This week’s storm is everyone in this house being sick. The fevers, the runny noses, the stuffy ears, the congestion, the sore throats—it’s a lot to navigate all at once. Especially with the little ones who can’t quite explain all they’re feeling, and whose accumulation of discomforts make them just wanting to cling to Mommy. All. Day. Long.

Did I mention I’m sick too? Yeah, it’s not a pretty sight at all! I’m stretched very thin right now, and I am still aware that no matter how awful I’m feeling, the dance is one of the best remedies I have. Dancing will lift my spirits, deliver some new oxygen into my blood, stimulate the release of whatever my body needs to flush out, and break up the long hours of crying, whining, begging, pleading, and moaning that are making up the bulk of our days right now.

This week the storm is a funky cold making its rounds. Sometimes it’s a financial crisis when all the bills are due. Sometimes it’s a tragedy in the community. Sometimes it’s the heartbreak of not winning the the grand prize after being a finalist. Sometimes it’s a fertility trauma that no one but you can see. Sometimes it’s the seemingly never-ending cycle of grief from losing a loved one. Chances are, we’ve all encountered multiple storms in various forms throughout our lives. They are never something we plan. They are not convenient. They are not considerate of everything else on our plates demanding our full attention. And yet, through every part of the storm, we’re continuously confronted with the truth of ever forward motion: Life moves on. 

There comes a point in grappling with the storm, that we have to make a decision about how we’re going to make it through the roughness and turbulence. For me, I’ve learned that engaging in my dance practice—especially in the thick of the thick of the storm—allows me to move with renewed energy through what initially felt like the heaviest of burdens, the most immovable of mountains.

Dancing opens up unexplored possibilities for processing and strategizing how we’re going to survive a very challenging situation. As we bend, twist, roll, reach, sway, spin, dip, and rock around, we invite new thought patterns to participate in the mental labor of sorting through whatever it is that is weighing our spirits down. The movements give us space, literally, to breathe, to think, to imagine, and to act in new ways. Each cell of our body plays a role in shaping our thoughts and actions. When we dance, we recalibrate all of our cells with an energy source more reflective of the present moment. We then have a greater capacity to transform our consciousness and develop a more desirable outlook. Something that might have seemed completely hopeless or made us feel that we were powerless to change can be rediscovered through a newly identified lens of possibility after a vigorous, sweat-pouring, heart-expanding, booty-shaking dance session. 

The reason the dance is so effective at helping us to generate fresh ideas or access opportunities and solutions not previously considered or deemed unrealistic is because we become renewed every time we dance. Renewed in our minds, renewed in our bodies, renewed in our hearts. The movement actually shifts our biochemistry and allows new pathways for synapses and neurological connections to emerge. This in turn creates new patterns for our thoughts, ultimately giving us a whole new way to look at, experience, and navigate our storm. 

This understanding is what leads me into the dance today. I am so tired from being up all night and day with little sick people. I want nothing more but to just stay tucked underneath the blankets, but my children are all demanding something—to eat, to nurse, to be held, to be read to, to be played with, to be listened to, to have all their questions about the world answered right, right now! There is no escaping them, as they grow more impatient by the second, yanking the covers back and pulling my head up from the pillow. I realize it’s time to switch gears as resting, in the traditional sense, is impossible at this point. If I’m going to have to be on my feet, I reason, I might as well be dancing. 

After serving up a round of snacks for everyone, I connect my phone to the speakers and put on my soca music playlist. I need some music that will jolt me into a new reality. Carnival it is! The festive, Caribbean melodies help us all shift into a different flow. They eat, I dance. They run around, I dance. They scream and ask for more food, I dance as I fill more bowls with more food. Tired as I am, I feel the movements gradually giving me more energy. My sinuses are starting to drain. My capacity to answer question after question after question increases with each rotation on the floor. I put a pot of tea on and keep dancing while waiting for it to boil. The simple, small, repetitive movements making their way into my hips and up my spine are the best this very tired mommy can do right now. My dance is not something spectacular in this moment, but its victory is still felt with each breath. This is me dancing through the storm, once again. This is me finding a way through when there is no way out.

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A little over a year ago, without any premeditation, I heard a message one night while I was scrolling through my Facebook feed: “Get off of Facebook.” I didn’t question it, even though I’d been logged on continuously at that point for over 11 years. All my significant life markers in that time period had been documented and preserved in the eternal memory of digitalia. I had hundreds of photos, messages, stories, exchanges, and ideas on there. It was a lot to abruptly just turn off and walk away from. But at midnight, that’s what I did, and I haven’t felt the need to go back. 

