by lisa ferrante

Today my morning started out like any other and then we had about a two hour speed bump (more like train wreck!)  My oldest daughter wouldn’t wake up no matter how many honey, sweeties and pumpkins I whispered into her ear.   After  finally  coaxing her out of bed with the smell of blueberry waffles she became upset because one of her waffles had a burnt edge so she refused to eat them but first she managed to get blueberries and syrup all over her last clean uniform shirt. My little one decided   to  pour her milk all over the floor and  then happily jump in it like a glorious puddle of rain. When I went to go get some paper towels to clean up the mess she went into the bathroom two feet away and proceeded to smear an entire tube of toothpaste into her hair and everywhere else her little hands could reach. She proudly comes out to tell us she smells minty! My oldest was now going to be late for school so I put a hat on the little ones head and we’re off! We get her to school just in time. When we  get  home I try to pry the little ones hat off that is now glued to her head with hardened toothpaste.  Bath time   ( ok,  now we’re getting somewhere!) We laugh and make bubble faces until she announces Mom I pooped! Just another magical morning in the Ferrante house!

You see my Mom died when I was five. This led to many years of imagining and sort of creating the mom I wished I could have had. I would imagine this playful, loving, silly mom who loved nothing more than spending time with me. I was not fortunate enough to have this but I was fortunate enough to realize that I could be her to my little girls.

Because I’ve had some hard times in life i’m blessed to know the difference  between  a real problem and a series of crazy events that when you take a minute to look at are quite funny.  I’m no saint, far from it but I try to live my life with few regrets. Sometimes we have to just laugh and think of it as a moment that will be over in the blink of an eye. My babies will not be babies for long. Pretty soon you’ll have nothing but free time to create and you’ll crave the beautiful chaos , the magical moments even the poop in the tub! The time I crave to paint will be replaced with the time I crave being with my children so enjoy it while it’s right in front of you looking at you with big blue eyes and fairy wings!

by christine castro

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a mother. There were so many careers I thought I could be happy having—ballerina, fashion designer, magazine editor, to name a few—but there was only one job I knew I’d be devastated without. I had to be a mom, and I had to be a good one.

As I grew up, I daydreamed about being a good mom. A mom who cooks dinner every night and bakes cookies once a week, writes love notes and slips them in carefully packed lunches, and crafts Halloween costumes and holiday decorations. A mom who keeps a warm and colorful house that makes everyone feel at home. A mom who plays, sings, laughs and dances with you—and never melts down. And at the end of a day filled with all kinds of activity, a mom who reads a story to you and tucks you into bed.

My ideal mom was a combination of all the mothers I’d ever known, from my own practically perfect mom to my friend’s moms, from the elusive Martha Stewart to the easy, breezy Lorelai Gilmore. She was someone who didn’t exist. Someone who couldn’t exist.

Pregnancy woke me up. I got my first dose of reality as my body began to transform. My emotions were all over the place, and my energy was nowhere to be found. It seemed like other moms-to-be were ripe with inspiration and filled with an urge to create during pregnancy, but my creative well was drying up and I was exhausted all the time. I was able to work when I had to, but when the work was done, I shut off. I took long luxurious naps, met friends for meals I was craving and watched daytime TV. My journal that I’d hoped to fill with art and stories was left untouched. My life had become a blank book.

And then came Henry, my dear and darling son. The first month of his life is a blur of sleeplessness and bliss, of snuggling and staring at his perfect tiny self. I was grateful to spend some time just being with him and my husband Rama. My heart burst with love for our new family of three. It was a dream come true.

After a month and a half, it was time to go back to work, and I was ready. For the first time in almost a year, I craved working in my studio. I needed to dream and scheme, to make and create. As my body once more became my own—and as I got more sleep!—I could feel an ember begin to burn inside me. It was creative inspiration, and it was filling me like wildfire.

