Writers and friends Kavita Bedford and Amna Qureshi gave birth just one month apart in different continents. During early motherhood they found there was an overload of practical ‘how-to’ and 'what to buy’ information for expecting and new mothers, but neither could find a space for the conversations that they actually wanted to have that reflected their experiences as women of culturally diverse, creative backgrounds.

They both had many questions. How does motherhood impact relationships, creativity and our identity? What role does our cultural heritage play in the way we experience this transition? How do you prioritise the slow work of motherhood within hustle culture? What are the structural limitations of work and how can we revolutionise the way we see mothers?

At the time, Amna was living in London and Kavita in Sydney and they ended up sharing intimate voice notes to each other exploring these topics at all hours of the day. They bonded over these questions and shared their beautiful moments as well as their fears and anxieties as they navigated the change of motherhood together.

There’s still an unspoken assumption that once you become a mother, your identity dissolves to become solely that. You become ‘mum’. They wanted to interview other women and share their own experiences of the transition to motherhood, about their fears of losing their creative identity and how to push back on that narrative.

Here, Kavita and Amna interview other women working in creative industries who discuss their journeys including the honest challenges and the expectations they had and continue to have. The interviews reflect on the profound identity shifts of motherhood, the societal pressures as well as the idealised versions of motherhood that we are bombarded with on social media.

The conversations highlight the complexities of modern motherhood and the need for societal recognition of mothers' contributions, which continue to be overlooked and neglected (or at the very least considered vastly unsexy) – as well as the importance of community support, cultural practices and the resilience required to maintain creative practices.

Jess Blanch

Jess Blanch is the Publisher and Editor in Chief at RUSSH magazine.

When I had my first baby, it was just such a shock to the system, because I was running an independent magazine, traveling three months of the year, doing long fashion weeks and fashion months. I had a really great and established team but it was my role to keep it growing and thriving, which isn’t easy to hand over. When she arrived, I had not really made any space for it, I just kept doing the business, I didn't take an official maternity leave.

It’s so wild. I was in the delivery suite and texting a friend in L.A because we were looking for dirt bike riders to be a part of that month’s shoot. And I was like, ‘Hey, do you know any dirt bike riders?’ And he was like, ‘Sure, I'll ask around, but haven't you had your baby?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, actually, that's kind of what I'm doing now. I'm in delivery.’

I can also remember the shoot I was doing when my second daughter Winifred came, but that’s the nice thing about being so connected to a business; I can look at every magazine we have put out, whether it be print or digital, and it documents a moment in time.

When I had my first daughter, Sloane, it was only five years into the digital boom. It was the rise of the mummy blogger era and it felt like anybody that was in the media that had children really turned them into their business. I felt this idealised version of motherhood with people having their picture taken alongside their perfect children in their creatively directed homes. I knew a lot of people on the other side that were struggling to have children, or that had children and found the process difficult, and I felt like we were just perpetuating this glamourised version of motherhood.

There's a lot of women within the fashion industry with babies. You hear those stories of women FedExing their milk from Paris back to New York and things like that. For me, it always felt like the most natural thing to bring the babies with me, to incorporate my daughters into my life.

But it's funny, as time goes on, you realise it's not really what your children want. They love routine, and don’t want to be pulled on these work trips around the world. That was a bit of a shock for me and I no longer travel so much.

The creative side of me yearns for the time to be able to make something and a space that is not littered in family domesticity. Literature and reading have been crucial for me. My mother's advice to "dream a little every day" has been a guiding principle. I've found solace in writers like Patti Smith, Maggie Nelson, and poets like Sonia Sanchez. Reading can offer validation, showing mothers they're not alone in their struggles, and provide inspiration and maintain hope through imagination and storytelling.

I've learned that motherhood doesn't mean sacrificing creativity, but rather finding new ways to express and understand oneself. It's about problem-solving, and adapting.

Meg Walters

Meg Walters is a painter and ceramicist originally hailing from the sub-tropical island of Bermuda. She has had nine solo shows across Australia and her new show, Metamorphosis is now running 15-27 May at Otomys Gallery, Prahran VIC. 

