My Mother’s Day
My artwork and career have grown around motherhood, so Mother's Day is big.
A big part of starting my business was about making room for motherhood. I wanted to be a mother without letting anyone dictate my schedule or capabilities, so I found this in starting a business as an independent artist.
Running my business has let me stay home with my daughter and create a flexible schedule. Prior to having my daughter, I've preferred a fluid workday. I like to work when it's quiet and when I'm inspired, sometimes at night. This flexibility has been vital, and given me plenty of time with my daughter to do all the fun things we like to do together.
After starting my business, I discovered my audience pursuing the same dream—balancing business with family and many of my designs have been used by mom/ family-owned businesses.
Starting my business was also about making room for motherhood.
Getting to motherhood was hard without my mom, who I lost in 2013, to cancer. Beyond motherhood, not having a mom has been incredibly hard. It taught me figure out how to mother myself with self care and love, this was especially true while navigating recurring pregnancy loss, and infertility. (Deep breath as I write this.) Mother’s Day was devastating for a long time and it can still sting at times. My artwork was a reprieve and a constructive distraction to work on my career while waiting for a family.
I gracefully surrendered to the idea that there was a good chance I would be childless when I was blessed with a viable pregnancy in early 2020.
I sense her passion coming through in me, and my daughter.
For this Mother’s Day, I’d like to celebrate my mom.
She was a helper, teacher, nurse, and activist, among many other roles she played. She worked hard to create a safe place for us teenagers to hang out after school by creating a theater group with my friends. She created community, she valued literacy and helped impoverished woman and girls build their reading skills. She had a fierce commitment to owning one’s birth experience and worked to empower women to own their birth story and ultimately give birth without fear.
Her experience as a delivery room nurse gave her valuable insight into the politics and business of women’s health and witness the capacity for traumatic birth experiences. As a teenager, her passion for birth was at times embarrassing, but it usually ended in laughter.
On the eve of giving birth, her presence was felt in my peaceful mindset. She normalized unmedicated labor throughout my life, and I was elated to give birth—without injury or complications—and with a team who were highly experienced in unmedicated birth. Navigating societal perceptions of unmedicated childbirth felt uncomfortable but I knew in my gut that my mom’s expertise was what I knew in my heart to be true, not an anomaly.
She helped many women who felt compelled to tell me of how important her help was even after she passed. I appreciated their gratitude, and finally understood her fierce passion for owning one’s birth story after I had my baby.
Happy Mother’s Day!
