Orbiting Io is 1 year old!!!!!

I began this blog at a time when I was starving to create. The first two years of motherhood were joyous, intense, exhausting, melancholic, and beautiful. To my surprise, motherhood found me isolated from the rest of world- alone in the house with a baby while the world seemingly moved on and moved forward. Those first two years I longed to create, to share, and to interact with the rest of world. That's when I got the idea to start Orbiting Io. 

Thanks to everyone for reading and continuing to look for my blog everyday. Thanks to my closest friends who put up with my rants, bouts of hyperactivity, and my tendency to get increasingly louder as I get more excited. Thanks to the handful of you who have followed my blog since the very beginning. When I feel myself stray from the true intention of this blog, I think of you.

Orbiting Io is my tiny contribution to the world. A place to bare my soul. I talked before about how we, as mothers, need to develop concrete methodologies to hold ourselves accountable to our creative progress. This blog is my method and my catalyst, not the final product, but the drawing board for all my creative endeavors.

My inspiration....

Happy Mother's Day to my Mama!

Sade vs. Beyoncè on Motherhood

This week Sade and Beyoncè both released videos portraying themselves as housewives doing what I hate to call, “women’s work.” In full 50s pinup girl regalia, Beyoncè asks, “Why don’t you love me, when I make me so damn easy to love?” While washing windows, attempting a burnt dinner, and in one scene, sloppily downing a martini, she sings a song of a mother who has perhaps given too much of herself. Sade, brings a more nostalgic feeling to mother’s work, singing an ode to fathers as she happily washes dishes dressed in soft, sexy silk. I wish I could feel like that when I’m faced with a sink full of dishes.

For the most part, roles for mothers within the household haven’t changed much since the 50s. When women have children, it is usually she who is stuck with the housework and childcare. For mothers, there are very few other options and even the most feminist of us find ourselves falling into these traditional roles. French author Stendahl once wrote, “All geniuses born women are lost to the public good.” I can’t tell you how many countless mothers have told me that they’ve given up writing, singing, painting, dancing, higher education, or other passions in order to keep their homes and raise their children. I’ve spent years now telling myself that I’ll finish [fill in the blank with abandoned creative endeavor] after I wash the dishes, or after I fold the laundry, or after the bathroom is clean. Or better yet, I’ll pick up where I left off next year when my daughter is in school full time. However disappointed, most mothers I know who have put their ambitions on the sidelines or even retired them completely seem to come to the conclusion that they have made the right choice for their children. And so it goes. We lose a genius. Having to make these choices between children and creativity or children and career is not much different than having to make a choice between paying rent and eating. They are not really choices. More so, it is a lack of choices. And we are constantly asking our women to make this choice.

 

 With mother’s day on the horizon, I have to say my feelings are more Beyoncè than Sade. And I don’t think I’m alone either. I know few mothers who smile upon a pile of dishes or do laundry with such dreamy looks in their eyes. Many mothers I know are resentful and angry about what they’ve given up for motherhood, turning their rage against the only logical person they know to blame: their men. I am not impervious to this unproductive thinking. However, we, as mothers, can’t wait for some miracle Netherlands-like legislation to pass that will pay us for our labors of love, nor can we wait for our men do their fair share, but we can stop telling ourselves that our dreams are not important. Writer and feminist Clarissa Pinkola Estès tells us that art was not meant to be created in stolen moments only and we must love our creative lives more than cooperating with our own oppression. Part of the reason we’ve given up so much is because we convince ourselves that our passions and ideas are not worthy enough to see through to fruition. We kill our ideas before they get a chance to breath. We develop no concrete method to hold ourselves accountable to our artistic progress and projects mysteriously disintegrate. But if we put ourselves at the helm of our own destiny, there can be no one else to blame. Then maybe we might find ourselves happy to do the dishes! This doesn’t, however, mean that the men are off the hook. This mother’s day, don’t stop at praising Mama’s sacrifices with flowers and candy, make a commitment to support her dreams so she doesn’t have to sacrifice so much, because chances are, she has.