The First Year: accepting the healing space that mothering takes up
The First Year: accepting the healing space that mothering takes up is a tapestry of three creative practices that helped me navigate early postpartum and new motherhood in the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Simultaneous Memories are photographic double exposures that represent the unearthing of my subconscious and conflicting childhood memories that arise as I raise my child today.
Whispers are beaded emblems that allow me to address my role as a white wife and mother in a Lakȟóta Thiwáhe. The designing process and act of beading are a manifestation of my attempt to heal cultural, generational, and familial trauma for our future generations.
Begging Poetics are poems made from a daily writing practice. These poems portray present day reflections on my experience of early motherhood and postpartum in the pandemic.
Each body of work focuses on different eras of linear time yet are displayed in a nonlinear timeline as each loop in and out of each other. Brought together, these three bodies of work demonstrate how present day choices can heal the past and the future.
The title for this show comes in two parts. The phrase “the first year” is something I heard an overwhelming amount of times throughout pregnancy and postpartum. This phrase can be added to the beginning or ending of other phrases like, “You can say goodbye to sleep the first year” or “You probably won’t feel like yourself the first year” and “Soak everything up the first year, it goes by so fast!” In my first year, these and other phrases of advice have been simultaneously conflicting and true.
The phrase, “accepting the healing space that mothering takes up” comes from a poem I wrote about postpartum, new motherhood, and the pandemic. This poem was created by selecting words and phrases from my response to interview questions I put together for other mothers about their pregnancy and postpartum experiences in the COVID-19 Pandemic. My postpartum experience was and always will be tied to the pandemic. I will never be able to separate the two. They are simultaneous.
Motherhood and healing have not been a linear journey for me so neither should your experience of this exhibition.The exhibition reads as a “choose your own adventure” with hidden poem-gems and multiple paths woven throughout. If you stay long enough, you might just find a secret, yourself, or a new perspective.
The artwork in this exhibition was made on O’odham, Yavapai, Akimel O’odham, Hohokam, Pueblos, and Ndee/Nnēē (Western Apache) lands in present day Arizona; and Osage land in Pennsylvania. This information was gathered by using the @NativeLandNet app.
Artists, join me in making an Indigenous Land Acknowledgment and Reparations Pledge. For more information visit #IndigenousLandAcknowledgmentAndReparationsPledge, #ILAARP or www.MeganDrivingHawk.com.
25% of my profit from artwork sold during this exhibition will be donated to the Center for Native People and the Environment.
*Wóphila (thank you) Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka for the blessing of becoming a mother and for the path as an artist. Wóphila to my thiwáhe (family) as without you this work and exhibition would not have come together. Lastly, wóphila to my fellow eye lounge members for bringing me on as an artist-member and for your support.
Simultaneous Memories are photographic double exposures that represent the unearthing of my subconscious and conflicting childhood memories that arise as I raise my child today.
Whispers are beaded emblems that allow me to address my role as a white wife and mother in a Lakȟóta Thiwáhe. The designing process and act of beading are a manifestation of my attempt to heal cultural, generational, and familial trauma for our future generations.
Begging Poetics are poems made from a daily writing practice. These poems portray present day reflections on my experience of early motherhood and postpartum in the pandemic.
Each body of work focuses on different eras of linear time yet are displayed in a nonlinear timeline as each loop in and out of each other. Brought together, these three bodies of work demonstrate how present day choices can heal the past and the future.
The title for this show comes in two parts. The phrase “the first year” is something I heard an overwhelming amount of times throughout pregnancy and postpartum. This phrase can be added to the beginning or ending of other phrases like, “You can say goodbye to sleep the first year” or “You probably won’t feel like yourself the first year” and “Soak everything up the first year, it goes by so fast!” In my first year, these and other phrases of advice have been simultaneously conflicting and true.
The phrase, “accepting the healing space that mothering takes up” comes from a poem I wrote about postpartum, new motherhood, and the pandemic. This poem was created by selecting words and phrases from my response to interview questions I put together for other mothers about their pregnancy and postpartum experiences in the COVID-19 Pandemic. My postpartum experience was and always will be tied to the pandemic. I will never be able to separate the two. They are simultaneous.
Motherhood and healing have not been a linear journey for me so neither should your experience of this exhibition.The exhibition reads as a “choose your own adventure” with hidden poem-gems and multiple paths woven throughout. If you stay long enough, you might just find a secret, yourself, or a new perspective.
The artwork in this exhibition was made on O’odham, Yavapai, Akimel O’odham, Hohokam, Pueblos, and Ndee/Nnēē (Western Apache) lands in present day Arizona; and Osage land in Pennsylvania. This information was gathered by using the @NativeLandNet app.
Artists, join me in making an Indigenous Land Acknowledgment and Reparations Pledge. For more information visit #IndigenousLandAcknowledgmentAndReparationsPledge, #ILAARP or www.MeganDrivingHawk.com.
25% of my profit from artwork sold during this exhibition will be donated to the Center for Native People and the Environment.
*Wóphila (thank you) Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka for the blessing of becoming a mother and for the path as an artist. Wóphila to my thiwáhe (family) as without you this work and exhibition would not have come together. Lastly, wóphila to my fellow eye lounge members for bringing me on as an artist-member and for your support.