Metamorphosis/ Close to the Heart

The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 10th edition of  this scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic,the para-academic, the digital, and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work, and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA

Project Metamorphosis

ART: Beth Goobic –
Metamorphose is an ongoing conversation in clay about the journey of becoming a mother and being a mother. It takes place in this study of a common utilitarian household item, the mug. These mug forms are endowed with the presence of both vulnerability and strength. They celebrate the glorified transformation of the pregnant body, but they bring visibility and conversation to the continuing
transformation of the body and person after birth. That they are mugs points to the commonness of everyday lived experiences by wo/men in motherhood and motherwork.

Each mug is entirely different reflecting the fact that the experience of mothering is unique to each individual person, even though motherwork is quite often mistaken as a universal concept. These kinds of assumptions about the universality of mothering
actually makes the personal experiences of each person doing it invisible. Metamorphose is meant to resist that kind of assumption.
The mugs are a reflection of the pregnant body, the very beginning of the anatomical journey of the female body as it enters motherhood but the mugs also celebrate and acknowledge the transformation of the female body after pregnancy, post
birth, which in our society, is a less celebrated transformation, and a less visible journey. Post birthbodies deserve the patience, celebration and glorification that childbearing bodies receive. Post-birth bodies are spacious, healing and rehabilitating,
while still maintaining a new additional life. The mugs acknowledge, give presence, and beautify the body post birth.

These mug forms acknowledge the more subtle but continual anatomical journey our bodies endure during motherwork and also a person’s transformative and altering personal journey throughout motherwork. Pertaining to motherwork this conversation in
clay is not exclusive to birth mothers, but opens up this conversation to all caregivers that take on motherwork. A man, or a non -biological parent may not physically go through the birthing journey but that person can experience the altering and changing of
their own bodies and spirits throughout the journey of motherwork. The common daily motions endured during motherwork, and the effects and marks that motherwork experiences leave on our bodies are also portrayed here in these mugs. With the unknown journey and struggles that each child brings, caregivers are altered in person as they journey with that child through the highs and lows of each experience. This altering of person throughout the lifelong journey of motherhood, so private and personal, joyful and painful, messy and beautiful is celebrated and acknowledged in these basic everyday utilitarian objects.

Like motherwork, the mugs are individual, unique and beautifully imperfect.The forms are altered, and asymmetrical, with undulating rims and drippy glazes. I choose to alter the form as a way to represent and interpret how we are altered in person and body in motherwork. The mugs are fired in a salt and soda kiln resulting in much surface variation among the cups. Each of these mugs are a functional sculpture and an experience, inviting the viewer to apply their own experiences in motherhood and motherwork to the conversation. The vulnerable yet commanding forms salute the invisible labor of caregiving and everyday experiences of motherwork, which involves a metamorphosis of person and body. Metamorphose is an artistic attempt to make the invisibility of motherhood and motherwork visible in households and workspaces via an everyday utilitarian object. [LINK TO MORE ART]

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WORDS: Close to the Heart

by, Nancy Cook

I am planning the perfect tattoo.  Where to have it applied is not in question:  It is going to cover my entire chest. But beyond that, I have some decisions to make.

My relationship with my breasts has always been complicated. So much different than Joel’s relationship with his penis.  Joel’s penis has a name. The penis is named Max, basic and simple. Max has a personality, so Joel believes, a life of its own, completely separate from Joel’s. Well, not completely separate, of course. Our son Aaron views his little penis in much the same way. Aaron thinks his penis is his friend, although he hasn’t given it (him?) a name. Joel is convinced this is evidence of relational capacity. I say if you are in conversation with a body part, addressing it as Other, that’s distancing, not intimacy. But to be candid, I don’t care enough to get into a real discussion about it.

It’s strange to me because my breasts have always been part of the integrated whole that is my body.  This was true even before I had real breasts, when I was a kid pushing my flat chest up and out so I could look like my Mom or Charlie’s Angels or Madonna. I’d check out my reflection in a mirror or a sun-glared store window, and there they’d be, future boobs, more real than imaginary. It’s like my body always knew breasts would be part of the family, and now they’re participants in a full-fledged collaboration, right in there with my ears, my toes, my heart. My body parts communicate pretty well, the soles to the brain, the nostrils to the spine, the nipples on direct-dial to the vulva. My breasts are as essential as, and no more essential than, other parts, say, my tongue or my hands.

