Why Be Creative?

I’ve been thinking about why it’s important for mothers to be creative, and have decided that maybe it’s not important. Art, writing, music, etc is not what fires everybody’s soul. Some people love physical activities or the outdoors, or reading, or giving back to the world, or heck, even money. If that’s what gets them going, then that’s what they should be doing for themselves.

I pick art because I’ve been doing it forever and have studied it and taught it and does something important for me personally. But really, what I think is important for mothers is to have SOMETHING outside of children, family, home, partner in which they can feel successful and productive. Something that gives the spark back to them because they do it for themselves, because it feels good and makes them feel good about themselves. Something that gives them purpose, outside of being a mother.

We are mothers, but we are, first and foremost humans. Should the mother in us overwhelm the human?

It’s so easy to get overwhelmed in the living when you have small beings running around who are looking to you to feed them and clothe them and play with them and keep them out of trouble. It’s easy when you look around at all the duties you have to say, “well, I’ll just do all this, because I have to, and then maybe someday I’ll do something for myself.”

But the more often you put off that self-duty, the easier it is to keep putting it off. There’s just so much to do. But taking care of yourself and your passions, having a purpose makes it so much easier and more joyful to take care of all the other little things that are required of moms. And it fills us up so we have more to give our children.