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 Jennifer
Connelly on motherhoodIt has changed absolutely everything [being a single mother to her two-and-a-half-year-old son]. I mean, it's changed my life. I think I've changed as a human being more since I've had Kai than in any other period in my life. It's such an incredible catalyst for growth. I found myself questioning absolutely everything: how I spend my time, how I speak, what kind of projects I work on, how I look at the world. |
I feel things differently, I hear things differently, I feel
so much more grounded,
I feel so much more myself. The last time I felt this comfortably seated in myself was when I was about eight, and I think that's largely because he's so present all the time, he's so pure. And he demands that of me. There's just so much less time for artifice, and I think that's really affected my work. And I think about it on a conscious level, I think about it in terms of the things that I want to do. ... So I think about it on those levels, and then I just feel things so much more deeply. It's like this layer of skin that I had over myself has been removed. Jennifer Connelly... [Reel.com 3.21.00] |
~ ~ ~ ~
 When your
children are toddlers, there are no "taboo" topics. Mothers will
discuss anything from diaper rash, sore nipples, and temper tantrums to
first smiles, kindergarten friends, and participation in sports. The ultimate source of parenting wisdom and support seems to be other women who are sharing your experiences. All that changes in adolescence. Only success and accomplishments are spoken about when moms happen to meet in the grocery store or at high school activities. |
Crises
such as depression, anorexia, drug abuse, pregnancy, bullying, or other
issues that face an alarming number of young women are hushed and
hidden.
Mothers of girls who struggle with these problems are often invisible,
grieving silently and alone.
I know. I was one of them. Cheryl Dellasega, Ph.D. excerpt on her site - from her book Surviving Ophelia: Mothers Share Their Wisdom in Navigating the Tumultuous Teenage Years |
~ ~ ~ ~
 I think
for a good few years, I worked too much -- the joy of it was drained a
bit for me. Then I took some time off and did a play.. and rethought my
approach. I realized that I would prefer to work less and do things that are really challenging or different -- and if that means that I have to do my own laundry, then so be it. The whole business of being a young actress in Hollywood became transparent to me: Everybody wants you to be something, but what do you really want to be? What's important to you in terms of how you see yourself? What kind of woman do you want to be, and what kind of artist do you want to be? |
 Now, I
feel like I'm coming at it from a very different place, than, say, when
I was 25. ///I'm so lucky because I have this amazing job, and I can leave something in the world when I die -- I would like it to be good. Especially now that I'm going to have a child, my priorities changed. Gwyneth Paltrow [Hollywood Reporter, Mar 24 2004] photo at right from "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" |
*related pages:.....identity........maturity~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~
 Like
many women who were writers and something else, I think about how I
might
have been a better mother if I wasn't a writer. It's tough, working
fulltime
and going to school at the same time. Looking back, I see myself as a
very
preoccupied mother. I was still trying to find my own way in life
during
a time when my kids were doing the same.
Would I have been a better mother if I hadn't felt this drive to be something else? I don't know that it was a choice. I don't think I could stop being a writer. I do it in spite of myself. If I wasn't a nurse, I would still be a writer, and if I wasn't a mother, I would still be a writer. Yet both those roles influenced my writing profoundly. |
Being a poet helped. I wrote at night after they were in bed, and wrote on the run. I would carry a poem around and work on it when I could. My children were often in my poems, which focused on interactions between family and life. It's funny: writing is considered a hobby for women, relegated to their spare time, whereas for men, it's a career. For me, writing is my avocation. Cortney Davis - from writerswrite.com interview: Mothers Who Write: Cortney Davis by Cheryl Dellasega, Ph.D. I Knew a Woman: The Experience of the Female Body by Cortney Davis |
~ ~ ~ ~
You wake up one day and say, "This is who I have been. And this is who I want to be to this child [her daughter, Ava], how I want her to see me as a woman, as a mother, and as a wife." I used to be much more competitive, caught up in why so-and-so got that job and I didn't. I had to let it go, because it's all so arbitrary and never very personal. You have to be cool with what's yours, and I've got mine, and what's mine is good.
Reese Witherspoon.....[premiere.com interview, Aug.2001]
~ ~ ~ ~
"A lot has changed since my days playing Blair on The Facts of Life. Shortly after
the birth of my third baby, an actress friend remarked to me, After having worked
for so many years, it must be nice to be able to relax and not work for a while.I had three children in diapers at the time, and I was tempted to slap her with a wet wipe.
