Taking Flight: Seeing by Starlight (Offering 9.4)
Learning to live, love, and make art as a new mom.
Welcome to motherhood, where magic and exhaustion collide, and I try to comprehend who I am inside it all.
(If you’re new to Eclosion: An Artist’s Path to Power and Peace, start at the beginning. Or visit my Memoir Hub for a full table of contents with links.)
Seeing by Starlight
We named her Seren Alma.
Shon was a bit sad that I’d called out Seren’s name during her birth—he’d wanted to choose it together. I offered to change it, but he liked the name; said it was already hers. Seren—pronounced like serenity—is derived from the Welsh word for star. Alma is Spanish for soul. She truly has the soul of a star—ancient yet illuminating the world around her with joy and light.
Shon took the first couple of weeks after Seren’s birth off from work to be with us. Friends brought us meals, washed dishes, and nourished us with company and care as we learned how to care for our newborn.
One morning, Shon carried her off into the woods without telling me. Anxiety spiked when I noticed they were gone, receding when they walked back into view. It was important to Shon that he establish his role as Seren’s parent—to show that he could take care of her on his own. I was truly grateful for this, simply asking that he let me know before leaving with our newborn.
We saved the umbilical cord to plant under a tree later and prepared my placenta as medicine. With my history of emotional ups and downs, I was worried I might have postpartum depression and knew eating my placenta could help. Some years earlier I’d prepared a friend’s placenta for her—boiling, drying, grinding, and encapsulating the medicine of her body, so she could reintroduce those vital hormones and nutrients.
This time, Shon and Jen were in charge. We marveled at how the blood vessels in the placenta resembled a tree, with deep roots and spreading branches. The ritual of making medicine felt rich and ancient, further connecting me to the Elk who kept watch from the forest. I took the capsules until they were gone, and while I was sleep deprived, I was also happy and grounded, falling more and more deeply in love with my child every day.
When Seren was seven days old, we dipped her tiny baby toes into the icy waters of Kennedy Creek, anointing her in the waters of the Pacific Northwest. She immediately screamed and curled her feet up. Perhaps this is why she is a water child, years later telling us that when she swims underwater, she feels like she is flying and knows herself better than at any other time.
We received the keys to our new home when Seren was four weeks old. We’d been working to leave Delphinia behind for months and finally began the next part of this arduous task—packing, moving, and cleaning. With Shon working full time and me unable to lift much, we couldn’t have done it without the help of so many friends and family. Both our moms came to visit, thrilled to meet Seren. They helped with the move, the baby, cooking and cleaning. My mom stayed for an entire month—a huge help and a joy watching her and Seren bond.
It was also a lot having both moms visit. I was still trying to get a handle on breastfeeding—I had so much milk that my breasts were painfully, even absurdly, engorged, so swollen and veined I could hardly recognize my own body in the mirror.
I sat nursing Seren on the deck while Shon’s mom helped him unload boxes from the back of his van. She paused to coo at Seren, who unlatched from my breast with a pop to look around. Milk shot out of my breast, hit Seren in the eye, spraying all over the deck, narrowly missing my mother-in-law. Finally, I got a cloth over my breast to catch the milk, wiped the milk from Seren’s face, and looked sheepishly at my mother-in-law.
Ah the joys of becoming a parent.
I was also trying to get back to work, but with little success. My intention at the time was to start an Artist Mama blog, to inspire and connect with other artist moms. I wrote just one entry and never published it. Having a baby is often all-consuming, which is likely why I had such a hard time finding other artist moms online. This is what I wrote:
We awoke, we nursed, we cuddled, we nursed some more. Somehow, I managed to eat breakfast, have coffee, and brush my teeth. Oh wait, that was because my mom is here.
Seren is six weeks old. It’s been a magical, heart opening time, filled with so much love and wonder—and so many challenges.