At the same time, I’ve often felt as if these beauties were not mine alone. They’re so, you know, out there. Visible. Available for public notice. Something like marigolds in a house-front flower bed or news of winning even a minor prize. Joel would probably take issue with that. He likes that he has private viewings. He coos, he tastes. Sometimes he plays them, left side against the right. He might grasp tightly, squeeze hard, but never roughly. I understand Joel’s attraction to my breasts, if not his proprietariness. I like personal time with my breasts too. They are nice to touch and very responsive.  Especially when an effort is made.

Not that I’ve had much private time with my breasts in recent years. Aaron made his claim on them as a baby, then the girls, Emma and Josie, had their turns. And, most recently, the doctors. I suspect that Joel has not liked any of this, although he’s too nice a guy to complain.

But back to the big question: what is the perfect tattoo?  What will pay tribute to feminine beauty, strength, sensuality? Motherhood. Solidarity and survival. I could go with a Xena the Warrior, the whole Amazonish thing. I’ve considered an artful rendition of a dinner feast, grander than Thanksgiving, smoky and steamy meats, a colorful overabundance of shining fruits and bloated roots and huge leafy sprays, a mountain of fresh bread loaves, luscious pies and puddings and creamed pastry puffs. Or maybe a circle dance, women of every size and shade with hands joined. Then, with every twist of shoulders, the women’s bare feet would boogie, their heads would float musically.

One inspiration, an early morning rumination, involves whales. When I was pregnant with Aaron, Joel and I took a whale watching cruise. I’d been warned against it, the risk of nausea being so unacceptably high. But the threat of an emotional breakdown if I were denied this outing convinced both Joel and the cruise hosts that a little boat vomit was the lesser of two perils. It was a good decision. The ocean was my friend that day. I never did get nauseous and the whales surrounded our boat not once, but three times. Their glossy bodies parted the waves, rose skyward, dashed below, made showers of foam. It was early summer and young black calves by the dozen alternately clung to mothers’ hides and flashed fins above the sea’s swells in bold proclamations of self-reliance. With every orca sighting, unborn Aaron danced and applauded in the womb.

What I keep coming back to, though, is a profusion of roses. Roses, fragile and impermanent. Roses, red and amorous and daring, their thorny stems hidden but still there, close to the heart. Roses and roses and roses and roses, every single one’s complex delicate exacting lines traceable with a fingernail. Generous gardens of roses that will take a lifetime to explore. Wild spring and summer roses, wall-climbing roses, Molly Bloom yes I will yes roses. Roses spread all across my empty chest, a gift to be bestowed after the medical healing, after the chemo and radiation are done. A gift to myself. A gift that is myself.

Nancy Cook currently lives in St. Paul. For years she has been attempting to integrate various parts of herself: sole parent, community lawyer, teacher, and writer. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of literary and social policy journals, including the Chrysalis Reader, Adventum, Nebo, Westward Quarterly, Emory Law Journal, and Prime Mincer.

LINK TO NOVEMBER 15th EXHIBIT with RUCHIKA WASON SINGH is HERE.

 

 

#Hillary Paradox [CLICK]

12193812_10153128432232327_737628475596845358_nWhen weighing her bid for the White House, Hillary Clinton repeatedly said that she wanted to have time to spend with her soon-to-be granddaughter.  Of course, in saying that, Hillary was presumably playing us, as her inevitable entry into the race had to have been decided even at that point.  But maybe she had more than a desire to leave us hanging on the edge of our seats in saying this.  Perhaps the image she has cultivated as a benevolent grandmother and supportive mother have served a political purpose as well?

If you Google “Hillary Clinton” and “unlikeable” in the same search, a barrage of hits will come up.  It’s no secret that Hillary has been criticized as unlikeable.  It may have even cost her the last election (shame, because I really like her).  But this time around, she is determined to not make the same mistakes.  After her departure from the Secretary of State position, she answered people’s questions about what she was going to do with her time by saying that she was looking forward to watching crappy TV and spending time with her dogs.  When daughter Chelsea became pregnant, she announced it on Twitter, declaring “Grandmother-to-Be” as her best title yet.  And now, political commentators are speculating that her foray into grandmotherhood could be great for business, as it were.

In an interview in the Washington Post with Jill Greenlee, scholar and author of “The Political Consequences of Motherhood”, Greenlee discusses the ways in which motherhood (and in this case, grandmotherhood) affect political entry/success.  According to Greenlee, “being a mother fulfills one of the strongest social mandates placed upon a woman, and that appeals to voters.”  Conversely, she states, motherhood responsibilities may make voters question their elected officials’ ability to juggle being a good political and balancing responsibilities at home.  (Funny how men never have to contend with this question).  The anxieties about women managing elected office and motherhood, however, have not stopped Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from appointing women to half of his Cabinet positions because, quote, “it’s 2015.”  

