The Postpartum of your creative pursuits

How we conceive, gestate, birth and nourish our ideas.

Friends,

This was hidden behind a paywall but since pausing subscriptions for everyone, I’ve decided to share it publicly! Grab a cuppa, and join me in a journey through creativity, birth and how our ideas mimic our birthprints.

I’m really excited to share this post with you. I originally wrote it as a guest writer for another Publication, and had to wait minimum three months before I could release it to my community here. I’ve been counting down the days.

I believe that this concept of exploring our OWN birth, as an insight into our creative process, to be generally unknown. Unknown, and incredibly powerful and completely game changing. Even if you’ve never birthed your own babies. You were born. therefore you have inherited a creative blueprint. This process offered an incredible exploration for myself and shifted the entire way I show up creatively, as a mother maker, and beyond.

It’s had me release confusion, shame or a lack of clarity around how I make, what I make, and gifted me an incredible amount of confidence in my own very personal process.

Our birth stories become blueprints.

Our own births.

Then again in different ways for each of our children.

In this post we completely unpack this and explore through my storytelling and examples. You’ll likely want to take notes.

I also show you how to shift and change these blueprints when they are no longer serving the way you’d like to show up in the world.

Before we begin, this post is simply a TASTE of the sort of content we cover in The Art of Alchemy - my 10 week online program for mothers in soul led business. YOU are invited. The course is made so much more accessible due to it being a group program. The pilot round had 107 wonderful women journeying with me and doors have JUST opened for this next intake. There is an early bird discount for the next couple of days and I’d hate for you to miss it.

If you want to check it out now CLICK HERE

and I’ll include another link further down xx

Oh, the rush I’d feel at 11.30pm at night as I was jolted by a streak of inspiration.

Ideas floating around, unsure which one to catch and seed into the soil and make reality.

So many temptations, seductions, so many unique avenues to explore.

I’d spend an hour or so “mind mapping” which I would call “heart storming” and having my ideas spread out on paper.

I was visual. I needed to see it. It was and still is a part of my creative process.

I was lit up,

pregnant with potential.

Getting the ideas were the easy part.

Getting inspired by a seed of what’s possible came as second nature.

I felt like fertile ground.

Though, it was gestating my vision that had me meet my edge.

To sit with the potential, and allow the space for it to grow,

slowly,

intentionally,

One cell at a time.

To take on a life of its own beyond my own personal intention.

That felt more challenging.

I felt the anticipation in my body, and found it uncomfortable.

I felt the eagerness to simply “Get it out” into the world.

Quick, before another idea arrived and whisked me away, or before I lost interest and got bored.

The discomfort in the limbo of waiting. Waiting for the right time for it to truly be born.

When these ideas were born, it was quick and it was fast. I absolutely felt present in the process, though I preferred not to get hung up on the perfectionism.

I wanted the idea birthed and out of my body.

I wanted the release and to witness it in the world.

My attention detail was diluted, as I simply held the vision that those who need it would receive it.

Simple, I’d tell myself. Let it be simple.

Though interestingly enough, after the rush of my projects birthing, I’d slowly feel a withdrawal,

“I’ve handed it over to you big wide world”, and after a little while, I’d disconnect from this creative baby I was so eager to set free,

Then I’d open to the next.

I’d assume I had done enough and that whatever art, or project, or business I had just birthed, should be enough as is, to be successful.

Mostly disregarding the nourishment needed to grow and bloom.

For it, and for myself.

Disregarding the possible need for support, and to expand my own skill set, guidance from the metaphorical village of elders when it comes to creativity, art, launching something special into the world.

This process, I’ve experienced many times over.

It’s not that it didn’t work for me, So I never strived to change it,

I assumed it was just my way of doing things.

In fact, the only time this pattern didn’t reflect back to me,

Was my experience of birthing my first son.

We conceived immediately, though after a long, thought out, felt out, conscious conception journey. There were boundaries around when we felt ready to “call in” his spirit.

As those needs were met, the doors opened and he arrived swiftly, but in no rush.

My pregnancy with him felt calm, settled, and though excited, I was happy to be in the presence of being with him in my womb.

His birth came at almost 42 weeks. It had a gradual build up over a few hours, and though his birth was also swift (7.5 hours), pushing took the most time and intention.

His literal crowning into the world was gentle, he would come down, and sink back up inside of me, before gently lowering himself again. Opening me slowly.

Postpartum was intentional, slower than any other life I had lived.

We were recalibrated into community and receivership, with meals and massage and care so tender.

