Just like a tree is nourished by its many roots and the soil that holds everything in place, every story we tell can begin in many places and is shaped by the words we choose to piece it all together.

The Fertility Abundance Garden is teaching me so much about finding soft, gentle ways into our deepest, most intimate fertility narratives. Opening up and becoming more receptive to the internal dialogues we have with ourselves and each other as creators is one way we transform and reimagine our relationships with fertility and creativity. Being able to access and articulate what we truly feel and how we want to create is vital to sustaining flow and nurturing wellness as a creator. 

Just like the soil has to be soft before we can dig out the weeds without damaging the roots of the plant we want to save, so too do the language and lens with which we talk about our fertility stories determine how much we are able to unearth and lovingly witness about what we have been through and what we hope for our futures. 

There is a way to journey into some of our darkest, most hidden places without causing more harm or trauma to ourselves. Many times a story can be so layered and tangled in knots that just thinking about it from a chronological or “just the facts” perspective triggers waves of anxiety or an instinct to shutdown and retreat for self-preservation. This discomfort and distress is exacerbated when the words we use to tell our story are not even our own, but rather the external imprints of conversations other people are having about our stories. 

One of the most critical first steps in the softening of our soil is to ensure that the language we are using is truly our own. We embody more power, and accelerate the healing process in the wake of grief, loss, and heartbreak, when we decide how our stories are told and define what each moment means for ourselves. The truth is, only we can author what has happened in our bodies, and this authoring is every creator’s sacred responsibility, now and always. 

When the soil around whatever grew from our fertility and creativity practices has not yet been softened enough, it’s very difficult—and sometimes even impossible—for new questions, thoughts, and understandings to be received and absorbed. Nurturing a gentler way into our stories means consciously choosing language that centers our power as creators. It also means slowing down to the pace of possibility when processing and unpacking our stories so that the liberating truth of a matter has a chance to take root, emerge, and be seen and experienced in a healthy, soul-restorative way.

Essential to the labors of cultivating and sharing authentic narratives about our birth stories, pregnancies, mothering journeys, fertility practices, relationships with partners and co-creators, passions, creative projects, girlhood-to-womanhood memories, relationships with our mothers and mother figures, dreams and visions—and whatever else we feel called to speak on—is a radical commitment to the truth of whatever it is our bodies, hearts, and minds have lived through. 

The substance of everything we need to say is already alive and pulsing within. When the softening happens, the words flow fluidly and abundantly.

Soft, moist, vibrant soil yields generous, new freedoms when crafting fertility narratives. Inside the expansive world of our fertile soil, we are able to take up more space within our stories. With more ease, we identify the real words and then take great care to organize and situate our words in ways that amplify our realities as creators. 

With each evolution of the telling and the sharing we discover the vastness of our beings and our creations. We remember with love, celebration and gratitude that when the soil is soft we really can bring the most beautiful parts of ourselves and our stories to life.

process & practice: fertility word sprouts

• Find your journal, open up a fresh page on your laptop, start a new email to yourself. Get ready to journal, however you like to do it.

• Think about a critical turning point in your journey as a creator. When did you realize a new truth about your fertility? How did you know that your creativity needed to be expressed in a certain way? Where were you when a piercing clarity awakened you to the life you are living now?

• When you have a memory that rises to the surface, write down what it is with one or two sentences.

• From the following question seeds, choose one that feels most relevant or most resonates: What happened to me? Why is this moment so significant to my story? How do I feel about this moment now? How did I feel about it when it first happened? How did this make me grow? What did this lead me to create?

• Write your selected question seed on your page. Then somewhere else on your page, or posted up somewhere visible to you in your writing space, write down: My story, my words, my truth.

• Take a moment to reread those words aloud or in your mind, My story, my words, my truth. As you repeat the mantra, become more aware of your breath. Deepening the breath and feeling the expansion within, say the mantra internally as you continue to inhale and exhale.

• Return to the space on your page and begin answering with a stream of conscious, free write. Allow all the words to come as the do. Keep writing for at least 5 continuous minutes. Don’t erase, edit, or censor. Just write.

• When you feel like you have generated an amount of content that feels good to you, set it down. Take a few minutes to rest and step away from your writing.

• When you are ready to come back to the process, revisit the mantra for a moment, My story, my words, my truth.

• Read through what you wrote. Soften the impulse to edit or amend and just read.

• Now read it again with your authentic truth lens. Read one sentence (or one line, or one phrase—whatever makes sense for how you wrote it down) at a time. After ever sentence, ask yourself, Is this true? Underline everything that is true.

• Now read through it once more with your feeling lens. Going sentence by sentence, circle all the words that make you feel an expansion in your body, warmth in your fingertips, or a flutter in your belly.

• On a separate page (or underneath what you have written) make a list of all the words you circled. These are your fertility story word sprouts.

• Over the next few days, weeks, or months, revisit your word sprouts. When you are ready to go deeper into writing about this story, pick one of your sprouts to explore.

• Begin writing about the original memory (or another memory if it’s shifted through your writing) from the context of the word sprout and see where your story grows.

• When you need a change or want to experiment with a different beginning to your story, choose a new word sprout or question seed, and then start the process over again.

• Now read through it once more with your feeling lens. Going sentence by sentence, circle all the words that make you feel an expansion in your body, warmth in your fingertips, or a flutter in your belly.

• On a separate page (or underneath what you have written) make a list of all the words you circled. These are your fertility story word sprouts.

• Over the next few days, weeks, or months, revisit your word sprouts. When you are ready to go deeper into writing about this story, pick one of your sprouts to explore.

• Begin writing about the original memory (or another memory if it’s shifted through your writing) from the context of the word sprout and see where your story grows.

• When you need a change or want to experiment with a different beginning to your story, choose a new word sprout or question seed, and then start the process over again.

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Are you ready to activate your superpowers as a creator in the fertility abundance garden? Learn more.

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

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.