When it comes to Hillary, she believes that motherhood/grandmotherhood may be helping her in the polls.  The countless articles about time spent with granddaughter Charlotte and stops along the campaign trail to allow for facetime with the grandbaby may soften up this portrait of Hillary as ‘unlikeable.’  She states: “[I]n 2008, Hillary Clinton struggled to find a balance between presenting herself as a tough, strong, competent leader and to also display the feminine characteristics that we expect to see from women. By focusing on her experiences as a mother and grandmother, she can very naturally invoke those feminine characteristics in a way that is comfortable for most voters.”  While the benefits of cultivating this image may be clear in the case of Hillary, Greenlee suggests that we will still have to look at these trends on an individual basis for other female politicians.  “At the end of the day, we still have a lot to learn about how motherhood shapes women’s paths to elected office. In a time when we simultaneously have more women than ever running for office and an increasing focus on family and motherhood in politics, it’s more important than ever to explore these issues.”

So for now, the jury is still out on the link between motherhood and any definitive trends in politics.  But the call for an interdisciplinary approach to looking at the applications of motherhood in society is clear.  Mother Studies, anyone?

Reading of Joanne Bamberger's book by Helen Jonson this Sunday at Chappaqua Library
Reading of Joanne Bamberger’s book Sunday at Chappaqua Library

To find out more about the book #TheHillaryParadox go to Joanne Bamberger’s website. Readings will take place throughout the United States. For those local to NYC and Westchester there is a panel discussion moderated by Joanne Bamberger, author and editor, and 3 panelists, Helen, Linda Lowen and Nancy Giles.

Nov. 15, 2015, 3 p.m. – Chappaqua, NY Public Library. Panel discussion & book signing.

This blog post was written by MOM’s social media intern Jenny Nigro.

MOMENTS OF WEIGHTLESSNESS while WAITING FOR WORDS [Link]

Project: MOMENTS OF WEIGHTLESSNESS
Pianist, inventor and performer Sarah Nicolls developed her unique ‘Inside-Out Piano’ to explore the belly of the instrument and to coax out some of its hidden sounds. In this solo show, she explores the extraordinary unexpected characteristics of the instrument, moving it around the stage to gradually reveal her parallel journey into motherhood. See this monumental piano in surprising motion, hear the beautiful melodies and textures of Sarah’s piano-songs mixed with stories of creativity, and contemplate the moments of life where everything seems to stand still.


About the artist: Sarah Nicolls is a UK-based experimental pianist, at the forefront of innovations in piano performance. She has worked extensively with interactive technologies and invented the ‘Inside-out Piano’, to enable ‘extended’ piano techniques. The second prototype was built in 2014 by Pierre Malbos, Paris.

In the rest of her concert career, Sarah is a frequent soloist, performing in events like the London Design Festival, a recent Wellcome Trust/BBC Radio 3 weekend, the PRSF New Music Biennial and Matthew Herbert’s 20 Pianos project. Sarah has given countless world premieres, is regularly broadcast and features on several CDs. She is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University, is Artistic Director of the BEAM (Brunel Electronic and Analogue Music) Festival, and curates interactive music exhibitions with ACCORD. Sarah has two children: Stan, born 2012 and Sylvie, born 2013.

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WAITING FOR WORDS

By Cynthia Patton

From Mom Egg Vol. 11 “Mother Tongue”

I was in bed when Katie slipped past, heading for the stairs. My slender, caramel-haired daughter didn’t look at me or speak. She was a shadow, receding with the dawn.

I huddled beneath the down comforter, filled with foggy, nameless emotions. I knew I should go downstairs and engage her as the specialists instructed me. Make good use of our precious free time. With an autistic child there’s always something to work on: social skills, sign language, speech. Instead a prayer rose unbidden. Please give me words. I can do without hugs and kisses, but I need more words, need them like air.

Katie was five yet spoke like a two-year-old—when she spoke at all. A knot lodged between my shoulder blades. What if conversation never came?  Katie was smart enough, but speech remained a challenge. Her mind was a secret garden, the thoughts overflowing with nowhere to go. I wanted to hear her stories, her emotions, her feeble attempts at jokes. I wanted her to look at me, smile, and say Mommy.

