Category: motherhood

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Art Birth Books Conferences Featured motherhood

Schedule Your Visit to MOM in January 2018 [Click]

VISIT MOM: Help us celebrate ONE YEAR at our new location in St. Pete! The M.O.M. Art Annex has enjoyed visitors from all over the country. To schedule a visit with us in January 2018 sign up online here or write us: info@MOMmuseum.org

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By checking the above box, I agree that I am participating in a tour offered by Motherhood Foundation Inc. at the Museum of Motherhood (MOM) Art Annex at 538 28th St. N. in St. Petersburg, Florida during which I receive information and instruction about mothers, fathers, and families from an interdisciplinary perspective. I recognize that with any activity, unexpected physical injury can occur, and I am fully aware of these kinds of risks and hazards. I agree to assume full responsibility for any risks, injuries or damages, known or unknown, which I might incur as a result of participating on the premises of MOM. I knowingly, voluntarily and expressly waive any claim I may have against owners, volunteers, other participants, and the non-profit Motherhood Foundation Inc. for injury or damages that I may sustain as a result of participating in activities at MOM. I agree that Motherhood Foundation Inc. at the Museum of Motherhood (MOM) Art Annex and its agents may use any image, photograph, voice or likeness, in its promotional materials and publicity efforts without additional compensation. I further understand that by participating in the photography or filming, I release Motherhood Foundation Inc. at the Museum of Motherhood (MOM) Art Annex and its representatives, licensees, employees, photographers, and their designees from any and all liability for any violation of any privacy or proprietary rights. I have read the above release waiver of liability and fully understand its contents. I voluntarily agree to its contents. I voluntarily agree to the terms and conditions stated above.

CONFERENCE: Our second “I ❤ MOM” Conference” takes place on February 16-17th in collaboration with the USF Women’s and Gender Studies Dept. and made possible by a ResearchOne grant. We hope you’ll join us. The event is open to the public through pre-registration. We are excited to feature keynote speaker Andrea O’Reilly and a book launch of the new edited collection, Music of Motherhood by M. Joy Rose, Lynda Ross, and Jennifer Hartman on Friday evening Feb. 16th. Write us at info@MOMmuseum.org.

COMMUNITY: The local Historic Kenwood Artist Enclave has been busy organizing community events, including the Arts Walk coming in March. The new enclave motto “where art lives” is particularly salient considering we really do live and work at the museum.

RESIDENCIES: Thus far, M.O.M. has hosted three residencies. In January, artist and activist, Christen Clifford arrived as our first guest and spent two weeks editing her latest work. She returned again in July. Also, we saw the first summer Spirited Woman Residency with Dawn Louise Parker who has been hard at work on her manuscript titled Forty-Seven Days of Love. In October, we welcomed Hannah Brockbank who joined us for a two week residency. Hannah is a poet hailing from Sussex, England. Her pamphlet Bloodlines will be published by Indigo Dreams in 2017 and she is a Kate Bett’s Award winner (2016). Read more about our residencies here [LINK]

LIBRARY: MOM is proud to announce that it now has the complete Demeter Library onsite!!

EXHIBITS: Try on a pregnancy vest, view anatomically correct dolls, see art from around the world, and experience a new historical display about women’s work in the home.

INTERNSHIPS: We currently have several calls out to local college students for internships for the spring of 2018. Our high school intern, Andres’ has been with us since the spring and is a St. Pete High School senior. He is hard at work cataloging our library and creating a new student exhibit for January 2018. We welcome one new intern in January as well. We’re looking forward to introducing you to her.

ONLINE: In July of 2017, according to our google report 4,239 conducted searches and found us online. We are happy and proud that people are thinking about us. We hope that we can continue to expand in our new location. If you have ideas or want to get on board, please write Museum Director: Martha Joy Rose at MarthaJoyRose@gmail.com Introduction to Mother Studies classes will re-launch with a new partnership sometime within the next six months – stay tuned.

Categories
Art Feminism History MAMA motherhood

MAMA: Art Interview with Mother Artist Carla Danes; Poetry by Hannah Brockbank [LINK]

A VISIT WITH CARLA DANES:

I want to share an artist love story. This goes back twenty-something years. When I lived in SoHo, New York in a funky six-flight walk-up loft, there was an amazing woman who took care of toddlers in her home on Crosby Street. After having my first, and then my second baby, I was desperate for some childcare and also I was hungry to network with other neighborhood creative-types. One of my friends put me in touch with Carla Danes of “Crosby Kids” and the rest, as they say, is her-story. Carla and her husband Chris, both artists, continued to live, work, and care for children while making art in Manhattan until empowering their daughter, Claire Danes to move to Los Angeles to pursue work as an actress. Carla and I were now on opposite coasts but we stayed in touch. I was lucky enough to visit her studio recently, which is part of a sprawling collection of gardens, outbuildings, and even a yurt in Santa Monica, California. It was wonderful spending time together again. Carla, Chris and I talked feminism, families, and mother-made art whilst sitting around their kitchen table, sipping juice, and appreciating the beauty of life’s grand arch. Below is a segment from an interview with ARTPOST featuring Carla Danes and a few of the photos I took during my trip.

