Resourcing
Notes from my biomat
Before we dive in, I’d like to share a few opportunities to work together…
My 3-month mentorship The Art of Storytelling starts soon! Whether you’re a messy-brained person who needs a strong vessel, a practicing artist, a secret artist, or an exhausted parent returning to your craft, this container is a space for you to evolve your practice and shape a specific project (i.e., a film, theater piece, or book). Learn more and sign up here. Online or in person.
Screenwriting Essentials starts April 21 at Wild Qi in Ojai. This 6-week course is designed to cover the basics of screenwriting, from seed to script. We will explore which ideas feel most alive within us and how to translate them into script form through dialogue, tone, and visual storytelling. Sign up here.
Join me in Forma’s Collective Practice cohort where I’ll be sharing Devotional Writing for the month of May.
I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time on my biomat recently. What is a biomat, you might ask? A biomat is basically a glorified heating pad—a yoga mat embedded with crystals, infrared heat, and other mysterious healing things like PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic fields). It makes my body feel good. I lie on the biomat while I read, watch TV, write a Substack, or cuddle my sick toddler. After lugging it out from beneath our bed, where it lay dormant in the early days of newborn chaos, I’ve resurrected my daily biomat prostration. Two weeks of daily biomat naps, and I swear my lower back pain has improved.
I don’t pretend to understand the science behind the biomat—surely it reduces inflammation, etc.—I simply enjoy being on it. It’s become my throne—a place where visitors gather, a little sanctuary that I occupy to show my family how to orient to my needs. Because let’s face it: if the mother is well, the family is well. We’ve been in a fugue state of illness, sleeplessness, and inconsistent childcare for two weeks. Here’s one thing I know about myself: I’m a better mom, partner, and artist when I have time alone. And the pace of motherhood is truly, beautifully unrelenting.
A little window into this morning: my toddler sits up in his floor bed at 6:45 a.m. and starts babbling, playing with the little elephant stuffy that lives there. I let him play by himself a bit, allowing myself to recall my dreams and slowly drift into waking. I snuggle up next to him and ask him about his dreams (he often lists the names of his friends first thing in the morning). We transition to the living room, where grandpa is sketching beneath the big ceramic mushroom lamp. I engage in the daily battle of changing the first pee-soaked diaper and wiping green-encrusted snot from the baby’s nostrils with a wet saline wipe. Off to the kitchen to make tea and start the oats. Baby follows me with a book called Buddha and the Rose, a current favorite which he calls “Boo-ba.” He stretches his arms skyward and demands to be picked “up!” I balance him on my hip while stirring the oats and reading the beginning of the book, but as quickly as he came, he’s off back to grandpa, wanting to touch the tip of each mechanical pencil.
Aloneness is a currency that does not come easily these days. I’ve had to intentionally carve out time for myself since becoming a mom—this includes time to work, work out, socialize, eat, shower, or simply rest. I’ve covertly and overtly experienced judgment for this need to find pockets of time that are my own. What’s even weirder is that this judgment seems to come mostly from other women. So I asked my husband recently: has anyone ever made you feel wrong for taking space from parenting? The answer was predictably no. I wonder why this punishment is seemingly reserved for moms. Women are still, sadly, the easiest canvases onto which we project our own internalized misogynistic demons. I also believe we’re carving out a new path of mothering, one where we can include our children into previously forbidden spaces, as well as freely choose to ride solo.
I had a dream the other night that I was in a car driving on a street that suddenly pitched upward at ninety degrees, and I was white-knuckling the steering wheel, attempting to get over the hill. There was some kind of mechanical contraption at the top that I was meant to pass through, and against gravity, I decided to floor the gas and attempt to get over the top. Taking space from the household can sometimes feel like this—stressful, unnatural, or downright impossible to achieve. But the mothers in my life who are the most resourced know this secret, and treat it as a non-negotiable. I’m practicing that now and wish the same for you.
x kat