Yeah, I'm leading a real Pampered lifestyle these days. Of course, I wouldn't trade it
for all the money in Hollywood. I love my life! I will always be grateful for the fun I had
while I was on television, but it can't compare with the joy I'm experiencing now."Lisa Whelchel - from her book Creative Correction : Extraordinary Ideas for Everyday Discipline
[Whelchel is also developing a book on homeschooling, and lists a number of resources on her site: lisawhelchel.com
~ ~ ~ ~
[When her daughter, Madelaine West, was 9 months old, she was taken to a hospital
and diagnosed with double pneumonia and a respiratory virus.]"West developed an allergic reaction to the drugs they gave her. For a couple of days
we didn't know if she was going to make it. This may be the worst experience in my life.But David [husband David Duchovny] and I learned a lot from it. We realized how well
we worked together. We encouraged each other's strengths and supported each other's
weaknesses. ...As an actress, I feel invincible. What's the worst thing someone can say about me?
That I did a lousy job? That I looked terrible? How can that hurt me anymore,
considering what I almost lost?"Téa Leoni [Parade mag., 7.8.01]
~ ~ ~ ~
Hollywood Moms by Joyce Ostin (Photographer), Carrie Fisher (Introduction) "Candid portraits of more than 50 acclaimed actresses, directors, producers, and performers, each one posing with her mother or daughter.
photo: Goldie Hawn and daughter Kate Hudson
~ ~ ~ ~
Nicole Murphy with husband
Eddie and children
Kelly Preston posed underwater
while seven months pregnantDanica Perez Twelve years ago, Los Angeles photographer Danica Perez set out to chronicle the miracle of birth with her camera.
The result is a collection of unforgettable pictures of mothers, babies, and birthing that features prominent proud parents
including Nicole and Eddie Murphy, Vanna White, Shawn and Larry King, Kelly Preston-Travolta, Bernadette and Sugar Ray Leonard, Heather Thomas, and Daphne and Keenan Ivory Wayans.A mother herself, Perez brings a sense of maternal awe
to celebrity subjects and regular ladies alike..[Amazon.com review]
Jessie, Emmett and Virginia, 1989
from book: "Immediate Family"
"Night-blooming Cereus" -
cover of book: Still Time*
"Shiva at Whistle Creek"
Sally Mann
I struggle with enormous discrepancies: between the reality of motherhood and the image of it, between my love for my home and the need to travel, between the varied and seductive paths of the heart.The lessons of impermanence, the occasional despair and the muse, so tenuously moored, all visit their needs upon me and I dig deeply for the spiritual utilities that restore me: my love for the place, for the one man left, for my children and friends and the great green pulse of spring. Sally Mann from a bio
from PBS interview with Jessie and Emmett - two of Mann's children:
ART:21: Has taking part in your mother's photography changed your life in any way?
Emmett: I feel like being in those pictures definitely has changed me as a person. Definitely.
Jessie: Because you have to get a sense of yourself, not only how you exist and your immediate surroundings, and how you exist in your family which is enough of a struggle for most of society, but we also have to think about how we figure in all of America and all of the art scene because so many people have seen us that you...we have a persona that's beyond us, that we don't have control...
Emmett: I mean anyone who's as driven as Sally Mann is, is going to be an intense mother and she's like...she's an incredible mom.
Jessie: To be an artist, you have to give so much of yourself to... to your art and god knows, mom does. You know all day long. All night long. She's thinking about it. She's working on it. She's printing. She's developing. Every time she looks at something, she's looking at it as an artist. It's so much of her energy, and so I think we lost to some extent, a mother, but we gained a friend and an artistic accomplice, and something entirely different.
from PBS / Art:21 series website
~ ~ ~
related video [includes segment on Sally Mann]:
Art In The Twenty-First Century **[PBS Home Video from the series Art:21]
*books by Sally Mann :
At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women*****Immediate Family *****Still Time*****Second Sight
more on Sally Mann:**photography : page 3
~ ~ ~ ~
I don't think I was born to be a mother. During those years when my body would have wanted [babies], my mind wasn't listening. My creativity was so starved... Last year I was very seriously thinking about adopting a Chinese girl. A part of me wanted a love that would be mine and always be there for me. But somehow that just made me psychologically uncomfortable.
Holland Taylor ... [People 11.29.99]
~ ~ ~ ~
****
What was amazing about Anna Quindlen's novel [One True Thing] was that it noticed
the mother. A whole generation has been brought up on Death of a Salesman, with all
the attention paid to Willy Loman. Nobody ever pays attention to Mrs. Loman!...I do think men can be more easily diverted from what really does matter,
from what's going to be important to them when they look back. They're able
to take a compensatory glory in the world when their name is written large in other ways.Mothers don't have that. Something is ceded on both sides, and I think women
understand this and what their role is, probably out of necessity. Anna and I are
of the generation of women that was seduced into the pursuit of outward achievements
and success on a different scale than the success of a relationship or the things that are
unmeasurable, like raising a child well or doing a good job at home." ....[So do you think you'll always want to act?]
"Yes, I need to do something or else I'd drive my children insane."