Carla Danes and Joy Rose
Carla Danes Art

ARTPOST INTERVIEW:

Yes! I see myself as this middle-class lady who was taught by my mother and my grandmother and by every magazine in the house about taste and fashion. So I like to play with that; art about what is fashionable, about what’s tasteful and what is art. This goes back to the idea that women have always been allowed to make art at home. Rich women painted ceramic cups and did needlework. Poor women made mittens, hats or quilts. But women have always been allowed to work at home. My work is an extension of that female territory and expanding on it.

I was in my twenties at the height of the Feminist Movement. Now women are allowed to go to college and they are out of the house. Women will buy a couch— big things for the house like bathroom fixtures. But we don’t buy our own jewelry. Sometimes we buy flowers for ourselves, but certainly, we don’t collect art—the men do. Our opinion is considered, but we are rarely the art buyers in the family. Ultimately, I’d like to make art for women to feel safe with. I mean it’s a joke. We have more women than men in many art departments. We have curators, teachers, art makers—but we don’t buy art? This is crazy. See the full article ARTPOST article here [LINK].

*Carla donated one of her prints to the Museum of Motherhood. Make an appointment today for a tour to see our latest collection. Write: info@MOMmuseum.org

Carla Danes Art

POETRY AT MOM WITH HANNAH BROCKBANK

Since I’ve embraced the opportunity to “go personal” this November, I am also happy to share some of the wonders of hosting poet Hannah Brockbank as part of the Museum of Motherhood’s Residency Program. Hannah has been here for two weeks studying the contents of the museum and making use its library. This has been grand opportunity to spend time engaged in serious discussion about everything mother. We first met briefly in-person at the ProCreate event in London over the summer after he accepted to the Residency. Since that time, we’ve wandered the grounds, explored St. Pete. watched the movie Momz Hot Rocks, perused books about mother studies, and of course Facetimed with her kids. It’s been a blast. I’m going to miss Hannah when she goes back to England! ~ Martha Joy Rose

This from Hannah:

I am a mother, writer, and Ph.D. student from England. My creative Ph.D at the University of Chichester involves the creation of a new book-length collection of matrifocal poems exploring my experience of mothering. Whilst at the Museum of Motherhood (M.O.M.), I’ve been able to research matrifocal narratives, but also use M.O.M’s excellently curated collection of books, exhibits, art, and photographs (including Procreate Project’s Photozine Archive) as inspiration for my writing. Having time to write without the interruption of family life, has meant I have been very productive, and I look forward to spending my last days at M.O.M. focussing on my creative writing.

One of the first poems I wrote was inspired by an exhibit of a breast and uterus offering. The card by the exhibit read, ‘Uterus and breast offering from Fatima, Portugal to be offered to the Virgin Mary.’ I found this to be a very powerful image and I immediately began to consider my experiences of fertility and wanting to conceive.

It took 6 months to become pregnant with my first daughter and during part of that time, my husband and I visited Japan. We saw many temples and shrines, including the Site of Enazuka – a placenta mound which contained the afterbirth of Tokugawa Ienobu (1662-1712) the Sixth Shogun of Japan. There were many white and vivid pink azaleas, elegant buildings, and copper coloured carp in the ponds. Everything was blooming and coming alive. I also remember the many women who walked along the paths between the azaleas, towards a thick plume of incense where they cupped the smoke with their hands and drew it to their bellies and prayed.

Hannah_NotebookI’ve carried this image with me for six years knowing it was a significant one, but wanted to find the right moment, and inspiration to use it. It was wonderful to commit it to paper. For me, most poems begin as a strong image. I then unpick images on the page. This can sometimes take the form of a sketch, a mind-map or sometimes, as in this case, in note form:

As you can see, I pay no attention to neatness, grammar, or punctuation at this stage. It’s really about getting the image committed to paper. I then include as many of the senses as possible, sight, smell, touch etc. Once I’m satisfied with that, I may add research. For example, the phytotomy of an azalea flower. Interestingly, at this point I start to find connections, or what I like to call ‘serendipitous moments’, where relationships between words, images, and idioms make happy alliances. Truthfully, this doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it feels rather special.

I then start to free-write, beginning to shape sentences into lines, carefully considering the placement of line ends, internal rhyme, and structure. As the poem is continually redrafted and workshopped, it becomes tighter and stronger.

Below is my first draft which has been given the work in progress title of ‘Nezu Shrine’. I will let it ‘compost’ for a week before redrafting. After that, the poem will be emailed to my workshop group in England, where I will receive feedback. I will make any amendments necessary and then send it to a publisher for their consideration.

NEZU SHRINE (Work in Progress)

You pinch a lace bug
from the underside

of a white azalea.
Pearls of pollen

drop from its stamen
and fill the creases

of your busy hands.
And later,

you take my hand
and lead me

passed a pond
of copper carp,

(their swollen bellies
visible from the surface),

to a shrine.
You clap

your hands twice
then cup and guide

the blue smoke
from smouldering

incense
to my empty belly.