It was a simple thing, but so profound at the same time. One of the first things I realized was that I had birthed all my children online at that point. Every pregnancy announcement, every birth photo, every early milestone—all coded and sorted in one of a billion bits of information, accessible to the whole world. All of the sudden that seemed so bizarre and unnatural to me to have these precious moments on display on such an impersonal platform. Who was taking in all my information? Who was celebrating me? Scrutinizing me? Tracking me? 

I know, I know, in this technology age we leave traces of ourselves everywhere. Here I am now, putting more information on my site, Mother Mother Everywhere. But I do feel very different this time because I’m the author of everything on this site. I own and control 100% of my content in a way that is not autonomously possible on social media channels. For me, for where I am right now in my mothering artist reality, this balance feels good to me.

There were more layers of revelations in those first few months of being off of Facebook. One, I didn’t realize how much time I spent posting bits of my life and perusing through everyone else’s. Immediately after disconnecting my account, I started writing letters to the mothers in my village. Nearly everyday for the next 3 months, I wrote intimate, longform dialogues exploring all the things that were too raw, too personal, too radical to share in public domains. I was able to open up about traumas, heartbreaks, losses, disappointments, hopes, fears, and dreams in this very meaningful way that created shared space for the other person to receive and respond to me in her own time. I loved the extended ability to share and to share so deeply. But even more that that I loved discovering the possibilities of slow communication. There’s so much we lose in the pressure to speed through everything. A text, an email, even a phone call can’t hold the fullness of all our stories. As mothers and women we need regular interaction with safe spaces where we can unravel, come undone, be seen and witnessed with loving, gentle reception. This is what I was able to access more abundantly once I signed off of Facebook.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and the same internal directive sounded off in my head: “Sign out of Instagram.” Again, there wasn’t a lot of forethought or questioning. It just felt very right and very important to do right then. I haven’t missed seeing the posts of my friends and people I followed. I’ve made more of an effort to reach out to people directly when I genuinely want to connect with them, share a story or picture of my kids, or invite them to participate in a project with me. Even my mass emails have come to a pause. I want to reach out to people who are reaching out to me. I want to experience a mutual, human connection that feels good for everyone involved. This is an interesting space to be in as I’m still in the launching process for Mother Mother Everywhere, but so far it feels like the right way to move forward—building personal, one-to-one relationships with the mothering artists I’ve created this site for and growing slowly from there. 

This is a whole new dance for me. In the past posting on social media has been a central part of how I share my work, grow our business, and stay connected with my loved ones who live in other parts of the world. I have given a lot of thought to the potential ways that deactivating my accounts could cause me to lose touch with people and opportunities. But the more I consider everything, the list of benefits of signing off of social media grows longer and longer everyday. This morning I made a note of the 5 biggest improvements to my life that have happened since tuning out of Facebook and Instagram, and tuning into me, my art, and my family: 

1. More time to read: I always thought of myself as a slow reader, and so oftentimes large books intimidated me and I didn’t even try them. Now, I welcome little pockets of reading time and just get in as much as I can in those interludes, usually while breastfeeding my baby to sleep.

2. Ability to practice learning a new language everyday: I have been intending to start studying a new language for our next family residency for a long time now. We’ve been dreaming up the details of this journey and the more we make plans, the more critical I feel it is for me to reach a level of proficiency in the language before we arrive so I can support myself and my family in acclimating to life in this new world.

3. Reading more books to my children: We read so many books everyday now—and sometimes the same book gets read 10 times in one day! There are books all over the house, and reading time is a spontaneous adventure that has become even more accessible now, as I’m more present with them in all the freed up moments I have from not being on social media.

4. More extensive research about writers, artists, mothers, and fertility studies: I have always loved researching the lives of writers and artists who fascinate me. I also love studying and learning about the diversity of mothering expressions and fertility practices through the history of humanity and around the globe. I enjoy all the extra minutes there are now to journey deeply into another creator’s process or discover the intricacies of ancient fertility rituals in a world that was once so far removed from me.