Ideas came to me in the shower, on the way to the grocery store, at the doctor’s office. I had so many visions and plans, and it was exhilarating. But it was also frustrating. Here I was, finally inspired, motivated, and excited, but there was little time to act on it. There were other pressing matters that required my attention, things like pumping milk, washing onesies, sterilizing bottles, and making dinner. Once all was said and done, I didn’t have a lot of time or energy left.

I wish I could tell you there was a defining moment when I figured out a way to balance it all, when I was able to make time to make everything I wanted to. But I can’t. I didn’t. I just know that somehow along the way, I began to find peace with my new juggling act. I realized that motherhood is creative. Never mind the obvious fact that pregnancy and childbirth are creative by their very nature. But there is art in the everyday tasks of being a mom, too.

Every single day I feed and groom Henry, who is a total work of art.
I sing made-up songs and tell not-quite-true tales.
I make a tunnel out of furniture and pillows and a drum out of a tin can and spoon.
I whip up elaborate dinners and bake picture perfect treats.
I fill our home with color and comfort.

With my family’s help, I’m able to devote a few days a week to design work. And occasionally, when the stars align (or when my Rama gives me the precious gift of extra time), I get to spend an entire afternoon or day to work on a project just for fun, just for me.

There are still days when I don’t feel like doing anything creative. I put Henry to bed and think, “Now I should get to work!” But the thinking is as far as I get. I end up sinking into the couch, disappearing beneath a blanket, and falling asleep in front of the TV. That’s okay.

I suspect it will be like this for a while.

And I am starting to think that this is the kind of mom I am. Not Martha, not Lorelai, and definitely not perfect. But real and complicated. Resourceful and clever. Busy and exhausted. Honest and beautiful. And a little bit messy. I am living my dream, but that dream is now rooted in the earth, not up in the clouds.

* * *

Christine Castro Hughes finds beauty and wonder in the little, everyday things and brings them to life with her stories and art. She has been chronicling her life online for over 10 years, first on the award-winning website maganda.org, and now on her new blog, Brunch. Christine runs Darling Design, a graphic design studio specializing in logos & identities, web sites and custom invitations. Her work has been shown in galleries and featured in national publications. While she is proud of her creative accomplishments, Christine is convinced that her best work to date is her son, Henry, a collaboration with her amazing husband, Rama. They live, laugh and play together in a lovely, crooked house in sunny LA.

Join Christine for brunch or visit her Darling Design studio.

by leonie allan

Once upon a time, almost exactly a year ago, my love and I knew a new
soul wanted to come into the world. That it was time.

And so it was that two blue lines appeared, and I thought:

She has come for me. My daughter has come.

Eight moons later, on an autumn evening, she came into this world,
looking around the world with wide blue eyes.

We named her Ostara Faith Avalon.

There are many of things to say about mamahood, but none of them would
even get close to the truth and the heart of what it truly is.

The only thing I can say for sure is:

Mamahood has changed me.

It has cracked me open, broken me, rebuilt me, made me wider, more
spacious, more courageous.

I am stronger, deeper, braver and better than I ever thought possible.

I am also infinitely more human and imperfect than I ever glimpsed before.

She is three moons old now, my dearest daughter.

When you become a mama, you become a mama to the world. You wince at
another child’s fall, you tear up over hearing another mama losing
their child, you ache to write all the wrongs, and you want every
child in this world to know they are loved, they are divine, they are
just perfect.

And yes, my life has changed. I write in stolen moments. I find grace
and faith by hook or by crook. I make up songs about every part of our
day: the washing song, the folding up song, the
walking-along-the-street song.

I was the perfect parent before I had a child. And now I make
mistakes, but still, I find the courage and presence to know that I am
just the kind of mama this daughter of mine needs.

***

Goddess Leonie makes art, gigglesnorts, meditations, creativity +
spirituality e-courses + retreats, laughter & beautiful babies. You
can find her rainbow website at www.goddessguidebook.com

by madalyn ducher

The art of Motherhood is just that, an art. It’s creative living on a daily basis. Things are consistently changing. Time always falls short and there never seems to be enough hands. I’ve definitely experienced times of feeling swept up and lost between it all. I have had to learn new strategies and ways to keep my creative energy flowing. The best and easiest is to incorporate my son with my projects! He has his own desk and art station right along side mine.

