12 Inspiring Lessons And Takeaways On Caregiving And Creativity
Highlights from this season of the Postpartum Production Podcast
On the Postpartum Production Podcast, we have conversations about the intersection of caregiving, creative practice, and capitalist production, as well as what it means to be producing art while also being a parent in modern society.
Listening back to Season 2, I have to say that I was surprised by how long ago the early interviews felt to me. Like a long time ago, even though I guess in the grand scheme of things, they weren't.
This podcast is a strange record of my own interactions with a series of absolutely wonderful humans and their work, with the questions that I might've been wrestling with that day, with what we were inspired to discuss, or with what was weighing on us collectively as a society at that moment in time.
There's obviously so much that's weighing on me personally, on us as an American society, as a global society. These recordings are time capsules, records that we leave for humanity. I’m realizing that these conversations are truly quite impactful, despite the fact that in our lives, it can feel like a simple conversation has very little productive value and can't be monetized.
It’s been almost a year since my conversation with Julie Phillips, our first guest this season. My daughter wasn't yet walking when we recorded that episode and now she's running and climbing. Looking back on these conversations, I’m reminded of the important lessons, questions, and opportunities that have arisen, what we've learned, and what still needs our attention.
This season, I spoke with biographers, poets, journalists, psychologists, memoirists, activists, lactation specialists, chiropractors, and others about the ways in which creativity and caregiving intersect.
While I sat with their ideas and words, I was struck as a writer who usually sits alone in a room with my own words, by the medium of the podcast, at how present we have to be when we're sitting with each other in conversation. When the kids aren't climbing up our legs, when the dogs aren't barking (although sometimes they did), when we aren't checking Instagram or reading Substack, when we aren't tending to a meal, a sick child, or an ailing parent.
During these conversations we got to just be present with each other. And for that, I'm incredibly grateful. That my guests could take the time to sit with me too, for their honesty and vulnerability, which really make this podcast the open and engaging space that it is, I am also grateful. Below are a few of my favorite moments, lessons, and takeaways from Season 2. Thank you for listening. I hope these conversations are as impactful for you as they have been for me.
Julie Phillips on motherhood and intellectualism:
writer Molly Caro May on the bodily experience of caregiving and its relationship to artistic work:There's a lot of moral judgment because there's this old idea that thinking too much is going to be bad for the baby. It's going to draw you away from that labor of care. It's going to make you emotionally inaccessible to this family that is making demands on you.
There's a fear that women will neglect their care work, I think. I mean, the whole society is built on women's care work. I understand why it's policed so much. I understand why the motherhood police is always telling you that you're doing it wrong. It's always asking you when you're going to have another child or why didn't you have another child or is always voicing an opinion about how many days your kid should be in daycare, whether you should be leaving it to cry or not leaving it to cry. I mean, it is the basis of civilization. It is not really so strange that people want to control it.
I remember saying to my husband, I wish there was some sort of machine where I could attach, like, a keyboard to my limbs or something, and I could literally, like, learn to type differently, but through my body, so that the writing was actually a physical dance, instead of just my fingers dancing, it was my whole body dancing, because I felt like I wanted to project onto my wall, like a big screen that was huge, and then that I could like, punch it out or flow it out and, and write.
We've laughed a lot about that, but that's what I'm talking about. I want to feel my body, not just my sensations in my body, but feel my body in motion as I am writing. And so a lot of what I do, and even what I did when I was writing my last two books, is walking and recording myself and writing with my voice and feeling what that feels like to have it come from my pelvis and not my voice and not necessarily through my hands initially.
Ben Berman on creative processing while parenting:
The most complex themes are often right in front of us. And if what is right in front of us is a four-year-old throwing her socks in the toilet, I want to make room for that in my poetry. I'm not going to try to write some great literature that's detached from the reality of my life. My children are the most wonderful and important thing to me. As difficult as parenting is, that's where my heart always is, and to really think about how do you make that your creative engagement as opposed to thinking of them in opposition to one another?
Tracy Cassels on how to lead a creative life while caregiving:
It's okay to struggle in a society that doesn't support you. It's okay to be like, this doesn't work and I have to get some stuff done. The question is then, how do you approach those changes that you have to make with your family in mind, and while considering everyone? It's also looking at your child and saying, yep, this may not be the ideal, it may not be what I want it to be, but how do I do it knowing what's most important to my child?
Jazmina Barrera on the ways in which text and maternal body intersect:
Dell'Antonia on basic, fundamental rights for caregivers:When you get pregnant, the body becomes a text, a text for someone else, and a text that is changing all the time that you have to decipher.
The problem is not that you are privileged. The problem is that we have a system in which many people do not have the very basic things that they need. So, when we talk about that as appreciating our privilege, yeah, check where we are. But also, every parent should have access to childcare and functioning schools. That should not be a privilege. We must never forget that that is not meant to be a privilege only according to a certain few. The goal is that we all have those things.
Minna Dubin on the root of Mom Rage:
We get so isolated in America because there's so much emphasis on the nuclear family. And then, if you're in a nuclear family and there's only two of you, and one of them, especially in different sex relationships. If one of them is a father, the labor just falls on you and you're just so isolated. The way that we do family in America, it not only puts all the labor on the mom, but it puts all the labor on the mom and she's alone.
Kimberly Seals Allers on self-care as a revolutionary act:
on the intersection of motherhood and activism:Something that you keep for yourself can actually be the most revolutionary and important thing that you could do postpartum journey. And you may not be able to do it for long, you maybe only do it for three minutes. I used to be able to write in my journal for 30 minutes and it turned down to like 60 seconds, but it was still my time. Finding that time – even if you have to lock yourself in the bathroom – but making those simple escapes is so important. And in those times, less may be more, but consistency is everything.
As a writer, I've always been really fascinated by narrative and what it can do. Like writing in and of itself is productive, is an action. Making art can be a social justice practice. It can be an action. But I'm also really interested in how narrative can just disrupt these other narratives that we're always carrying around.
Raena Boston on community, caregiving, and activism:
If we want things to change, nobody's coming to save us. They're just not. And that's heavy and that's rough. And that's why I think we have to do it in community.
Dr Elliot Berlin on the impact of parenting in society:
You're born, you get bigger, you give birth, and you die. And you can have the greatest, most successful, most impactful career on the planet. But it still pales in comparison to what you do by leaving your imprint, your DNA imprint on the planet. Or it doesn't even have to be DNA, your parenting imprint on the planet for the future generations.
Eugenia Leigh on the life-saving nature of creative practice:
I came to poetry when I was younger as a coping mechanism, and I think I still do sometimes. And, you know, some poets like to pretend that it's a totally intellectual practice and that there's no therapeutic benefit for them. But for me, it did start out as a therapeutic practice.
And I think I still turn to it in that way and maybe in some ways the pandemic helped me to access that primal relationship I have with poetry where I went back to the original reason why I go to poems. It's because I did need a place where I could tell the truth. I did need a place where I could process the most impossible things.
And in doing that, then I figured out how to be a poet again. And I figured out that I haven't lost my relationship to writing. I can start writing again. And so I think it was in a weird way, all of these terrible things happening simultaneously brought me back to that place.
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