I’ve always likened my motherhood experience to that of the Selkie Mother who’s hide has been hidden. I can be present with my children, I can nurture them and provide for their basic need but I always have that hide in the back of my mind. The hide that I wore before I gave myself to other people. The hide that warmed me in my independence. The Selkie Mother is my kindred spirit and one day it is one of her own children who brings her back that hide. Our children can teach us many things and even bring us back to ourselves in the smallest, innocent ways.
Oh Grace, I feel this so strongly. I remember being very early postpartum and reading a retelling of Selkie story and just thinking to myself...THIS. I don't think I ever fully understood that story until I became a mother. Thank you deeply for bringing this telling back into our space here. I felt it like I feel the ocean.
I just wrote about my experience yesterday, which was similar in a way that I feel I have been dissolved and put together again into a whole new person.
But for me motherhood seemed to have released creativity I have been denying myself. Now that my resources are so limited, I care way less about what everyone else thinks 🙂
Isn't one of the most wild, amazing, unintelligible paradoxes, isn't it? The very thing that takes all our time away from us, shows us just how expansive we can actually be. Thank you so much for this sharing Polina.
This reminds me of a piece about how motherhood didn’t just change me… it rearranged me! It really wasn’t until my second daughter was born that my creativity returned fully. I could create for others in my work before, but the fire within me to alchemise my own raw material into something wasn’t there. Now it’s back but in a different rhythm… one that’s much slower and gentler in some ways but then urgent and fast in others. Your writing always speaks to me Asia. Thank you xx
I’ve always likened my motherhood experience to that of the Selkie Mother who’s hide has been hidden. I can be present with my children, I can nurture them and provide for their basic need but I always have that hide in the back of my mind. The hide that I wore before I gave myself to other people. The hide that warmed me in my independence. The Selkie Mother is my kindred spirit and one day it is one of her own children who brings her back that hide. Our children can teach us many things and even bring us back to ourselves in the smallest, innocent ways.
Oh Grace, I feel this so strongly. I remember being very early postpartum and reading a retelling of Selkie story and just thinking to myself...THIS. I don't think I ever fully understood that story until I became a mother. Thank you deeply for bringing this telling back into our space here. I felt it like I feel the ocean.
The selkie story was so much a part of my personal mythology when I was a new mother, for this very reason.
I just wrote about my experience yesterday, which was similar in a way that I feel I have been dissolved and put together again into a whole new person.
But for me motherhood seemed to have released creativity I have been denying myself. Now that my resources are so limited, I care way less about what everyone else thinks 🙂
Isn't one of the most wild, amazing, unintelligible paradoxes, isn't it? The very thing that takes all our time away from us, shows us just how expansive we can actually be. Thank you so much for this sharing Polina.
This reminds me of a piece about how motherhood didn’t just change me… it rearranged me! It really wasn’t until my second daughter was born that my creativity returned fully. I could create for others in my work before, but the fire within me to alchemise my own raw material into something wasn’t there. Now it’s back but in a different rhythm… one that’s much slower and gentler in some ways but then urgent and fast in others. Your writing always speaks to me Asia. Thank you xx
Mmmm yes!!! The rearrangement is so real and so deep. I love this reflection Lauren. And I am constantly in awe of your own creative fire.
Thank you for writing this, I can so relate. I feel like I'm still in the process of getting my creativity back .
❤️❤️❤️
Having just weaned my second daughter I suddenly feel like I have the resources for myself again for the first time since I became a mum ❤️
This is amazing Clare. Thank you, thank you for reporting back from this other side.