Artist Mothers, Are You Ready?
The school year for me is my biggest work stretch. Summer is when my husband’s work picks way up and mine slows down. But come Labor Day, it’s on.
That gives me 12ish weeks to rest and dream (when I’m not being a camp counselor to my kids, that is). This summer brought real clarity and vision around my identity and my purpose. I thought a lot about my original dreams, like for real OG, before my adult life really started, about how I wanted to record music, perform, and sing. I thought about how those dreams, if I’m honest, never changed, shrank, or shifted. They are just…there, waiting. The inspiration for them still knocks me over and lights me up in new records, live shows, and singing with my friends for fun. Those dreams are mine, and they’re real.
This is, of course, what I’ve believed in and helped clients do for years now: figure out their calling, what lights them up, and how to face and integrate what’s in the way. But I’ll tell ya, in some ways, it’s a lot easier to be a guide than to be a pursuer of my own dreams.
Until now.
Now, pursuing dreams will always be like climbing a mountain. But at 42, there’s more capacity, more tools, resources, and support. There’s more space in my heart, and in my life, and honestly, more sleep now that my kids are older. Truthfully, I know I would not have been able to handle the reality of the bigness of my own dreams at 18, 19, or 20. I actually have a few clients struggling after artistic success because there wasn’t a solid foundation in place.
No journey is the wrong one when you’re curious and committed to your own growth, and we are, right? So for me, I can love the path I’ve been on (while definitely so hard, like so many of yours), and I can recognize that it has led me to the beginning of what feels like a new era:
The Artist Mother Era.
Here’s what I mean:
Every woman I know is mothering something: her kids, her sisters, her friends, her dreams, her business, herself. It’s the nurture, the compassion, the courage, and the deep, elastic acceptance that we carry for what we love that makes us mothers.
I feel especially on fire to not only become the woman equipped to mother everything in her world with strength and softness (and whimsy!), but also the woman committed to her own creation, her own personal artistry, her gifts.
For the woman who feels like she deeply wants to pursue her dreams without negatively impacting her family and those she cares for, OR the creatively inspired woman who also wants to understand how to mother well from a place of fearlessness and vision, I say to ya:
Welcome. Dear Artist Mother, welcome.
This season in my newsletters, my podcast, and my socials, I will be sharing my journey of pursuing my dream of recording music, as well as talking about (by myself and with experts in their field!) what it means to cultivate your own creative expression while tending to your world with practical tools and deep care.
I have to be totally honest. I am terrified. Oh my God, the fear of publicly sharing something in which I am, in so many ways, more of a beginner is so deeply humbling and vulnerable. To be honest, while the inspiration and clarity for this were crystal clear, the lead-up over the last few weeks kind of made me…completely freaking sick to my stomach. My nervous system knew-this kind of visibility is a whole new level. Like I said, it’s easier to be a guide. Those who can’t do, teach, and all that.
But it’s time.
Music, poetry, singing, artist identity, the ins and outs of the current music industry, all of it. If you want, you’re coming too. And if you have a dream, OMG, even better. We’ll do it together.
Women deserve to be completely alive, and what is in our care deserves to be deeply loved and well tended to. I absolutely believe both can fully happen at the same time. I do.
Even more so-I deeply believe that the world needs us to step into our full Artist Mother selves like never before.
—Court