5. More time to write, create, and dream: This is the most rewarding part of shifting off of social media—having the time to be more of the creator I have always dreamed myself to be. Mothers especially are constantly told that our children prohibit us from deepening our practice as creators, but really our children inspire us to learn how to create in different ways. A significant part of my expanding creative momentum has come from identifying my former relationship to social media as a major obstruction to having abundant time for writing books, dancing, and dreaming up more creative programs for my family and my mother village.

I don’t think this is a one-size-fits-all conversation. We all have different ways of engaging, navigating, and benefiting from the current technology advances in our world. It’s important to pay attention to what we need as mothers and creatives in this now. Only we can hear the inner voice of our intuition guiding us toward a more fulfilling and joyful reality. The most important thing we have to assess day by day, moment by moment is are we listening, really listening, to ourselves, to our passions, to the creative revelations inviting us to become more of all we want to be. The time is there for us to create with it what we will. It’s always been there, and the more we trust our paths as mothering artists, the more time we’ll discover we have to bring all our creative visions to life.

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from richelle:

Ah! I am so there! I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you on IG! But I have just recently signed off social media myself and it already feels so right! Life feels so much more spacious, less cluttered. More room for what matters, less of what doesn’t. All your reasons I am either experiencing or excited to hopefully experience. Thrilled to see what evolves in this time and space. And I know social media will still be there if I ever decide to utilize it again. I also know that would look very different for me than it did before.

Love,
Richelle

The munchkins explore the space with Mommy in between dance sequences at her favorite place to dance in Washington, DC, the roof terrace of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

I dance with my children all the time. In fact, my movement practice has evolved radically and abundantly since becoming a mother. The more children I have, the more time I seem to have to dance. Does that surprise you? I would have never guessed it would turn out this way either, but as I continued to experiment with how to integrate my mothering labors with my creative practice, a beautifully collaborative process emerged.

My kids have mixed emotions about mommy dancing. Sometimes they are all for it and spend the whole time with me, running circles around me, moving through my legs, climbing over me, swinging off of me, and taking turns leading me through dances that they’ve come up with on the spot. Sometimes they are whining that I’ve done enough and can they pleeeeeeease get their snack, NOW! Sometimes they are sleepy or fussy and they are on my hip, or on my back, or on my breast while I am still swaying, and dipping, and rocking, and discovering whatever it is I’ve tapped into for that day’s practice. Also, after mothering two sons and then having a daughter, I was amazed to see how different my dance sessions are when it’s just me and Jubilee are in the space. The mother-daughter movement connection is unlike anything I’ve ever shared with my sons. I’m really curious to see how our collective movements, and duos, and trios evolve as they grow up.

A large part of creating and actually experiencing more time to dance has been through undoing the conditioning that in order to have a meaningful dance practice I have to be away from my children. For me, facilitating long stretches of time where I can be on my own has never been a part of my mothering reality. The resources to facilitate that—open blocks of time, childcare, transportation, money for transportation, commuting time, time and energy to prepare food for everyone while I’m away—are not easily accessible or affordable for our family. I learned this early on, but I also just never accepted that those resources were the only way to nurture my practice as a dancing mother. I always came back to a simple question that led me deeper into the experiment: But what about my dance?

Years before having children I had a profound revelation that everyone’s movement, everybody’s dance, mattered greatly to the sustained wellness of humanity. When we dance together, we are kinder to each other, more thoughtful and sensitive about making space for everyone’s needs, and more positive about our shared futures. Dance competition shows perpetuate false narratives that in order to be worthy of being celebrated for our dance, we have to know how to move a certain way, and be validated by people who have reached a certain level of expertise in the field. But movement is an individual resource, no matter who’s watching, or appreciating, or liking, or understanding our dance moves. When we dance, we are enhancing our quality of life. We are regenerating blood cells, muscles, and brain power. We are adding new oxygen to our blood stream, and increasing flexibility, stamina, and energy. Simply put, dancing makes us better human beings in our day to day moments of life. 

As a mothering artist I knew that not only did have to dance to nurture my creative practice, I have to dance to sustain optimal wellness while navigating the very physical, emotional, and mentally exhaustive labors of motherhood. From a logistical perspective, as someone who spends all day and all night with her little people, learning how to dance with my children became an imperative. If I was waiting on a moment to myself to dance, I’d always be waiting. The movement would pass me by, and my body and spirit would lose some of its warmth and vibrancy. An absence of movement was not an option. I had to figure out a generative and collaborative process. The dance, like me, had to grow and make space for my reality as a dancing mother.

