Becoming a mother made me a better artist

When I thought about my future throughout my 20s, I knew I wanted to experience motherhood but I could not fathom how my life of putting on indie shows and spending every scrap of spare time on something related to writing, directing or producing those shows (and seeing shows), would ever be compatible with having a baby. But as I approached my 30s, I felt the biological clock tick, tick, ticking and I swear something in me just came online…suddenly I was interested in babies. I got a cat. Puppies were heartwarming on a new level. I had never been anti-animal, but all things cute, fluffy and tiny took on an emotional resonance that was new, which I put down to my ovaries telling me it was time. 

But I still struggled with how I could continue to be a theatre artist and a mother. Fortunately I had a steady teaching job at the VCA, but it was my practice I was concerned about. I had this notion that I needed to work really hard and get my career to a ‘certain point’ by the time I wanted to have a child. Exactly what was that point? Some vague notion of working with mainstage companies or having a show produced at a major festival… only then would I have enough of a career to ‘take a break’ from, as I brought a new human into the world. It makes me cringe to think of this now, as if I had to earn a pause for myself by achieving things that are not only difficult but so unlikely to happen on any sort of predetermined time frame.

The thought I finally had that dislodged this limiting and unrealistic (and really unhelpful) thinking was a beautifully simple one. I had spent so many thinking hours worrying about how much I would have to give up – which was not unrealistic, mind you – that I hadn’t seriously considered what I might gain. One day it occurred to me… “what if my life gets better with a child?” This thought unlocked possible futures that I had never considered and within 6 weeks of having that thought I was pregnant.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge that pregnancy and the journey to motherhood is really personal and unique for each person. It’s complicated and can be heartbreaking. And sometimes the hardest bit is after the baby is born.

Once the vulture days of morning sickness were over, I felt so special to have a little companion with me everyday. Everywhere I went, my baby went with me. I felt creative. I was excited. I loved being pregnant. I knew life would change and I started to surrender to the idea of a new kind of life. Then, as the brain-farts of pregnancy-brain kicked in I wanted to retreat and go within. Nature is great in that it gives you the better part of a year to get your head around the whole having a baby thing and I felt each day I was edging closer towards accepting that life would never be the same again. But it might get better.

I did a lot of research in the lead up to giving birth, mostly because I wanted to breastfeed. It led me to a lot of learning about unnecessary medical interventions, the cascade of interventions, unnecessary induction of labour and so many things that were news to me. I learnt so much about how women’s bodies exist within the hospital systems and kept coming across new research by leading midwives and birth professionals, committed to making the birth experience and early days of motherhood more joyous, more empowering. I wrote about this experience and the research I did into birth trauma in my new play Ripening, which has its first staged reading as part of La Mama Explorations Aug 30-Sep 1. There was so much about this process of becoming a mother that for me required real commitment and doing research to be informed. I wrote the play because I couldn’t believe how common traumatic and negative birth experiences are and how close I came to feeling I might not have control over my experience. I’m so grateful for the positive experience I had in the end, because as one midwife said to me, you draw on that deep strength and power from the birth experience in the challenging moments of having a newborn. I felt strongly (and still do) that this should be the common experience for women giving birth: an empowering experience one can draw upon in times of difficulty.

After I emerged from the haze of sleep-deprived newborn life, I started to feel a desire to create again. In fact, I felt intensely creative. As I sat in a wonderful armchair breastfeeding my baby for so many minutes, which must have totalled many hundreds, if not thousands of hours, I started to dream again of what I wanted to say through theatre. I started to have images appearing of scenes I wanted to write, symbols I wanted to explore theatrically, and plays that wanted to be written. I had spent a lot of time creating rather experimental works and playing with form and now I could imagine myself writing more traditional plays, bringing what I had learnt from my experiments into conventional forms. But now I had found my voice, my taste, my theatrical sensibility. I guess I had to go the long way around.

Something dawned on me as I grew into motherhood – a sense of being connected with many millions of people who were also raising their kids, paying their bills. I had come down to earth I guess. Motherhood is humbling. There are so many hours you spend doing repetitive games or tasks, some days where you are so sleep deprived you decide not to drive for fear of not being able to stay awake, you look down and see so many types of crap on your clothes - snot, porridge, banana, maybe even a flick of poop you didn’t notice before - and if you’re breastfeeding you smell like milk. It is not glamorous. But it is also full of the most intense joy ever. At no other time in my life have I been so happy and grateful at 6am. I am not a morning person by nature, but such is the power of love and the potency of a baby’s cry. 

As my boy started to have more of a rhythm to his day and had decent naps and sleep (which is a magical thing and does not happen for everyone), I found I had pockets of time. I used them to write. I wrote furiously. I still do. Those pockets when he is sleeping are so very precious and I try not to waste a minute. I wouldn’t say I was a procrastinator before, but honestly, if you want something done efficiently, ask a mother to do it. 

With the support of my amazing husband, mother and stepfather, I am actually finding that I can still be an artist. Not in the way I used to be – I think it will still be some time before I can direct properly, aside from the work I do at VCA. But I wrote a play, one that I think is crafted much better than anything I have written before. Something about the way motherhood has given me thinking time, creative energy and a real sense of humility has taken me deeper into craft. It might have something to do with the way motherhood immerses you in the world of practicalities: meals need to be made (and eaten), nappies need to be changed, clothes need to be washed (again and again). It’s possible this orientation led me to being less fixated on ‘is this good?’ and more concerned with ‘how can I strengthen this scene?’ or ‘what is this play trying to do or be and how do I get that on the page?’ I don’t have as much time to worry about an arbitrary value judgement, I need to get in there and work. Isn’t it always the way, that if we are end-result focused, we rarely end up with the result we wished for…

If someone had said to me in my younger life, having a baby might actually make you a better artist, I doubt I would have believed them. I think what has made me a better artist is having less time, so needing to use it better — and taking some of the focus off myself. Motherhood has not only given me perspective, but has also opened up a depth of love and feeling I never knew possible. Being a mother of course isn’t the only way to becoming a better artist, but I think it has given me the lessons I needed most.

Come and see the staged reading of Ripening as part of La Mama Explorations Aug 30-Sep 1 and share your feedback!