A Creative Mama’s Story

When it comes to your life, your family, and your art, what is negotiable and what is non-negotiable?

Many things in our lives are non-negotiable. They are the bottom line things such as a roof over our heads, sunlight, bread, water, our children, sleep, and food.

But, there are also many things in our lives that have become non-negotiable because we are used to them, we don’t question them, and we don’t evaluate and define our priorities. In the realm of motherhood these are usually things we think we have to do to be a “good” mom: carpools, making our own baby food, having a kitchen floor that you could eat off of, etc. The non-negotiable will be different for each of us. But, there are things basic to our survival that will be on all of our lists. Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs in the form of a pyramid placing survival and physiological needs at the base and esteem and actualization at the top.

You can view the source of this information and see a picture of the pyramid on Wikipedia.

I agree with Maslow’s theory. I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies of it or the research behind it, but it makes sense. And most sensible people will make the assumption that artistic expression and creative fulfillment should be placed at the top of the pyramid in the realms of esteem or actualization.

However, for the sake of art, I am going to make the outrageous argument that we give ourselves permission to move our creativity as close to the base of the pyramid as possible.

When I am not creating, I feel it in my body. The same way you can physically feel the loss of love during a painful break up. For an artist the need to create and share her art is a physiological need. She must create and express herself in order to feel fully alive. When I am not creating, expressing, or challenging my skills and craft as a writer, actress, or director, I feel physically numb. I call this living in the “Drone Zone”. Now, I can get used to this numbness and live in the “Drone Zone”. At some low points in my life, I’ve done that successfully for several years, but that isn’t living. It is barely surviving.

Consider Joan’s monologue in Act VI of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. She is speaking to her judges who have given her the choice between signing a confession and living in their dungeons for the rest of her life or being burned at the stake. She says:

Light your fire …
You think that life is nothing but not being stone dead. It is not the bread and water I fear: I can live on bread: when have I asked for more? It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. Bread has no sorrow for me, and water no affliction. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again ride with the soldiers nor climb the hills; to make me breathe foul damp darkness, and keep from me everything that brings me back to the love of God when your wickedness and foolishness tempt me to hate Him: all this is worse than the furnace in the Bible that was heated seven times. I could do without my warhorse; I could drag about in a skirt, I could let the banners and the trumpets and the knights and soldiers pass me and leave me behind as they leave the other women, if only I could still hear the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed, blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind. But without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil and that mine is of God.

I love that monologue. It gives me goose bumps.

So, let’s say, our artistic inspiration and creative expression are to us what the “wind in the trees” and the “blessed, blessed church bells” are to Joan. Without them, we are not alive. So often I hear people say they are afraid to take a dance class or claim space in the house to set up their easel and paints because they don’t want to short change their children or take time away from their families. Of course we don’t want to short change our children. But let’s consider this, how fun is it to live with a mommy who is in the “Drone Zone”?

When a Creative Mama is not creating for the sake of being a “good” mom, she is not expressing her gifts or sharing our best self with those she loves. Consider the legacy of raising a daughter who has a kitchen floor clean enough to eat off of or raising a daughter who gives herself permission to express herself with color, music, or poetry. We teach by example. Our children soak us up like sponges every day. Living in the “Drone Zone” is a poor example to give them. It is short changing our children.

Here is what I am suggesting. Build your own pyramid and put your creativity as close to the bottom as possible. While you’re at it teach your daughters to build their own pyramids. You will have to make choices, re-evaluate your priorities, and probably negotiate for some help, but it is worth it. Make your art non-negotiable.

Last week we finished blocking Act I of The Laramie Project. I have to say I could not have done it without Dave Matthews. The latest, Stand Up, seems to fit the themes of the play (and my life). So I crank up my little E1 Rokr before the actors arrive to get my Matthews fix and that bit of inspiration I need to make it through two and a half hours of telling people where to go. I am thinking I am perhaps not cut out to be a director for the following reasons:

1) I hate telling people where to go.

2) I hate it more when I tell someone where to go and they ask my why.

That would mean I’m not cut out to a mom either. But, I am a mom so the point is mute.  (See how this all blends together into one senseless blur?)

Yesterday we had over 100 tornado warnings in the Midwest. The sirens telling us to take immediate cover went of at 4:45 pm and again at 10:00 pm - just after I had gotten a stressed out, hyper, over excited 6 year old to sleep. The first time at 4:45 my daughter didn’t want to go down to the basement without her toys. The second time at 10:00 she wanted to go down to the basement immediately and I didn’t because I was tired and it’s cold in the basement. We made a compromise and ended up sleeping on a twin matress in the hallway surrounded by stuffed animals. The hallway is internal. I closed the doors to all the rooms and we squished ourselves in between the coat closet and the linen closet. At 1:30 AM it was over and we got up and moved into my bedroom. I don’t like the whole tornado, hurricane, earthquake, mudslide, forest fire extravaganza that mother nature frequently throws our way. Where on this earth is the absolute safest place to be? I’m taking my child and moving there.Yeah right.

This week, we start in on the blocking of Act II and try to get the whole thing finished with a good solid stumble through on Thursday. It would probably be a good idea if I started thinking about where I want to tell people to go.

In my last post I said, “Being a people pleaser can be both a blessing and a curse.” So let’s hash out, shall we, the ways in which it is a curse. I also want to answer this question: 

Does being responsible to/for someone else mean you have to please them? 