I was completely naive and delusional going into motherhood. I had a very different idea of what motherhood would be than what the reality actually was. My daughter is seven and my little boy is just about to turn four. I've always been a feminist, but more so when I became a mother and I experienced just how much of a patriarchal society we live in. You're almost penalised for being a woman and having children and trying to work. The system is not set up for you to do that. It's very challenging, and I've really had to fight tooth and nail to keep going in my creative practice.

I had several challenges during postpartum. I had postnatal depression, but I didn't know I did, because you still have all those beautiful moments where you're connecting with your baby and smiling and laughing and feeling that joy and it really masked those severe underlying symptoms. I felt isolated and alone with a challenging baby in the jungle. My mother also died when my daughter was one, and being in a different country from her was so hard.

At that time, we had just moved to northern New South Wales, where I didn't have that many friends. While I was having a hard time, there was a lot of toxic positivity about motherhood in that community, and it made me feel like there was something wrong with me.

One of the hardest, most real things that I've had to face up to in being a mother, is who is looking after me? No one, really.

We now live in Newcastle and I have found an amazing community with other artists who validate my experience. My practice is definitely more erratic now. It feels very choppy and haphazard. But in saying that, I think there's nothing wrong with my creativity – it hasn't been hampered or altered. When it works, there is a fluidity and that amazing feeling of being lost in time and space.

Since becoming a mother, my perspective on my artistic work has deepened significantly. I've realised that my creativity is not just a luxury, but a fundamental part of my identity and well-being. Initially, I struggled with self-doubt, wondering if my art was valuable given the financial uncertainty. I have to continually convince myself that what I am doing is valuable just because I don't have a regular income. However, I've come to firmly believe that what I'm doing is important, even when society often undermines the value of creative work.

My art is not just something I do, but an essential part of who I am. By maintaining my creative practice, I'm demonstrating to myself and to my children that passion and purpose matter.

Kavita Bedford

Kavita Bedford is a writer. Her novel, Friends & Dark Shapes, was published in the USA, Australia and Italy and Shortlisted for various Australian literary awards. She is currently working on a South Indian literary cookbook and her next novel.

When I was pregnant, I was told by a close mentor not to become one of those women who writes about motherhood. It made me understand that motherhood is still not considered a serious literary topic. It is a blog; an instagram business; a to do list; it is the self-help section. But literature? Anything but that! I wasn’t prepared for how cracked open and creative I have felt during this time. And how much I have needed my writing to process my experiences, and how important imagination has been as an entry point to some of the darker, more difficult parts.

Giving birth has been stealthily intertwined with the loss of self. And with that has come grief for the woman I once was. I have struggled in these postpartum years with mental health, from processing a traumatic birth and managing health issues like endometriosis and recently hashimotos. These have led to a lot of questioning about the sustainability of the creative path I am on and how to make it work.

I write in bursts now. Everything I write is a fragment, grabbed during nap times and walks. Stolen time. That’s how often I describe my writing practice now. But who am I stealing it from? The child I suppose. But I only ever write when he’s occupied or being looked after. It's such a strange way to think of my craft. Is it that women’s time for her own pursuits always feels stolen in some way?

I live in a multi-generational household which has been so life affirming during this phase. It has also offered a support system which has allowed me to continue writing. Since having a baby, I have really yearned to reconnect to parts of my cultural identity. So, I have been trying to learn Tamil alongside my son and I have been practicing cooking South Indian recipes.

I have been reading literature about motherhood and am grateful for writers like Deborah Levy, Amani Haydar, Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offil, Rivka Galchen, Kate Briggs who are playing with the form and giving this topic its rightful place in the literary canon. Since having my baby, I have strongly rejected what I was first told. There is so much joy and newness and love and tenderness and surrender and grief and suffering and loss in this life stage. And with that there is so much rich material and possibility for making serious – and playful – art.

Vanessa Marian

Vanessa Marian is a BAFTA winning dancer, movement director and writer. She is the founder of Groove Therapy, an ‘anti-dance class’ that focuses on making the mental and physical benefits of street dance accessible to all. 

