05. Sticking to your principles as the noise gets louder

It's not a new phenomenon to feel as though happiness/values are put in an antithesis to making money... Exceptional free read of the 5th instalment in the Mother-Artist column

Welcome to Follow Your Gut, a newsletter about the artist life and business based on my experience from a soon decade long independent artist career.

Hi there!

There’s already a red thread emerging at such an early stage of my column-to-be-book “Mother-Artist” and I’m really thrilled about it.

More than anything, my children made me bloom into a fuller version of myself. Not the inverse, which is so often portrayed.

I’ve struggled. I’ve suffered. Like so many other mothers.

But just like with my art business, I refuse to settle for something less. I refuse to settle for a narrative of how I’m supposed to mother if it doesn’t sit well with me. And I refuse to run my business in a way that I’m supposed to if it doesn’t feel right to me.

This instalment is free to read as an invitation into the exploration of what it means to be a mother-artist. Or actually, it’s a greater invitation than that. It aims to open the reflections around what it means to continue to follow your gut as life inevitably changes.

Do you really have to choose this OR that?

Or can you lead a life of abundance within this AND that? What is it about unsolicited advices when you go against the norm, and are there ways to not let resistance grab a hold of us and make us blind to our own purpose?

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Entry 05

In the last instalment “Two major themes emerged after the announcement, both equally uncomfortable”, I highlighted how fearful messaging mixed with a skewed perspective of children as marketing tools threw me off track from the get go.

Even though I didn’t realise it at the time, the experience of resistance in motherhood was just beginning.

In the book the War of Art, Steven Pressfield famously talks about how resistance is a necessary evil. Resistance will show up and try to make you stop making your art whenever he can and it’s your job to resist the urge to stop. Just stick to your work.

The same, I feel, happens in motherhood too. Resistance in the latter case often comes in the form of external pressure concealed as well-meaning advice. That it’s “for your own good” that you’re constantly given unsolicited “recommendations” which may go completely against your own gut feeling.

Like the shocking example of recommending me to use my unborn child as a marketing tool to drive traffic for business…. From the “recommenders” perspective it was probably not more than a well-intended advice on how to grow the business, knowing that images of cute babies tend to get a lot more engagement than pictures without it.

But for me it became an absolute clash with my personal moral values of privacy and integrity. And frankly, I was not prepared to nudge my principles for the potential opportunity to make more money.

It’s not a new phenomenon where it feels as though happiness/values are put in an antithesis to making money. As if the two cannot co-exist but rather live mutually exclusive to each other.

Why?!

Why can’t you lead a life of personal creative fulfillment, while ALSO being a present mother, while ALSO making good money?

Why do we have to choose this OR that, and not this AND that?

Like with everything, I refuse to accept a truth I don’t believe to be true. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize the challenge to create my own truth of coexistence.

It’s HARD.

Especially when your mere existence may nudge by-passers the wrong way due to their own personal insecurities. It easily becomes a very lonely path.

This is a big deal. Going against the norm is not as easy as it can sound. It requires a lot of power to resist the urge to settle and to always stay true to oneself.

Me in Paris looking very thoughtful… it felt fitting for this entry!

Being a relatively young mother by modern standards, I can’t help but contemplate on whether age plays a role here. Adultism and ageism are a thing, and something I’m currently exploring out of fascination, especially how to avoid to use these -isms as unconscious power tools against my own children.

I don’t think that age legitimizes you as knowing more or necessarily automatically granting you more experience. Age may bring an advantage of time, of having had the chance to face more situations which thereby bring more experience.

But only so far as making those experiences relevant for others in various circumstances. To say that “I’m older therefore I know better” is irrelevant when it comes to things that said older person has never experienced.

Gabor Maté once said something in an interview (sorry I don’t remember in which) that really struck me. In it he claimed that no child has the same parents, despite being biological siblings. The reason is that no parent is statically the same as time progress.

For example, your financial or geographical circumstance might change from a year to another. So may your health, mental peace and relationships. As a result, your experiences are only as relevant to others as they are applicable to general scenarios.

Something like falling in love and becoming a mother are general, it happens to many (most?) women at one point or another. But when we take all aspects into consideration, the circumstances around your love-story or entry into motherhood can look vastly different.

To fail to recognise nuances in our existence is perhaps one of the pandemics of our time.

Popular copywriting tactics like to paint the picture of who the targeted buyer is. But when the picture is painted too broad it technically targets everyone and no one…

The same goes for short form rapid content, which doesn’t have the time to go in depth to explore the nuances but rather focuses on the superficial.

Have we become too superficial? Is that why there are endless unsolicited advice out there for just about everything?

To love a gut-lead life is what I’m set here to do and I’ll do anything to stand for my principles as the noise gets louder.

Thanks for reading!

Elin, xx

Ps. If you enjoyed this more personal type of essay, I warmly invite you to join my paid offering as I’ll be focusing on developing this column over the summer.

Mother-Artist Index so far (paid):

• Introduction (FREE): How to be a mother-artist?

• 01. Maybe we have to go through a shit-show to fully bloom into who we’re meant to be?

• 02. What I wish I knew before I became a mother

• 03. I rather be successful behind the scenes than forced to keep up a fake facade

• 04. Two major themes emerged after the announcement, both equally disturbing

And for further free reading, check out the archive! The majority of my essays are free to read ❤️

Sending you love, Elin

Hi there!

I’m a Swedish (expat) artist, published author and mother of two who’ve lived off my art for my entire adult life, through residencies in 9 countries and while raising a young trilingual family. There are lots of exciting threads to untangle, come join?

If it’s our first date: Here’s a direct link to indulge in the free archive. New letters goes behind the paywall after 1 week.

Paying readers get instant access to my e-book “When Will You Get a Real Job”, the serialisation of the sequel: Mother-Artist, and the entire 100+ archive of artist life and business writing to get you fuelled to create more art on your terms.