Maybe It's Not Stolen. Maybe It's a Gift.

A epistolary series about creativity with Tresta Payne/Letter #2

Note: You can read Tresta’s invitation to this conversation about creativity and motherhood, along with her first letter, here. Although we’re both writing from the perspective of full-time mothers, I hope this series is for anyone who’s wrestled with how to balance their “real” job with their creative aspirations.

To begin, here’s something I wrote when I was young mother:

The Lord has called me to be a wife. A mother. A teacher…That’s enough to fill up forty-eight hours in a day so could I possibly believe that He’s also called me to yield to these creative longings and write?

Today in this moment I’ve got my blank page and my thoughts and until that baby girl wakes up, or the boys get back or the girls arrive home, I’ll have my moment.

Maybe–it’s not stolen.

Maybe–it’s a gift.

(Excerpt from a blog post written in 2009 when my four kids were nine and under)

Dear Tresta,

In your letter, you asked how I was able to justify¹ time spent creating when my kids were young. The honest answer is that I don’t think I was ever able to justify it. I struggled throughout those years, feeling like a thief, like I was either robbing my kids of their mother or I was robbing myself of my creative dreams.

Justified or unjustified, it wasn’t really a choice I had the luxury to make. Creativity was going to trickle, seep and sometimes burst out of me in one form or another because that’s how I was made. I’ll be forever grateful that my creative side adapted and grew alongside motherhood, two intertwined vines dependent on one another, rather than withering away during the dry seasons.

I may not have had a choice about whether to be a creative person but I wish I’d had a choice about whether to carry the guilt. Tresta, did you have a certain idea about what a mother should be like? Driven by a deep desire to be the best mother I could be, I somehow internalized that my time had to be completely devoted to my children.

I found the following excerpt from one of my blog posts, written right after I’d returned from my first trip away from my family. At the time of the trip, I’d been a mother for more than a decade and I had four children.

“Before my trip, I had taken to apologizing to my children regularly for requiring space, afraid of hurting their feelings. They are with me all day long and I still seem to leave their mama-shaped holes hungry.

In the compact arena of my day to day mama life, how do I find a semblance of that found space in order to be fully a woman, writer, wife, friend and daughter of an amazing God…

Maybe as I spread out occasionally, it will at the same time make room for their own journeys, maybe they’ll find they want to jump higher, sing louder.

I’m going to leave you a little, dear ones, to come back to you more of me.”

(Me, 2010)

Before I left on the trip, I’d been unsure of who I was apart from being a mother. Over the course of the weekend, I discovered I didn’t simply disappear when I wasn’t holding my sweet baby in a sling, surrounded by my three older children. It would take more time to learn that I was actually being a good mother when other parts of me took up space, too.

I didn’t have many real-life examples of mothers making space for writing and art (only one in fact). I don’t know about you, Tresta, but much of the early years of parenting were lonely and to be a mother who also had creative aspirations was even lonelier. At one of the homeschool co-ops we participated in, I told the leader I wouldn’t be able to attend the mom’s retreat because I had writing to do that weekend. The judgement was clear in her eyes and her response: “But you have to come.” I stuck to my answer but there was a cost, an ever-widening crack dividing me from the other moms who didn’t understand.

A good decade into motherhood and homeschooling, I hit a certain season when all the parts fit together more easily. My babies had become people with their own imaginations and creative courage that inspired my own. At the time I wrote on my blog: “It’s a gift and an affirmation to have motherhood and artistry naturally blended into a day.”

The homeschooling environment we had cultivated made space for me to learn and grow along with the kids. I began teaching the kids the basic techniques of art from a textbook and as I taught them about shading and composition, I learned them as well. I took online art classes and the kids were my classmates. Side by side we made art and wrote stories. Eventually I was able to share my passion for theater² with them as well through small homeschool classes that I taught. My kids were my creative community.

My fellow art students, an art show of our work we hosted at our house

As a musician and a graphic designer (and a painter when he felt so inclined), my husband was part of our community, too. And he was also my biggest cheerleader. He took me seriously as an artist even when I couldn’t. He encouraged me to leave the house several evenings a week and on Saturday mornings to write. Similar to your husband, Tresta, mine bought me a Macbook and designed my blog. Despite bearing the complete financial responsibility for a family of six, he never pressured me to find a way to monetize these gifts. At the same time, he valued the job I was doing as a mother and as a teacher, reminding me of the contribution I made to our family even if the world didn’t always recognize it.

It’s much easier to see it looking back but even during those earlier years, I was able to name the gifts of creativity.

“Creativity isn’t a hobby. When I’m doing it I feel better fitted into my skin and my spirit. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out how it fit into my new life, I couldn’t blend the shades. I’ve learned to recognize the restlessness when I haven’t done something with my hands or with words. It only takes an hour of writing or making a collage to find order and peace. I can see why Madeleine L’Engle compared writing to praying.” (Me, 2012)

I found solace at the computer keyboard. It’s where I came to make sense of my world, my God, and myself. It’s where I celebrated the amazing moments with my family and named the hard moments as well. When I think of what writing did for my heart, it doesn’t surprise me that my chronic pain and anxiety developed in the years after I stopped writing my blog.

When I shut down my blog in 2014, I had the contents printed into a hardback book for myself and my family. Over three hundred pages detailing the life of a mother, a wife, a friend, an artist and a writer. It may not be a published book but there’s heft to it when I hold it in my hands.

In addition to the collection of blog posts, I have a script I wrote, a stage adaptation of the book Ish by Peter H. Reynolds. Using the framework of Reynolds book, there are fingerprints of my family all over the script. I used details from stories and conversations my kids were having about their own art at the time. I also have the poems and other writing I did after my father passed away. To say the time was not wasted is an understatement.

The book I had printed of my blog.

The beauty of looking back is that I’m able to know for certain that the benefits weren’t just for myself. In the messy middle I wasn’t sure if the creativity that bloomed around our kitchen table would follow the kids into their adult years. There were years where it seemed our academically intense homeschool tutorial had stripped it all away. But in the last few years I’ve been delighted to see creativity surface again, either as a form a relaxation in their free time, as a side business, or as part of their vocation.

Tresta, maybe we were thieves. But maybe we were more like Robin Hood, stealing creative hours to become more fully ourselves and giving our kids permission to do the same.

Until next time,

Aimee

P.S.-I know I haven’t answered all of your questions but here’s one for you for next time: How do you justify your creative life now? I believe you’ve been in a busy season of running a restaurant and spending time with your kids and grandkids. Has it gotten any easier to make time for writing and art?

1. I told my twenty-two year old daughter about the question I was answering for this post. I loved her response, “Justify it? Why would you have to justify it?!”

2. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Theater.