Last night was a struggle. Seren fussed for a couple of hours, then went into all-out screaming. I could get her to calm down for a bit, maybe nurse, sometimes fall asleep, but she wouldn’t stay asleep and would immediately begin to scream once she awoke. Some of the things we did: bounced on the yoga ball, nursed, changed positions, sang songs, walked around outside in the dark, swayed, hummed, lay down flat, changed her diaper, changed her diaper and all her clothes, bounced, bounced, bounced, nursed some more… And finally sleep came.
I need to put in my first art proposal since her birth. It is due next Tuesday. I have no idea how I am going to get it done. Even as I write, which I’ve been doing while bouncing up and down with Seren in the carrier, she is waking up and demanding something different.
I haven’t made art since she was born.
That last line—“I haven’t made art since she was born”—hit me hard. Caring for a newborn is HARD! The idea of being a mom and an artist was unimaginable at that time. Considering I was only six weeks post-partum, I probably could have been easier on myself. As a friend later wrote to me, “I mean this with love: Psh. You made SEREN.”
When Seren was just a few months old, in late 2016, I was sitting in meditation while she slept in my lap. This was during a time where it felt like the whole world was falling apart, kind of like it feels right now. I sat there, meditating on how, amidst all of the hard things in this world, how could I be the best mama possible for her? As I sat there with this absolutely precious little being in my lap, my mind clear and my heart connected, I heard these words:
The best thing you can do for her is to stand up for what you believe in and follow your own bliss at the same time.
With that message resonating through my entire being, the way forward suddenly appeared. I didn’t get to just be her mom and be with her all the time—a luxury that many mamas don’t have, but that was available to me, at least for a while. That wasn’t what Seren needed. She needed me to go out into the world and show her, show myself, and anyone else who needed to see it, what it looks like to stand up for what I believe in, and to do so while doing what I love. For me, that meant taking part in the environmental and social justice work that is so needed, and doing so through the context of collaborative art.
With crystal clarity, I found ways to continue to do my work while nurturing my baby, stepping more fully into my role as artist and change maker. As Seren grew, her needs changed. Sometimes she would come to work with me—sleeping in my lap while I typed up a proposal or strapped on my back while I painted a mural or sculpted with metal. Sometimes my mom would visit and help care for her. We were part of a nanny share for a while, and she went to an outdoor preschool. I found ways to do my work, and she thrived by having a community of people to support her.
I was still Seren’s primary caregiver, so even though I had some hours dedicated to work, I couldn’t work as many hours as artists without kids. Sometimes the sharp sting of jealousy would strike—jealousy of artists who could spend all their time on their art practice. It felt like I was getting left behind and would never be as prolific, or make as big of an impact, as those other artists.
But I kept at it. Every year I made more art and completed more projects—murals, sculptures, collaborative Art in Action Projects, community engagement work. I continued learning and studying ways to be a better facilitator, a better leader, a better ally. I practiced my craft and continued to learn about climate change and climate justice. I kept making art. I kept growing.
Even though I couldn’t work as fast as some artists, my résumé and portfolio increased tremendously. I grew as an artist, as a leader, as a change maker. I grew not despite having a child, but because I had a child.
Before Seren, before sobriety, before Shon, I wasn’t as hopeful about humanity’s future. When Al Gore’s documentary about global warming came out in 2006, I went to see it with Shon and another friend. They were crushed by the movie, sharing their shock and fear for humanity out loud as we drove home through the dark. I was not empathetic—of course we were killing the earth. Hadn’t they been paying attention? Instead, I told them it wasn’t that big of a deal. The earth would survive, even if we didn’t. At the time, that was what was important to me. The earth. Not the people on the earth. I’m not sure I believed that we deserved to survive with all the damage we were doing.
My perspective shifted over time, as I changed—growing into someone capable of loving herself and therefore others. And even more so after having Seren.
Life takes on a different meaning with children—a different intensity, a fragility. Today, I want nothing more than to usher in a world where my child, and all children, have the opportunity to not only survive, but thrive.
What has helped you find yourself in times of exhaustion or change?