Self-sabotage as a socially accepted norm for mother artists
Self-sabotage as a socially accepted norm for mother artists
We are expected to not make it, so why bother?
Hi there,
Welcome to Follow Your Gut, a newsletter about the artist life and business where we uncover how to listen to our guts in a world that tries to stuff it with fluff.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how I’ve struggled to write the mother-artist column as a linear narrative based on my own experience of being a mother, while also working as a full time artist.
I’ve come to realize that the main reason I’ve struggled was due to the narrative being driven by personal events, as opposed to personal reflections, which to me is a BIG difference.
Does that make sense?
Ironically, I set myself up with an editorial calendar (driven by personal events) shortly after I wrote the piece “Nothing kills my flow faster than an editorial calendar”, and well, it killed my flow (shocker).
I suppose you could say, shit happens.
The thing with shit though, when you’re a mother especially, is that you can’t let it sit too long. You must clean up the mess or you’ll use that shit as a legitimate excuse for inactivity forever. I mean, it’s convenient, I won’t lie about that. But I also think that the social encouragement to use our children as an excuse for why we don’t advance on our personal goals, is unfair to our children (and to us!).
Before continuing today’s essay about self-sabotage as a socially accepted norm for mother artist, I want to declare that the column is NOT dead. In fact, I’ve been doing a lot of shadow work on it to figure out what blocked me and how to proceed.
My conclusion is that I will no longer drive the narrative based on chronological events. Instead, I will use the column for anything related to being a mother-artist, whether it is a contemporary reflection or account of past events.
If you missed the previous ten instalments of the mother artist column you can check them all out here (heads up: they’re mostly behind a paywall)
Self-sabotage in the context of this essay, is the contradictory action of actively NOT working on the things you want to do, and instead do everything else.
This type of self-sabotage can also be considered as proactive procrastination of which I am a self-proclaimed Olympic medalist, by the way. )There are exceptions though, like scrolling on social media, which is NEVER proactive but a time and energy sucking passive devil).
It’s mind boggling when the proactive procrastination happens, because you don’t understand why it’s so bloody hard, when the self-appointed task at hand entails what you love to do: make art.
Here’s the twist:
It all gets exaggerated when you become a mother, because “kids”.
I like to blame the kids-excuse on society who installs a narrative that your life ends when you become a mother, and that everything you have going on is secondary to raising those children.
What happens, as I’ve witnessed in both myself and women around me, is that this narrative becomes internalized as an answer to why we don’t get to work on our dreams while our children are young.
I want to challenge this narrative.
Maybe there is a way. A way that doesn’t equate a full-time in house nanny.
Maybe we must be more honest with ourselves regarding how we spend our time and why.
Are we merely coping,
are we avoiding,
or are we even self-sabotaging by using socially accepted excuses (which by the way are often realities not to be neglected), for why we don’t advance?
Self-sabotage can come in the shape of a lot of diggerent things.
For instance (but certainly not limited to):
Scrolling on social media (triggering the comparison trap we’re all so familiar with…)
Negative self-talk (oftentimes re-inforcing the comparison trap as to why we’re such failures at both mothering and artistry)
Always prioritizing others, in every situation (perfect set-up to blame “others” for why we didn’t get our shit done)
Always prioratizing other activities than what we have in front of us (like reoriganising the attic… like, why?)
Constantly starting new projects without finishing the prior ones
Make promises we know we’ll have a hard time to keep (and which we’ll inevitable feel bad about later on)
Over-schedule = overwhelm = SEND HELP
It’s worth to re-state: This is just a fraction of the list, but which all contribute to major time and energy loss that are not related to anything our children do or don’t do.
To work on something that we love and which is of great important to us, requires a lot of energy and focus. It can be very uncomfortable (even if we love it), because we so badly want (insert thing) to turn out well. We worry we won’t make it (and society tells us that we probably won’t do a good job anyway, so why bother?)
The “probably won’t do a good job”, tends to be an in between the lines sensation rather than a transparent open statement.
Just think about it;
How many times have you been confronted with the criticism that “you can’t possibly financially sustain yourself as an artist”?
It’s everywhere. The starving artist syndrome is real.
Now let’s look at motherhood.
How many times do you receive unsolicited advice for how to do this mothering thing, suggesting that the way you do it probably isn’t the best way (and God forbid, you may ruin your children for giving them some screentime, or don’t even dare to utter that you wish to homeschool them… OOOOOOOHHHHH instant failure.)
We are wired into negative belief systems about our identities (assuming you identify as both a mother and artist). As a result, if we in fact don’t make it, it’s more the rule than an acception to the rule - HOW SAD IS THAT?!
If there is anything that I feel deeply passionate about, it’s to reframe the narrative around what it possible. And to help open the eyes for the possibility that maybe, by tweaking our mindset and approach to things, we can actually achieve a great lot more than we ever thought was possible (than we were ever told was possible).
We don’t need permission from anyone else to mother the way we feel intuitively lead to mother, or to be an artist the way we intuitively feel lead to make our art.