Mom's are Humans too, After All--What I've Learned About the Artist and Self-denial

As a mom to three wildly wonderful, intensely creative, caring, complicated, mostly adult humans, I fret a lot. Fretting is something I am working on doing less of with each passing day but I am not there yet, nor, perhaps, will I ever fully be.

I am human after all.

So too are all mothers.

Deeply human, animalistic-ally human; human in so many ways the consumer world wants to deny, clean up, cover over.

And I am fully one of them.

As a young mom I did what I saw my mom do, and her mom and her mother-in-law and my aunt. Mother their fantastic, delightful, all-needing little humans to the point where I watched these fabulous women disappear slowly into shells of whoever their former selves were.

Broken—fragmented—denied.

How did they let this happen? What impossible standards were they trying to meet? What was my role in any of this?

Twenty years ago, at age twenty- seven when our oldest child was one, I needed to push back at what I sensed of this in my own self so I decided to take an online writing course. We had a computer my dad (in his genius) had rigged up for me and I got myself an email address and dial- up internet. The woman from Ontario who led the program was taken by the vividness of my descriptions. She told me she never gets back to people right away but she needed to know who I was, to teach me about goddesses and how they work their way into our words. I think the course was called Write Yourself into Being, if I recall correctly. And while I never did run with the whole Greek Mythology thing, I did realize that I had come back into existence on the page through the writing process in a way in which I hadn’t felt since I had given my whole being over to pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and the all-consuming title of Mother of this one sweet daughter whose wonder and beauty was (still is) so great I could not fathom I had anything to do with her being here.

Same too with our delightful middle child and our sweet youngest; with each new child I forgot that Jill existed beyond the role of mother. I let the bright flame of their being consume me whole.

And I can’t judge that what happened or what I kept allowing to happen was wrong. I think I was a junkie for being consumed because I could not see another way in this world for me to be than mother. I adored my own mom for all her loving and creating and home-bodiedness and I wanted to replicate my own experience of feeling so cared for and loved.

But my own mom isn’t well unless she is creating and just as she sometimes forgot this truth through the years, so too have I.

This truth is something she discovered as a young mom much like I discovered I need to write to be well.

Yet, she always felt like she needed to apologize for the time she took when creating, for the mess it made of the house while she auditioned fabrics for new curtains or slip covers and cushions. For all the things she made to make our house a welcoming and cozy home.

For her cluttered and exuberantly curious mind.

But what she may not have realized is that by taking weeks away at rug-hooking school, by going to basket weaving workshops, by learning to paint and sew and embroider and dye wool; that by honouring her inner creative she was demonstrating to us, her children, that she was not just mom who worked doggedly for her family, cooking, baking, cleaning, tending and mending heart and home-- she was a mom (still is) who sees the world through an artist’s eyes. Whose embroideries honour us when she gives them to us by the hours of fine handiwork and how much of herself she puts into them. Who, in doing so, honours us by honouring a self beyond her role as mother to the five of us (and grandmother to our offspring).

Today I will cherish my mom, complicated, creative human she is, by honouring that I am a human beyond my mothering. I recently confirmed this in my own heart by taking a chance with a most wonderful memoir writing course with Kathleen Hamilton. Today I will write as much as I want to for as long as I feel compelled to and I won’t apologize to anyone. Tomorrow I just might do the same!

Because real mom’s don’t fit hallmark cards—we’re way too complicated for a few short lines-- and artists win the award for not fitting into neat categories of being! And from one mom who doesn’t like the pressure Mother’s Day puts on everyone to buy, buy, buy, fuss, fuss, fuss, and post, post, post pics of all the proper, glossy ways to celebrate mom's, instead, I raise my teacup to the best tea drinker and all around creative I know. My mom!

And I will remember to care for myself while writing by asking one of my offspring (dear as they are) to bring me another cup of tea to keep me going!

Love you dear mom, love you sweet kiddies of mine and love to you, dear reader, too!

Thanks for reading!

Jill