By Hannah Brockbank

Happy writing!

Hannah

MAMA_Logo_2015

The Museum of Motherhood, the ProCreate Project, the Mom Egg Review, and the Mother Magazine are pleased to announce the launch of a bi-monthly international exchange of ideas and art. M.A.M.A. will celebrate the notion of being “pregnant with ideas” in new ways. 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 creative, 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. Download the Press Release here or read about updated initiatives. #JoinMAMA  @ProcreateProj  @MOMmuseum @TheMomEgg

Categories
Blog Featured Medical motherhood

Raising Awareness of Hyperemesis Gravidarum [LINK]

Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) is a debilitating and potentially life-threatening pregnancy-related illness impacting two percent (underreported) of pregnant women globally. HG often begins by week six of pregnancy and includes malnutrition, rapid weight loss, dehydration, limited mobility and psychological trauma due to unrelenting nausea and vomiting with potentially adverse consequences for moms and babies. HG significantly disrupts women’s daily life. Yet, no standard medical definition exists nor adequate medical care for most of us.

HG is often medically misdiagnosed as extreme “morning sickness” and medical personnel (from physicians to midwives and doulas) often believe HG will resolve by week twelve. However, each pregnancy is unique and while for some women HG dissipates by week twenty, for others (between ten to twenty percent in the U.S.), we experience HG until the end of the pregnancy. HG is NOT morning sickness; it is “beyond morning sickness” as Ashli Foshee McCall (Beyond Morning Sickness: Battling Hyperemesis Gravidarum, 2006, www.beyondmorningsickness.com) puts it. My own experiences with three HG pregnancies over the past fifteen years (with one live, healthy birth) along with my mother studies scholarship (“The Yonic Myths of Motherhood: An Autoethnography”, 2008 (10.1,57-65), Journal of the Motherhood Initiative of Research and Community Involvement & “New Maternalisms”: Tales of Motherwork (Dislodging the Unthinkable), 2016, Demeter Press) calls into question normative stories of pregnancy and birth and motherhood, mothering and motherwork.

At the heels of May 15, 2017 – HG Awareness Day – and October 15, 2017 – Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day, I write to bring attention to the pregnancy and birth traumas around HG, including one in three women do not come home with their babies. I simultaneously draw attention to some of the supportive voices of HG: Hyperemesis Education & Research (HER) Foundation, HER Foundation Facebook, Beyond Morning Sickness, and Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG): Sufferers, Survivors, Supporters Facebook. Dr. Marlena Schoenberg Fejzo, Ph.D. of UCLA has partnered with HER, conducting a study entitled, “Genetics of Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG)” (if you live in the United States, have suffered from HG and had treatment that includes i.v. hydration, TPN and/or other form of non-oral feeding and are interested in being part of the study, then please contact Dr. Fejzo at nvpstudy@usc.edu or 310-210-0802). And, Dr. Chandler Marrs, Ph.D. has recently published an article, Hyperemesis Gravidarum – Severe Morning Sickness: Are Mitochondria Involved?, outlining a potential nutritional intervention that may help to navigate HG better (see also the often unacknowledged work of Dr. John B. Irwin, M.D., author of The Natural Way to a Trouble-Free Pregnancy: The Toxemia/Thiamin Connection, 2008, Aslan Publishing).

Finally, I center my work not only in producing HG scholarship in the field of mother studies but I also practically assist women to plan HG pregnancies and develop strategies for managing HG. (I contain in my work a therapeutic shamanic healing component, grounding my work in motherwork, pregnancy and birth traumas for HG suffers and survivors, which embraces experiences of HG-related therapeutic terminations.) We are not alone! I can be contacted via email at drrokbad@gmail.com – Dr. Roksana Badruddoja, Ph.D.

Categories
Art Featured Literature MAMA motherhood

MAMA by Elisabeth Schön Words by Judy Swann [CLICK]

The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 24th 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

Art by Elisabeth Schön – See more at ProCreate Website:

ZMOTHERINE

Art by Elisabeth Schön

The postpartum period is a surreal time and space that can hurt or heal a woman but either way she’ll never forget it with her in body in flux and a human being that just came through her and is utterly dependent on her for survival. Their meeting binds them as she’s confronted with her biology and its vulnerability. 

 
Elisabeth Schön is an artist photographer photo book maker juggling her attempts at self-publishing with three young boys at home.

Words by Judy Swann

Fool

I threw rose petals on the ground
and her pink slippers slid on that silky surface, the Muse, when she came just now.

Her small hooves have worn every fabric, every skin, every color, my kids
try them on when she slips them off.

Her little goat horns wobbled and she scolded, “Why am I not connecting? Why so many dreams and so little in my basket, Fool?”

By ‘Fool’ she meant ‘Innocent Child.’ She said, and I could see her beard, she said, “Tell me that you love me.”