Meryl Streep [Interview mag., Dec, 1998]
~ ~
Diana Maychick. Meryl Streep : The Reluctant Superstar / Anna Quindlen. One True Thing
dvd: One True Thing
~ ~ ~ ~
"In some ways, I feel this whole thing about pop motherhood
is uncharted territory. So few women talk or write about what it's like,
what it does to their creativity and their drive.Yet it's this utterly transforming experience, and there was no way
it couldn't enter into my [song] writing once I started again."Shawn Colvin [LA Times 3.24.01]
~ ~ ~ ~
I'd had about a decade of being in films, and I really think I hit my stride with 'Nixon' -- and I think a lot of that is linked to the birth of my daughter. She changed me tremendously, and gave me a lot more courage, and a lot more emotional experiences than I'd ever had before. Joan Allen
~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~
"As a mother, my first responsibility is always going to be to my children.
But being creative makes me a better mother." Andie MacDowell***[E! Online, 1998]
"Before I was married and had kids, my whole identity was wrapped up in being an actor. If I didn't act, I was depressed. My whole sense of myself was in my work. Now, I feel a real balance in my life. I never knew I would love mothering as much as I do." Christine Lahti***[InStyle Magazine, Dec., 1996]
| *Motherhood
and Hollywood: How to Get a Job Like Mine by Patricia Heaton
"The really important things in life are your family and friends. And what will people say about you at your funeral—that you won an Emmy once, or that you were a good person, kind and generous? Well, as for me, I hope it's the latter. And the fact that I recently commissioned an Emmy-shaped coffin just eliminates the need for anyone to bring it up." Everybody knows that Patricia Heaton plays the hilarious, wise, and tempestuous married-with-kids everywoman on Everybody Loves Raymond. What they might not know is that in real life she is married, has four boys under eight years old, and is just as funny offscreen as on. Motherhood and Hollywood is Patricia Heaton’s humorous and poignant collection of essays on life, love, marriage, child-rearing, show business, having parents, being a parent, spousal rage, surviving fame, success, and the shame of underarm flab. [Amazon.com summary] |
 |
~ ~ ~ ~
It is time to explore the creative potential of interrupted and conflicted lives, where energies are not narrowly focused or permanently pointed toward a single ambition. These are not lives without commitment, but rather lives in which commitments are continually refocused and redefined."
****Mary Catherine Bateson****
~ ~ ~ ~
Never allow anything or anyone to talk you out of creating. Never allow your creativity to take a back seat, but to sit right next to you in your life. I've met a lot of women who were painters then became mothers and are no longer painters. And women who don't paint as much as they need to. I can see that they are missing something. They have paid a price that they didn't have to pay. A long time ago somebody asked me a question about that and I said, Anybody who tells me I can't have it all can go jump in the lake. Because I'm going to have it all. I was like, cocky, but I got tired of people saying, if you're a mother, you can't be an artist and if you're an artist, you can't be a mother.
Linda Vallejo- quotes and photo from her site: lindavallejo.com
quotes from book: Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds: 21 Artists Who Are Mothers Tell Their Stories by Anne Mavor
The most financially successful artist of the group commented that having children was undoubtedly limiting
if she compared herself to a woman who devoted her whole being to art.
She also believed, however, that being a mother provided grounding in her life and may offer experiences
that help the woman as artist to relate to humanity better through art.
 .. .. Thanks Time Magazine, this is just what I need -- another article so depressing that I can actually hear my ovaries curling up. According to author Sylvia Hewlett, career women shouldn't wait to have babies because our fertility takes a steep drop-off after age 27. And Sylvia's right -- I definitely should've had a baby when I was 27, living in Chicago, over a biker bar, pulling down a cool 12 grand a year. That woulda worked out great. |
But
Sylvia's message is feminism can't change nature, which is true. If
feminism could change nature, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be all oiled up
on the cover of Maxim.