We’ve recently moved seaside and life couldn’t be more incredible right now. It is awesome to have the ocean in your backyard and be among nature daily. We are constantly collecting shells for our seashore haberdashery or making alphabet + number charts with what we find. We collect many sea oat sticks for castles + ship building.

It’s wonderful to sit outside for breakfast in the morning. Sketch books in hand + pencils at the ready. I believe the vast openness of the beach allows your mind to have endless exploration inside your imagination. It can run free alongside the waves.

I look at my child and see a crisp white blank canvas that’s waiting to be painted. I’ve never been more inspired in my life than when I notice the ‘click’ of inspiration striking. The light that sparkles in his eyes at the discovery of something new.  I can see those parts of myself in those eyes. Painting his life with wonderful colors, shapes and adventures.

It can be overwhelming at times. Overwhelming with both gratitude and chaos, confusion and affirmations. I relish in the grace of those silent moments when I get to see his face peacefully asleep.

Observation of all that is beautiful.

Beauty in the stillness of having made it through another day.

Beauty in the unknown that will unfold tomorrow.

Unearthed treasures in the seemingly mundane.

As all artists can relate, often times when I set out on a project I have no idea where I will end up. Being unattached to the final outcome of the art makes the little dips and turns of the adventure that much sweeter at the end. All the while holding this tiny little hand next to mine while I create is simply indescribable. Awe inspiring. Bittersweet as they grow to new heights yet already waving + leaving old milestones behind.

Watching his canvas, of his life, taking shape with so many vibrant colors + stories is an honor. I feel so humbled to be connected to this wonderful, delightful little human soul. He is the best version of me in an extension of myself.

Just like in creativity, it’s the same in motherhood. You have to keep skipping around the next bend and have faith in the process of it all.

Everything is artful.

And heart-full.

It’s a heart-full art!

Sometimes you just have to walk in the ocean and let your pants get completely soaked. You have to break out of the mold in order to have more space for the dreams to filter in and your mind to become loose + untethered.

What could creativity be without childhood?

Children have a magic in them that gets you off the ground and back into the clouds where all artists should be.

The tiniest glimpse back into that world of imagination + endless possibilities is the greatest gift of all.

I sat and watched as the shadows in this photo created art…
and I captured it.
And literally, within moments, it was nothing more then a blank canvas of possibility again.

I think motherhood & creativity are a lot like that in my world…
interwoven so you can’t separate the mother from the artist or the creativity from the mothering.
They are constantly being re~invented and forever evolving.

follow kirsten’s blog over at the landofthelovelies.blogspot.com

suggested by shona cole:

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By kim mcmechan

I was supposed to be a rock star.

At least that was the plan, anyway.

But then that pale blue line appeared on the drugstore pregnancy test.

To say I felt thrown is an understatement.  I called my friends and family in tears.  I tried to use the word “surprise” and not “mistake”.

But the truth was?  It felt like a mistake.

I spent my whole pregnancy depressed.  All rock star plans came to a grinding halt as I threw up into ice cream buckets, slept 14 hours a day, peed into little cups at the midwifery clinic, and wore horrible floral-print maternity shirts (it was 2001—it was either floral or polka dots that year.)

I’ve heard it said that pain has the capacity to shove us over the edge into waking up.

So maybe it was the pain that eventually pushed me over.  But I did.  I woke up.

It was late spring.  The baby was due any day.  I was sitting on my couch reading.  I don’t even remember what book it was now.  It didn’t matter.  A line popped out at me from the page and my whole world opened.  The line was:  Interruptions often come to us as interventions.

I had never considered this before.  I was 27.  I had been so good at moving through life until that point.  I had managed to maintain control, mostly.  I was successful in my creative work and I had recently married the love of my life.  It was not an understatement to say that I had felt, up until this recent interruption, that I was being divinely led.

