The adventure of living creatively

Hi! I’m thrilled to be joining Today’s Mama Boston. I live close enough to Boston to make it legit, but really, I live at the end of a long dirt road in Vermont with my husband T. and our two little guys, Bean and Sprout.*

(* their blogosphere monikers.)

Bean is five, rides his dirt bike like a hellion, picks me flowers, and is currently enthralled with pirates.

Sprout is one, tall for his age, and an utter rascal. With his big brother to follow around, he gets into mischief everywhere he goes, and gives me darling drooly kisses.

Together they are trouble; and also two of the very best things that have ever happened in my life.

I am writer and mixed media artist with a day job. I have developed a rather serious recent crush on graphic design; I make my own bread from scratch; I keep a notebook; and I’m in the midst of making an illustrated collection of essays and prose called  A Field Guide To Now.

I’m hoping to share bits of my life here, and some ideas for living creatively with small children.

Life with little ones can have an astounding impact on creativity. It can be the best thing, and also the worst. It can shrink or expand your horizons, and regularly does both like a fun house mirror.

Life with small children is a perpetual sticky-fingered, dirty-floored endeavor, and I’m in the thick of it, curious and astounded every single day.

Many days this endeavor doesn’t feel particularly balanced: there is never enough time and always too much laundry, but I am committed to noticing the small, exquisite moments and to sharing them here with you. Hopefully you’ll join in and share your own creative living adventures.

The way I see it, we’re all looking for road maps. We all want to know how each other are navigating this crazy adventure of being parents and also ourselves. It’s uncharted territory. As mothers who are also other things (writers, scientists, analysts, accountants, teachers, researchers, artists, doctors, yogis, actors, journalists, inventors, rock stars, superheroes,) we don’t have hundreds of years of successful, creative women to look to (the way men comparably do.)

There were women, certainly, who broke all kinds of boundaries and astounded the world with their vision and talent, but not many of them, and often the catch was this: they didn’t have kids. Arguably, their successes were possible because they could live outside the parameters of what was expected of women who were also mothers. Now though, the terms have changed. Possibility is ours.

I want these years to be ones I look back on with satisfaction and joy: at what I achieved in my own creative life, and at the creativity I shared with my family. And I’m looking forward to recording some of those moments here.  I’m also curious: what does living creatively as a mother look like to you?

Tags: adventure, art, Creative Living, creativity, creativity with children, motherhood