How to be a mother AND a creative
Weaving a creative practice into motherhood
It’s almost Mother’s Day in the UK, which feels like an ironic time to have hit a patch of maternal burnout.
Or maybe it’s a work burnout. Maybe it’s an all-round life burnout. All I know is that trying to run two businesses and care for two children (at least one, probably two, of whom are neurodivergent, and one of whom is allergic to sleep) whilst trying to figure out my own neurodivergence, and trying to write and make art in the middle of all that, has taken it out of me lately. But I don’t really think that’s what’s done it - I think all of that has made me very, very, very tired, and beaten down some of my resilience. Yet I think the actual burnout has more to do with an internal sense of nourishment.
Some of the work I’ve been doing hasn’t felt meaningful or impactful, and, without those things, work drains me. I’ve lost a bit of direction recently. And I haven’t been looking after myself.
And that’s what’s crashed my system. I’ve basically drained my battery by trying to power through without a charging source.
I’m now finding it almost impossible to do anything. Even writing this piece is taking forever because I’m struggling to put words together, my hands feel heavy on the keyboard, my brain is doing the equivalent of the internet spinning wheel of death… it all just feels too much.
Even more ironically, I’ve been trying, this week, to work on a self-care programme. For other people. I’ve been creating a course to guide people through using creativity as a tool for self-care, whilst deprioritising my own self-care.
Alanis Morissette could’ve got some much more apt lyrics if she’d come and had a chat with me.
But it’s made me even more eager to bring this course into the world, and also to take my own damn advice. I’m working through the exercises myself as I upload them to the programme.
Sometimes it feels like it’s impossible to have a creative practice as a mother. Your children need so much of you, and then if you have to work as well… what is left of you to put into your art? How can you find time to write when you can barely find time or energy to wash your hair?
It’s even more complicated for neurodivergent mothers - neglecting, or entirely forgetting about, our own needs is second nature, thanks to a mix of interoception issues and social conditioning that told us our needs were unacceptable. Throw in executive function challenges and energy fluctuations, on top of the sensory overwhelm and high demand stress of parenting, and how the fuck are you meant to get a creative practice together?!
It is possible, though. I have (previously) done it successfully, so I know it can be done. I also know that it’s important - we need our creative practices, and we need self-care.
Real self-care. Not the bullshit wellness industry packages. Not bubble baths and chocolate, or eye masks and box sets. Actual caring for ourselves. Nourishing our bodies, minds and souls. Creativity is ideal self-care because it allows us to understand and process what’s really going on within us, and it fulfils our primal need to make and create. All humans have that need, but some people revel in it more than others.
If you are such a human - a creative soul who comes alive when making art - then creativity is an even more important self-care practice for you. Not on its own, mind you - self-care is never just one thing. It’s a range of tools that look after the different parts of you. But writing, making art, knitting, collaging, baking… whatever floats your boat, it matters. You matter.
Because they say you teach what you most need to learn, and because I don’t want you to end up in the kind of sludgy funk I currently find myself, and because I know that society pushes mothers to give everything they’ve got without properly caring for themselves so that our default state becomes sludgy funk… I’m going to share some ways to balance your creative practice with your demanding bloody kids (who you love, and wouldn’t change for the world, and blah blah blah).
Anyway, let’s go.