As a creative, a solopreneur, someone trying to desparately make this side hustle work- there’s been one constant throughout it all: single handedly doing it all.
Then I got pregnant & everything changed. My motivation & creativity sucked dry, most days it was hard to pry myself from the couch, the slightest frustration led to a waterfall of tears, emotions on edge & not much room, desire or energy for running a business.
I felt trapped. Like this was the way it would be from here on out. Like the world as I knew it was over. The creative energy & sense of productivity I thrived under was ripped out from underneath me like a cartoon where the server snags the tablecloth from beneath the place settings. Except every glass & plate came crashing with it instead of neatly staying in place.
I spent the better part of the last year feeling like the parts of me that I liked best were being removed in order to create a new human that I didn’t know how I’d be able to love more than my dog. It was the hardest thing I had ever experienced. (Not to mention being pregnant in a pandemic... More thoughts on that here)
Until birth day. Enter the newest version of the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And also the cheesiest thing I’ve ever said when I admit that it was a birth day for me, too. Finally the unexplainable became a reality rather than something that every mom had fallen short of explaining. Perhaps because it is truly unexplainable.
And this week it came full circle as I strapped my daughter into a carrier & walked upstairs to my workspace where she fell asleep on my chest while I worked on a new design I had scribbled on a piece of scratch paper. And even though she wasn’t watching (+ wouldn’t care even if she was) I was able to share one of the things that matters most to me with the newest human that matters most to me.
Not only was creativity flowing again, but I had someone to share it with. I was no longer flying solo through the messy process of making & no longer wondered where the pieces of me went missing because now they’re right in front of me. I was sharing my first baby (my business) with my first baby (actual first born child).
As it turns out, some of the ways I thought it would be from here on out haven’t changed. I’m still a waterfall of tears with emotions on edge. But now it’s for the better instead of the worst & it’s still completely unexplainable.