Pregnancy: One of my Greatest Creative Acts

As someone who writes, performs, and makes things, I have always thought deeply about the creative process. What it means to bring something into being. To nurture an idea. To build something slowly. To make something from almost nothing. 

Pregnancy and birth made that feel newly physical to me.

The same way I grew my first play from the seedling of an idea, to a six city international tour, I grew my two beautiful boys, cell by cell, into fully formed human beings.

For me, pregnancy was a time of creative fruition. I felt that I was full of ideas, inspired to write, feeling motivated even through the fatigue. That “pregnancy glow” seemed to seep into my creative work.

During my first pregnancy, I fully rewrote and hatched a plan to tour my play The Culture as widely as I could, starting with New York, all the while knowing that there was a baby on the way.

During my second pregnancy, I finally finished my novel after nearly a decade of working on it.

Pregnancy forces you to pause some of your usual activities– and for me, that left space for creativity to expand.

It forces you to look ahead and sets your imagination ablaze. A new baby is coming. What will that mean for my life? What will the baby be like?

Pregnancy (and birth!) also reminded me that creation is not always neat or glamorous. Sometimes it is demanding, messy, exhausting, repetitive, and painful.

Brutal. But Miraculous.

Becoming a mother has changed me. Expanded me. Helped me to take up space. Helped me find peace in chaos and appreciate stillness. 

It has clarified my thinking. It has dragged me through the full spectrum of human emotions. Surprise, frustration, fulfilment, protectiveness, jealousy, fury, overwhelm, contentment, clarity, and a kind of heartbreaking happiness.

It has been, unequivocally, one of the greatest creative experiences of my life.