I've finished making a record + a visual world to go with it. After years of building, it’s physically in my hands now. The process came with both morning sickness + motherhood glow.
When I came near completion, I was invited to a couple of baby showers (the human version) and felt a little overlooked as someone who's birthing something all consuming, over years of my life, and not getting acknowledgement or a party to go along with it, thrown by the women in my life.
But this is part of the picture, when your lifestyle is on the foreign side to convention. You live + work more on the solitary side, and have to be your own source of acknowledgement and approval most of the time. Your bio family can’t give that to you, because there is no mothering that is physically visible to them. No growing belly as proof of life.
I love mothers + babies, and seeing them together. But I've never felt a gravitation towards that kind of motherhood myself. My feelings squeeze me over different things. This style of creation is not superior or inferior. It’s just a different chemical wiring altogether.
With these observations, I will throw a ‘baby’ shower next time a woman in my life is birthing something from seed to a realized form. You’ve finished a collection of paintings, written a book, finished an album or film? Call me. I will throw you a party.