Tuesday, April 22, 2008

BREAKTHROUGH!

Here is the balance between creativity and motherhood:

THEY ARE THE SAME THING.

Creativity and motherhood are not separate entities. One does not detract from the other and there is no weighting one by shorting the other. It is not about stealing time for creativity from being a mother and vice versa.

Where one lets off, the other begins. Not even. They work in tandem. Creativity infuses motherhood, and your motherhood colors everything about your creativity… and mostly in very good ways.

Motherhood is not an activity, it is who you are, forever. Even when the kids are with papa or sleeping or grown up and living on your own. Even when there are no kids about, you are still and always a mother. When you are writing that novel or jotting lines in a poem or painting a giant canvas or cooking a gourmet meal or knitting socks or staring up at the clouds changing shape… you are a mother and all that means.

Creativity is a holistic approach to life. It is not just about that novel/poem/painting/meal/sock/cloud, it is about the way you look at things. It is about being open to the adventure. It is about looking for new uses for old things. It is about coming up with solutions to problems that do not seem solvable. It is about seeing beauty and meaning in the mundane. Creativity is about learning to speak what is in your heart. It is about looking for and nurturing possibility. It is about feeding your soul with what nourishes and about sharing with those around you, in effect, feeding them too. And all that? That’s what it means to raise children, too.

One and the same, I tell you. One and the same. That is a thing to celebrate.

2 comments:

Mitzi said...

What a beautiful way to put it.

Anonymous said...

This is just an incredible piece. First, I love that you shared your breakthrough in all its beauty. So often we move so fast through life that we miss it.

I agree that creativity and motherhood are one. They are and I love how you truly opened the definition of motherhood to include more than children. Giving birth to all that is in our souls and sharing it with the world in a creative form that makes sense - whether children or in something we craft with our mind, heart and hands or both - is the most important thing in the world. I loved the end where you mentioned feeding your soul and others too. Right on! Yes, let's celebrate.
Keep sharing!

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