wishmamas :: madeline bea

by maegan beshline

I always knew I would be a mom. And I have always been creative. What I didn’t know was that my most creatively inspired period would come smack dab in the middle of motherhood when I would have very little time to create. As ironic and paradoxical as that may seem, it also makes complete sense. My years of creativity have provided me with the best tools for being a mom. Conversely, my experiences being a mother have taught me how to tap into deeper places within my creative soul. These two parts of myself, the mom and the creative, have been like having two children, loving each one differently but equally, combining and dividing my time with the two, and each one helping me and teaching me to be better with the other.

As siblings always do, these two sides of me squabble and compete for my undivided attention. I know that favoring one will result in heartache and outcries from the other. Each one is unique and deserves to have undivided time with my full attention…even if it’s just a little, infrequent, or masked as something else. Of course, I love the times when we can all play as one; me, my mothering role, and my creative spirit. And often they do.

In fact, as with my children, my time with one ends up teaching me more about the other. My creative side has taught me to be intuitive, to work with what I have, to look below the surface, and to make the ordinary extraordinary. These skills have helped me be a better mother. They have helped me turn bad situations into heaps of laughter, rainy days into magical opportunities, and learning time into cozy moments. They have helped me to see my children at their core and adapt my approach with them accordingly. Our mundane and everyday becomes special and exceptional because of the creativity I’m able to bring to the table.

Being a mother has taught me to feel things more deeply. It has made me want to capture moments and feelings and breaths as if they are falling right out from underneath me. I work constantly to try and capsulate these moments, these indescribably wonderful moments, in words or pictures or a combination of both. Motherhood is giving me a surfeit of exercises in putting feeling, depth, and story into my work. From my children, I am learning to observe, to be patient, to be persistent, and to take pride in my milestones. On top of all of this, motherhood has given me the ability to listen to a thousand voices and yet still hear my own; a skill that as an artist, has proven to be one of my greatest assets.



When I was pregnant with my second child, I wondered if I could possible love another human being as much as I loved my daughter. I wondered if I would feel the same desperate attachment to both of my children. I learned that the heart has the capacity to love and nurture all that it needs to. So too with the similar yet very different sides of me, the mother and the creative, it is impossible to separate myself from either one. And though it becomes more of a juggle, it is an act that I perform with fierce dedication.

Maegan Beishline is a wife, mother to three, and a photographer. She shares her life, her work, and her inspiration on her blog, Life Set to Words.