When you can’t find time to create as a mother

Hi, I am back on Substack after taking a break for Lent. It was a beautiful time that strengthened my faith and relationship with God and has helped me clarify my purpose as a mother and creative going forward. I wrote the following piece a few weeks ago as I meditated on why it can be so hard to simply sit down and write (or create.) I hope you enjoy it!

Dear reader,

Do you ever wonder where your ambition and creativity went? That lightness and quickening of your pulse you felt when a new idea flashed across your mind and delighted your soul? Now it’s all ketchup-coated plates in the wash, socks strewn across the living room, and a list of dreary phone calls to make.

Then of course you finally get a block of time, a delightful reprieve from the everyday, and your fingers freeze above the keyboard. The words, the images, the patterns of creativity that so naturally flowed pre-kids? Well, it takes a cup of coffee and a handful of prayers to coax the flow to ebb over the sink’s edge and tumble into your waiting reservoir.

So sometimes it just seems easier to not try.

To not feel the limitations of your creativity, but instead stick to the tasks you can do with your eyes closed: the laundry, the meals, the carpool line. It’s not that these things make you happier by any stretch of the imagination (although, you feel the immense value in cultivating a home for your family), but rather they’re safe.

As safe as a cardboard box in a rainstorm.

Because the truth is that a good soaking of reality quickly reminds you that you cannot go that long without creating. Just like the Creator couldn’t help bringing you into existence, you also cannot go without pouring yourself out onto the tablet of expression. After all, you were made in the image of the Creator, why would your creative inclinations be any less necessary?

Motherhood is thus an acknowledgment of a dance between the monotonous and the creative. Your earthly home and your heavenly imagination. It’s remembering that you weren’t created to solely clean and toil, but to bring beauty into the world through your hands and heart. From childbirth to homemaking to writing to designing to cultivating, you are a vessel for what is true and beautiful.

When I was newly pregnant with my third child, I remember telling my husband I didn’t have time to write the children’s chapter book that was on my heart. It started at bedtime with my two little bright-eyed girls, a tale I wove about two sisters who traveled the United States with their parents in a vintage Airstream. It was a seedling of my own dreams for my family, a way to take my hopes and give them flight. I had begun writing it down, but my creativity stalled.

My husband was writing and recording his debut EP while working during the day at the hospital. He was gone many evenings and weekends playing shows, and it was an especially hard pregnancy. For the first few months I couldn’t tolerate the smells of our 1940s house; like a bloodhound I could detect every inch of old wood and damp corners, and it took a bottle of lavender oil under my nostrils to even enter my own home and keep my nausea from bubbling over. To top it off, the odor of meat completely pushed me over the edge, and I reluctantly went vegan to cope. I was exhausted, always slightly hangry, and working on a book was really the last thing I thought I should be focusing on.

Have you ever felt that persistent nudge, like a toddler tugging on your dress hem? My husband gently, but firmly reminded me of why I was writing the story and what it meant for our family’s future and dreams and the floodgates poured open. It was greater than the fatigue, greater than the nausea, greater than my own excuses for why I couldn’t.

I sat down at my laptop, all pregnant belly and high emotions, then it hit: I was in the flow, writing and crying and feeling the full spectrum of creativity coursing through my body, as I filled pages of that book.

This experience of unlocked creativity, even as a mother with a full life, is for you. So let me ask you:

What is causing your creative flow to be blocked?

What do you tell yourself when you think of sitting down to create?

And what would it mean to you and your family to actually see your creative expression out in the world?

The completion of my chapter book and my husband’s EP debut both culminated with our youngest’s birth and were the catalyst that changed our family’s life forever. He released his debut to a sold out theater of 200 people, our youngest 6 months old resting in an Ergo carrier on my chest, little baby headphones on his ears. And although my chapter book never got picked up by a publisher1, it led to us traveling full-time around the United States as a family.

The bedtime story indeed became our reality.

This is why creativity is not superfluous. It’s not something extra that maybe you can squeeze in someday when life slows down. It’s daily bread for sustaining you, the mother and creative guiding her family in the pursuit of a meaningful life.

In “Liturgies of the Wild” by Martin Shaw, he shares about the mythology of color and how one uses it throughout life. He explains that with Red:

(Y)ou have it readily available as a kind of fuel. It’s the Red that urges you on, gives you the courage to take a position, draw a line in the sand. It’s the Red that lets you dream big, pack a suitcase, and head out on an adventure.

Friends used to tease me in high school as about 60% of my wardrobe was made up of red clothing. I gravitated to the bold and courageous embodiment it supplied me. And even though we’re talking about Red in the most symbolic of terms, isn’t it fascinating that for many of us, our adult homes and wardrobes are awash in neutrals?

We tell ourselves that too much color is overwhelming and overstimulating. We want the Nordic home with its minimalist white walls, white kitchen, blond woods, and aesthetically pleasing wooden children’s toys. Yes, it feels more calm, but is it also anesthetizing our creative flow? I don’t want to be perfectly calm if it comes at the cost of my courage.

My belief is that being creative does take courage, the kind of boldness that is cultivated in baby steps that stack until it’s just who you are. Courage looks like sharing that Substack post that you’re afraid is too much. Courage is buying the painting supplies, the easel, and actually using them. Courage is taking the next step when you don’t know where it’s going to lead.

Which means sometimes your creative courage must also rise above your own rationality. You know – that voice in your mind that tells you to be realistic, to not step on any toes or ask too much. It’s the voice that compares you to that other person doing what you want to do. It loves to pipe up when you even think of taking action and it quiets down when you don’t.

“And the Lord answered me:

Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so he may run who reads it.” Habakkuk 2:2

This is why you must have a compelling vision for your own creative endeavors. I found that I’ve always needed to know how my creativity helps my family and is part of the future we’re building. A clear vision may very well emotionally move you when you let yourself slow down and truly think about it. Perhaps, like me, it may even result in hot tears of purpose. This, I believe, is your soul reminding you of your God-given purpose and why He gave you the gifts that He did.

You are the one that must connect the dots, breathe life into your Why, and then use that vision as your fuel daily. This is how you honor the gifts God bestowed upon you and let yourself be more of who He has called you to be.

When we look at it from this perspective, doesn’t it make sense then to make time for your creativity? To not let your To Do list steal it away? To not use your children and home as an excuse?

My encouragement to you this week is to write down the vision, pray over it and ask for God’s wisdom in pursuing it. Let yourself be more Red and put a creativity block on your To Do List every single week. Treat it like the very important divine “appointment:” that it is. You do have time and your creative endeavors are worth it.

With love,

PS. I’d love to hear from you: what was your biggest takeaway from this essay? Will you commit to a regular creative practice? If this spoke to you, please restack or share with a friend. Thank you for being here!

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