Signed, Constipated and Conflicted

On Creative Flow

Dear reader, I get creatively constipated. I’m sure others would call it writer’s block; it sounds better. But what I feel is less an internal obstruction and more an external circumstance. There is no lack of material swirling around in here, my head and heart. Instead, there are simply fewer moments of release than necessary to express what’s whirling around as words and images. And so, it builds and builds and yet remains stuffed inside of me.

It’s a new-ish problem. A two-and-a-half-year-old dilemma, to be exact. I used to sit and write for hours, every single day. During my years in St. Louis, my soulmate adventurer (rest in peace, my boy) and I would frequent every coffee shop. We were familiar faces at not one, but five. We knew which shop was open late and which one offered covered patios during rainfall, which shop made the best pour over with its delicate hints of blueberry and which one to avoid during the Saturday morning rush. 

When I moved to Denver, this regular pastime dwindled down to an occasional outing. Most of my writing excursions happened in the cramped room on the third story of our townhouse. I could lay down on its carpeted floor and graze the walls with my outstretched fingers and toes. I shuffled upstairs with our two boys trailing behind me, morning and night. Poems poured out as the three of us nestled close, legs and tails tangled together.

Then our lease ended, we bought a home and moved our life further south. Out of the bustle of a metropolitan and into a quiet, suburban oasis. I soon became a mother, and…

Well, mothering intently comes with a certain constipation of self-ness I suppose. Productivity, creativity, self-sovereignty, sleep, adequate time in the bathroom — it’s all, kind of, blocked and locked up. Out of reach. 

Now, I copywrite for our business and not much outside of that. It’s squeezed into naptime, when my babe is asleep and my darting focus is a bit more intact. But, as any artist will tell you, the rare (and pressed) chunk of time amidst the most awful middle moments of the day is not conducive to genuine, unobstructed outpouring. Instead, I complete tasks and leave the rest of the soul stuff to smolder inside of me.

This works until it doesn’t. The need for creative release builds until I’m left with no other choice but to unleash the flood inside of me. So once per month, I’m awake at 3:00 AM typing my brains out. Or restless and ready to blow at 11:00 PM after anxiously lying in bed for two hours. Not rehearsing presentations or rehashing conversations, but imagining strokes of paint on a canvas or chewing on the right rhythm of words for my mental essay. Sometimes, something comes of it. I’m forced out of bed and into the basement studio. More often, however, the sudden urges manifest as unfinished paragraphs in my Notes app.

This restless energy is how I find myself now, dear reader, penning you. And tonight, I’m trying for more than one haphazard paragraph as I parse out this constipated and conflicted feeling inside of me.

My husband and I lead a coaching group, and July marked our first month with the second round of members and mentees. Calls are on Mondays, and last Monday was a special one. A Q&A session, so a dynamic and organic conversation about the month’s previous material. Early into the call, we began discussing the path rollercoaster of entrepreneurship. 

For many, the journey as a business owner starts as solopreneur. Over time, the solopreneur becomes an entrepreneur with a lean team of hustlers beside them. As the business grows, the goal is to shape it into a self-sustaining entity. With success, this happens — but many founders and business owners swiftly reach an impasse thereafter. They find themselves trapped between relief and alarm, asked a perilous question: who is their business without them and who are they without their business?

As I laid in bed tonight, I couldn’t help but wonder: might the same dilemma arise for full-time parents? The same flavor of identity crisis. One of the goals of parenthood is to bolster your child with so much safety and security that they blossom into a self-sustaining entity: a fully capable being sovereign unto themselves. Not belonging to you, the parent. Instead, an individualized man or woman who can play their hand at life without their parents’ shield.

But for this to happen, the parent and child must learn to carefully separate when the time comes. Only a little at first, but then completely. And as a business owner or a parent, this fact is gutting. It pierces through you like a rusted nail. Burning, aching, deep. 

My daughter started preschool this week, and I am walking along a plank of rusted nails. For the first time since she left my womb, we stepped into and through a new layer of separation. One that, not unlike the business owner, comes with both relief and alarm. 

During three, 3.5-hour sessions per week, I have space for writing and painting, taking showers and attending doctors appointments. The external circumstances are shifting to make way for what’s been gnawing away inside of me, this creative blockage. I can resume some sense of selfhood, and though I am immediately inspired into action, I am also painfully torn into smithereens. I am losing time with her, my daughter. Our connective tissue is thinning. 

Last night, Joe said, “I wish you would find something that excites you so much that you start sprinting toward it.” And, as I do, replied, “That’s not quite it, babe.”

From an outsider’s perspective, it may seem as though I haven’t felt inspired enough to pursue some big dream. Some giant project or passionate pursuit. And, I’ve been told as much over the past two years. I’ve sat silently while acquaintances have gushed over businesswomen making big moves in their careers. I’ve listened as they’ve sung high praise for the woman building a socially acceptable life for herself, complete with six figures, a sense of authority, and public recognition.

And at times, I too have felt that pressure to homogenize and adjust myself into someone who is worthy of the same applause. Someone doing more out there and less…in here.

Here, at home, with my daughter. Because the truth is:

I have been pursuing something with my entire being and I have felt so inspired that I’ve sprinted without stopping. I have poured all of myself into a project, but mine does not come with multiple figures in the bank account. Or noteworthy praise. I am not the woman brought up in social circles for what she is accomplishing. Instead, I am the woman brought up for bedtime wishes and one more kisses.

My job is more than a job; it’s a heartbeat. A living, breathing piece of art. In my eyes, everything else I do and have done is part-time. Background noise to her music.

She says, “Mommy, I’m grateful for you. You’re my best friend.” And nothing else matters. Not the accolades or the pressure to perform. Not the conversations that skip over the other kind of meaningful work. The one right here. I knew the season I was entering before my daughter stepped foot in this world, and I chose it wholeheartedly. Chose her, and me, together.

Which has made every minute of constipation worthwhile. Although uncomfortable, I found respite in remembering its impermanence. I would sooner block up my mental jibber jabber than give up my time with her. I moved against the current rushing past me, and into her slow, steady presence. I let the creativity flow out of me as I daily molded her world and nurtured our relationship. 

But now, she is in preschool. Something in our container is shifting. Simultaneously growing into something bigger and slipping between my fingertips. In essence, she has a short, three-hour play date a few times per week. I have the same amount of time to court my muse and bring life to my ideas. I’m thrilled for us both because, though we may be each other’s entire solar systems, we are spreading our wings. 

I’m grieving and grateful. Uprooted and overjoyed. This moment, this transition, is equal parts excruciating and breathtaking as life so often is. I sense that I’m losing a small piece of her and gaining a piece of myself back, and meanwhile asking myself the question, “Who am I without her and who is she without me?” Truthfully, I don’t know who I am without her by my side at all hours of the day and night. I don’t know who I am outside of her mother, but I do know that I’ll soon find out. As she too finds herself out. 

This jumbled up, constipated creativity will find yet another new form.