People we respected offering guidance, and the stretch into learning how to be parents for this baby, didn’t have us at our edge as we had anticipated.

Though of course challenges raised, we met them with eagerness to lean in and learn.

For so long I had his birth, and the birth of my creative pursuits as two very separate experiences.

I found my creative process to be romantic, a rush of sorts, dancing between a one night stand with a strike of inspiration, and a courting phase.

I saw my creativity as something less platonic, more sensual.

And for a long time definitely not something I would assume to “mother”, rather something to flirt and play with.

Though, since birthing my second son a couple of months ago,

This journey into parenthood again, three years later, has been shaped with an evolving perspective.

The last three years of being a mother, a creative, a mother maker- so to speak,

Has revealed a lot about the creative process that simply wasn’t accessible to me before I became a mother.

It wouldn’t have been accessible unless I allowed my maiden self to stay grounded in ‘her season’ of my life as I transitioned into something new.

This is the something new that I’d love to share with you.

The last few years have ruptured, humbled and remerged so many aspects of my creative self.

I surrendered many parts that I once held with so much value, and I let them live alongside my past self.

I’ve sat in the limbo of not knowing who I was, or what to create.

My ideas all of a sudden on radio silence.

When those moments did come, I’d feel that lingering familiarity of the possibly honeymoon phase with an idea over the horizon,

I’d wonder why my body was resistance to commitment.

Why, I felt almost as though I was developing an avoidant attachment style relating with my creativity.

I noticed that naturally, being a mother and having my literal heart outside of my chest each day, that my internal energy systems were depleted… or possibly prioritised elsewhere.

This had my creative energy feel really inconsistent to me and I would have a surge, but really lacked follow through.

I lost trust in my creative process, as it kept failing to complete, and I wondered if I needed to simply create a boundary with my creativity to just not be so present in this season of my life

- as the frustration of not being able to follow through was distracting me from my son, my relationship to my husband, and myself.

Firstly, from hundreds of conversations with creative mothers, this seems like a consistent theme across the board in some way or another.

Once we become a mother, we are required to recalibrate ALL relationships in our lives. That includes the one we have with our creativity.

It also means we have to learn to trust what THIS season is offering us, and learn to dance and move with it, because - honestly, it’s not ever going to be the same as it once was.

The longer we resist and try to claw ourselves back into the womb to move backwards through the portal that brought us here,

The more disconnected we can feel - even though the intention is to connect to something that we once felt, trusted, and knew ourselves as.

We have to move forward into the mystery of what’s to come, and trust that the very creative we dream of being, is on the other side of that.

We have to engage with who we are as a creative mother, not a creative maiden.

The way we are as entrepreneurs, artists, speakers, teachers, business owners, etc has to morph.

Theres so much available to us here, so much wisdom, intuition, and deeper more grounded creativity available, If we are willing to walk further into the abyss, let it dissolve our expectations, and have us be reborn.

I also noticed my romantic relationship to my creative process had to change. No longer did it feel like a fleeting summer romance of passion.

Instead I felt grounded in the fact that my creative process needed to be mothered. I don’t mean mothered as in parented,

but mothered as in held with a mothers love, not a lovers love.

The inconsistency in my energy around my creative hits, was because I was still hoping for them to fuel me the way a lover would, and when they didn’t, I lacked the capacity to pivot.

The Consistency came when I was honest with myself about my limits in this season.

It came when I did’t try to make It the biggest and most grand, and instead allowed the whispers space to make themselves known.

It was when I attuned to the subtleties and acted accordingly, rather than expecting it to always feel clear as day.

It was when I’d allow ideas that also had respect for where I was at.

Ideas that could morph around the natural ebb and flow of my life.

Knowing it was safe to let them “lean back” when my family, child, relationship needed me more, and they’d “lean forward” when they felt like I had the space emotionally and mentally to hold them.

It felt more mature, a trusting that perhaps, though I was the vessel for these ideas, they too were mothering me in return. A collaboration with everyone best interest at heart.

My learnings from when I was 17 weeks pregnant with my current pregnancy, had me completely understand these creative shifts as a mother differently.

I had just arrived in Tasmania with my almost 3 year old, and my husband. We were about to travel for a couple of months.

My inner pelvis and hips had been so uncomfortable, and though my womb was still small, I had established, and perfected, the 40 week waddle proudly.

I noticed that I had so much fear arising for this birth, of this baby, even though my last birth had been my dream experience, no complications, and ticked every box I had.

I remember having very little fear in the pregnancy and birth of my first son, and I was taken aback by the amount of resistance, disconnect, and discomfort I was experiencing this time around.

