I wear many hats.
There is the Mama hat, which includes all those others hats: Hurt-kisser, nose-wiper, diaper-changer, listener, teacher, discipliner, cook, meal planner, encourager, homework-helper and so many more.
And then there is my creative hat: Writer.
Often, these two hats seem to be in conflict with one another.
When my oldest two boys get home from school, the first thing they do is come to my room to tell me about their day. I love this, except that I’m typically deeply entrenched in some essay or a novel chapter, and the sound of my bedroom door opening pulls me right out of my creative flow.
I used to feel so annoyed about this. I talked to my husband about it, because afternoons are his shift with the boys. We came up with a plan—wear headphones, ignore the boys, lock the door, explain that this is work time, not talk time.
Still it kept happening.
The thing about kids is when they have something to tell you, they will plow right through any locked door or hasty explanation or music filtering through headphones to say what they need to say about that picture they got to paint in art today.
Balance is one of the most difficult aspects of being a parent and a creator. Sometimes we fall into the trap of believing that one cannot possibly exist with the other.
But here is something I have learned in my eight years as a parent: Children make our creating so much richer.
It doesn’t even have to be our own children. It can be a friend’s children or our sister’s children or the children who play outside our apartment. It can be a child we see in a restaurant or on the bus or running wild in a park. It doesn’t matter. Our interactions with them will always make our art richer.
You see, we used to be children with wild and crazy imaginations. We used to believe in the impossible. We used to dream big, incredible dreams.
And then we grew up and traded all that for a more realistic plan, because someone told us that’s what adults do.
Your head doesn’t belong in the clouds anymore, they said. It belongs here on earth.
That’s not a profession, they said. That’s a hobby.
You can’t write or paint or sing about that, they said. It would be silly.
But children. They’re allowed to be children. They’re allowed to believe and imagine and dream and create, without any limitations. The whole world is a giant field of possibility.
The truth is we create using the child who lives within us. So what makes us more prolific and artistic is connecting more deeply with our inner child.
Who can draw out that inner child most effectively?
Children.
My children are the ones who crank up that heard-it-a-thousand-times song on Pandora and can’t help but move their bodies to the music, pulling me into the dance party with them. They are the ones who sing those made-up songs, about how 1953 was the year of heartbreak, without a care for whether those lyrics make sense or not. They are the ones who create whole worlds in their imagination and share those imaginings with me so that my creativity feels ignited and new.
Just this morning, on his way out the door for school, my oldest, who is 8, brought down a box. A stuffed animal crouched inside.
“This is a portal,” he said. “Whenever my animals go inside, they are magically transported to another land called Hyrule.”
Yes. I want to be like the children.
So these interruptions of my children, when they need a mama and she’s working, are not really interruptions at all.
They are opportunities to enrich my work.
I don’t have to be writer for a certain number of hours a day and Mama for the rest. I can be both all the time, because one enriches the other.
I sure am glad for that.
Challenge: If you are a parent (especially one who works from home), next time your child interrupts, try to see it as an opportunity. What can you learn from this exchange? What might focusing fully on your child even in the interruption do for your creativity? Many times our attitudes about something just need gentle redirections. So redirect. Play. And watch your creativity explode.
(If you’re not a parent, spend some time with a child this week and see what you can learn from him/her about creativity. You might be pleasantly surprised…and significantly changed.)