I’ll speak in the first person because I know this role so well. Being a chronic people pleaser often makes me feel as if everyone else is in charge of my behavior. It makes me feel that I have no control over my time. It makes me feel that I have very few choices. In reality - I KNOW I am the only one in charge of me. I KNOW I have numerous choices (sometimes limited by circumstances - but choices nonetheless) that only I can make for myself every moment of every day. I think art, theater, and writing remind me that I do have those choices and having these acts of creation in my life on a daily basis shakes me out of the people pleasing stupor. 

The desire to please others, the belief that I can please others and the perceptions I have about having pleased them well or having disappointed them are for the most part fictional. It is a story I make up in my head. Unchecked, this fictional narrative becomes my primary source of motivation. I hand over my free will and my personal creative power to my perception of another person’s perception of me. 

This feels yucky and powerless. So why do I do it? I think the first answer is survival. I think we learn it in the womb - okay maybe that’s going back a bit far, but I think you know what I mean. If we please the big people when we are little people, the big people reward us and protect us. The second answer is that I don’t want to grow up. I am not a little person anymore. I am responsible for my own rewards and my own self-care. Therefore I no longer need to please the big people in order to survive. But, instead of individuating (becoming the whole, self-governed individuals we are meant to be), I carry the little person’s operating system out into the big world with me and project big person status onto various people like my boss, my co-workers, my collaborators, some peers, teachers, doctors, police, the media … and my daughter. 

Wait a minute! Did I just say I project big person status onto my daughter and behave as if I am the little person who needs to please her in order to survive? Yes, I did. Now, that’s just backwards, isn’t it? So what would frontwards look like? I am me. My daughter is her own person. My boss is his own person. My mother is her own person. None of us has to please the other in order to survive. My mother may be disappointed in me, but those are her feelings based on her expectations. My daughter may be disappointed because I won’t let her have a second Popsicle. She may throw a fit because her expectation of a second Popsicle has been thwarted by mom - again. If she throws a fit, we will all survive. None of us has to please the other in order to live through a temper tantrum. And for the bigger picture - how do I raise my daughter to be a self-governed, powerful, creative human being. I know there is some magical parenting fairy dust out there somewhere that will allow me to set age appropriate limits for her without making her feel like a “little person”.

I think I just answered the question in paragraph 1.

There is so much more to talk about on this subject. In summary, people pleasing is a story we make up in our heads which unchecked can become our primary motivating force. When this happens we are giving our creative power and our daily choices away and acting as if we have none. It is funny, sometimes, when I catch myself people pleasing (sometimes I do it when I am ordering my dinner in a restaurant) and I think, “Wow, I just gave my free will to that poor fella over there and he has absolutely no idea what to do with it.” More to come. Next post: People Pleasing - The Blessing. 

Go out and enjoy your free will today - create something powerful for yourself! 

Many blessings,
Kirsten

An example of the mind chatter: 

My daughter who has the flu and who is spending a day at home just asked me to put Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on for the sixth time.  I love Dick Van Dyke, but give me a break. I am home - missing a third day of work in 3 weeks. I haven’t worked one full week in all of January. I had the flu, I shared the flu and … it’s a vicious cycle. Thankfully her temperature has come down to 99.2 from 102.1 - what a relief! So I am sitting at the computer thinking about all the projects that I want to be working on and wondering if I have the energy or if I can find enough silence to work on any of them.

Right now I am on the verge:

• Auditions for The Laramie Project are only a week away.
• My collaborator and I are almost done with AS- not quite jello yet, but should be done within the week.
• My WIP, Earthscorcher, is waiting impatiently for me to return.

What does all this mean? It means I am feeling a bit of overwhelm. Overwhelm is a state that can completely paralyze me. So what to do? I know! I’ll create a new blog! Actually “writing it out” always helps me pick a direction in which to run. I am thinking now about ways to add pressure to each project.

Laramie has built in pressure because actors are going to show up to audition next Monday and Tuesday and I need to know who I am looking for. It also has the pressure of a very public deadline. We’re performing April 27, 28, and 29 whether we are ready or not.

AS has built in pressure because I am writing with a collaborator and I HATE it when people are waiting for me and I really HATE it when people are disappointed in me. (Being a people pleaser can be both a blessing and a curse - this subject deserves its own post.)

Earthscorcher has absolutely no built in pressure. It is for me and by me and I’m working solo. It is easy for me to remain accountable to others and not so easy for me to be accountable to myself. Thus the difficulty of balancing my “writerly” dreams with being a mom, I mean a working mom, I mean a working single mom. (It just gets better, doesn’t it?) The only reason for me to return to Earthscorcher is because I enjoy it and want to write it. The characters are waiting somewhat impatiently for me to return. I wonder how much longer I can let the pressure of their voices build in my head before they give up on me completely.

So there you have it. A breakdown of the major projects.

Then there is life. My beautiful daughter, Emma, has the flu. It seems to be cycling every 6 hours or so. Her fever goes down after a dose of the medicine and she is bored, bored, bored being stuck at home with me. Her fever goes back up and she just wants to crawl into my lap and have me rub her back. There is no question about my priority in this situation. Everything else is dropped when it is back rubbing time.

Then there is the pseudo-guilt I feel about missing another day of work. I was sick two days last week. Then, of course and unfortunately, Emma came down with it on Saturday afternoon. The office manager said, “Don’t worry about us. We’ll muddle through.” Yikes! It is the conundrum of having no choice and too many choices at the same time.

Can anyone relate?