I felt confused, and so I had a call with a birth elder who shared something with me.

She asked me a lot about my creative process, and I shared with her much of what it had been, and what it was becoming. The personal realisations I had experience so far etc.

Then, She asked about birth.

But not the birth of my son.

And not the birth that I had almost arrived at the alter for.

She asked about my own birth story.

How did I come into this world.

Luckily I had heard the story enough times growing up to be familiar with it.

My parents were living in a tiny little rural community up in the north of Western Australia in the Kimberley.

They worked as teachers for the Indigenous community there. No hospital, though a tiny local clinic was available in emergencies.

I was conceived quickly, with eagerness. My mum was so ready. My dad too, but it wasn’t really up to him.

Pregnancy was easy, straight forward, clear,

Though birth was quick. Too quick even.

I came a 34.5 weeks. “Not term/ premature”.

Her waters broke and she waddled over the sandy track to the local clinic.

There was no midwife or doctor on call, and instead my mum delivered me on the table with a relieving nurse who hadn’t been at a birth before, and my dad.

I was out in 45 minutes from first contraction to babe in arms.

It was so quick that my mother was in and out of consciousness.

She had lost a lot of blood. I was cut from my umbilical cord straight away,  immediately wrapped in bubble wrap, being so tiny - to keep warm, and they called the flying doctor.

Within an hour, the three of us were up in a plane over the red rocks and gorges of the Kimberley , and into a big hospital in a nearby city where I was separated and in an incubator.

My mum was alone as my dad had to go back and collect her things before meeting her down south at his parents place, a few days drive away.

She struggled to establish breastfeeding as I was so small so early on.

After 10 days she and I were on a plane, flying to my grandparents and dad,

Where she felt anxious being in the air with me.

The woman I was speaking to then guided me into seeing the common threads between my own birth and the way I birth creatively.

And it all became clear.

The conception of ideas was never a problem. I was always more than eager to receive, There was a rush. “Ready or not, here I come” energy (Like my mother to my father about becoming parents)

I’d hold the ideas with clarity though they were always, always born prematurely and with intensity.

“Before their time”. Never full term completely with attention to detail and a settledness in the waiting. Little time for nesting.

The crowning, the birthing itself always quick. I’d sit in a surge without interruption and it would be ready only hours later.

My metaphorical babe in arms.

I would experience a subtle disconnect almost immediately after the rush of birth, oxytocin diluted. It was subtle but it was there.

I kid you not, around 10 days after birthing a project, I’d experience an overwhelm and then a deeper disconnect. A resistance to nourishing my pursuits from my breast so to speak.

Lightbulbs began blinking in my mind.

My relationship to creativity this whole time has been less about gallivanting as lovers,

And moreso birthing the way I was birthed.

My own birth blueprint on repeat,

For years of my life.

I have a vivid memory of being 5 yrs old in primary school, and wanting to draw a big beautiful tree.

I began slow, but the leaves took too long, so I sped up, did it quickly.

I remember having the thought that it still looked great because art is art. I lacked attention to detail, I just wanted to drawing finished and out into the world.

I showed my teacher, and I was proud of it. “Look what I did, isn’t it cool? Now can I move onto the next activity?”

I got in trouble for rushing, that it was messy, and made me start the whole thing again.

I remember the rage surging through my body.

That’s how long this pattern of birth work within myself has been around. In different expressions, different forms. All the same in some way or another.

Conception - How we receive Ideas

Pregnancy - How we gestate our Ideas

Birth - How we release our Ideas

Post partum - How we nurture our ideas

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It was that way up until the birthing process of my son three years ago, or more so when I fell pregnant with him.

That was the beginning of a rebirth for myself, and an opportunity to re-write my birth blueprint.

Because I knew that matrescence is the best time to plant new beliefs and rewrite blueprints. (Not from the creative standpoint, but simply from a birth perspective of going maiden to mother)

I leant into it all.

I was intentional with conception, slow, no rush.

I rewrote the way my ideas would arrive and be conceived.

I took my time and was present with my pregnancy and birth. I soaked it up, I felt grateful each day. I stayed pregnant for 41 weeks and 4 days, and I didn’t get impatient. I enjoyed those last weeks as some of the best weeks of my life.

I rewrote the way I gestate my ideas.

I birthed, confidently, intentionally, with a slow build up and though overall I’d say it was quick, I was so inward within my body that the illusion of time stopped existing.

