How To Be A Mother Artist

You’re impressed I, a mother of three small children, set aside time to create.

I understand the predicament.

Small children require so much little; little things to pick up, little sicknesses to attend to, little, constant needs for attention. Little details overcrowd maternal brains.

My dear, creative, pining mother, looking at me with those hungry eyes. Only a question arises in kind: How do you not?

How do you survive without it? How do you not fall down, tears streaming as sprinklers do, while searching for something, anything, to cover bare, little, cold legs? Shuffling through socks, brain clouding over, how do your knees not buckle, when the only certainty in life is the anguish welling up within your heart?

How do you not pound against walls with sudden bursts of anger and passion, catching loved ones off-guard, mid tantrum, giggles stuck in the air, as their rock and salvation crumbles before their eyes?

You ask me how I pull myself to my studio, and more specifically, where I find the courage to indulge myself in one, with the expenses so high.

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Indulge? Are you serious? I assure you, my dear, creative, pining, young mother, I could not escape the call of the asylum without it.

Instead, I ask you, dear mother, dear God: How do your kitchen walls not become prison walls without escape? Where does your anxiety go, when not extinguished through pen, brush, pick, or bow?

How does your other half fulfill you, when the question of your existence eats you up inside?

You ask me how I find time to do art with three small children, as if there’s a choice.

No answer comes. Only a must.

To live, to sustain life, I must.