I've been contemplating what to say about this, my second to last image of the series. I find these last two have significant meaning for me personally as an artist and a mother.
There are many artists who don't like to divulge their personal reasons for creating a piece so as to allow full and open interpretation by their viewers without the possibility of impressing on them a specific meaning and thus limiting that meaning to a single interpretation - that of the artist's. But I feel if I don't share my thoughts about an image I created I would be doing a disservice. That, and I hope that my images are broad enough to allow any and all interpretations.
Back to how I began. With this being one of my final images of the series I feel torn. Because I want the series to end but I don't want it to end because I know what it could mean for the future. Because it's a future that I've been through before. I'm ending the series so I can go on maternity leave. So I can rest up and relax and gain my strength for the newest addition to our family, who should be making their arrival in about two months time. So I can prepare myself mentally for what it will possibly be like and prepare myself mentally for the fact that it probably won't be anything like any of the possibilities I hypothesized. I have to do this for myself because with the birth of my first son I had postpartum depression. And I had it pretty bad. And I don't want that to happen again.
Bound | (c) M.M.Hewitt 2014 Downloading this image for any use without written permission is strictly prohibited.
I'm not going to divulge the actual feelings and thoughts I had while in my depression. But I will say that I felt much like the young woman shown above. Bound by this role that was supposed to be glorious and exalting and all that I would ever want (and for some of you who know me personally, for the four years previous to my son's arrival it was all I wanted) out of life but was just bleeding me of my happiness, my soul. I was losing myself in what I was taught was my divine calling.
I hardly had a creative project going the first year of his life. I did nothing but sit with him. I didn't take a single photograph that wasn't of him. I did nothing that was for me. Which when raised to be mothers is what we are told is the ultimate sacrifice and example of love for our kids. We do nothing for ourselves and all for them. But I need my creativity. I need to be able to make something from nothing. And so I worry about ending this project because I know what will happen to me when I stop taking photographs.
But the series must end. And with it's end I am teaching myself that this role of mother that I willingly placed myself into, that I willingly bound myself to, is not the end-all-be-all of my existence. I am teaching myself and preparing myself to be better with my time with my kids, and better with my time without them. I am teaching myself that I will be very tired all the time, but reminding myself that the one thing that can bring me back from the brink of ennui and total despair is my photography and that when I find myself in those moments I will need to force myself to take out my camera and create. I am teaching myself that I do not have to be bound by anything.
Don't let yourself be bound by something you only think binds you.