“I am,” I said, “not sleeping alone.”
She said, “Tell me that you love me.”
I said she was always on my mind, I called

As often as I could. She said, “Tell me
that you love me.” I said “I’ve spent twenty years, two husbands, and all my thrift on those roses.”

Judy Swann is a poet, essayist, translator, mom, blogger, and bicycle commuter, whose work has been published in many venues both in print and online, including the Mom Egg Review. Her son is (always) on his way home. Her book, We Are All Well: The Letters of Nora Hall has given her great joy. She loves. She lives in Ithaca, NY.

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Conferences Feminism MAMA Media motherhood Residency

CFP: MOM Conference 2018 – Teaching Mother Studies In The Academy & Beyond [LINK]

LINK TO SUBMIT HERE [LINK]

LINK TO SUBMIT HERE [LINK]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Art Books Conferences Feminism International Literature Media motherhood Residency Spiritual Motherhood

About the Artist & Founder

Martha Joy Rose (call me 'Joy') is a scholar, artist, curator, and activist. She She founded MaMaPaLooZa, after touring with her band Housewives On Prozac (1997-2008). She is the founding director of the Museum of Motherhood.

Martha Joy Rose (call me ‘Joy’) is a scholar, artist, curator, and activist. She She founded MaMaPaLooZa, after touring with her band Housewives On Prozac (1997-2008) and began work on the Museum of Motherhood (MOM) in 2003. She holds an advanced degree in mother studies from CUNY, GC, is the NOW-NYC Susan B. Anthony awardee (2009), has lectured extensively, written widely, and served as publisher for numerous mom-made publications. Joy has also been featured in the Tampa Bay Times locally as well as WEDU, PBS, ABC News and nationally on Good Morning America, CNN, and NPR. She is the NOW-NYC recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Award, her Mamapalooza Festival Series has been recognized as “Best in Girl-Power Events”, and her music has appeared on the BIlboard Top 100 Dance Charts. Her current live/work space in Kenwood is devoted to the exploration of mother-labor as performance art. She is an ‘artist recipient’ of a grant from St Pete Arts Alliance & in 2023, she was certified with the Adult Mental Health First Aid, USA. She is the mother of four adult children and five grandchildren.

Diary of a Curator

9:30 AM. I am a cheerleader with a cup of coffee in hand, at my desk, dressed in underwear, checking e-mail. The young intern in Southeast Asia, who is conducting research as part of a special project for the Museum of Motherhood is having an issue getting access to the women who have been traumatized by rape, displacement, and other human rights violations in Myanmar. She wants me to look over her proposal. A senior in in high school, she believes in humanitarian activism. It is only 9:30 am and we are mothering the world.

12 PM Pause for olives, crackers, kombucha, and seltzer. Nice ice spills on the floor as my phone rings. Daughter wants to video chat from San Francisco on her commute to nursing school, then back to my computer. 3-hour time difference.

1 PM Sift through the student e-mails which begin with “Dear Professor Rose, I am so sorry I forgot to turn in my homework on time,” and are followed by a variety of excuses, most of which are not worth sharing.

2 PM Urgent phone call from a friend. Her voice quivers. “Can you talk?” She apologizes profusely. A secret story spills out. She keeps asking, “Am I crazy?” She’s in the car, with her daughter, leaving her husband. She says she is not safe and needs advice and a divorce attorney. I refer her to one and also the Pace Women’s Justice Center.

2:30 PM Text to my friend. “You are strong.”

3:00 PM Talk to my sister. Grab a cookie.

3:30PM Fingers on keys. I have a theory. I am a woman of many collected years, who has raised four children to adulthood. My circle is comprised of mothers, many who suffer periodically from anxiety, depression, and even mania. (I have had my episodes too). We are the women, forty to sixty years old who have spent our adult life feeding babies, changing diapers, and fretting over young progeny. We work, we take public transport, and if we have cars we drive. We try to sleep. We keep a grueling pace: the caregivers, the mothers, maybe now the fathers, but mostly the mothers whose bodies feel the vacant place where their infants stirred: the real, the imagined, and the yearned for. Trying to heal that deep mysterious hole, prepping children for school, cooking meals, cast, cast, casting spells. We, snap pictures for the prom, or we take them to the hospital, or maybe the worse possible thing happens. We keep so busy. Then, when our youth go off in the world to make lives of their own, all that is left in place of twenty years of directed, exhausting, unrelenting energy is a longing. That momentum, circles back into the heart and mind, funneling a giant vortex that drives some mad – Vigilance! Do not let the madness take hold. Take a deep breath. I am flinging these words, towards the universe in the hopes of reaching your collective soul. Take heed, I beg you. Find a way to fill yourself.

4 PM I draw a sketch of a small statue. She is a victorious woman made of steel with a V-up and V-down. Tomorrow, I go to town to procure rebar, followed with a lesson in welding, from a young man who works in a car factory, who has gifted me with a stick welding machine from 1957. “Can you give me lessons,” I ask? “Sure,” he replies. I place the drawing on the desk and stare at it. The fire burns hot.

