women and ambition
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women and ambition
Tillie Olsen wrote: “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children . . . the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” It was a physical problem, a time problem; it was also a question of selfhood. “The obligation to be physically attractive and patient and nurturing and docile and sensitive and deferential . . . contradicts and must
... See moreJulie Phillips • The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem
True confidence is believing in the validity of your own core desires, which also means identifying what you’re willing to sacrifice and bear for certain conditions to yield fruit. When there are competing needs, true prioritization reveals itself. A woman defining her own career path will learns this across various dimensions.
Nix 🕊 • ambitious women
I have heard tales of creative rushes during the postpartum period, of women who ride the energy of human creation to power other creative acts. It is a beautiful idea, and one I would of course hope to experience. Make a human AND have a personal creative renaissance!? Yes, please. But alas, this is very, very far from my current state of affairs,... See more
Rachel Katz • Magic 8 Ball Mind
on mothering, productivity, and caring for an infant
Whatever initial appeal this argument has, it owes to the unpleasantness of corporate drudgery in general, not to the predicament of female corporate drudges in particular. Invariably, the job that features in articles like Andrews’s is soul-sucking, pointless and therefore presumed to have been chosen solely for the prestige it confers (although s... See more
Becca Rothfeld • Women’s Work | The Point Magazine
Most people in my life at that time thought it was too late for me, a stay-at-home mom, to become a writer. It can be hard to believe in yourself when you’re immersed in the low expectations of others. You can feel like you’re drowning, and the only hands reaching out are trying to push you under.
But we don’t need to be the victims of other people... See more
But we don’t need to be the victims of other people... See more
There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life, when a woman has to make a decision - possibly the most important psychic decision of her future life - and that is, whether to be bitter or not. Women often come to this in their late thirties or early forties. They are at the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they've ... See more
She may agree with the poet Mary Oliver that “creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration. . . . It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching,” or with Gertrude Stein, who warned, “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
Julie Phillips • The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem
“Too much life enters this house,” Tillie Olsen, the writer, labor activist and mother of four girls, wrote in a letter to the poet Anne Sexton. “Up at 6, breakfast in shifts, lunch packing — then, if no one ill, or it isn’t a holiday, or any of the other ORs, the day for work until 4, sometimes longer or an evening — depending on housework load, s... See more
Opinion | The ‘Impossible Life’ of Equal Devotion to Art and Mothering
I’ve spent a lot of time with intelligent and determined women.
What have I noticed? Achieving the vision of ease is ironically arduous. It’s diligence and conscientiousness behind the scenes. Behind glamor is effort . I absorbed early that beauty and competence aren’t heaven-sent but goals to continuously chip away at. Many of us silently believe t... See more
What have I noticed? Achieving the vision of ease is ironically arduous. It’s diligence and conscientiousness behind the scenes. Behind glamor is effort . I absorbed early that beauty and competence aren’t heaven-sent but goals to continuously chip away at. Many of us silently believe t... See more