A Year of Motherhood, Art, and Adjusting the Dream

It has been over a year since I last wrote a blog post, which feels both surprising and completely unsurprising at the same time. Before my daughter was born, the idealist in me imagined I would somehow keep writing, keep painting, keep doing all the things that made me feel most like myself, just now with a baby nearby. I pictured quiet nap times, little pockets of creative rhythm, and some graceful version of balance.

That is not exactly how it went.

In the nearly year since my daughter was born, I have finished one painting. One. For a while, that number felt a little painful to admit. Painting has always been one of the clearest ways I have understood myself, and to see that part of my life slow down so dramatically made me wonder what was happening to me creatively. Was I drifting away from it? Was I losing something? Was this simply a season, or had motherhood permanently rearranged the landscape of my inner life?

The truth is that motherhood has rearranged everything. It has changed my routines, my time, my energy, and my expectations. It has also clarified what matters to me.

I may have only finished one painting, but I have not stopped creating.

Over this past year, I have poured myself more fully into illustration. I finished Volume One of Inked & Ordinary, which feels significant because it marks a shift in how I am creating and what I am building. I have also started working on the next volume, and beyond that, I find myself wanting to create a more expansive, living world around Inked & Ordinary as a whole. It is becoming more than a project. It is becoming a place with its own mood, its own language, and its own possibilities.

That matters to me deeply.

Parenthood has changed the way I think about creativity. Before becoming a mother, I was more comfortable letting it exist in a romantic, half-wild state. I created because I needed to, because it made life feel fuller, more beautiful, and more meaningful. That is still true. But now there is something else running alongside it: a stronger desire to make a real living from the work I create.

I want to prove to my daughter that it is possible to build a life around something creative and beautiful. I want her to grow up seeing that even in a world that often feels unstable, loud, expensive, and deeply unromantic, there is still room to make meaningful work. There is still room to make beauty. There is still a way, however messy, to shape a life around what matters most.

That desire feels different now than ambition once did. It feels steadier. Less performative. More rooted. I am less interested in proving myself to the world and more interested in showing my daughter what is possible.

Of course, life has not become neat just because my perspective has changed. We are still navigating the legal and logistical mess of living between France and Canada, which comes with its own particular chaos. There are forms, timelines, uncertainties, bureaucracies, and all the lovely unglamorous details that life tends to pile on just when you are trying to make something meaningful. There is motherhood. There is work. There is the constant negotiation between what needs to be done and what longs to be made.

And still, creation continues.

Not always in the way I imagined. Not always in the medium I expected. Not always at the pace I would prefer. But it continues.

That has been one of the deepest lessons of this past year. Creativity does not always disappear when life changes. Sometimes it changes shape. Sometimes it asks to be approached differently. Sometimes it grows quieter, more patient, and less precious. Sometimes it stops waiting for the perfect conditions and learns how to live right in the middle of the mess.

As I write this, my daughter has crawled over to me, pulled herself up on my legs, and is now peeking around the side of my laptop to inspect what I am doing. She is extremely pleased with herself, as she should be. She is a happy little chappy, especially after a good nap, and in this moment she seems to believe that whatever is happening on this screen should obviously involve her too.

Maybe that is exactly the point.

For a long time, I imagined creative life as something that happened in private, in silence, in long uninterrupted stretches of time. My life does not look like that right now. It looks like small windows of focus. It looks like unfinished cups of coffee. It looks like a child climbing into my lap while I try to string thoughts together. It looks like work being made in fragments, then slowly, surprisingly, becoming whole.

It may not be the version of artistic life I once imagined, but it is real. Right now, real feels more valuable than ideal.

So yes, it has been a long time since I last wrote. Yes, I have painted less than I thought I would. But I have also built something. I have finished something. I have kept going. That feels worth honouring.

This season has not made me less creative. It has made me more honest about what creativity asks of us. It asks for persistence. It asks for flexibility. It asks us to keep making in the middle of life, not just on the edges of it.

That is what I want my daughter to see. Not perfection. Not effortless success. Not some polished fantasy of balance. I want her to see that beautiful things can be built slowly. That meaningful work can grow alongside family life. That creativity is not frivolous. It is part of how we shape a life.

And so, here I am. Writing again. A little later than I expected. A little more tired, probably. A little more grounded. But still here.