From traveller to mother

Photo by Andrea Simoni

If i am not posting or drawing much lately, it is not because I lack inspiration!

On the contrary, my head is filled with ideas. I have about 20 blog titles I want to write about, I imagined already 3 children's books I want to write and illustrate, I am working intensely on my 2016 Calendar, I want to make more things for the market, update my website, go travelling, knit socks for the winter, write letters, read books and I could keep on going!

But all of these things needs a few hours of concentrated time, and I don't have that!

I used to be a traveller with not a lot of money, but a lot of time. Now I am a mother and I have neither time, nor money.

Sounds like a bummer, but I have something very precious instead! I have a little boy called Willow, 11 months old, who crawls around my legs, throwing everything in reach on the floor, beating his own record in breaking stuff ;)

He makes me laugh and smile every day. He makes me dance and sing. Jump, play and make fun. Every day.

He teaches me patience and unconditional love and forces me to give myself fully to serving. Couldn't think of a more efficient life coach!

But, yes, it is hard, really hard.
And it has been a massive change of my life. Bigger that I imagined.

The last many years of my life was filled with travelling, living on the road, under the sun and stars, free from bills, house, jobs and responsibilities. A life of freedom and spontaneity. Experience over comfort.
But I started longing for something else. Something longer lasting - I dare not say permanent, because nothing really is, but something deeper than fleeting experiences and encounters.

I also started feeling older than fellow travellers, not being able to find the same interest in topics like hitch-hiking, leaving home and all the things that are extremely exciting in the beginning, but I had done these things for years now.
I had journeyed with a thousand hitched cars, on foot, by bicycle, on cargo ship. I had surfed the surface and was starting to fall deeper into the soil, the spirit of the Earth, the one that is the same all over the world.
I started being more interested in planting seeds and watch them grow. And soon I wanted to plant a seed and feel it grow. Inside me.
I had started to see the mother in nature around us, and the mother in me was waking up. She was longing to be expressed.

I felt I was ready.

I didn't have a house, and education, a big bank account or other material securities. I didn't even really have a partner! But for me, these things have nothing to do with being ready to be a mother.
I believe that things will come to you when you need them, so no need to stress around obtaining stuff before it is needed. Most of these things I don't really need anyway, and you end up having worked a lot for more stuff than you ever need.
I did need a partner though, I was never intending on doing this alone, and I did meet Roberto, who just seemed to be everything I have imagined of a good father. So that's how it went!

But as soon as I got pregnant I also got hit by the famous nesting syndrome! Suddenly sleeping out or in Roberto's VW camper who was older than both of us, just wasn't good enough.
I had lived happily by the philosophy of Experience over Comfort for many years, but now comfort was calling me strongly! I didn't want to have to pee behind cars or in cafés any more. I felt dirty and exposed. I wanted privacy, comfortable temperatures, a bed and a bathroom!

So we decided to go back to Europe. We had to stay in the city (Panama City) to try to sell the van, a pretty unsuccessful mission, and in the end we flew to Germany and hitch-hiked to Denmark.
We stayed in my mother's house where we also gave birth to Willow.
Then Roberto's old childhood house in Italy was free for us to borrow, so we moved to Italy.

So now I am a mother. And I am staying steady, not moving anywhere, in a village of one thousand village people and nothing else but the forest and mountains.

I find it hard to live among people that I don't have much in common with, not even language, but I also find it a beautiful opportunity to learn a new language, experience village life, full of sharing, which I have never really done before, and I enjoy immensely to be so close to magnificent nature.

But, as I initially wanted to write about, it has been a big change in my way of living, and in many moments I am missing the open road with it's freedom and wild opportunities.
I miss the wild and the spontaneous, and I am working on ways to incorporate them in my new life.

I love my son greatly, but I find it difficult staying still and not having time to let the artistic and the creative unfold wildly. To see the days going by without feeling that I have created anything.

I am fighting with desire for being successful as an artist and illustrator and I am sure that I need to work much more for it.

But a child needs more care and love than a career.

I am torn between the more permanent; making a home, a garden and working with my artistic skills; and the impermanent open road.
And what is best for my son.

One thing is certain; I miss community of like minded people. I miss travellers and free spirits, artists and healers, magicians and lazy dwellers. People with more creativity than 'success' and security. People who have seen so many things and places, that 'normal' no longer exists.

I want my son to grow up in magic and seeing the whole world, but at the same time I also want him to have stability and to grow up close to his family and grandparents. And I know they all want to see him grow up too.
And here we are already torn between Italy and Denmark to begin with!

So I think I will have to be able to get a mobile home, to go between family in Italy and Denmark and to search for a stable community of colourful and different people to stay in, to grow the land and work with my art.
If I fail to give my son a stable physical environment to grow up in, I will do my best to give him the stability of a grounded and stable love from a mother and a father and whole family surrounding his life.

I do hope to find a place in the world that I without doubt can call home, though. A stable environment with all the creativity and impermanence and changeability of artists, travellers, musicians and madmen of the road! A place where every day has possible surprises and nothing is predictable, apart from friendship, family, a meal and a bed.
A place that is stable but has the whole world in it by the people who are around.

Thank you Universe!

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