Motherhood, Creativity, & Rest

My last post was back in May and it’s titled, “Take a Break.” At the time I interpreted taking a break as the simple addition of afternoon naps to my schedule. I would come to find that I would need more than afternoon naps. I unintentionally took a hiatus from social media and from creating. When I would feel the anxiety of not being consistent on social, I would tell myself it’s okay. If the anxiety was mean and loud (you’re going to loose followers, your art is going to suffer), I would give it a “fuck the algorithm!”

Sometimes we need that especially when we feel the urge to let the media consume and control our lives.

It was consuming me and I saw my illustrations and writing suffer from it. So I stepped away with no deadline, giving myself space so I can know for myself when I was creating for me and not for some abstract authority.

This Toni Morrison quote has been on my mind,

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

I felt Morrison lecture me in that and I am deserving of it. There’s something about being a Filipina-immigrant that makes working and immersing oneself in the busyness of life as something to be proud of. That’s utang na loob. That’s survival’s guilt. That’s poverty trauma.

Intentionally resting and mind-wandering, two things that are so very much needed for creative energy, were taught to me as a waste of time. Unless it was napping on the Sabbath cause you rest for the Lord not for yourself (sorry, not sorry for the religious criticism). So I have the habit of taking on all the things and letting my creativity sit in the back seat, gatekeeping it’s presence in my life. Not yet, the kids. Not yet, the house. Not yet. And then I feel an immense sense of accomplishment when the house is clean and the kid’s, oh I don’t know, not fighting. There truly is no indication my kids suffer when I nurture my creativity and yet I have it in my mind that need to attend to them day in and day out or else. I have a suspicion for the source of that fear, but in the mean time I digress.

So my house is clean. My kids are alive and they tell me they love me x amount of times even though I was impatient with them x amount of times. Yet, my creativity sits aside, taking neglectful hit after neglectful hit. Morrison is right, this kind of life is not deserving of an A-plus. But I take heart, for change is possible. In the two months I’ve been away, plans to rework my life around my creativity instead of my creativity around my life are being made. A mending is taking place, with motherhood, creativity, and rest become equal partners.