Over the years I’ve made some exciting discoveries in my shared movement moments with my children. Each of my children experience their dancing selves in different ways. Sometimes they are content to move as solo operators in the space. Sometimes they like being the leader and getting everyone to follow along in their movement creation. So far, my daughter, who is also the youngest at two years old, has spent the most time dancing with me one-on-one. Many times I’ve noticed even when we’re not sharing an intentional collaborative moment, she’s still watching me, and will later imitate my movements, calling out to me, “Look Mommy, I’m dancing!” 

My oldest son loves to come up with dances, and giving them wild and hilarious names. He loves jamming to his favorite song over and over again, and showing us all the movements he’s creating. My second son is very acrobatic and athletic with his dance movements. Oftentimes, he’ll find his way into the dance by imitating an animal, a robot, a creature of his imagination. Also, anything involving running or jumping, and it’s automatically his favorite dance. I learn something new every time I dance with one or more of my children. I become more aware of what is on their minds, of what memories are playing out in their heads, of how they are making connections and deepening understandings about the world at home and outside of home. 

Dancing with my children also makes the moments when I am truly having a solo dancing moment very sweet. I appreciate those sporadic pockets of solo-bodied dancing time in a way I never had to before being a mother. Once upon a time I spent hours, days, weeks by myself, just immersed in my own creative inquiries. I didn’t have to consider bed times, snacks, diapers, disputes over a toy that no one will care about in five minutes. I used to dance in all sorts of public spaces, spaces that would be extremely dangerous for small children in my current reality. I used to only have to consider my body, my needs, my time. Now though, I have to factor in a multitude of needs every time I dance. Even if I’m not physically engaged with my children at the moment, I’m still hyper-aware of them and the constant possibility of their needs altering the dance practice I’m having in that moment. 

For instance, when I am mothering an infant, even if I’m dancing while they’re sleeping, I remain in close proximity so that I can quickly tend to whoever might need to be nursed back to sleep, or picked up if they roll off the bed, or just held as they acclimate to waking up. If I’m playing music it’s low, so that I can hear my children and be responsive to their needs. If they’re out at the playground with their father I am debating how to use the moment: make dinner so people won’t be hollering for food when they come back, or dance, dance, dance? 

There is no pure moment to myself where I don’t have to consider my children’s needs. A dancing mother is in perpetual communion with her mothering labors, no matter where or how her body is moving in the space. It takes time, practice, and lots of experimentation to come into peaceful acceptance and celebration of this new way of dancing, of being. In these first years of motherhood I’ve had to dismantle old ways of thinking. I’ve had to do away with ideas that left me feeling stuck and unfulfilled in my daily reality of being a mother and primary caregiver to my many munchkins. 

The dance had to expand so that it could adapt to my new parameters. That’s one of the beautiful things about dance as an art form, and about creativity in general. Reinventing, reimagining, reshaping, redoing, repeating, restoring, recovering—it’s all a part of the process of discovering and accessing new movement possibilities. My children—ceaseless demands for snacks and all—have made me a better dancer, a stronger dancer, a more creative dancer. I move through life with more receptivity, more passion for the present moment, more joy in the revelation of every new thing my body can do. 

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Rehearsing for Soil at the Botanic Gardens.

This weekend I performed at my favorite place to dance in Washington, DC, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I was thrilled when my dear friend and director of the Liberated Muse Arts Group, Khadijah Ali-Coleman invited me to be a part of her company’s presentation at the Page-to-Stage Festival. Liberated Muse presented a reading of Color in a Sphere of Monochrome, a series of poems and monologues adapted from essays written by different women exploring how to preserve their capacity to show up in the world as their full colorful selves, even as there’s so much pressure to just conform, blend in, and disappear.

I danced to a piece called Soil by mother, writer, and gardener Tichaona Chinyelu. This was my first time performing dance for an audience as a mother. Since giving birth 6 years ago, I’ve facilitated a number of workshops and presented interactive movement shares at conferences, but I hadn’t taken to the stage in pure performance mode in a very long time. I spent all summer preparing for my part, which was only a few minutes. But I was the only dancer, and everyone else in the cast was speaking and acting. 

