Dear Intimacy,

What would you have me know today?

Okay. Dear intimacy. I’m going to start again. What would you have me know today? I would have, you know what I'm thinking. So I'm thinking a lot about motherhood and creativity.  I'm reading this book that my mentor / friend Illana Hester recommended probably two years ago, The Baby on the Fire Escape. The author, Julie Phillips, talks about the intersection of motherhood and creativity

If you're a mom, there's this myth, I guess, that you have two selves at two times. At one point in time (or in the day), you're a mother. and then at a different point in time, you may have free time, so you step into your creative self. But the author suggests, actually maybe not, why don't we let go of that narrative and rethink things.

Every time you feel tension, or there's some struggle, this is the time where to make the work. This is the creative point. And it's the undoing that maybe pushes you creatively. And possibly to become a better mother, person, creative. To think of this time as a renewing or a rebirth.

Renewing, a new way to do things. So this is what I'm doing. You know, I felt like I've come undone. But now, I can look at things as a rebirth. Instead of getting frustrated when I can't do my work because, for example, Miles and Margot are interrupting (and I'm sure that I'm not the only one) I'm welcoming the interruption and using this as inspiration. Maybe I can make work now, maybe I can have a thought or an inspiration. Maybe I can use the interruption for a creative purpose?

Secondly, I’m riding the bike because I’m still injured. And I'm not a very good bike rider. I'm hearing people in the cycling world talk about watts and I don't really know what that was until I started cycling. When I bike ride, I have zero watts. So low. Today, I was riding and I was planning on doing an easy ride and then I really got into it the cycling class. We were doing sprints at a high resistance and cadence. I thought to myself, I don't think I can do this. And then I did it! I really did it. And my thought was “look at my legs go!”

All of this is just cycling in my basement on a Saturday morning. But I had put this boundary on myself that I had set unwittingly. I didn't realize it, but today, I broke the boundary. Think about all these boundaries that we can break, all the boundaries that we've created for ourselves that we haven't realized.

I'm proud of myself. I'm proud of myself for breaking my cycling boundary. But I'm also proud of myself for giving myself grace. It's okay and I'm going to move forward in a new way,