It didn’t feel long or short. It simply was what is. I felt deeply connected to my son Rafi and felt in intimate communication the whole time he was moving out of my body. It was gentle. No rush.

I Birthed. I left the placenta attached. When the nourishment was finished pulsing through the cord, we burned it with candles. It took 20 minutes, with reverence.

I re-wrote the way I birth my ideas into the world.

And the biggest one…

We had a meal train set up, and had fresh meals dropped off daily. I stayed in bed and nourished myself for the first week. The following week I moved to the couch, and then the deck/ short nature walks.

It was a slow getting to know of the body.

I was revealing myself to myself,

I was learning who Rafi was.

We had a friend come and do bodywork on both Tully and I.

Close friends visited with helpful words of wisdom.

We were supported and initially, it was uncomfortable.

Though we had no choice but to recalibrate into receivership and open to the love and celebration being gifted to us.

In that time, I re-wrote the way I support my ideas postpartum. Once they are born into this world.

I re-wrote the experience of nurturing my creative babies beyond birth and setting them up properly for their life.

Allowing the slow burn, the slow build, the slow getting to know each other, the slow transformation.

I learned to allow my ideas to “change me” and be in a co-created feedback loop with myself.

I re-wrote my boundaries around creativity and learned to trust that these ideas were in the long game with me.

That I could tend to them over time and they would grow and evolve - just like my son.

I rewrote the idea of staying the same after an idea was born into this world.

That I was actually  born alongside an idea, in either a subtle or not so subtle way, and that I was required to morph in order to hold the beauty of what was in my hands.

As I moved into motherhood, I noticed more and more how the insecurities, fears, or recalibration of motherhood, mirrored - so closely - to mothering my creative process.

I would martyr my creative process the same way I would martyr myself in motherhood.

Over extending, going above and beyond, sacrificing my vitality, wellbeing, forgetting to eat, sleep, shower until I could complete my process.

And then feel exhausted by it, crash and burn after.

It was an unraveling in itself to step into creativity alongside the ability to self moderate and learn to nourish, alongside create.

The same as within my mothering.

I noticed I would have to “Claim space” for my creativity too, especially as Raf got older.

Shedding the shackles of self sacrifice and assuming ill “do it later”.

Just as I do in motherhood, having to claim space to shower, or sit and rest, and know that it’s more than okay to do that as it impacts my ability to show up as the mother I want to be.

My ability to claim space for my pursuits and know that that impacts not only the sort of creative I want to be but ALSO the mother that I want to be.

In fact, the longer I mothered, and the longer I sat in the identity of a mother maker, a creative mother, the more I realised they weren’t actually that seperate.

It wasn’t “Being creative” over here, switching it off, and going to “Mother” over there.

No,

They danced with each other,

They were each other.

I became creative in the way I chose to mother.

Creative in our play, in our games, in the way I would homemake.

Creative in the way I’d hold space for him and navigate emotions together.

Creative in the way I’d answer his questions and creative in the way I explored my own inner worlds with him.

And my mothering morphed into my creative process so deeply now,

In the way I hold and love my ideas, and give them space to reveal.

The way I have patience and capacity.

The shadow work of creativity, is the shadow work of my motherhood and Vise-versa.

And so, I titled this “the postpartum of your creative pursuits”

because postpartum is often the first aspect of motherhood and birth that get’s overlooked.

There’s focus on fertility, and falling pregnant.
Theres every resource under the sun for pregnancy and birth itself.

There are parenting books, podcasts, courses around every corner.

But when I comes to postpartum - And reminder, postpartum isn’t just immediate, it’s ongoing…

It’s mostly forgotten.

The village.

The support.

The tenderness.

The re-meeting of the self.

The healing.

The getting to know the baby.

The ability to set ourselves up with ongoing support into the first year and beyond.

The complete burning to the ground

And rising as the phoenix

And so,

Please don’t let the postpartum of your pursuits be lost on you.
It’s where most of the magic actually happens.

They say the way we experience postpartum will set us up for the next 40 years of our lives.

I would say the same for our creative birthing process.

The way we choose to gather, with those who see us, acknowledge us, celebrate us and what we choose to birth into this world,

The way we seek council from elders and wisdom keepers specifically to do with our projects, businesses and creative process,

The way we allow ourselves to be re-met, by our communities who receive us, by our families, by our business partners etc,

The way we take time to get to know the spirit of what we’ve just birthed, and acknowledging it may be different to the initial fantasy of what it would be like.

The way we create support systems for when it does feel hard to stay committed to what we’ve created,

And the way we allow ourselves to burn,

And rise again.

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