It occurred to me then (duh!) that maybe this was not a mistake after all.  Maybe my whole life had not, in fact, gone off the rails.  Rather, it was just a little unexpected curve in the road.

My daughter was born on a sunny day between two Winnipeg snowstorms.  I was not prepared for the avalanche of love that would crash over me following her birth.  Her hands looked crinkled, like a poppy right after it opens.  Her eyes were a bluey-charcoal and shiny, like pewter.  Clearly, this was the farthest thing from a mistake there could ever be.

I realized that perhaps I had simply made a slight error:  I’d bought into the tribal lie that my life had to have a straight, tidy storyline.  I was a songwriter?  I had to have a clear-cut place in the music industry.  I was a performer?  I had to work until near burn-out to plan tours and sell records.

Maybe, I thought, my life could be lived more intuitively, more moment-to-moment.  Maybe it could be more layered, more deep and wide as opposed to linear.

I think it was Joseph Campbell that said:  “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.”

Having a child taught me this.

Once in awhile, I still stumble into the gutter of regret.  My creative work is not unfolding quite as quickly as I would like it to.  Having children (a second daughter born three years later) has made the path a little more crooked than I would have otherwise chosen.   And the other day, while I sketched out an idea for a chorus at the piano, Ella, my three-year-old, ate nearly two-thirds of a block of cheese under the kitchen table.

But this lesson, that interruptions can be seen as interventions, has become a spiritual practice for me, one that I return to again and again, one that continually teaches me to let go and to trust in something bigger than me to carry the momentum of my life in the same way my babies grew eyes and earlobes and fingers inside me without my having to do a thing.

*****

you can win a signed copy of kim’s beautiful and soulful cd little gray house (go have a listen!)… please leave a comment on this post and share with us one thing that you have had to let go of in becoming a mother.  one random winner will be chosen and announced in the wishstudiuo cafe (check the giveaway winners discussion thread) on wednesday, may 19th.

by pixie campbell

I’m not really sure I was supposed to be a mom. I mean, I was supposed to be, because I am. I hope you know what I mean. Ironically, the same mismanaged assumptions apply to me being an artist. These two jobs are the two most difficult I could have ever considered. Sandwiched together, life resembles a potpourri of madness: filled with chaos, and lacking in some of my favorite descriptives: structure, predictability, control, quitting time…happy hour.

Once I was an important office girl- single first, then later, married- but with responsibilities I knew I could handle. Becoming a parent would not only hurl me out of the frying pan, but fling me heart-first into the creative fire.

I’d pounded hard on creative pavement several times in my adult life before Miles was born- in higher education repeatedly, as a self-employed designer once- but only since he joined our clan have I never looked back over my shoulder about it. When Miles was three months old, I miraculously completed two paintings, with the dedicated help of his extremely hands-on, new dad. I’d felt exhilarated by it, thinking I surely must be stoned on paint fumes and Elmer’s glue.

In the recesses of my newly dusted-off wild soul, I knew that balancing art and motherhood were going to be big. Just being in front of my art supplies with the intention to make time for them was a holy experience. Sitting on a sofa at a gathering of working artists shortly after my triumphant creative burst, one woman who was contemplating motherhood stared through me, rather than at me:

“Sooooo…”, she lingered, “it can be done…”, she sounded dreamy and deep in thought, saying this more to herself, than to me. I don’t think she would have heard me if I’d answered.

And I’m pretty sure I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. I’d only made two paintings and was simply writing for my little blog. What was she talking about? Possibilities were dawning, horizons were expanding, and yet it would still take me two more years to share my work, and put it in the blender with commerce, and all that follows from there.

Flashing forward, inspiration for blending an artful life with a motherly one is all the virtual rage. And now I know the answer: yes, it can be done.

What I love most about being a working artist and a mom is that over time, I’ve come to believe there is no separation. If I ever had fears about me as an artist versus me as a mother, blurring the lines by being creative with my children and nurturing my work has resulted in complete confusion of identification. Perhaps this serves the mightiest purpose of all, which is to do both at the same time and have as much fun as possible.