I sat with the piece for a long time, just feeling for the mood. I wanted to feel for the story underneath the words. I didn’t want to choreograph literally to the text. I wanted to feel the writer’s story, and then extract movement phrases from the embodied emotions coming up for me from my interpretation of her story. To do this, I played around with lots of different music when I was rehearsing. I danced to house music, jazz, afrobeat, African drums, sonic soundscapes, gospel, and nature sounds. I didn’t feel I could only rehearse to the recording of the poem and its sound score. In fact, I felt I had to intentionally open up the field of possibility for the movement, by situating the story in a variety of moods. 

Sometimes I took myself—and the munchkins of course—outside to experiment with movements for the piece in the sun, or in the breeze, or in the grass, or near a body of water (read: next to the fountain at the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden because getting to the beach wasn’t always doable). And without words, and without music, I would just move inside of nature. Since the piece was connected to this theme of growth and all the writer is able to do with her soil, I thought immersing myself in the elements of nature was also a critical part of the choreography. 

As it got closer to performance time, I started to try out all the movement sequences I’d been developing to the actual recording of the poem. It was like playing around with puzzle pieces, but the overall picture could always change. Nothing had to be permanently anywhere. Sometimes during a run a particular movement would feel really good and seem to mesh with a line of the poem. But then the next day the resonance might have dissipated, and I would allow that to just be. I didn’t feel pressure to lock the choreography down. Just like the soil, my movement had to be responsive to the realities of the moment. Every time I dance, I’m bringing my full, mothering self to the process. Everyday I am a different dancer, and my movements reflect the ever-shifting nature of what it means to be always mothering and always creating. 

In the last weeks leading up to performance time, I’d identified a core sequence of movements that I felt most strongly connected to the emotions and imagery of the poem. With each practice, I felt more and more in tune with the narrative and felt my movements growing more seamless and fluid. I didn’t piece them together in the exact same way each time, but I did find recurring segments and markers that anchored the flow of the piece, and still allowed me the freedom to be present, authentic, and responsive to the moment. 

One of the best parts of this process of allowance and deep awareness as a mover was the continuous discovery of more layers to the poem and to the dance. The closer it got to the performance date, the more specific my embodied emotional narrative became. I felt that the undercurrent of the writer’s story was one of joy, a deeply sensual and abundant joy that fed her soul—and her soil—from the inside out. It was here that I rooted my own movement expression when showtime came. 

All the movements came together beautifully at the performance, a magical puzzle finally realized after months of processing, development, and experimentation. I felt my emotional narrative really translated through the movement, and that the audience could feel the joy exuding from the poem, my body, and the collaborative union between Tichoana, the writer, and me, the dancer—even though we’ve never met or even spoken to each other. All we’ve shared together is our art, mother to mother. And our sharing was enough to birth a performance piece that is truly amazing and lovely.

I love that my life as a mothering artist keeps me in close communion with other mothering artists, and that I’m constantly exploring ways to engage in intimate creative exchanges across time, space, distance, language, cultural backgrounds, artistic disciplines, and mothering paths. Each of us are abundant in our own creative powers, and when we find mutually satisfying points of intersection, merging, and expansion, our powers grow exponentially. 

This is why I’m so passionate about cultivating spaces for mothering artists to discover the infinite possibilities within our creative labors, both individually and collectively. Many of us have been trying to find our way inside the harsh corridors of the world’s frequently anti-mothering spaces, because we’ve been told that real art and real artists look and function a certain way—a way that is most often not connected to children, fertility, or motherhood. But here we all are, creating anyway, thriving anyway, finding joy in our art anyway. There is a whole universe for us to explore, just within our own vibrant selves as mothering artists. 

My whole performance journey this go around was facilitated through the loving actions of one mother to another. I am reminded that I don’t have to look outside of myself to experience the bliss and delight of my process as a performer. There is room for me as I am. There are opportunities for me, and my reality as a mother with plenty little folks to care for, to be on someone’s stage right now. It matters greatly how we feel and how we are treated throughout the process of performing. It matters whether or not our mothering selves have been honored and celebrated in the intensive work of producing our art. 

The actual performance was less than 4 minutes, but the three months I spent preparing for it enriched my life and my labors as a mothering artist. And my munchkins weren’t there to see Mommy perform (the logistics of getting everyone there for such an early call time were beyond what I could manage for the day), but they were with me for nearly every rehearsal, including my dress rehearsal at our home studio the night before when they all oohed and ahhhed over my dress that I was wearing for the show. 