5 PM Stirring a pot. Cooking the dinner. Watching the soup spin. I anchor my artistic practice to scholar Sarah Black’s assertions that argue for the position of “mother as curator.” Everyday activities equal the sum of our labor on behalf of the flock, as well as our art, and collectively we create, enact, and display our creativity.

6 PM I still have mountains of homework to do. I have a book to finish, paintings to paint, and metal to bend. I have a museum to run, my mother’s farm to harvest, a home in New York where the work began. Where the children were raised. Where I made music, was married, and then divorced.

7 PM Chores, water garden, pick up the kitchen. Then, back to the computer.

9 PM More papers. More emails. My eyes are tired. I need to log off until tomorrow.

9:30 PM Shutting down the screen. Brushing my teeth. I am grateful for the women, for IWD, for Women’s History Month, for all the ancestors who made my life possible, and for my mother, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters who inspired me to find this work. To the professors, scholars, and artists who helped me understand the world, I live in.

10 PM One last thought, as I lie in bed, in the dark, when the quiet is so thick it feels like an eternity. In the house where my parents lived and died, in the bedroom that was theirs for twenty years after they moved here, next to a field where relatives from Scotland arrived in 1832, where the blackness swallows the light, I say my prayers. I call out for help, invoking my angels, lighting a candle, blessing my children wherever they are (because I cannot tuck them in anymore), and then I wait, slumbering, for strength to find me again, which invariably it does.

Martha Joy Rose; IWD Women in Herstory 2023 (Shared from a 2019 post)

10 AM Log onto the Manhattan College online. Grade papers for the Sociology of Family class. I am teaching fifteen students this summer. They are all boys. I am teaching them Mother Studies. We recite the names of the Female Founders one by one committing them to memory, first the feminist leaders, then their theories, then, the scholars, eventually the artists. I cite the quote from Adrienne Rich: “The one unifying, incontrovertible experience shared by all women and men is that months-long period we spent unfolding inside a woman’s body. Yet, we know more about the air we breathe, the seas we travel, then the nature and meaning of motherhood.” (Of Woman Born, p 11)

Categories
Art Digital Media Internships International Media motherhood

Internship Opportunities at the Museum of Motherhood [Click]

Each year the Museum of Motherhood (MOM) welcomes interns from a variety of disciplines. Each internship seeks to balance individual goals and needs with those of the museum’s. Study labs, online courses, individual projects, visual displays, research, and guest docent opportunities are just a few of the ways MOM has worked with university and graduate students since 2011. Onsite and remote internships are available for the 2017 academic year. Write Director, M. Joy Rose, 538 28th St. N. St. Petersburg: info@mommuseum.org

Seeking students for extra credit lab-work with the Museum of Motherhood for six weeks, beginning October 2017. MOM is launching a new online course called Introduction to Mother Studies. This is an introduction to mothers, mothering, and motherhood through a critical lens. The class uses articles, statistics, film, media, and literature to examine the perceptions, experiences, and identity of mothers. The goal of the course is to offer students insight into evolving notions of family, while sharing a multitude of perspectives. We analyze and explore motherhood in the private as well as the social sphere where mothering is performed.

  • Time commitment approximately 3-4 hours per week for six weeks, October 1 – November 12, 2017.
  • Exit survey completion and final report
  • Participants will be invited to share their class perspectives and final projects at the annual academic MOM Conference in St. Pete/Tampa, February 15-17, 2017.

Seeking self-designed internships at the Museum of Motherhood in St. Petersburg, Florida. Students bring their passion and perspective to an individualized study program focused on mothers, fathers, and families. Create a community outreach project, launch a museum display, or conduct research on a specific topic or category. Business students and those interested in the non-profit sector also welcome.

  • Time commitment is flexible. Students have worked between 4-10 hours per week.
  • Remote or onsite opportunities available
  • Participants will be invited to share their projects at the annual academic MOM Conference in St. Pete/Tampa, February 15-17, 2017.

“….the rules of motherhood are being radically rewritten–with a snarl, cymbal crash and power E-chord that would make the lads in AC/DC stand and salute.” –USA Today

[FIND OUT MORE LINK]

Internships at the Museum of Motherhood

Categories
motherhood Residency Spiritual Motherhood

Spirited Woman Residency At M.O.M – Introducing Dawn Parker and Nancy Mills

Spirited Woman through The Spirited Woman Foundation has created a program with the Museum of Motherhood to honor one courageous unstoppable mother on the next chapter of her journey. The mission of the Spirited Woman Foundation is to help heal and support women through actions of empowerment. The Spirited Woman Residency offers one spirited mom a chance to speak her voice, walk her path, gain time away for reflection and to flourish and thrive through a guided, intensive experience – all within a sacred space, in a creative environment, with the objective of fulfilling her personal dream-goals. Every woman has the right to be heard. Every woman has a voice. Every woman must help another.

