Motherhood Diaries

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After I became a mother, I lost a part of me. I felt everything a little too much: love, joy, anxiety, guilt. There was so much of her in me that I lost sight of myself. I kept showing up, for every feed, every cry, every long day. But somewhere beneath all that love and care, I was longing to find my way back to painting.

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She was waiting in colors.

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Opening my sketchbook wasn't easy. There was judgement, frustration and a constant chatter in my mind. I was struggling not just with the act of painting, but with my own expectations of myself.

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Then one day, while pulling my art materials out of the cupboard, I found my mother's diary. Dated 1981. A diary that existed before I did. These paintings began on its empty pages. Slowly, my daughter Ira's world began entering mine.

Beneath the paint, she is everywhere: her scribbles, her pencil shavings, her mirrored letters. Beside them are fragments of letters I had written to my own mother, collaged into the paintings. My mother's childhood diary, my letters to her, and my daughter's marks began to meet on the same surface.

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Two childhoods, one page.

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My childhood, my daughter's marks, and my own messy, beautiful transformation through motherhood began to live together on the same surface. Motherhood is sleepless nights and beautiful chaos. It is loving someone so much that your heart walks around outside your body. And somewhere along the way, I began to understand that while I was busy helping her discover her world, she was helping me

rediscover mine.

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From the moment you came to me, I only loved you, and wished I could give you more and more of it.

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Motherhood Diaries is a record of what happened to my inner world after I became a mother, and how making art became a way of finding myself again. I didn't find the person I used to be. I found someone new, and my daughter helped make her.

Every painting here is a page from that diary—and perhaps a page from yours, too. Whether you have rocked a baby at 3 a.m., grieved a past version of yourself, or simply loved someone so fiercely that it rearranged your soul, perhaps you will find a piece of your own story in these pages.

Thank you, my little girl, for choosing me.