I am grateful for all the sweet moments along the way that led to Saturday’s performance. Through every part of the process, I have become so much more of my mothering artist self. Just like a seed planted in well-nourished soil can grow freely into its fullest potential, so too does a mother who is loved on and treated kindly as she and her creativity are constantly evolving.

Words by Tichaona Chinyelu

Narration and vocalization by Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman

Music composed by Ben Dawson, Jr.

Produced by Chez Soleil Music Group

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Today I take the munchkins up the street the big open field that I’ve claimed as our “outdoor” classroom. Conveniently just 5 blocks from home, it’s magically all I ever wanted it to be: accessible, safe, abundantly spacious, clean. And even though it’s not fenced in, it’s so, so big that they can run long distances and move freely without ever getting too close to the street.

I pack the usual stuff: some snacks, some books to read, a blanket to sit on, a water bottle. But then, I also pack something new this time: my wireless headphones. Yes, I intend to get my dance practice in while they run around and do their thing. I am looking forward to a much larger studio, with the fresh air, endless floor, and outstretched sky.

I dress in a single layer, even though they are more bundled up. I want to be comfortable. I plan to break a sweat. I love how I’m preparing for a real dance moment. I am taking great care to insert my creative practice into a moment that is usually all about them. Everyday I ask myself, how can I take up more space inside our family learning lab? How can my creativity and my process as an artist be visible and integrated into all we do?

My joy matters. As the mother, the artist, the primary facilitator of our family-centered education, I am the pulse of this whole dance. I am quite certain that the happier I am, the more connected I am to my own passion spaces—which for me is in the dance, the writing, the community building, the village making—the more engaging, liberated, and adventurous I’ll be when holding the space for my children and their learning journeys.

As I get deeper into these experiments with integrating my creative labors into our everyday learning lab moments—impromptu counting games while I’m dancing in the middle of a circle they’ve created around me, wall-mounted collage art while breakfast is being made, reading these blog posts aloud to my children for storytime—I see that my kids really are learning all the time! Every single moment, no matter what we’re doing, is ripe for some deeper understanding, for more tangible discoveries about how they shape and are shaped by the world around them.

Basically, I don’t have to force the learning. It’s already always happening! I can totally have fun everyday with my children and be deeply immersed in my creative practices as an artist. There is no war here, no separation, no conflict of interests. Being their mother, their teacher, their caregiver, is not in opposition to developing my dance methodology, and writing my books, and devising workshops, and running our family business. In fact, the more rooted I am in my passions as an artist, the more joy, creativity, and positive energy I can source as I navigate all the demands of mothering a band of little people. And when Mommy is more joyful overall, then everyone else is expanding in their joy spaces too.

Mommy’s joy really is contagious. When we first get to the big open field, the magical moment I’ve been dreaming of is not fully coming together. People are whining about this snack not being that snack, people would rather nurse continuously than run around in all this space, people are complaining about not being able to go barefoot in 40 degree weather like they did in the summertime. At first I am annoyed that my children haven’t seamlessly jumped into their happy place, and let me just enjoy my insta-groove, personal dance party. But then, I remember I am free to begin my practice, as is.

It catches them by surprise when I just start running around them, dancing in a circle, jumping side to side, shaking, gyrating, spinning my torso, waving my arms like wings toward the sky. I am getting in plenty of booty rolls as the beat blasts from my pink headphones, headphones that are slightly off my ear so that I can still hear everything they’re saying and be, you know, visibly responsible-parenting in public space.

Bloom keeps asking me, “Mommy, why are you so happy dancing?” I just make sure to keep moving every time he asks me. I want this part of his childhood to be remembered so clearly, all these beautiful moments with his joyful, dancing mother.

They are all paying attention now. I dance with more intensity, kick up my legs, twist and jerk and bend and leap, slide to the left, to the right, back it up, shake shake shake. This makes them laugh more and more. They start to chase me around, imitate me, make up their own moves. Before I know it, they have abandoned the snacks and no one is pulling on me or complaining about something. They are finally running around, happy and free! They are making their own fun, getting into their own adventures, individually and collectively.

This moment is really nice, how it’s all come together. I see it has been up to me all along. I have to be the one to get the party started. I have to center my joys, and in doing so that creates an inevitable momentum of vibrant energy that enlivens the moment for my children. My example inspires them, makes them want to seek, to play, to explore, to grow, to ask new questions, to have big fun, to access more of their own joys.

