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M.A.M.A. Issue n.23: Jane Glennie and Sarah Goshal

The ProCreate Project, the Museum of Motherhood and the Mom Egg Review are pleased to announce the 23rd edition of this scholarly discourse intersects with the artistic to explore the wonder and the challenges of motherhood. Using words and art to connect new pathways between the academic, the para-academic, the digital, and the real, as well as the everyday: wherever you live, work, and play, the Art of Motherhood is made manifest. #JoinMAMA

April, 2017 Jane Glennie

Art by Jane Glennie

Container//contained 2012-2014

In psychoanalysis the container-contained notion, as introduced by Wilfred Bion, holds a neutral position, without judgement, that can be used as an approach to the analysis process. Reading texts through this position, from within the paradigm of motherhood, seems to be illuminating. It provides numerous ways of probing the question: ‘who is the container and who is the contained?’. How does the relationship between mother and child, mother and son, mother and daughter stand at any one discrete moment? What is the basis of the container at that moment? What is the emotion of the contained? The container can be actual, practical, or explicit. It can be metaphoric, emotional or implicit.

The complexity and variability of container-contained could, potentially, provide a framework to better understand and accommodate the complex and variable ‘emotional storm’ of minds (mother and child) that both ‘crave and resist’ each other.

more about the artist:

Jane Glennie was born in Rustington and grew up roaming a horticultural nursery; planting fuchsias on piecework and selling cups of tea to raise some cash. A winding path traversed fashion & textiles, economics and archaeology before a BA in Typography & Graphic Communication at Reading University, freelance graphic design, and then MA Art & Space at Kingston University. Jane exhibits her work nationally and internationally, and has managed and curated projects with other artists.

Words by Sarah Goshal

Blur

They say you

block it all out:

no sleep, sore

hips, racecar

blowtorch wake

up heartburn,

tests, tests, tests,

feet hurt, slow

walk waddle,

timing, waiting,

talking to you

for hours and the

pain …

I haven’t forgotten.

You were a pot of acid

in my side, trying to escape

with tremendous effort,

announcing the future

in seconds.

Originally published in Mom Egg Review Vol. 15

Sarah Ghoshal is a poet, a mom, a professor and a runner. She has published two poetry chapbooks and her work can be found in such publications as Red Savina Review, Cream City Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives in New Jersey with her happy little family and her faithful dog Comet, who flies through the air with the greatest of ease. You can learn more about her at www.sarahghoshal.com or find her on Twitter, @sarahghoshal.

M.A.M.A. issue 23 also live at

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Open Call for Papers - The Procreate Project publication

OPEN CALL FOR PAPERS TO BE PART OF THE PROCREATE PROJECT PUBLICATION. Launching September 2017

The wealth of information about motherhood and womenhood these days has become quite overwhelming. It needs to be broken down and presented with more subtlety.
The critical moment of transition from the mainstream to alternative voices has been raised by the Procreate Project publication.

“We propose a different direction – examining unconventional approaches to motherhood with the porpuse to give all women the freedom to choose which mothers they want to be and sustaining them in this direction.”

We are currently looking for contributors to be part of this online space for publications and explore any knowledge and perspectives on pregnancy, motherhood, art, birth and midwifery, gender, feminism, identities, female representation, patriarchy, traumas, mental health, attachment parenting and education.

Deadline for submissions is the 20th of April.

The selected papers will be published during the current year in contribution to our online blog. The most representative pieces will be part of a special, in print , publication launching in September 2017 to celebrate the 3 years activity of the Procreate Project and its members.

HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

Send papers and any related image to info@procreateproject.com

Any type of writing welcome: Academic/Poetry/Prose

Max length: 2 A4 pages

“Foto credits: Leticia Valverdes – BirthMarks project”

BECOME A MEMBER

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The Art Of Birth Summit 2016

“Back to the origin, closed within themselves with nothing more than the instrument of their creations and the profound connection with the nudity of their brain, an intimate journey to the renaissance of their creativity. The artist is opening her eyes for the second time in her life, fresh inspiration is born; central and internally constructed, it brings a raw flash of life and vision.”

During the Art of Birth summit organised by Gloria Esegbona – a UK born and trained obstetrician & gynaecologist.
Following the intervention of our the Procreate Project founder Dyana Gravina and Elisa Terren.

Dyana Gravina:

What you have just seen is a photographic project called “the placenta effect” featuring various artists and their process of immersion into their personal placenta effect and its stimulation.

About Procreate Project:

ProCreate Project is a social enterprise gencouraging and promoting the works of female artists who are mothers. The organisation is providing practical support for artists, enabling them to continue producing work during pregnancy and motherhood through a range of initiatives and artistic productions.

The procreate project was born from the creative rush I felt from the 5th month of my pregnancy, body underwent enormous changes and a force inside of me grew stronger and became more physical. Inspiring me to become even more driven and persevering.

