What I want to say is, I’ve been an awful parent lately. Nothing good to write about. Nothing in particular to celebrate. It has been nothing short of day-in and day-out, all-hands-on-deck and every-man-for-himself for nearly two months. Two months? How, two months?
Two months came and went and in parenting time, two months of not doing it well, or at least to your own high standard, is too long. But, you can’t win them all. This is not a metaphor for parenting. But as I write you, I have been applying this philosophy to all of my relationships, hoping that it sticks somewhere: You Can’t Win Them All.
We aren’t allowed to say this about parenting because for many of us it is deemed The Most Important Thing We Will Ever Do. It is the kind of thing that you know, when you’re doing it, just how important it is. So much so, when any kind of mistake or heartbreak rubs against it, causing friction, I am forced to ask myself, “How important is it?”
What Creativity It Takes
During a call the other day, as I tried to map out this critical junction of my career. I had to think what I’ve spent the last 12 years doing, on the internet, and in books, but mostly in my home. How did I overlay all these worlds and deliver them to you to read and experience in tiny snippets? Is this my calling?
This thought process is a salve, I suppose. Something to soothe the passing days and months, particularly the ones where I don’t show up as my best. I try to see the good in the time passed, the places I could and did apply creativity in mothering as much as anywhere else. And it’s a salve to calm the aching of living in a world where trans death, school shootings, and the bombardment, occupation and killing of other children is normalized. I dreamt about the water again last night. When I woke up, I read that the Atlantic Ocean is at its critical tipping point, much sooner than anticipated. We can not course-correct now, I summarized. So I locked it away in a box in my head, I played Bob Marley, purchased croissants, and came back to these conversations about creativity and community.
Mothering is not a scalable creative role. Often, it is seen as an inconvenience. When I say I haven’t been the best mother lately, that’s because it has been very inconvenient lately. Because I am very human lately. Because I wonder what will become of me. And of them. Of all of us. I wonder what will become of this conversation about creativity, about motherhood—about how the two can dance together so clearly sometimes, when we claim they are worlds apart. It starts at home. Paint on the walls. Meals on the stove. Making things. Music wafting through the air. And believing. Believing in something beyond what we are forced to ingest.
What Am I Creating In Community Now
This week I spoke with my peers in meetings and podcasts about the creative act of mothering: of organizing, fighting and spinning a world that might not feel within reach.
I am the daughter of a domestic violence advocate, and I grew up going to shelters, listening to my mother speak, hearing the stories of others. I also am the granddaughter of a beloved community advocate, and grew up on Brooklyn street corners believing the pitches of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, handing out leaflets, adorning pins. I grew up in the community, garden plucking and learning about herbs and soil, only to return to rent-stabilized apartments. I saw these Black women commit to and fight for their communities, and for their children.
This is what I remember as I turn my focus back to my own children these days. Here I am the child of two magnificent women who gave so much. Community building is part of my genome, and they taught me to live up to it. They wove it into me before I entered this world. One is gone, way too soon. One is here. They both teach my children in their passing and in their aliveness. So I come alive for my children, in my creativity and in my mothering. I pass something down to them as I care for myself—because hanging on to this part of myself if important for them, it’s important for my community, and it’s especaily important for me. Please take care of yourselves and each other.
With love,
L
“We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.”
Gwendolyn Brooks
I loved this reminder from "You Can't Win Them All," I wish someone had told me this when I was writing to please bosses and editors.
"How liberating to accept that a project’s success ultimately isn’t up to us — only its quality. You can pour your heart into it. You can give it your time and attention. You can leave it all on the page. But how the world (or audience or boss or family) reacts is very much not up to you."