By Miranda Hersey

Sometimes it seems like our culture celebrates the divide between being an artist and being a mother, pondering the absurd question of whether it’s actually possible to be both. Entire books have been written on the topic of a mother’s “divided heart”: when she’s being an artist, she isn’t being a mother; conversely, when she’s being a mother, she isn’t being an artist. So the creative mother is doomed to dwell between the proverbial rock and hard place. From the instant of giving birth or adopting, she will forever after have to choose between these dueling parts of herself and feel guilty about whichever part she’s neglecting at the moment.

I used to buy into this worldview. I also used to be fairly unhappy with my creative life, rarely finding time for my personal projects while raising my five children and growing an editorial services business. I’m fortunate that my “day job” is creative, allowing me to refine my ear as a writer, but writing for clients has never satisfied the need to create for myself. I also love photography, painting, drawing, and mixed-media work, but these didn’t get regular exercise either. When I was feeling especially resentful, it was easy to blame my responsibilities as a mother for my lack of creative output.

But I could see that other creative mothers seemed to be living happily creative lives without neglecting their children—having shows, getting published, taking over the internet. What were they doing that I wasn’t? I decided to find out. I started interviewing creative mothers, compiling reams of notes through several dozen interviews with women who were creatively satisfied as well as those who weren’t. I discovered a handful of things that the creatively happy women had in common—and a book emerged. (I’m currently in revisions.)

During this time, I launched a group blog for creative mothers: www.studiomothers.com, which quickly grew into something wonderful. In its 3.5 years of existence, I’ve continued to learn about myself, creativity, and motherhood—as friendships have developed and spilled over into “real” life. My creative practice began picking up steam and regularity. I came to realize that in addition to being passionate about creativity, I’m passionate about helping other mothers maintain their own creative lives and reach their creative goals. This year, I took a big step and decided to become certified as a creativity coach through the national Creativity Coaching Association. I’m currently immersed in the program and will complete my certification in October 2011. I absolutely love it, and am so excited about building this solid base for my coaching work. (Details at www.mirandahersey.com.)

Through the intensity of the past few years and the wisdom of other women, I’ve come to understand that the “divide” that some of us focus on is not real. This isn’t to say that motherhood isn’t utterly demanding and will, at times, leave you feeling like your hands are tied. There will be days when you say “A room of one’s own? How about just a freaking moment of one’s own?” But this is your life. Your best hope for sanity—and happiness—is to embrace your life for what it is. If there are things that need changing, then by all means change them, but don’t fight reality when that reality is actually exquisitely beautiful.

A mother is a mother even when her kids are at school and she’s at her day job or when she’s up late finishing a painting; she is also still an artist even while she changes diapers and does the laundry. By breaking down the paradigm of separation, women can instead discover the many ways in which the two elements feed each other. Rather than focusing on how to balance, I urge creative women to focus on how to blend. This is where “creating in the middle of things” comes in (as espoused by creativity guru Eric Maisel, one of my current teachers).

It doesn’t have to be painful. Being committed to a creative practice does not mean that a mother needs to lock her office door and bang away at her laptop for hours while the children are banging away on her door. This approach has never appealed to me—though some do claim it works—and living an artful life as a mother need not be so unpleasant.

In addition to learning how to capitalize on creative opportunities, creating in the middle of things means living with one’s senses fully open. For me, stopping to take in the beauty of sunlight spilling onto a bowl of fresh strawberries is a moment of creativity. Am I actually creating? No, but I am living, and living with presence. This feeds my creative work in unseen ways—not the least of which is by making me a happier person.

As I came to embrace my life rather than fret about my seemingly incompatible priorities, something shifted.

As my view changed, so did my ability to create and to enjoy the moment, whatever it brought and whatever I was doing. I became less focused on outcome, and more interested in creative practice for its own sake. It is a practice—a sacred practice for those who make meaning through their art.  If something brilliant comes out along the way, well then, terrific.

Here are three tools to help support a more holistic framework.

For creative mothers:

Brainstorm a list of at least 10 creative things that you can do as part of your creative practice when you are with your children. These would ideally be things that you can easily pick up when your child is happily situated doing something else, and easily put away when your attention is again required. Try to think of things that feed your primary art form—like making sketches, listing ideas, browsing through art magazines, etc. If at all possible, try to avoid activities that require you to stare at a laptop screen or mobile phone. While these electronic tools are extremely helpful in the right time and place, when you’re on kid time, a notepad is much easier to set aside when appropriate and will better support your focus. You won’t be tempted to start frittering away your opportunity online, and you will seem more accessible to your children. (You’ve probably already figured out that the more accessible you seem to be, the less your children vie for your attention.)

For creative mothers, especially those who are potters, sculptors, oil painters, jewelry designers—any medium that involves chemicals, equipment, or small parts that are unsuitable for mixing with young children:

Brainstorm a list of at least 5 things that are lateral shifts into a different medium that can become your temporary creativity practice. As you broaden the ways in which you define creativity, these media may be surprisingly satisfying. These pursuits will allow your mind to percolate your primary project in the background. For example, a professional potter in The Hague with two children in elementary school worked in her detached studio when the kids were at school, but when a child was sick and at home, going out to the studio was not a possibility. So the potter took to knitting, which she enjoyed very much, and could do at a bedside or on the couch next to a sick child. During summer vacations, the potter devoted her creative energies to her garden, which gave her much satisfaction. As the writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh put it so elegantly: “And when I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.”

For mothers whose children are old enough to work with creative materials:

Brainstorm a list of at least 10 projects or activities that you can do with your children that you really enjoy. These can projects that you create together collaboratively, or create side by side. Being creative with your children is excellent modeling, and can be a worthwhile part of your creative practice.

These strategies are valuable because they keep your creative practice alive and growing. This means that when you do have an opportunity to spend several hours alone, you’ll feel far more capable of jumping right in. When you haven’t kept your creative practice alive by “creating in the middle of things,” the prospect of returning to your primary discipline may seem as appealing as diving into a frigid ocean. With active practice, you are always ready, and you are always working, even when you’re at the park catching a laughing toddler at the bottom of a slide. You are always an artist—just as you are always a mother.

Miranda Hersey’s work has appeared in the Boston Globe, the Boston Globe Magazine, the Sun Magazine, and Wild Apples, among other publications. The mother of five, Miranda is writing a nonfiction survival guide for creative mothers. Miranda provides creativity coaching to creative mothers at www.mirandahersey.com and the group blog www.studiomothers.com. She lives in Groton, Massachusetts, happily overrun with people, books, and animals.