I wondered whether I was going crazy. I was surprised that all the information readily available on the internet mostly dealt with all the problems you are likely to face, it was such a negative approach and so far removed from what I was feeling. There was nothing that reflected what I was experiencing. So I put a call out advertising online for other female artists who might relate to me and my new found passion. It was not long before responses started to pour in. By sharing my story with other artists I realised that what I felt was shared and real. Out of this positive spark and the exchange with these women “the placenta effect” was created and I put together the start of the procreate project, and a performace piece called Foetus which sees pregnant performer on stage and the use of new technologies to capture the inside of the womb and the wonder of this life experience. Are 100s the artists who have approached me during the past 3 years and who have started collaborating with the organisation and I fell quite lucky to be able to share few of their works and representation of pregnancy with you Today.

“I realised my work became more meaningful and rich as my pregnancy became embedded in the making… “

“Performances seemed to be a good channel for transmitting these intense feelings during the pregnancy. I had amazing amounts of energy and got involved in various projects. I felt very inspired and instinctive”

After this empowering pregnancy came the moment of birth.

The birth and the following months demonstrated a huge shift both for me and the women I was working with, the empowered creative positive world of pregnancy moved into a difficult negative place, of traumatic births, of dealing with that, tiredness, lack of support, loneliness, struggle. Revisiting my birth now I realise that though I managed a natural birth, I didn’t feel safe and supported to express myself at that intimate moment, I felt judged and rushed by the professionals and there was no space for the expression of emotions. Despite this, I found the power to follow through when a doctor came in saying that if the baby didn’t come out in 30 minutes they would do an episiotomy. I started screaming to my baby “Regis baby, come out, help me otherwise they’re going to cut me” and I pushed him out.

I met Elisa a few months later and she had a different experience that made me realise the missing link.

Elisa Terren:

My pregnancy was a period of profound enquiry, I had a deep belief that birth could be simple and straightforward but I had deeply held fears too. I did a lot of research and preparation which culminated in a wonderful home birth, with my daughter being born gently with no tears into my arms. It was the best day of my life and I felt in love and union with the whole world. I felt connected to all the mothers who have birthed from the dawn of time. It was the most transformative experience of my life, it was the ultimate creative act. That is the power of creation. My experience was diametrically different to most people I spoke to, the cultural perceptions towards birth were at completely different sides of the spectrum. I became profoundly interested in birth and motherhood, I am convinced that we can change the world through empowered births that offer the birthright of love to baby and mother. I trained as a Doula.

As I learned about the physiology, I understood why my birth was the way it was and why so many other births are not. There is nothing special about me or my body, I’m an ordinary woman, with a fairly small frame, and I had no problem giving birth. I had the right conditions. We do not culturally understand birth. Birth is an intimate creative sexual act between baby and mother. It is an involuntary process that needs protection from inhibitory stimulus. The archaic brain structures that we share with all other animals on the earth are in charge of birth, not our thinking brain which is the main inhibitory agent of a straightforward birth process. The birth process needs Protection from Inhibitions.

I’ve been working for the past year with Ramiro Romero an Indigenous Midwife from the Muisqua people of the highlands of the Andes in Colombia, and he tells me that when he goes to a birth he prays for the spirit of Sahana Caosh to be present, this is the spirit of creative chaos from where all life emerges. That makes total sense to me!

A woman has to let go completely, feel free to express Sahana Caosh, to embody her own creative chaos to be able to do something as bonkers as open her body, heart and soul to let a human being out of her vagina.

My birth experience catapulted me into a period of great joy, flow and capacity to deal with the newness, challenges and intensity of motherhood with love, patience and understanding. I was safely held by it in my sleepless nights, my changing hormones, my job as a milkmaid. I realised that all this was a creative process. It was a profound thing when I discovered that creativity was not limited to the arts.

Dyana Gravina:

What we have seen is that birth is a deeply creative process itself and that you can’t be inhibited when creating life and you can’t be inhibited when creating art.

However I felt that was a big shift that introduced me into a completely different world perspectives, the feedback and experience was negative. Understanding the act of giving birth, and how that could transform the whole experience into motherhood both as a women and as an artist. I have start looking at how art becomes the medium to articulate and emotions negative or positive, and over come complex traumas.

Thoughts from artists and works about birth postenatal issues c sections

“writing, It’s been a way for me to try to make sense of the changes brought about by pregnancy, birth and motherhood, including a struggle with anxiety and postnatal depression.”

“My birth sadly was not as straight forward as I wished for (maybe it never is).

An induced labour (due to being 14 days overdue) and a c section later (due to no progression and my baby getting distressed by the drip dial going up?)

it took me a while to adjust to life with baby Heidi and recovering from my c section.

Keeping up my practice and getting on with my degree having the possibility to creatively working through emotions, anxieties and the strange bodily feeling after a birth

really helped me to stay, maybe not sane but stable enough to conquer this new so very different life. “

“These works helped to articulate my emotions. The realisation that the journey of birth is still so precarious – not quite life and still today, potentially quite close to death.”

Through collaborating with other mothers at different stages of their process we confirmed a shared experiece of the link between motherhood and the creative urges at many different stages of motherhood, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and later.

The main focus of the project is to empower women from around the world during the life transforming experience that is becoming a mother, making the art of motherhood manifest and possibly display always more positive birth and motherhood representation thought art mediums.

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