Interview with ‘Create Anyway’ Author Ashlee Gadd
Ashlee Gadd is a writer, photographer, creative, and mother. In her recent book, Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood, Ashlee seeks to embolden young, busy, overwhelmed mothers to “create anyway”—to continue dreaming, pondering, doing, and creating as they take on their new role as mothers.
Ashlee has been encouraging mothers through her online space, Coffee + Crumbs, since its launch in 2014, which was created with the vision of making motherhood less lonely. Coffee + Crumbs features essays from various writers on countless motherhood-related subjects.
Ashlee lives in Northern California with her husband and their three children. She can often be found writing, picking Cheerios off of the carpet, and rearranging bookshelves.
Q: What’s the story behind the inspiration for your new book, Create Anyway?
A: When I first became a mother, I felt an instant tension bubbling up between my motherhood and my creativity. It sort of felt like I was being stretched in opposite directions like Gumby. How could I mother and create? I constantly wrestled with the idea that I couldn’t mother without sacrificing my art and I couldn’t make art without sacrificing my motherhood.
So I set out to compartmentalize. I tried to wear my parenting hat for some hours of the day, and my artist hat for other hours of the day. I quickly realized, though, these two selves did not fit into tidy roles I could clock in and out of. Rather, motherhood and creativity ran together like two rivers becoming one, a confluence of scribbles and spit-up, love and art, wild ambition and sleepless nights.
Over the past decade, I’ve learned to accept that motherhood and creativity work best when you stop trying to keep them apart and simply allow them to collide. Sometimes you make a masterpiece, and sometimes you make a beautiful mess. Either way, you are making something: poems and photographs, gardens and grilled cheese, memories and magic.
Create Anyway is everything I’ve learned in a decade of creating in the margins of motherhood—an anthem of sorts for that beautiful collision.
Q: What are the biggest obstacles that you face in being both an artist and a mother?
A: Trust and surrender. Rinse, repeat. I love to believe I am in control—of my life, my children, my art, my everything. Nothing kicks my anxiety, doubt, and insecurity into high gear quite like realizing I am not in control of anything. This can fuel fear or peace, depending on where I place my trust. Learning to “let go and let God”—as cliche as that phrase is—continues to be one of the most convicting areas of my motherhood and creativity.
Q: Do you find that being a mother inspires your creativity?
A: Absolutely! I find endless inspiration in both the act of mothering, and in simply watching my children engage in the creative process. Witnessing firsthand their wonder, their curiosity, the way they play and imagine and create entire worlds in their bedrooms—it’s impossible not to be inspired. My kids remind me to embrace whimsy, to not take myself too seriously, and to find joy in the process, regardless of the outcome.
Q: What would you tell a woman who is currently in the trenches of motherhood but still has a desire to engage more with her creativity?
A: If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never begin. For so many of us, especially mothers with young children, we do not have 12 uninterrupted hours a day to pursue our art. We might have an hour here, 20 minutes there. Most of us don’t have a magical cabin in the woods we can escape to whenever we want.
We are real mothers living within the confines of our real lives—the same lives filled with laundry and work deadlines, carpool schedules and grocery lists. We have boundaries and limits, but right up against the edges, if you look closely enough, is a sliver of space. It might not look like much, but when you add all of those margins up, you’d be amazed at what you can pursue, what you can dream up, what you can create with that time.
All of those minutes become holy fragments and sacred scraps that, when cobbled together with God’s grace, can make something beautiful. You just have to start.
Q: Here at Wallflower, we always ask our women of note what their favorite book is—what’s yours?
A: Tie between Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies, both by Anne Lamott.
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