Mothering is a hard, noble work worthy of grand attention

I am feeling somewhat vulnerable in my creative life at the moment. There are so many things I want to make, so many projects I long to complete - and yet, so little time, so little energy.

The second draft of my novel is moving painfully slowly. I am moving painfully slowly. There is an unfinished painting resting on a bookshelf. Next to it, three balls of yarn that were meant to become a birthday gift for a girlfriend. The podcast microphone has been bought, but I haven’t reached out to a single writer I hoped to interview. The text for the picture book is almost done but I haven’t even started on the illustrations. It’s hard to list these things and not feel some sort of shame or disappointment in one’s abilities to get things done.

I talked about it before; every week, I listen to The Mother Daze podcast. It’s hosted by Sarah Wright Olsen and Teresa Palmer who, between them, have nine children, and somehow continue to create, build, and show up in the world with remarkable consistency. They are not only deeply present mothers - breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and clearly hands-on - but also actors, entrepreneurs, writers, etc. Watching them move through life with babies in their arms feels somewhat disorienting. They are open about having help, and I recognise how significant that is; still, even accounting for it, their capacity seems expansive. Where does that level of energy come from? I know how it sounds, but I don’t feel diminished by their lives, I am inspired by them and I feel invited into reflection. When I look at my own days, I see a lot of care and presence, but very little outward production, almost no visible “achievements.” I need to have a hard look at how I spend my time, what I choose to give my energy to, and what kind of life I am actually trying to build.

Bean is not a hard baby, but it’s impossible to work without interruptions even with an easy baby, plus I want to be present, and not knee deep in my laptop when she is next to me, so I am only really ever able to work in the evenings (I usually chose to do something else) or during her nap-time.

During the first months of her life, she mostly napped on me. Later, she started enjoying the pram, and I would walk with her for hours, listening to audiobooks. Now, most days, she finally naps in her crib, and I try to protect that nap time at all costs. Sometimes she naps terribly; other times she sleeps so well that I have to wake her, otherwise we end up with a horrendous split night. But either way, I am almost always on edge, waiting for her to wake up. Doing anything would feel so much easier if I knew I had exactly an hour, let’s say. But I don’t. I try to do some paid work, to write, to think - while a question runs in the background: when is she going to wake up? It makes even the simplest of tasks feel fractured. I open a document, but I don’t quite settle into it. I start something, but I am already half-preparing to stop. There is no real immersion, only this suspended state of almost-doing. And by the time the nap is over, I feel as though I’ve been both really busy and terribly unproductive at once, and I wonder if this feeling will ever go away.

Well, I know it will. She is only so little for so long. That’s the other thing, I already start to mourn her littleness. She is growing up so fast, and I love watching her grow up, but I miss the newborn days and feel horrible guilt for not enjoying them more. I did enjoy them, but it never feels like enough in hindsight. If I had understood just how much of a thief time is, I imagine I would have spent those early months differently. I would have stayed in bed, held her close and inhale the smell of her head, I’d let the days blur together without looking ahead. You only ever realise what it was after it’s already gone. And now, even as I try to hold on more tightly, I can feel it slipping again - this version of her, this particular smallness - already on its way to becoming something I will one day miss. I already miss it, and it’s right in front of me. I want to slap myself and tell myself to enjoy it, every single bit of it. Who cares about the work when this is the work.

Of all the things, I am mostly proud of her thighs. Her chunky delicious thighs. I made them. Would it matter if I never made anything else, when I made the most perfect thighs in the world? I don’t know.

She started walking a couple of weeks ago - running, really - and sometimes when we come home from the playground, her feet smell sweaty. They are deliciously stinky; I can’t find another word for it. I inhale them and kiss them, and my God, I am happy, and is it weird?

I think what unsettles me is not just the lack of creative progress, but the lack of containment. I cannot hold this period still long enough to understand it while I’m inside it. And so I keep trying to reach for something solid - projects, plans, evidence of output - while living inside something that resists being held. But I also want to make money. And I want her to be proud of me and I want to be proud of myself, and I think it would truly be possible only if I created something, and so I am not sure that I have to let go off that idea. I know myself well.

I am trying to reframe this. Since the birth of my daughter, I have published 66 Substacks (a whole novel if you think about it!). I have written poetry. I finished a really shitty draft of an actual novel. I started working on a screenplay. I haven’t achieved all the things I wanted to achieve, but I have most certainly achieved some, all while being bone-tired (my baby still doesn’t sleep through the night most nights). I need to give myself grace. I don’t want to sound unhappy or ungrateful, because I truly am happy and grateful. I love the hard work of mothering, and I do get tons of support from my husband. (Sorry for calling it “help.” It’s his child, he is parenting, not helping, but I am the primary caregiver, so you know what I mean.) My satisfaction with the ordinariness of my days is through the roof. The conflict is exclusively between myself as a mother and myself as an artist, which is, I am aware, a silly thing to whine about so much.

I relistened recently to this conversation between Marisa Bate and Naomi Sheldon, and this part really stayed with me. Naomi spoke about something her therapist once told her. She brought up Vermeer, those luminous paintings of domestic life: a woman pouring milk, another washing, light falling softly across an ordinary room. There is nothing grand happening in them, nothing that would traditionally be considered worthy of awe, and yet they are painted with the same care, reverence, and attention as grand religious scenes.

This is the work - the hard, noble work worthy of grand attention. The scattered toys, the bottles, the half-finished paintings and knittings, the warm, slightly damp body of a my baby pressed against mine. The same gestures, repeated every day. The same acts of care. Nothing spectacular, nothing that announces itself as particularly meaningful - and yet, somehow, it is. I must not forget it. But I also don’t want to forget my other work.

If I want a solution to this creative slumber, it would probably be to admit that not much will get done in this season of life, and to get anything done at all I need to break things into the tiniest bits and pieces, to not see any single project as large. I have written out a list of scenes in a novel. Now, at any given time, I am only allowed to work on one tiny scene, without looking at the whole thing. It’s too overwhelming. What comes easily to me right now, for some reason, is writing poetry. Perhaps because of its somewhat short format, but also, maybe, because I am full of emotions and things to say, and it’s the best outlet for it? No other medium can explain so much so quickly. Maybe music, but I am not a musician.

Anyhow, it will all be well, as long I cherish the moments of easy and pleasure, as long as I see the work I do, all the work, as important and worthy of awe.

Love, Alena