When I was 25 I had a termination. 

There were a lot of factors that brought me to make that decision. 

And it was the right decision for me at that time.

 I was not ready to bring a human life into mine and the partnership I was in was not a healthy one. 

What I did not realise at the time was that, whether I had the baby or not, did not matter.

The moment I conceived, I became a mother. 

The moment I conceived, my entire life’s protectory pivoted.

That line from Juno that the step mum tells her right after she’s given birth, rang so strongly in my head for years afterwards.

‘Next time sweetheart, it will be on your own terms.’

And so, I set out to create a life that I’d want to raise children in. 

I let go of the father of the child I never had, knowing he would never be someone that could support me to go through the next phase of my life. 

I met someone that could.

We left the city. 

I found community and nature.

 I built a family of pets. Cats, dogs, chickens, rabbits, ducks and geese. 

I immersed myself in nature, growing, tending and learning it all.

 I left studying the arts and studied teaching.

 I grew up.

But the whole time I fought myself. Because I had this expectation that I was supposed to be an artist. 

I punished myself everyday that I had stopped making room in my life for ‘creativity’ for the arts. 

Lets go back…

Before I was 25 I identified as being an artist. I studied the arts and spent my days integrating them into my life, trying to make a living from them. 

Failing miserably over and over, to my 20 year old self with such high expectations. 

I’d been told repeatedly, for as long as I could remember, that I had great potential in so many areas. 

But it was suffocating.

 I’d get a job in theatre, and ache to write. 

I’d get a piece published in a small magazine, and grieve creating wearable costumes. 

I got a job in the circus, and wished for my career as an illustrator to go off. 

Nothing was never enough.

 It was an unsatisfactory life. 

Because I was looking for acceptance and recognition and I was never going to get it from myself, no matter how much I did. 

So in some ways, falling pregnant and recognising that I wasn’t ready to support a child, carved a new pathway for creativity for me. 

Certainly, a path I did not recognise was creative until recently. 

Because despite their simplicity; raising animals, cooking, homemaking, growing a garden, are all at there core, creative.  

So today I recognise that my longing to become a recognised and great artist has already been realised. 

In all things that I do, I am creative.