Instead of embracing LIFE, I make sure I don’t enjoy things “too much,” just in case I have to quickly prepare for losing everything and enveloping myself inside grief.

And god, it’s exhausting.

I understand (intellectually) that it’s not about “losing” so much as “cycling through” what naturally comes from LIFE: change, transition, then death. I understand (intellectually) that we cannot have life without these things.

I just didn’t realize how desperately afraid of death (and life) I’ve become.

And who would have thought that I’d travel 200 miles to realize all this? To realize, too, that I have everything I want and need within the life I’m already living.

Following my withdrawal from graduate school, I received an email from a professor that said:

“[I hope that you can] ‘be like water’ and find ways around the barriers to graduate education.”

It’s taken me a bit to understand why these words feel frustrating. Because his intention, I think, was encouragement and optimism.

So why do I feel conflicted?

It’s this implication that I can, and should regularly, move over/under/between/around barriers that serve no purpose but to keep me out (and maybe, to prioritize profit).

It’s so often accepted, that I nearly accepted it myself.

This is the first completed cycle within my residency program: August 29 (the start of the miscarriage) to October 10 (start of my period).

Rather than follow individual months (or even moon cycles) I’m choosing to follow my own menstrual cycle to create and document my creative work - which could very well change if we decide to get pregnant again.

I made this "choice" from a slew of non-options, in honor of myself and in defiance of unfair, unjust practices within academia.

It was a hard, painful decision - because I’ve planned to return to school since I graduated in 2014; but it’s also the decision that feels most in alignment with who I am and what I want now.

I feel grounded in this choice. But also I’m grieving, I’m raging, I’m releasing.

an artist residency in motherhood - “a self-directed, open-source artist residency to empower and inspire artists [writers] who are also mothers,” created by Lenka Clayton

the (original) purpose -

My reasons for adopting the Artist Residency in Motherhood framework are these: to embrace working and creating within my everyday life; to redefine the “limitations” of motherhood, work, and creating by earning a sustainable income for my family - and enjoying the process; to explore my relationship with schooling, education, learning, and teaching by unschooling my kids at home and deschooling myself within our shared life.

Following my hard “break-up” with graduate school, I want to create my own education at home and inside motherhood - while also sharing the process and the results publicly.