I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. My tears rained down as I prayed for the day the words broke free, flooding fallow fields.

Katie was nonverbal for two years, eight months. At three, after a year of intensive therapy, she had a spoken vocabulary of 50 words. By four she used two-word phrases. By five she assembled short sentences.

Special needs parenting is often a strange blend of gratitude, sorrow, pride, and guilt. I was excited and proud when Katie mastered a new sentence. Yet I was sad she had to work so hard and guilty I wanted more. Why couldn’t I simply be grateful? I was, but when I looked in her eyes I saw an IQ boiling, just out of reach, and wanted to smash something on her behalf.

It’s hard to watch your child struggle, especially when there’s nothing to do but wait.

At six Katie answered simple questions. By seven she used adjectives and worked to master possessive pronouns. I fought for additional speech therapy and finally the long, slow slog ended. Her speech gained momentum.

One night shortly after she turned eight, Katie asked for the blue dolphin as she climbed into bed. Her words were crystal clear, so I praised her as the therapists trained me.

She asked again, and I showed her the blue cat.

“No,” she said. “Want dolphin please.”

“We don’t have a dolphin.”

“Dolphins swim in the water.”

“You’re right,” I said. “They’re good swimmers.”

I reached into the basket that contained her stuffed animals. “Do you want the lobster?”

Katie smiled and reached for the toy. She played with the pinchers while I felt smug about discovering the glitch where her brain veered off course.

She looked up. “This is red. Red lobster.”

“I know, but it lives in the water.”

Her pained look said I was the one with the neurological problem. “I want blue dolphin.”

She clenched her teeth—the beginning of a tantrum. I thought fast. “Why don’t you pick the animal you want to sleep with?”

This wasn’t the routine. After a long pause she rolled out of bed, rooted in the basket, and yanked something out. I laughed when I saw Eeyore. “That’s not a dolphin. It’s a donkey.”

“Blue donkey,” she said, climbing into bed.

Katie knows the difference between a dolphin and a donkey. Sometimes her brain scrambles the words.

We recited Goodnight Moon while Katie stroked Eeyore’s ears. I said, “I love you” as my hand automatically made the sign.

She signed I love you as Max, our cat, entered the room. “Good night, sweetie. Max says good night too.”

“Goodnight, Mommy.”

I froze, unsure I’d heard correctly. Katie had never spontaneously greeted anyone. She could say the words, but I needed to coax them out.

Max meowed, and Katie giggled. “Good talking, Max.”

She’d done it, twice in one night. I wanted to cry and shout and jump on the bed.

So what if it happened a few years late? So what if it wouldn’t happen again for months?

These moments sustain me.

A few months later, I was reading yet another progress report. Katie was in the kitchen studying cookbook photos. “That’s soup. Soup is hot. I like soup. Soup is good. I can make it. I’m stirring soup. Let’s make chicken tortilla soup.”

She flipped the page and talked about pumpkin pie. I didn’t know she knew what pumpkin pie was. More pages flipped, followed by a long discourse on chocolate cake, then meat, then pasta, then salad with cranberries. It was as if she wanted to say every sentence she could that included the particular food item.

To say I was stunned would be an understatement.

It went on for 15 minutes, maybe longer.

I listened as the words poured out, barely breathing. Then it hit me. This was it, the moment I’d been waiting for. The words were breaking free, spilling into the kitchen and filling up the room.

They filled me up. Better than any meal.

Cynthia Patton is an award-winning author, speaker, advocate, and attorney, and  founder of Autism A to Z, a nonprofit organization.

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Why Jenny Wants To Be A Birth Doula

 This blog contribution is by MOM Social Media Intern, Jenny Nigro

I have been on a path toward pursuing a doula certification for some time now.  The beauty of the timeline for certification is that it is a go-at-your-own-pace kind of thing.  As it turns out, this also happens to be a curse for me.  Admittedly, it’s taken me longer than it should to keep up.  Part of the reason, though, is that without any real rhyme or reason, I convinced myself that I should be a birth doula.  A birth doula is someone who attends the birth and offers support to the laboring mama in any way that is needed — in offering kind words, in reminding parents of breathing techniques, in running any water/ice chips that are needed, in massaging sore parts of the mother’s body, in taking photos or video of the birth so that other labor partners can be more actively involved, or in communicating aspects of the labor plan to medical personnel on the mother’s behalf if requested.  Even as I write this list, I am filled with a sense of caring and warmth in thinking about the role that this plays in a birth.  Perhaps this is what initially drew me to the field.  But the deeper I went into fulfilling a certification, the more I realized that what I truly wanted to do was become a postpartum doula rather than a birth doula.