THE SISTERHOOD OF THE SACRED SCARVES

– Nancy Mills, Founder of the Spirited Woman and The Sisterhood of the Sacred Scarves – Wearing AWAKENED ENERGY –

A large portion of the Spirited Woman Foundation money continues to be raised through the Sisterhood of the Sacred Scarves program. It is by purchasing these “Spirited Woman Prayer Scarves” that a portion of each scarf’s proceeds is donated by Spirited Woman into the Spirited Woman Foundation.

Purchase a scarf. Assorted colors and intentions! (Click photo)

The Sisterhood of the Sacred Scarves honors women through scarf and ceremony. The Spirited Woman Prayer Scarf is a symbol of spirit, empowerment, and beauty. To date, there have been 18 scarves each with a different theme. 1000s have been sold worldwide, connecting women together energetically. The scarves themselves have been blessed – each carries sacred energy.

Spiritually and socially conscious sisters proudly wear the prayer scarves as a symbol of support at gatherings, marches, retreats and in spirit around the world.

The latest Spirited Woman Prayer Scarf is AWAKENED ENERGY.

The prayer scarves are a Mother’s Day gift for the entire year – filled with meaning – a gift both can share and help others at the same time. By wearing the scarf you will be making a statement of sacred love – together. What a beautiful message to give our daughters, our sisters, our friends, and our divine sacred selves.

PURCHASE A SCARF / SUPPORT SPIRITED WOMAN [LINK]

ABOUT DAWN PARKER – Recipient of Spirited Woman Residency Scholarship

Dawn Louise Parker

Dawn first visited the new Museum Art Annex, which is the personal live/work space of M. Joy Rose in February 2017. There was an instant connection between Dawn’s bright and curious personality and the spirit of the Museum, which had recently relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida from New York. Museum founder, M. Joy Rose and Dawn brainstormed on ways for Dawn to introduce her work at the upcoming annual MOM Conference. That experience quickly evolved into dual participation at the AEHK Art Tour in which Ms. Rose presented new art-works and Ms. Parker dialogued with interested attendees.

“Dawn impressed me from the moment I met her,” says Rose.” I could perceive that she was thinking deeply about her life and was committed to the next stage of her journey, namely that she had dedicated much of her life to raising her child (who is now a successful filmmaker living in California), and that she was ready to come into her own power. She was very focused on the next steps that would help activate her four years of writing, spiritual evolution, and prepare her to successfully launch her new career as an author and inspirational teacher.”

Ms. Parker is a writer, intuitive problem solver, empathetic public relations expert, thought provoker, outdoor beachy sun lover, wildish nature nurturer, and a fiercely independent self-starter. Her current writing project, “Forty-Seven Days of Love,” journals her soulful search to find self-love as a way to heal emotional wounds and heartbreak, anxiety, low self-esteem, negative self-image and relational dysfunction.

Speaking at The Academic MOM Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida inspired Dawn to enroll in the SHFT Catalyst Coaching Intensive to become a certified life coach. She is currently a contributing author to their blog on SHFT.us.

Dawn wants everyone to know how blessed she feels to receive the Spirited Woman Residency Scholarship! (thespiritedwoman.com). “This gift,” says Dawn, “will allow me to focus on completing my book while remembering my very spiritual connection to not only my life but the lives of women everywhere. I plan on wearing my scarf while I write and on making it part of my daily ritual. I also plan on conducting one workshop focused on women’s issues here at M.O.M over the summer.”

WHY DAWN IS A SPIRITUAL WARRIOR

“I am a Spirited Woman because my story is a story of transformation. I have not sugar-coated the raw emotion, love, heartache, and pain that were part of this ongoing healing. I want to share my evolution towards a purer heart, focused on compassion, while seeking forgiveness. I celebrate the glimpses of triumphant peace that I am always arriving at. Telling my story comes directly through an intimate connection with divine love, which is the source of light that runs through every human heart. I know we are not meant to do this life alone. I want to share the knowledge that each of us matters, that our hearts are precious, that each person’s story is important, and that feelings are valid. I want each and every one of us to know that we are capable of living in the light and that we are meant to shine.” ~ DLP INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK

THE MUSEUM OF MOTHERHOOD

The Museum of Motherhood (M.O.M.) is an exhibition and education center dedicated to the exploration of family – past, present, and future with a focus on women, mothers, and families.

M.O.M.’s mission is to start great conversations, feature thought-provoking exhibits, and share information and education about women, mothers, and families.

The Museum of Motherhood is made possible by the Motherhood Foundation Inc. – is a certified nonprofit 501c3 that creates, produces and presents artistic, educational and cultural content that studies and supports mothers and their activities. MFI disseminates information about mothers for broad public consumption while paying tribute to mothers (Moms) free of age, race and socio-economic barriers. MFI cares about and acts upon the status of women while celebrating their courage, fortitude, and ingenuity, and while addressing important issues, creating meaningful content, and providing compelling community experiences

SPIRITED WOMAN

Spirited Woman (www.thespiritedwoman.com) is a leading global women’s empowerment community founded close to 20 years ago by Nancy Mills. It is known for celebrating the every woman visionary, who is inspiring and changing the world one Spirited Woman Step at a time.

