If you are a mum and are frustrated by not being able to create read this article at parentingexpress.com. Feel as if it was written just for me.
The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood by Rachel Power
I quote “As Susan Rubein Suleiman wrote, perhaps the greatest struggle for a woman artist who has or desires children is the struggle against herself. No amount of money, no amount of structural change, can entirely resolve the fundamental dilemma for the artist–mother: the seeming incompatibility of her two greatest passions. The effect is a divided heart; a split self; the fear that to succeed at one means to fail at the other.”
Certainly resonates with me, even though my son is now 27 and someone I am very proud of .... and someone who is also very proud of me. Because if I am honest there is still the unending internal struggle around the guilt of having made choices that fed my life - that put 'me' before 'him' on occasion - and the knowledge that I would have been so much less as a person and more importantly as a mother if I had not.
ReplyDeleteI still can't see any way to bring that conflict to a satisfactory end. It remains the most difficult tightrope I've ever had to negotiate.
Thank you for leading me to that article. I remember my mom moaning her inability to do the things she wanted to do. I acknowledge my own deep regrets at choices I've made.
ReplyDeleteI sent the link to my daughter. She is feeling the same ripping of her soul. I'm not sure if knowing she is not alone is enough to comfort her. She wants "the answer."
:diane