Doula_StoryAs the name suggests, postpartum doulas become involved in a family’s life post-Baby.  The doula offers support to the family in a variety of ways — they may offer insight into breastfeeding technique, offer general breastfeeding or parenting support, maintain the household while parents and Baby rest/spend time bonding, cook healthy and nutritious meals for the family, or assist in care-giving to other children in the household so that the parents may have time to bond with their baby individually.  A huge part of why I wanted to become a doula is because of the outcome of most safe, healthy deliveries: the welcoming of new life into a family.  As a birth doula, I would only get to witness a small piece of that process.  But as a postpartum doula, I could assist in the most crucial moments of that baby’s growth and development: as they bond with their family, expand their awareness, perform life’s first milestones, and interact with their environment.  And for the family, I could ensure that the time that they have with their baby following delivery is precious and undivided by mitigating the demands of everyday life so that they can focus on the new member of their family.  As a nanny, I perform many of these duties already: I cook nutritious meals for the family, I engage in light housekeeping duties, and I help supervise, instruct, and engage the children in the home to help the household run smoothly.  It would be a natural transition, I feel.

As part of my postpartum doula certification requirements, I am expected to read several books about “mothering the new mother,” breastfeeding, and infant care.  In one of my required reading books, I came across a quote/concept that sealed my decision to shift from birth to postpartum doula-ing.  Deep down, I suspect that I’ve felt this way all along, but seeing it in print was sort of an awakening.  The book quotes Suzanne Arms, holistic birth and parenting advocate, who once asked, “Is ours not a strange culture that focuses so much attention on childbirth — virtually all of it based on anxiety and fear — and so little on the crucial time after birth, where patterns are established that will affect the individual and the family for decades?” (Mohrbacher & Kendall Tackett: 2010, 106).  The book also cites a cross-cultural review of postpartum practices which found that postpartum depression is virtually nonexistent in societies where families had a reserved time set aside for spending time alone with their baby, where mothers were cared for and allowed to rest in privacy, where parents were relieved of their household duties during this time, and where women’s status new mothers was recognized (2010, 106-107).  In Rigoberta Menchu’s memoir, I Rigoberta Menchu, she devotes a section to describing the postpartum practices of the Quiche, where this sort of designation for new mothers is honored.  She describes this as one of very few times in women’s lives when they are exempt from labor so that they may remain with their babies in seclusion for these important moments of their lives.

This feels so inherently different from the way we treat new mothers in our society.  We shower expecting moms with attention — literally and figuratively — by throwing them parties, buying them everything they need for their babies before they come, and catering to their aches/pains/cravings while they are carrying.  But once the baby comes, new mothers are somewhat forgotten.  While some thoughtful friends and neighbors may contribute a dish or two and grandparents may come to stay with the family for a short while, once that time ends, new moms are expected to 1) automatically “get it” — get the hang of everything that taking care of a newborn entails, 2) bounce back from their pregnancy and any trauma inflicted on their bodies in terms of medical interventions used in birth, 3) not ask for anything and instead give everything to their newborn.  Any attention offered the new family is more in adoration of the new baby.  Brises, christenings, and naming ceremonies all celebrate the child.

I’m not saying that this attention and focus on the new baby is misplaced.  But imagine a society in which the time followed the birth of new baby is cherished and sacred.  Think about the ease of transitioning for the family if friends, family members, and neighbors eased the burden of normal household routines so that the new parents could have the first two weeks with their babies, chore-free to simply enjoy getting to know their little one.  Picture a world in which a family’s decision to engage the services of a postpartum doula is expected, not a rarity.  It is conceivable to think that a culture of postpartum depression or baby blues could be alleviated, even just a little bit.  If this were the norm, perhaps our entire construction of maternity/paternity leave would shift.  In reality, the way we do maternity and paternity leave in America reflects the reality that we simply do not value the time following births.  Policies that do not include paid parental leave or offer inadequate time periods of full or partial pay speak to this idea that we expect parents to immediately bounce back from giving birth.  Parents are expected to return to work in tip-top shape, despite having gone through a major life change.  They are criticized when they fall short and admonished for taking additional time off.  But if we were to reserve special time for families following the birth of a new baby, undoubtedly we would begin to see parental leave policies that respect this convention.

And that is a world that I would like to raise a child in.