This ability to tap into what truly brings them joy will carry them very, very far in life. It is sort of like a superpower I have cultivated over the years, and I’m glad they are getting plenty of good practice with it while they’re so young.

It’s a process, I say over and over to myself. Motherhood fractures time. Those luxurious moments of creation that used go on for hours, for days, weeks, months even, are now fragments of themselves. In almost six years of making and raising babies, I have learned how to gather the scattered seconds and the lost minutes found in, around, under, and between my daily mothering labors. I nourish my mothering artist self with these loose pieces of opportunity. If I did not know how to do this, if I did not know it was possible to construct a new relationship with time, my soul would hunger for itself. There would be no reconciliation between all my selves. Like so many mothers I know, motherhood, more than anything else, would seem to be the biggest obstruction to my expansion as an artist.

Still, I am coming into greater appreciation for the slower evolution of my magic making with each year. Because I am mashing together bits of time, the progression of an essay, a story, a dance might stretch, drag, lull, swell, quiver, and then sag again before recovering its momentum. Sometimes I am growing so slowly through a process that it almost feels like nothing is happening. But even the subtlest of motions is movement in some direction. It’s a process, I remind myself. 

The process doesn’t have to be linear, scheduled, rhythmic, or predictable. It moves as I move. Ultimately, I am the creator of all my time. This is not a reality mothers are encouraged to explore. From the moment we are pregnant, we are inundated with fear narratives about how we won’t be able to “get anything done with a baby,” and so even before our little humans are born we are hardwiring ourselves, steeling our nerves for the never-ending battle to have time to ourselves. There is an overemphasis on adhering to a set schedule, on protecting our ephemeral solitude, and very little attention given to emotional cues, intuition, and a mother’s need for a peaceful, supported postpartum in community with other mothers.

The artificial acceleration, the pressure to go, go, go—and alone at that—no matter the cost to body, sanity, or wallet, soon becomes a rigid norm that is scripted for survival. This is how so many mothers, despite their most diligent efforts to sustain their creativity, lose the war. Tethering themselves and their time to a system where they are just as invisible as their labors, their once vibrant artist selves become dry, brittle remnants, shadowy memories from a time before birthing and babies. In a society addicted to going faster and faster, mothers wallowing too long in the rubble of dreams deferred are then made to feel shame for their failure to thrive at this manufactured speed. So many brilliant, amazing mother-artists succumb to the bullying to just let go of their fragmented, creative sparks, to surrender their art and just fall in line with the script. 

But true creativity can never be completely suppressed. Everywhere on this earth there are bright bits of our potential flickering and beckoning to the mothers who can still feel something of a creative pulse. It is by way of these lasting strains of light that we mothering artists are able to find each other, and begin the labors of restoration and re/connection to our creativity and our passions.

It has taken many cycles of practicing, stumbling, recovering, and reimagining to realize that despite all the directives to accelerate, I am actually more fulfilled moving at a pace that is natural to my reality as a mothering artist, and one who is homeschooling three munchkins and running a family business. I have fresh, mother-centered eyes now. I see the development of a text, of a song, of a movement sequence amidst the lovely chaos of life with my little people. While chopping potatoes for breakfast I am singing loudly, composing a song for a new performance piece. While scraping poop off of a cloth diaper I am hearing the opening lines of a character’s dialogue, the way her hair falls over her face as she laughs coming into focus in my mind. While setting up a water and temperature experiment, the music is blasting and I am dancing back and forth from the cabinet to the table, arranging our supplies and giving my children some movements to play with as they run circles around me.

I wish I had come more gently into this understanding about how the interplay of time and creativity would be radically re/discovered in motherhood. Instead, it has been a turbulent, heartbreaking, exhausting, and at times bitterly discouraging, journey toward awareness. It was only after the birth of my third child that I finally, graciously, identified and embraced this language around slow mothering and saw its vital application in how I engage with my artistry. 

Now I am breathing through my process, celebrating the access to the unexplored depths of my creativity that working slowly fosters. I rarely experience creative blockages and slumps as I am always engaged in some aspect of my creative process. My children, having splintered every sense of what is time and what is mine, have helped me embody more tangible and transferrable realities of what I can do with every second of the day and the many ways I can create as a mothering artist. I am so grateful for our evolving collaboration, and that I can see the beauty in our gradual progress. The world around us continues to move swiftly right along, but this snail’s pace is deeply generative in its own magical way.