Categories
Art Birth Conferences Featured Feminism MAMA Media motherhood

OXYTOCIN – Birthing the world: A Symposium On M/otherhood [LINK]

EVENT INFORMATION
Royal College of Art, London – 3rd June 2017Oxytocin is a one-day symposium and programme of performances about mothers, mother art, maternal health & wellbeing.Supported by LADA and under the umbrella of theProCreate Project, the event is curated together with Dyana Gravina form the Procreate Project, Martha Joy Rose from the Museum of Motherhood (USA), Laura Godfrey-Isaacs, artist, midwife and founder of Home Live Art, Sara Paiola, researcher in Law and Human Rights from the School of Law, Birkbeck University and Sarah Dufayard, artist and producer.Oxytocin is an international research and community event focused on mothers and carers. The panels will analyse current critical practices pushing for new strategies aimed at increasing the visibility and representation of women and mothers in society.The symposium will highlight new ideas whereby infrastructures and creative programs can support and facilitate healthy families thus challenging attitudes towards motherhood, female sexuality, birth, depression and human rights. Oxytocin will encourage conversation and exchange between medical, academic and art sectors with the aim to facilitate collaborations between them and increase awareness on women’s rights, mental, emotional and physical needs during pregnancy, labour and postnatal adaptation.The event opens a community discussion aimed at spotlighting the connection between much-needed support for mothers and new approaches that are designed to encourage mothers’ and childrens’ optimum health, professional and artistic development, ongoing education, and continuing connection.The event will consist of panel discussions lead by three sectors (Artists & Academy, Midwifery, Mental Health and human rights) fused with a day programme of performances, installations and live art.
Contact:
Email info@procreateproject.com
Website:  https://www.oxytocinbirthingtheworld.co.uk 

Special Panel: Saturday, June 3rd 10:30AM Royal College of Art

Making Mother Studies Matter: Academics Advocate Fiercely for Art, Maternal Health, and a Lasting Legacy
The self-identified Mother Movement started roughly 20 years ago. In its early years, American bands began singing about motherhood while Canadian scholars began writing about it. The year was 1997. Roughly eight years before that, a few scholars published books examining the subject of motherhood. Sarah Ruddick wrote Maternal Thinking. Barbara Katz Rothman wrote Recreating Motherhood, and these Western works were preceded by Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born. The texts examined a society based on patriarchal constructions that constrained and oppressed women who were mothers, as well as their offspring.
It has been said that in order to change the future we must understand the past. Likewise, by studying the rising wave of mother-identity-art-making and scholarly texts, this panel aims to explore the legitimacy of mother studies, advocate for it to be levied within academic institutions, and share some of the ways current academics and artists are championing this legacy for future generations.

Martha Joy Rose: Martha Joy Rose is a musician, concert promoter, museum founder, and fine artist. Her work has been published across blogs and academic journals and she has performed with her band Housewives On Prozac on Good Morning America, CNN, and the Oakland Art & Soul Festival to name a few. She is the NOW-NYC recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Award, her Mamapalooza Festival Series has been recognized as “Best in Girl-Power Events” in New York, and her music has appeared on the Billboard Top 100 Dance Charts. She founded the Museum of Motherhood in 2003, created the Motherhood Foundation 501c3 non-profit in 2005, saw it flourish in NYC from 2011-2014, and then pop up at several academic institutions. In 2015, she received a Masters in Mother Studies from CUNY, The Graduate Center of New York. This is believed to be the first individualized MALS Degree in this specialty. She then taught Sociology of Family at Manhattan College before moving to her current live/work space in Kenwood St. Petersburg, Florida, which is devoted to the exploration of mother-labor as performance art. She is a contributing author the The Encyclopedia of Motherhood (Sage Press, 2011), The Twentieth Century Motherhood Movement (Demeter Press, 2011), New Maternalisms (Demeter Press, 2015), and the forthcoming book, Music of Motherhood (Demeter Press, 2017).

Sarah Black -In 2016 a presentation by Sarah Black called “Mother As Curator” at the Annual Academic M.O.M. Conference described her home environment as a video, art, installation, and inter-generational family experience. Her treatise declared that as an artist, she “blurs the boundaries of art, and the personal, family and audience, narrative and auto-biographic practices.” She states that as a “performance maker, she explores the home as both a physical and a metaphysical structure to house the work.” In this way, spaces are informed and co-created by those who participate in its interiors, but similarly, its interiors also hold a template for studying the things it contains from a distance.

Paula Chambers – Paula Chambers has exhibited widely, with a back catalogue of solo shows including most recently “Transcendental Housework” at Stockport Art Gallery, and “Domestic Pirate” at Show Space, London. Paula studied under Griselda Pollock at the University of Leeds for the MA Feminist History, Theory, Criticism and Practice in the Visual Arts. Paula is Principal Lecturer (Sculpture) on BA Fine Art, at Leeds College of Art. She is undertaking a practice‐led PhD at Middlesex University.