Ladies, there's no reason to panic though: it's out of your control anyway. Either your cooter works, or it doesn't. My mom had me when she was 40, and this was back in the 70s when the only "fertility aid" was Harvey's Bristle Cream. So, waiting is just a risk that I'm going to have to take. And, I don't think I could do fertility drugs, because, to me, 6 half-pound translucent babies is not a miracle! I'd rather adopt a baby. I don't need a kid that looks like me. I was not a cute kid. I looked like a cross between that chick from the Indigo Girls... and the other chick from the Indigo Girls! Not a cute kid. Dratch, Poehler, Maya... how do you feel about author Sylvia Hewlett? ALL: We hate Sylvia Hewlett. ... // Tina Fey: Back to you, Jimmy. ****"Saturday Night Live" / Weekend Update 2002 |
~ ~ ~ ~
At mid-life, between a third and half of all high-achieving women in America do not have children. A nationwide survey of high-earning career women conducted in January 2001 shows that 33 percent of them are childless at ages 40-55, a figure that rises to 42 percent in corporate America. By and large, these high-achieving women have not chosen to be childless. [from Chapter One]
The fact that high-achieving women are less likely than high-achieving men to marry and have children
is a problem. Hewlett is right to bring this issue to the forefront of our collective consciousness.High-achieving women appear to be looking for partners who are their equals in terms of educational
attainment and earnings capacity. While it remains socially acceptable for men to partner with women
who have less education or lower earnings, this is less so for women.If high-achieving women continue to prefer equitable pairings while high-achieving men do not,
then we have a classic supply and demand problem and high-achieving women will continue
to have difficulties finding mates that they find suitable.from article: 'Baby Panic' Book Skews Data; Misses Actual Issue by Heather Boushey, womensenews.org 07/03/02
referring to book: Creating a Life... by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
~ ~ ~ ~
*--*--sites:
Artmoms are everywhere. Info and inspiration for artists who are mothers
Important Links [at cheryldellasega.com]
includes The Ophelia Project; Mothers In Touch; Parents with Teens etcLiterary Mama - "an online literary magazine, features writing by mother writers about the complexities
and many faces of motherhood. We publish fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, literary criticism, book reviews,
columns, and profiles about mother writers."Other Writing by Cheryl [at cheryldellasega.com]
includes Mothers Who Write interviews: Roxana Robinson... Diane McKinney-Whetstone...
Amy Bloom... Ann Rule... Alice McDermott... Martha Tod Dudman~ ~
Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson
"It is time to explore the creative potential of interrupted and conflicted lives, where energies are not narrowly focused or permanently pointed toward a single ambition. These are not lives without commitment, but rather lives in which commitments are continually refocused and redefined." // "Utilizing the theme of improvisation, Bateson examines her own life and career, as well as those of five other women - an anthropologist and writer, a psychiatrist with special interests in the homeless, an educator and president of Spelman College, an engineer and owner of her own company, and a dancer, artisan, and writer - and weaves them into a fat braid of lost, discarded, and reworked strands that continually emerges with a new shape and texture. She carefully laces in the extraordinaries with the ordinaries of life and portrays these exceptional women as human and understandable rather than superhuman and aloof."Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
The Fruits of Labour: Creativiity, Self-Expression and Motherhood by Penny Sumner
Writers and artists - including Alice Walker, Käthe Kollwitz, Julia Alvarez, Adrienne Rich, and Louise Erdrich -
reflect on motherhood, work, and identity.The Glow: A Journey to Motherhood by Danica Perez
Guarding the Moon : A Mother's First Year by Francesca Lia Block
For Francesca Lia Block, 39, the experience of maternity is incorporated into the whimsy of a bohemian fairy tale, part hall of terror but mostly enchanting magic. "Guarding the Moon" bedecks Block's daughter in names like Silky Milky, Girly Swirl, Charm School. Her Giggle Bean, Block writes, has wrought a magical transformation on her surroundings: "birds sing her lullabies at midnight, bunnies and bears and bouquets and books parade to our door." But Block's world is not all ladybugs and bunnies, it's also become "all sharp corners and edges," which "come to life in the swirling night, little demons of destruction that I must battle." ... Block.. lays out in darkly beautiful poetry the psychological terrors and transformations of an artist in the first year of motherhood. [from A mom makeover by Janet Saidi, LA Times, May 9 2003]Hollywood Moms by Joyce Ostin
Motherhood and Hollywood: How to Get a Job Like Mine by Patricia Heaton
Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood by Camille Peri, Kate Moses, Anne Lamott
Editors Camille Peri and Kate Moses have created a chorus with range: this is not a stream of white, privileged voices interrupted only occasionally by news from the underclass, news from women of color, or news from sexual minorities. If anything, the book is too focused on a wide variety of very personal stories--one often wishes for the gesture of expansion, the linking of the personal to the cultural. Still, that's a small gripe to have with a book that takes us into the brainier, funnier kitchens of motherhood all over America. [Amazon.com]A Question of Balance: Artists and Writers on Motherhood by Judith Pierce Rosenberg
Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds : 21 Artists Who Are Mothers Tell Their Stories by Anne Mavor, Christine Eagon
Here's how wild women both acknowledge and resist the socially imposed conflicts between artmaking and motherhood.
Strong, determined and doubly creative, they defy some rules, make some mistakes and full this fascinating book with
spirit and insight. There are a lot of different models here, and the are all good ones.
review by Lucy R. Lippard author of The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist Essays on ArtSurviving Ophelia: Mothers Share Their Wisdom in Navigating the Tumultuous Teenage Years
Ten Tips for Women Who Want to Change the World Without Losing their Friends, Shirts, or Minds - by Paula Prober
Work Left Undone: Choices and Compromises of Talented Women by Sally M. Reis
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