The Sum of Many Parts

Twenty Five Years of Being an Artist and a Mother

May 18, 2024

Creative Possibilities/Issue #15

I used to be in a club for artists. I just didn’t realize it until I wasn’t in it anymore.

There were no annual fees or t-shirts, no regular meetings or oaths to swear by. We were automatically members because of our shared passion for the creative process.

We were storytellers using our various mediums.

We were actors finding our voices.

We were instruments tuning our music and bodies leaning into grace.

On any given day, we built the dream worlds of playwrights.

I suppose our meeting place could be called The Classroom since all of this took place while I was a theater major in high school and college. But the real itinerary happened in the electric current running between our imaginations. I found myself discussing a character or play over a bagel or learning a new skill to help someone’s idea move along. All of this sent me running to my journal to fill it with dreams fit to bursting.

Creativity was embedded into my life and I got to share it with others who cared about the same things. I didn’t realize that such rich creative time and resources at my fingertips wouldn’t follow me around forever.

I got married just two weeks after my college graduation and moved twelve hours away from everyone I knew. By the time we celebrated our first anniversary I was pregnant with child number one. A few years into marriage and a couple of children later, I took a good look around at the utterly foreign world that was now mine. Or at least foreign compared to the land where I had previously taken up residence.

It wasn’t until I was reading through Madeleine L’Engle’s journals and the stories of her creative community that I realized what I had left behind. I hadn’t understood the impact of being around others who prioritized the arts or how it stimulated my own creative life. I took it all for granted.

You could say that L’Engle had an unofficial club too, although the members were quite a bit more elite than my college classmates. Her stories were filled with names from the New York theater scene, dinner parties with people I knew as mythical legends from my theater classes. Similar to my experience though, hers flowed into every area of her life whether she was at the piano in her small apartment, backstage in the theater, or at a gathering in Greenwich Village where dreams were being followed and lost.

Out of the stay-at-home moms in my new life, I couldn’t name one potential member for a club. Instead I was the young mom who often heard, “You’re so creative”. I wasn’t interested in being set apart, instead I longed to hear someone say, “Let me tell you about this thing I want to make..let’s discuss this great movie I saw…or the book I want to write.” I wanted a fellow creator not a reminder of how alien it felt to be me.

My husband was the only one in my club and thank goodness for him. He worked as a graphic designer, he painted, he drew, and he loved films. When I shared my ideas with him he answered without hesitation: Go for it!

Go see that play. Go make art. Go write a script.

His encouragement kept the creative fire in me from completely dying out.

Yes, start a photography business, I’ll watch the kids.

Yes, your writing is important, let me design your blog.

The image of L’engle’s dinner parties lingered as a reminder of what I was missing and I finally took some initiative. Matt and I started leading a group through a book study on faith and creativity which connected us to other people who were just as stuck as we were. I discovered I didn’t really want to lead a group, I just wanted to be among people who got more excited about art than Excel spreadsheets or football. (To be fair, my husband also loves spreadsheets).

In this lonely time I found out a few things about myself. Creativity wasn’t just an optional hobby. When I was engaged in a creative process I felt more comfortable in my own skin and more settled in my spirit. Over time I learned to recognize the restlessness when I hadn’t made anything with my hands or with words. It only took an hour of writing or making a collage to create a little order and peace inside of me. I can see why L’engle compared writing to praying.

My world has grown—a little. I have a close friend who loves to write, who understands the need to create and be a full-time mom at the same time. I have kids who get out their sketchbooks daily. Here’s a glimpse of a recent conversation in our house:

Daughter: Mommy, ask me if I’d rather:(a) sketch (b) eat chocolate or (c) play a video game?

Me: Hmmmm, I don’t know?

Daughter: It’s A! Sketch! I want to do it all the time!”

One year the kids and I took an online art class together and then held an art show at our house to celebrate. They were around 12, 10, 8, and 4 at the time.

Our walls are adorned with family originals. The kids beg me to write stories with them and create radio dramas. It’s a gift to have motherhood and art blended together into my day.

So far it’s a small club. I’d like to see it grow. I hear about artists who live isolated lives and maybe they don’t need the energy that emerges from shared passions. As for me, I’ll take the club.

(Note: This first part is a freshly edited piece that I originally wrote on my blog back in 2010. As I read through these older pieces I’m continually surprised by the truth and relevance that echoes forward to the present day.)

Fourteen Years Later

After about ten years of waiting, we eventually stumbled into a thriving creative community. It was sort of like climbing into a wardrobe, pushing through some winter coats, and ending up in an entirely new world. There were writers, musicians, artists, and playwrights.

I can’t say I ever felt “in the club” but it was inspiring and stimulating even as I felt the gap between myself as a full-time homeschool mom and the people who had been pursuing their craft professionally for the past decade.

Those years were a gift but when the Pandemic disrupted the connection I could eventually see the reason for God’s hand in placing new boundary lines. As inspiring as the artists were, I’d been slowly growing to doubt the validity of my own gifts and passions.

I’m back now to my small, cobbled together community: a writing friend I meet with every week, another writing friend that I mostly communicate with via WhatsApp, the writers I’ve connected with on Substack and the Exhale writing community, my fellow students in my year long art class and, closest to home, my husband and kids.

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Looking back over a quarter century of living in this foreign land, I think it was less about forming a club and more about giving myself permission to fully inhabit the many parts of me. Being a mother has been the most amazing privilege of my life but the artist in me takes up a lot of space too. It’s okay that the real estate of my heart has been in a continual shift over the last twenty-five years. All the parts matter and there’s room for all the parts.

“Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.”
-Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

What about you? I would love to hear about your own journey of finding your people and/or embracing different parts of yourself.

Continue the Journey

Video
Check out this witty four minute speech by author Fredrik Bachman on creative anxiety and procrastination.

Books
Letters from Max by Sarah Ruhl: This is a re-read for me. It’s a non-fiction account of the special relationship between playwright Sarah Ruhl and student/poet Max Ritvo before he died too young from cancer. It’s tender, witty, and full of passion for words and craft.

Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer: I’m only a few chapters into this book but it’s been a great read for someone like me who is going though a transition in my life from being a full-time parent to—whatever is next.