Five years ago, I was struggling to navigate early motherhood. Sleep deprivation, isolation, and lack of bodily autonomy blended into a potent cocktail of postpartum depression. One particularly dark night, I realized that I hadn’t written a song in years, but returning to songwriting felt as impossible as it did essential. I began to drag myself to the piano every night after I’d put my daughter to sleep. As I sat there immobilized, I prayed for a song to come as much as I prayed for my daughter to sleep. The two became intimately connected; my songwriting and my daughter sleeping. This symbiotic relationship transformed my artistic practice, and my last album, While She Sleeps, was born from its creative revolution.
The Ultimate Act of Creation
Ava Wheeler is a multimedia visual artist who makes beautiful, vibrant things in a 750 square foot house with three daughters, three cats and two gerbils. Along with an autoimmune disease and battling cancer, one could say it’s an enormous feat of creation to be here at all. Speaking with Wheeler, I was struck by how mothers never seem to carry one thing. We carry all things; within us and all around us.
“My inspiration is really circular,” Wheeler says. “In the way that I need to see it and feel it around me, and then let it inspire me. So, I feel like my art is a kind of living thing that I create. It has movement. It kind of breathes and wanders and waves. I think if I’m still creating, I’m speaking my existence. I’m still here.”
It’s a funny thing though; creating and building life within us sometimes robs us of our artist identities. I haven’t met an artist mom who hasn’t had to reckon with the ways our roles as mothers negate our lives as artists. We devote ourselves to our families, homes and communities and yet devoting ourselves to our art can seem inconceivable. But as I experienced, if we don’t, we lose ourselves and are left with the distinct feeling that something is missing, even when our lives are so full.
Corralling the Chaos
Singer Aimee-Jo Benoit, a mother of three, knows this well. She’s been writing and talking about motherhood and music for over a decade, and navigates it all with grace and understanding for the endless needs of those around her. [ED. Note: You may also recognize Benoit from The Scene’s Q&A last month!]
“Most of the time, my motions to create feel like a series of Hail Marys,” says Benoit. “Amidst the cosmic and comic chaos that is a home with a partner in event production, and three active kids, I eke out moments in which I plan to make music. And I think planning is the only thing I can actually do sometimes. The rest is folly. Planning is the creation of steps, and steps lead to a pathway, but where the pathway leads is not up to us. My pathway is influenced by so many variables, and we hold those variables close.”
Artist and actor Carmen Paterson acknowledges the chaos and believes honouring the seasons of life can assist with traversing the sometimes-confusing time of creative fallow. As the mother of two young boys, Carmen has embraced this phase of her life and sees alignment with how she lives her life and the different stages of the creative process. Sometimes it’s everything, everywhere, all at once.
“It’s the season that you’re in. When you can do art, when you can’t, when it’s bubbling underneath, and when it’s ready to go,” says Paterson. “Sometimes it’s just all these things simultaneously. But as for practical practice … it flows in between all the chaos. My practice feels nonexistent right now because so much creative energy is in my kids. Let’s face it, I’m tired! But I know it’s brewing underneath. When the time is right, I’ll be able to jump into a new pond or maybe an ocean of creativity rooted in this newfound motherhood.”
Always an Artist
Ultimately, artist moms have this incredible perspective and appreciation for how our art and our children come from the same place. As Wheeler puts it, “I just want to leave little tokens, because I love the idea of existing after I don’t.”
I’ve come to believe that we artists can’t compartmentalize our lives. If you’re an artist, you wake up and you’re an artist. You’re focusing on raising a family, working another job to pay the bills, and haven’t stepped on stage or pulled out your paints in years? You’re still an artist. You’re always an artist. It’s the chaos of our lives that convinces us we can’t possibly make time for ourselves, our creativity or our artistic practice.
Kenna Burima is a Calgary-based songwriter, musician, mother and teacher.
