Mothers Who Make is our regular meet up and support group for mothers who are creatives. Each session features makers from a range of artistic backgrounds and offers attendees the chance to make professional connections, network and explore their practice in a supportive environment. To find out more, we’ve invited our Mothers Who Make participants to take part in a monthly blog series where to reflect on their time in the group and discuss their field of work. Writer Lucy Tomlinson starts things off…
I am a mother who makes. I am a mother who makes. I am a mother who makes.
I want to preface this post by saying I believe that the vast majority of people are creative at heart in some way or another. Musicians, poets and photographers are creative of course, but so are doctors, scientists and mathematicians, as well as those of us with less glamorous job titles. Seeing, hearing, feeling and even just being can all be creative acts as well as the more obvious act of making.
So why the need to open with such a mantra? Well my post today is going to be about identity – or a least two aspects of that multifaceted beast. The first is about why it might be hard to own a creative identity and the second is about whether motherhood and being an artist or maker or creator are mutually exclusive animals.
First, why is it hard for some of us to admit we are mothers who make? I’m mainly talking about myself of course, but I noticed that some members, when introducing themselves to the group, prefaced their statements of artistic intent with hints of uncertainty or shyness, as if being too brazen might get them kicked out of the group (as if anything could be further from the truth).
I myself did this, perhaps more than anyone at the meeting. I introduced myself as an observer, someone detached who wanted to understand the creative process mothers go through. This is all true of course (it’s part of my PhD research) but it also was useful in that it meant I didn’t have to talk about whether I felt eligible to call myself a mother who makes – which deep down I probably don’t. I write but I don’t feel that what I write has any great artistic or cultural merit. I don’t find it beautiful. I’m not following muse wherever she may lead. I write because it fits in with my life (sometimes) I get paid for it (sometimes) and I quite like doing it (or at least I think I do after I’ve met a deadline). This doesn’t seem to me like the suffering and sacrifice required of an artist.
And I think this diffidence isn’t just me. After I’d been to the group I recommended it to lots of mums I knew whom I considered to be deeply creative – lots of them also averred that they weren’t makers, despite being crafters or writers or musicians, like there is some special test to pass before you are allowed to call yourself these things, when in reality the only test is the one you set yourself.
But I should also say that there were lots of members of the group who were –artistically speaking – out and proud. They talked about their practice and projects with a straightforward confidence, as if their ability to be actors or film-makers or writers hadn’t been shaken by their ability to grow a small human in their womb, and keep on growing them after they made their exit. To me, this was one of the simplest, but most invigorating and inspiring thing any member of the group can do for the others.
The second aspect of identity that I’m interested in, and that I took from the group discussion that many other people were too, was the idea that one’s artist self and one’s mothering self might be somehow in conflict. There are obvious practical ways in which this might be the case – both are full-time jobs after all. To give time to one you have to take time away from the other and if you expect yourself to be perfectly competent at both then you will unfortunately fail to live up to at least one of your expectations. This is true of any mother who has work outside the home but there is something about the expectations of mothers and artists – the images we have of what they ought to be – that I think is especially in conflict. As mothers we are meant to give everything to our children. As artists we are meant to give everything to our art. Yes, there is the problem of time and adequate childcare can go some way to alleviating this. But there is the problem of self as well, and no amount of nursery provision can stop the nagging guilt that you and only you can be the one to care for your child.
That’s why I think the Mother Who Make groups are important. They allow us to interrogate these notions. To question the pictures we are given of perfect mothers or of selfish artists in their studios who are feted with great success but are monsters in their personal lives. I think meeting and talking to people who are neither perfect nor monstrous but can still claim to be mothers and artists will help break these images into pieces.
My academic research is about immersive experiences (creativity and parenting are two of my main topics of interest within this category) and how they affect identity over time. I’ve heard people say that you can reclaim your creative identity after giving birth; that it gets submerged but you ‘go back to your old self’ after a while. I don’t think that is right because I don’t think I can ever get back to who I was. I’m a different person now. I’ve felt fear and joy that was so much deeper because it was on behalf of a person whom I consider infinitely more precious than myself. I’ve felt emotions so intense that I couldn’t tell the difference between love and pain. Isn’t this the stuff of true artistic experience? Not that this means I am suddenly going to be able to write a great novel, but just that I can’t imagine someone could produce a truly great artwork if she had only skimmed along on the surface of her feelings. If I want to go deeper, if I want to follow that muse (and I’m not sure that I do, yet) then motherhood and its trials and delights would be the obvious place to start.
If all this sounds rather grand then I want to go back to something I said at the beginning – that the artistic or creative doesn’t have to be just about the novels or the plays or the sculptures we can make, but the smaller, quieter moments too, the sandcastles we build, the hurts we kiss better, the small changes we see and feel every day too. Motherhood can teach us that.
Lucy is a writer, postgraduate student and edits the website RainyCityKids.com.
Want to know more about Mothers Who Make? Our next session is on Mon 14 Nov.
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