Rosiland Howell – Rosalind Howell is a Registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist with the Association of Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK (ADMPUK) with a particular interest in Maternal Subjectivity and Perinatal Mental Health. Her recent publications include: Writing Maternal Ambivalence (and how we love to hate it). MaMSIE.org/blog 2016 A Chorus, a Gaggle, or a Consternation of Mothers. Mommuseum.org 2015 The Loneliness of Parenting Decisions. Juno Parenting Magazine 2014, Love and Hate in Childbirth. MaMSIE.org/blog 2015.

Roberta Garrett – Roberta Garrett is a senior lecturer in the School of Arts and Digital Industries at the University of East London. She has published widely on gender representation in film and literature. She is the author of Postmodern Chick-Flicks: The Return of the Woman’s Film (Palgrave, 2007). Other publications include ‘Female Fantasy and Post-Feminist Politics in Nora Ephron’s Screenplays’ Journal of Screenwriting, 2011, and the forthcoming ‘Gendering the Post 9/11 Movie: Love, Loss and Regeneration in Julie and Julia’, in Mary Harrod (ed.) Women and Genre (University of Illinois Press, 2016). She is currently working on popular representations of the neo-liberal family in literature and film, and has published: ‘Novels and Children: “Mum’s Lit” and the Public Mother/Author’, Journal of Maternal Studies, 2013; and ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin: The Monstrous Child as Feminist and Anti-American Allegory’, in Peter Childs, Sebastian Groes and Claire Colbrook (eds.) Women’s Writing Post 9/11 (Lexington Press, 2014). Her essay, ‘ Cavorting in the Ruins? Truth, Myth and Resistance in Contemporary Mumoirs’, appears in Roberta Garrett, Tracey Jensen and Angela Voela (eds.) We Need to Talk about Family: Essays on Neoliberalism, The Family and Popular Culture (Cambridge Scholars, forthcoming 2016). She is also writing a monograph entitled Writing the Modern Family: Neoliberalism and Representation of Parenting in Contemporary Novels and Memoirs.

Categories
Art Featured MAMA motherhood

MAMA: Contained & Blur

 The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 23rd 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

Art by Jane Glennie

Container//contained 2012-2014

In psychoanalysis the container-contained notion, as introduced by Wilfred Bion, holds a neutral position, without judgement, that can be used as an approach to the analysis process. Reading texts through this position, from within the paradigm of motherhood, seems to be illuminating. It provides numerous ways of probing the question: ‘who is the container and who is the contained?’. How does the relationship between mother and child, mother and son, mother and daughter stand at any one discrete moment? What is the basis of the container at that moment? What is the emotion of the contained? The container can be actual, practical, or explicit. It can be metaphoric, emotional or implicit.

The complexity and variability of container-contained could, potentially, provide a framework to better understand and accommodate the complex and variable ‘emotional storm’ of minds (mother and child) that both ‘crave and resist’ each other.

more about the artist:

Jane Glennie was born in Rustington and grew up roaming a horticultural nursery; planting fuchsias on piecework and selling cups of tea to raise some cash. A winding path traversed fashion & textiles, economics and archaeology before a BA in Typography & Graphic Communication at Reading University, freelance graphic design, and then MA Art & Space at Kingston University. Jane exhibits her work nationally and internationally, and has managed and curated projects with other artists.

Blur

Words by Sarah Goshal

They say you

block it all out:

no sleep, sore

hips, racecar

blowtorch wake

up heartburn,

tests, tests, tests,

feet hurt, slow

walk waddle,

timing, waiting,

talking to you

for hours and the

pain …

I haven’t forgotten.

You were a pot of acid

in my side, trying to escape

with tremendous effort,

announcing the future

in seconds.

Originally published in Mom Egg Review Vol. 15

Sarah Ghoshal is a poet, a mom, a professor and a runner. She has published two poetry chapbooks and her work can be found in such publications as Red Savina Review, Cream City Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives in New Jersey with her happy little family and her faithful dog Comet, who flies through the air with the greatest of ease. You can learn more about her at www.sarahghoshal.com or find her on Twitter, @sarahghoshal.

Artist: Jane Glennie More at ProCreate Project

Blur

By, Sarah Goshal

They say you

block it all out:

no sleep, sore

hips, racecar

blowtorch wake

up heartburn,

tests, tests, tests,

feet hurt, slow

walk waddle,

timing, waiting,

talking to you

for hours and the

pain …

I haven’t forgotten.

You were a pot of acid

in my side, trying to escape

with tremendous effort,

announcing the future

in seconds.

Originally published in Mom Egg Review Vol. 15

Sarah Ghoshal is a poet, a mom, a professor and a runner. She has published two poetry chapbooks and her work can be found in such publications as Red Savina Review, Cream City Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives in New Jersey with her happy little family and her faithful dog Comet, who flies through the air with the greatest of ease. You can learn more about her at www.sarahghoshal.com or find her on Twitter, @sarahghoshal.