IGNORING THE MUSE WHILE SHE SCREAMED FOR MY ATTENTION
A week without creating—ironically because a baby was birthed into this world.
Recurring thought of the week: I really made the right decision, not having kids.
My sister had a baby on Saturday, and it was miraculous and beyond words, witnessing that.
I’d committed to tending to her family—my sister, my niece, my new nephew—whenever this happened … staying with my niece those first few nights while my sister was still in the hospital, staying with my sister when she returned, taking care of the housework, making meals, doing the dishes, babysitting, driving—while also working my day job remotely.
My boyfriend would send artwork and songs he was working on throughout the week, and I’d think maybe this is unimportant, all these things we are always working on. But the truth is, I don’t feel that way. I feel the opposite. It’s not that I think having kids or a family is unimportant, but I missed working on my own stuff—writing, designing, journaling, all of it.
After just five days, I felt not just the emptiness of not creating but a sort of rage building up inside me.
I wanted to show him something I’d been working on, too, but it’d just been interpersonal relationships and patience and how to burp a newborn.
I felt an ache—a real ache—without the freedom to create, to be in conversation with the muse, like my oxygen had been taken away.
I realized this state of creating is what lights me up—and what lights him up—the way children light them up. It is what gets us out of bed the way children get them out of bed. It is our creation.
My niece is my favorite human on the planet. Also, witnessing a human being pulled out of a mother was one of the most magical things I’ve ever seen (if you ever get the opportunity to see a birth, I highly recommend it).
But I couldn’t survive as a mother. I would end up in a psych ward.
My first afternoon back to normalcy, I lied on my boyfriend’s chest for a good long while and thought about how the baby is placed on the mother’s chest immediately after birth—“skin to skin,” to soothe. I wanted to lie there long enough to let my body reconfigure to his and our own weird “normal,” the way I sometimes go barefoot in the grass or through a riverbed and give my body time to re-acclimate to nature’s geomagnetic field.
I don’t get FOMO; I get the opposite—anxiety about all the things I’m missing because I’m not alone, anxiety about what that lack of stillness and solitude is doing to my mind and body.
I was on family duty again a bit the next day—baby’s first doctor’s appointment—but then, after that, I really slept. I slept in past 9. I woke up to my first morning in two weeks with nothing on the agenda. I woke up with freedom. I could breathe again and feel myself return to myself.
To have the freedom of the day again! The luxury to wake up and write morning pages! (I wrote seven of them and am far from being done.)
It was on that morning (today, in fact) that my algorithm brought me a clip of Brené Brown articulating exactly what I’d been feeling:
Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, judgment, sorrow, shame.
And it did. After only a week of putting my needs on hold to be there for the people I love, I was on the verge of a breakdown. I know it sounds melodramatic, but I am not good at 24/7 peopling and was totally depleted, tank on E. Had nothing more in me to give.
I think writers are often left out of the conversation about artists, or at least, they are less likely to come to mind (don’t we generally think of musicians, visual artists, actors, dancers, performers, etc. when we use the word “artists”?). But writers are moved by the same creative energy, and that force becomes hazardous if not channeled.
By the end of the week, the muse was screaming as loud as that newborn needing a bottle, and I couldn’t respond.
How do artists who are mothers—or mothers who are artists—do it?
✦ I traveled to a farm near Sabillasville on the spring equinox to visit a friend and collect duck (and goose) eggs. Now I can say I’ve tried duck eggs, and I will also say I prefer chicken eggs. The duck eggs were a bit gamey—a little too heavy for me. Meanwhile, I still have one goose egg to try (wish me luck). It is huge.
✦ Overheard and was immediately envious: “I met so and so yesterday and we just kinda drank wine and ate for eight hours” (and overseas)
✦ Speaking of which, I visited Links Bridge Vineyards for the first time recently not to drink wine but for a friend’s birthday party, and it is a lovely place worth a visit, off the beaten path, near Thurmont. They get pretty great little art exhibitions, too, in their tasting room. (And, fwiw, they have glass bottles filled with chilled water for people who don’t drink wine.)
✦ Went on a journey to make my own stickers this month, quickly realized I am terrible at making my own stickers.
✦ Every time I go to HMart, I have the same thought: Why do I not go to this Asian wonderland of food more often?! I mean, just look at all the crazy spices they have. They sell chamomile stems, for instance. I want to know what people do with chamomile stems.1
✦ ChatGPT for recipes. Best life hack I’ve found all month (year?).
✦ Fav photo in my scrolling travels:
✦ Why did this song hit so hard? Who have I been fighting all this time?? (spoiler alert: myself)
A death, a birth, and the energy of spring pushing everyone to move … the past month has been a blur.
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Per Reddit user: “You can burn them, but here in México we use it for manzanilla tea. You can grind the stems coarsely and then strain it like loose leaf tea, but really I just stick a few in my teapot and let them steep. I particularly like manzanilla with tila (linden) and either candied lemon peel or preserved ginger for sweetness.”
As a creative mother, respectfully, you’re missing the point. The life I birthed is the most important creative piece I’ll ever work on. It’s not the kind of creativity that heals or soothes, it’s the agonizing kind that leaves you changed completely. I’ll struggle to form and carve it daily, but in the end, I’ll see only a few fingerprints left in the glaze. But that creation of life and the potential to carry on with more creation of life long after I’m gone is the point.