The Mirage of the Creative Mother

The other day I came across an article in Slate about a woman in the 1940s who abandoned her toddlers to move to the UK and write a novel. Doris Lessing believed that she could not pursue her creative work while serving in her capacity as a mother. I both admire and despise her. 

After two years of a pandemic, who doesn’t fantasize about leaving it all and following their bliss? Even a one-night stand at writer’s retreat down the street might help what my doctor calls my “sunken qi.” Yet I canceled one a few weeks back because my daughter needed me more.  

I look back on my family history, full of bright, creative women, some of whom were housewives and turned to alcoholism. I think of these women every time I use up my precious writing time talking to doctors, arranging appointments, following up with teacher emails, searching for summer camps, paying bills, ordering new gear for growing bodies, etc. Most days I’m lucky if I can eek out a minute to respond to fellow writers with feedback. 

How did I manage to publish more than fifty essays and humor pieces last year? I didn’t have a social life. I stayed up until three in the morning hammering out satire and revisions. My eyes developed cataracts, my waist grew, my neck ached. I had no friends. My kids spent too much time on their screens.  

In hindsight, I know that those monomaniacal writing binges helped me survive. When someone asks me how I survived parenting/schooling undiagnosed neurodiverse kids through a pandemic without a social bubble after losing one of my teaching jobs while fearing for my health (I’m high risk), going blind, and almost getting divorced, I will say: “by writing satire and personal essays.”  

But what if that which is meant to save us kills us instead? 

This year, my new year’s intention was simple. Be more present. Have more conversations with my kids. Spend more time with my body. Cultivate relationships. Take my kids skiing. Dance. Sleep.

Three years ago, triggered by numerous visits to the ER with aggravated asthma, I fell into writing to overcome my fear of death. I thought that by leaving evidence through words I could live forever. Since I started telling my stories, writing has lessened my fear of death.  

But what is death if one does not live? Octavio Paz said that without death, there is no life. In this same way, without life, death is meaningless.

While I admire and despise Doris Lessing, she lives on through her words. Yet her letters echo a grief of the motherhood she lost, a yearning for the babies who she abandoned. Eventually she did have a child and found a balance between motherhood and creative work.

I suppose this is what we all strive for. To manifest our true, glorious selves, both inside our nests and out in the world.  

In the last six years, I have produced little creatively. But since making a resolution to be more present, I have been gestating a book. I have been planting seeds by working on grant applications, practicing my craft, and building a writing community. 

I just have to remind myself that wherever I am, that is where I need to be. Whether that be writing, reading, walking, resting, nesting, conversing, or cleaning. 

Where are you right now? Are you currently planting seeds, or harvesting the fruits of your labors? Or are you resting and restoring?

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Love,

Summer