Cultivating a Creative Practice During Motherhood

Some of the journals I have filled.

Do you have a creative practice? For years, I wrote in a journal every night and morning (I started writing in the mornings after a high school English teacher introduced me to Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which advocates morning pages). I read constantly, mostly fiction or nonfiction by nature writers, and I crafted as I pleased: knitting, sewing, bookbinding, sketching. I went out to play music weekly, and I helped start a book arts group in Chattanooga that met monthly (shoutout to the old Chattanooga Book Arts Collaborative!). In that life before children, living alone, working six- or seven-hour days with the rest of my time to mold as I pleased, I didn't have to squeeze my creative moments into a narrow routine. I could cultivate creation whenever, however.

That seems far off now. My life is heavily structured around a full-time job, spending time with the children, and very little time to let creative curiosity lead me down a new path. I am trying to write more these days, and I have to make an immense effort to carve out my own time. On a good week, I wake up just after five (I have always relished the early early morning!), tiptoe to my soft, gray chair in the living room, quietly switch on the lamp and pull out a pad of paper. I write, and if that seems too hard, I read. About half the time, my youngest daughter (age three) wakes up twenty minutes later and races through the house to me, her wet pull-up swishing with each bare footstep. She'll curl up in my lap, and that's the end of my me-time until 8:30 or 9:00 pm. Sometimes, though, she sleeps in and I can get nearly a whole hour to delve into my head (or someone else's).

Trae also helps tremendously. He takes the kids on weekend adventures so I can focus on my writing (like he's doing as I write this!), which is such a gift. I know the kids won't be little and physically needy forever. In just a few years, they will be stuck to screens and slamming their doors (well, they already do this sometimes!), and as much as I crave me-time, I already dread the day Margot doesn't want to curl up in my lap in the morning, whisper loudly to me about her weird dreams while jamming her fingers in her noes and ask me to read her a book. But for now, I'm working with what time I have, knowing that this thing I am chasing is worth waking up early for, grateful for each word I can put down on a page.