one who makes this blog come to life, who fleshes out the ideas that I lay down. This was never meant to be one girl chirping away about her ideas and experiences; the readers bring the voices that make this project harmonious. I think deeply on the topics that I write about in hopes that I can spark you, inspire your beautiful minds to keep going where I leave off.
Rabbit Write is a blog that sometimes discusses life’s big issues. Rabbit Write loves learning and errors on the side of science, logic and reason. I think our generation to some extent seems apprehensive to engage in discussions of these questions. Maybe it is because we were raised in the politically correct and litigious era with a relativist stance, where everyone is supposed to be right. Though, I know that for most of my life I have been intellectually shy… scared to share my thoughts and ideas. Putting yourself out there can be terrifying. Rabbit Write is a protected safe space, think of this as your practice area. Work out your thoughts here, so when you are out in the world you can speak with assurance!
With that, it should be noted that alot of life’s big issues are met with snap defenses and strong reactions. Because Rabbit Write is a safe space, I ask that you please think before you post a comment or send me an email. Explore the idea that you could be reacting defensively. What made you feel anxious? Can you remember another time you felt that way?
Commenting Rules
- I have no doubt that you will use this forum for civilized and fruitful discussions! However these are great general rules that it’s best to know up front I will be expecting from all members.
- If you attack commenters or me, you will be banned. No abuse, negativity or rudeness will be tolerated.
- Please do your research before responding to factual posts. If you are refuting particular facts, please supply links to reputable sources.
- Please do not respond to a post when you are angry — take 10 minutes, figure out what is really bothering you, and then respond if you must. Ask yourself if you are simply reacting, or engaging in the conversation.
- Passive aggressive posts are strongly discouraged. If you don’t know what passive aggression is, please research the term before posting.
- Please respect your feelings. If you find that a post is becoming unpleasant, please disengage. If you feel your temper rising with someone, please stop responding to him. Anger and escalation will never lead us to the truth. Escalation is the responsibility of both parties.
- Please avoid Internet courage. Before posting, try to imagine speaking the words you are typing directly to the person, as if she were standing right in front of you. Also imagine that she is very large.
- I will work hard to ensure this is a place that is fun and helpful to use and I hope you will do the same. I can wait to talk to you soon!
About This Site
This site is hosted, designed and administered by Nedsferatu — under the close direction of me of course! The design is inspired by the excellent Blackbox by Hillary Louise Johnson. The blog is powered by Wordpress, and the design is powered by Sandbox and Blueprint CSS. Thanks to Icons Etc for the Magic Marker icons. Please contact me or Nedsferatu with questions about the technology and design, and with any requests for technical and design support for your blog or website.
Licensing
Rabbit Write by Rachel Rabbit White is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
