BECOMING AN ARTIST
I became an artist at almost exactly the same moment I became a mother.
I don't think that was a coincidence.
I had always been a creative person. I studied film and animation, and over the years I was drawn to writing, screenwriting, puppetry, set design and different forms of storytelling. I was always making, exploring, moving between forms.
But becoming a mother changed something in me. Around the same time, I began to understand that what I really wanted was to be a visual artist, to make work that was entirely mine, from the first decision to the last.
There was an irony in discovering this just then. At the very moment I understood how much I wanted to be an artist, I had less freedom to be one than ever before.
So I stopped waiting for enough time.
I learned to work with the time I had.
Motherhood filled my life, but it also took away much of the uninterrupted time I suddenly understood I needed. We moved countries with two young children while my husband's demanding work involved frequent travel. For years, I lived with a frustrating gap between how much I wanted to create, develop my work and build a career, and how much space I actually had to do it.
An hour here. A morning there. Sometimes more, often less. I accepted that the career I wanted would develop much more slowly than I wanted it to, but that moving slowly was still moving.
That choice came with real trade-offs. I gave up the security of a steady income and a more conventional professional identity. There were financial compromises, family vacations I chose not to take, and time with the people I love that I sometimes chose to spend working instead. I don't romanticize those choices. They were choices, and they had a cost. But there is something I understand differently now. My kids grew up with a mother who was sometimes frustrated, often short on time, and always trying to make room for the work. But they also grew up watching someone deeply fulfilled by what she does.