This feels foreign, like coming back to an old friend. I miss writing but the days are long and the nights are for rest, the little I’ve been getting.

We’re currently experiencing the strangest time in my living memory; I think many feel the same. I currently have 2 children and my husband home, my kids are 5 months and 2.5 years – or thereabouts anyway. I have a burning desire to create, to be present, to make my mark. Then I look at my baby monitor and the fire inside me burns smaller… I have tiny humans to look after. I am needed. I am their safe space. I am mum.

Part of me yearns for the days I had no responsibility, but honestly, I can hardly remember that time. It was so long ago, I was not the woman I am today. I look back at that girl and smile, but I do not miss her. I have grown. I have created life. I have sustained it. My babies are my life now, and for a long time they will be.

My desire to create, my fire, my love, it is for them. I wake and work and learn and love for their future. And sometimes, like tonight, I get a sliver of time to myself and it is timed beautifully so I can write, or paint, or move my body. I long for the days I can do this every night, and somehow even though they are not here yet, I mourn the fact they will come. My babies will grow. They won’t need me as much. I will be ‘free’ and I will miss their little hands holding while I listen to the big snores that arise from their tiny mouths.

How fortunate we are to have the benefit of hindsight and foresight. And how cursed too. I can get lost for hours and days thinking about the past which I cannot change and dreaming about a future that I cannot control… It is so easy to disconnect from the present. It is so easy to let them fly with the time, and they grieve the lost hours.

Life is strange. No doubt about it. Life is beautiful too. My babies are sleeping and I am here. I am blessed and loved and held and privileged. My burning passions could be something incredible if I were alone, if I could spend hours and days creating and sharing; but instead these desires are quietly kindling. They rise and remind me they are here and I listen to them, I hear what they ask, I try and soothe them. I have quietly begun to ask my soul to soften and be patient, to give my babies the time they need from me, to enjoy the peace and slowness, because when the time comes that I am less needed by these tiny humans, I will let my fire burn brighter and fiercer. I will let my soul roar.