The Creative Process

Welcome to the final week of the month-long Carnival of Creative Mothers to celebrate the launch of The Rainbow Way: Cultivating Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood by Lucy H. Pearce which has been Amazon.co.uk's Hottest New Release in Motherhood for the past week!

Today's topic is The Creative Process. 

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She Meets Herself                                                                Lucy Pierce

Creation

As an artist I am Midwife.

The imagery calls,

whispers from the cavernous realm

of the formless place

and I am charged with the task

of engendering this birthing into being.

Asked to bare witness

to this emergence of becoming.

To turn up and be present

and ride the waves.

Wiping the sweat and the blood,

accommodating with my hands

and heart and words

the inseparable passage of ecstasy and pain,

of resistance and release.

Sometimes sitting still in the quiet corner,

in the dim-light of the pre-dawn,

in the hush, of the eye,

of that magnificent storm,

as creation navigates its own

thunderously graceful

pathway into existence.

Sometimes, and more often than not,

being the boundary that says

“Yes you can, and lets get on with it!”

Scouring the psyche

for the point of most resistance

and laying it bare;

A gratitude deep and wide

for the baring witness

to something holy of spirit,

that breaks the heart

ever more open

to receive

and reciprocate.

As an artist I am Mother.

Called upon to carry these vessels of life

upon my hip, upon my shoulders,

even when they get really heavy;

Cupping them with my heart

when they look awkward,

ferocious, raw, ugly even,

loving them still;

Suckling my charge in the night hours,

enduring the animal instinct

of love so strong

it’s an effort not to devour

that softly solid little form,

tucked up in the crook of my arm,

in the hollow space

between my soft, round belly

and my thighs,

making do with a kiss and a squeeze;

Accepting the weight

of being bound to something,

inextricably, forever;

Suffering the surprise

and sometimes embarrassment,

when something that was once inside of me,

so utterly intimate and private,

moves out into the world

in a way so unexpectedly independent.

Revealing so much more

than my own censored heart might condone.

The child, rambunctious and proud,

demanding and difficult,

where I am timid and afraid;

Allowing my eyes to shine with the hope

that my love so desperately elicits,

even when the world seems an unlikely

and dangerous place

to house these delicate futures.

As an artist I am Child,

So very, very small and new

in a world so very big.

Rooting around like a grub in the dark,

looking for something real and comforting.

So hungry for the succor

of that sweet, warm and mighty breast,

and the light-filled fluid

filling my immense vulnerability to the core

with an equal measure of love and faith.

The circle of my mother’s arms

such a tender haven,

from my endeavoring

to know a world

I am mostly blind to,

so ill-equipped for,

clumsy and mute,

my skin too soft,

in the face of my task.

And yet the spirit that spurs me forth

into that other vast beating I hear beyond me.

A tenacious drive arising

to learn and to grow

and to become more of who I am,

but also becoming somehow less;

Delighting in what I know

and thankfully ignorant of what I do not,

least the path seem insurmountable.

Trusting in the things that cannot be spoken,

and at the mercy of the goodwill of the universe,

with a prayer that nurture

is indeed the guiding principle

after all.

It is the part of me that says

“Can’t I stop now?”

“Do I really have to finish?”

“Will you carry me?”

“How much further to go?”

The devastating suspicion

that I am nothing

and worth naught;

The precious and dangerous part

that does not know where I end and you begin;

The part that has not yet learnt

to separate my will from the will of God;

Creating secret hiding places

for the precious things that do not fit,

hiding them so well it takes a lifetime

to find my way back to the heart of them

and claim them

truly as my own.

As an artist I am Lover.

Endeavoring to allow

the romance of the universe

to ravish me utterly,

to open me so completely to the majestic

and sometimes terrifying

and sometimes mundane seeming,

Other.

To choose to leap

off that death defying cliff

even when I am tired

and feeling the tantalizing pull

to comfort and safety.

To gather up my too many muffins in the belly,

worn-out nippled,

weary-boned body

and say yes to you,

forever and always.

Seduce me even in the quiet, dark corners

I have thought to preserve only for me,

Even in the places I go to retreat

from loves unflinching gaze

and to revel in my wounds;

Even these I must surrender back to you,

so that you may fill me utterly,

my mouth, my eyes, my ears ,

my yoni, my womb, my heart,

squeezing out all my separation,

all my withholding.

Making me new, like a clean sheet of paper,

awaiting the dawn,

awaiting the pen and the brush,

to be born anew as form

and the familiar;

The wooing awake

the ocean-deep yearning of the heart,

braving the weight of that longing;

Whispering the haunted mating song

to the barren void

again and again

until the ground gives way

and I am swept away

into that turbulent current,

alive again

and love;

The echoes of the aching

like a bruise

receding from the skin,

remnants of the pleasure of it

remnants of the pain of it.

And oh, the sweet pulsing honey-love,

ululation of union

where I forget

who I am.

Too often I hide,

I turn and forget,

I pretend that it does not serve me

to surrender my hard won position

to the current of chaos

forming itself into grace.

I find that I must offer

more and more of myself,

as an appeasement to God,

the ransom of my being,

for the bone-crunching,

heart-wrenching gift

that life offered me

when she gave me a body

and set my heart to pounding.

Lucy Pierce © 2013