Matrescence and pockets of time
Time. It’s finite but also infinite. I didn’t paint during my last maternity leave. I didn’t do much apart from care for our baby who was poorly and sad through the day and night. She didn’t want to be put down and my arms did little else than soothe her when it was the two of us together. They were more akin to those of a juggler when I was with both my girls, particularly during a long 7 weeks in the sweltering city with a 3 year old and a 3 month old, with no village around. From a tired toddler’s meltdown at London Zoo to a picnic under the Go Ape ropes in Ally Pally, I feel proud that we made it, and I sure learnt a lot whilst making memories along the way.
I’d painted and explored during my first maternity leave, and thought this one would be the same. This maternity leave didn’t pan out as I thought but it was expansive in other ways. Over a year went by between logging off heavily pregnant until I was reliably back at my computer, working. A lot can change in a year, and a lot often does, but this year was different. Matrescence turned my mind inside out and reformed it anew. I am different. I am changed. I can’t put my finger on how, but I feel it.
I knew I needed to find a path back to myself, to feel things rather than think them, which my work as a strategist often entails. And so I began painting and drawing again. Ten minute windows, as my baby settled in to nursery. Ten minutes to feel the flow of a line and the shade of a stroke. And that ten minutes was transformative. I would say I persevered, but it’s not the right word. I couldn’t help myself but continue. Ten minute bursts, sometimes clutching twenty minutes, and papers flowing with lines and shapes and colours.
Echinaceas, Hestercombe, July 2026. Oil pastel, posca and emulsion on kraft paper.
I painted this once I had settled my kids to sleep. That afternoon one small child had badly bitten the other and there had been many tears. My husband was out for the evening. We were saved by the arrival of a plethora of Octonauts toys from Vinted. I can feel the energy of my nervous system in the painting.
At the end of the pocket of time, I would pull out the drawer in my cupboard, lay the paper down, push it shut and close the door. I felt satisfied and sated by the creativity, and ready to crack any challenges that the day sent me. These paintings became a secret joy, and a way to return to myself. And now they are a way to share my words without saying anything at all.
I think of the woman still in the thick of it, arms full, and mind unrecognisable to herself. I wouldn’t tell her that ten minutes are enough - I wouldn’t offer my life as a blueprint. I would sit with her and be there whilst she finds her own path. I hope my artwork finds it way into the days of other women who are passing through matrescence and allows them to feel and flow, too.