As I seem to have a natural way of complicating my own life, returning to what is in my soul to do keeps me on a simple path. Delineating creative goals, which is the sensible thing to do in most cases, lands me up with a to-do list a mile long and a disappointed sense of myself as a mom and artist when I can’t cross everything off of it. And while I don’t mean to discourage anyone from creating goals, I am learning from experience that as I do what is in front of me to do, which is nurture children, and create objects of personal meaning, the inspiration flows freely and I tap the source of what is in my soul to do.

Brushing up against this holy purpose is humbling and childlike, empowering and sacred, it is chaos and harmony, both organic and wild. Being right where I’m at is to be on a quest for the Grail, which I catch peripherally in spilled glitter in the cracks of the dining table, Twinkle Twinkle plucked on violin, rainbow gardens and paper rainsticks.

Late at night when the house sleeps and I go to my paints, the echoes of an inspired four-year old and his eager baby sister guide my hands back to the wild place we are all born from- that I witnessed them being born from- where tangled fur and instincts all come together in front of me.

And I know secretly… that there is no map to here.

*****

to find out more about pixie’s life and art, visit her site here

by jenny doh

Every day, I start with a list. It’s my routine. Usually, there are lots of easy things on the list. And there are a few difficult things on the list. And every day, I force myself to start with the most difficult thing. Because if I don’t start that way, I’ll just check off the easy things and never get to the difficult things …

Like cleaning my studio.

Like balancing my checkbook.

Like helping my kids with their school projects.

Like writing my editor’s letter.

And when I finish the most difficult thing on my list, the rest of the list is like riding down hill on a bicycle without pedaling. It’s easy. And life is good. This is my routine.

And as I coast downhill, I find myself able to realize that it’s only when I face what I dread most and overcome it that I experience the highest level of fulfillment. And I am able to count blessings through this routine. How blessed am I that I have a studio where I can create and conduct my business? How blessed am I that I have a checking account with transactions that need to be regularly sorted out? How blessed am I to be a mother to two children who are attending school and learning? How blessed am I that I have experiences like all of these to draw from, to write editor’s letters and other works of writing?

Routines.

They’re like traditions. They help provide a framework around the work that we do, and allow us to gain focus.  Through routines, I am able to gain perspective of all that I have in my life — my art, my children, my work — that I ought to never take for granted.

Jenny Doh is President of CRESCENDOh, LLC and former Editor-in-Chief of Somerset Studio. Visit www.crescendoh.com.

by lisa leonard

When I was little I wished to grow up. And be a mommy and decorate my house and make a cozy home for my family.  I imagined my future like sepia tinted photos with warm baby snuggles, sunny walks on the beach and lots of hand-holding with my busband.

Year by year, I started to gather real life photos – our wedding day, vacations with my husband, our first apartment and I found so much joy in the lives we were building as a family.

I remember the evening we got a positive pregnancy test. The weight and the excitement of having a baby filled my whole being. Our lives were forever changed, but not in the way we imagined.

After a smooth pregnancy and a stressful delivery we welcomed our sweet baby David to our lives.  Well, ‘welcomed’ might be too simply stated. To be honest, he wasn’t the baby I had wished for.   He was born with only two fingers on his left hand, a heart defect and global delay all stemming from a syndrome called Cornelia de Lange (CdLS). I felt like my dreams crumbled in front of me. I was broken and scared. And I wanted to wish all of this pain away.

Those first days and weeks with David were sleepless, tear-filled and intimidating. I didn’t know myself any more. I didn’t know what to wish any longer. But slowly we started to see more smiles, get more sleep and we found ourselves falling head over heels in love with this little boy.  And I began to find joy in the unexpected.  As we began to gather photos of our family and this new life I started to see that although it wasn’t the life I imagined, it was beautiful.

Looking back, I’m so glad I didn’t get exactly what I wished for.  I am so grateful for my sweet David, his silly smile and our sweet, imperfect family.