As an artist I am just so much more sensitive since becoming a mother – I feel everything a lot more. I am moved by something for a lot of reasons that I can’t put words to – it shows you the tenderness and brutality of the world and of life in a different way. I am more meditative on life and the world because of having a kid.

For me, dance is everything you don’t say with words. Groove Therapy has become even more potent since I became a mother because it’s a space that isn’t about image or fostering a scene. It’s about community and everyone just comes as they are and there’s such a range of people attending which is very cool. It’s completely unpretentious.

You get to learn about history, dance and politics which fosters cross-cultural exchange and dialogue. It has become much more meaningful to me since becoming a mother. It also represents freedom for me. I can say what I want, I can make artistic choices and statements as I wish which is super liberating.

My parents uprooted themselves from Perth and from their very close knit community purely because they now have a grandchild. It was a huge decision for them but it’s been life changing for us. Because of my work I’m very used to prioritising my mental health so if I had a particularly tough night, I’d drop baby to my parents’ home and I’ve found that this lands very differently with my friends with immigrant backgrounds – it’s just seen as much more normal to them.

The most special thing for me has been to have my parents live so close by and to walk into a home and see dance films, hear mum’s Hindi music playing, have the smell of all the curries that I grew up with and just being cocooned in that culture. Knowing that my kid gets to grow up with that and have that imprinted on his DNA – I feel so lucky. It wasn’t a given that my parents would uproot themselves and move to Sydney. I really want my son to learn my mother tongue, Malayalam, but that’s easier said than done.

I was a nomad for so long before having a kid. I’ve been in Sydney for two years and this is the longest I have lived in a city for fifteen years. I feel like we lived this very exciting life, living in New York and then getting a residency in Italy and moving to Byron but I always felt like life was a bit manic and I was always a bit breathless. In the birthing course that we did, they spoke about the parasympathetic nervous system and how you can be pumped with cortisol and adrenaline, or you can be pumped with oxytocin, and I remember the penny dropping where I was like ‘that’s the thing that is missing in my life’.

Amna Qureshi

Amna Qureshi is a story producer, writer and privacy lawyer. Her work has been published in the Guardian, HuffPost, Frankie and i-D as she explores topics such as online safety, identity, women’s health and racism. 

When I became a mother, I felt afraid about how it would impact my identity. The more content I looked at for guidance, the more I felt alienated by ‘this is how you must raise your child’ and hyper-consumerist content. I was living in London and didn’t really have many friends there who were also mothers so I felt quite alone with these thoughts. I ended up relying on voice notes and messages to friends back in Sydney who I could share these feelings with. It was a beautiful re-connection in lots of ways and made me appreciate the slow moments.

In hindsight I definitely put too much pressure on myself to somehow prove (mostly to myself) that I was still interesting, still creative, still able to travel, still fit into my clothes, still ready to get back to work quickly and experience life in the exact same way as I was prior to giving birth. And of course, to some extent there is truth to that – but also everything changed. Of course it did. How could it not? And I wish I could have accepted that more readily.

When my son was born, I didn’t think I would move back home in the near future. London really felt like home. Moving back to Sydney with my toddler after almost a decade away has been more of a journey than I ever could’ve expected – but the beautiful moments of having my son play with his grandparents as they age and his cousins as they grow – is not something I could ever trade and will always be grateful for. I have also realised that my culture and faith has impacted the way I navigate motherhood. I rely on my family in a visceral way, especially postpartum and I really do believe it takes a village. I now understand that postpartum is not just the few months after giving birth. It is a continuous state of being with different phases to flow through. Each phase carries an abundance of beauty and challenges combined.

While I am not going to pretend that I have as much time to create, the moments that I do get to write, to tell a story, to imagine are extra special to me. I still think there is this unspoken assumption in society that mothers are boring and that motherhood is your entire identity, which I do not agree with. I’ve had comments from well-intentioned friends who have said “I’m so glad you haven’t become one of those mums who only talks about your child” or “you’re a cool mum” and it really makes me cringe. I think this perception is slowly starting to change though which is great, especially with content like HOWL and Mother Tongue that are so refreshing and resonate deeply with me. We desperately need to reframe how we see mothers and motherhood.