Rebekah Taussig: Rewriting Your Own Story

What did you use to do during recess?

A lot of my recess memories are actually pretty stressful and lonely. I got my first wheelchair a few months into first grade, and much of the school playground was inaccessible to me. I remember wishing other kids would play the things I could actually participate in – foursquare or those hand-clapping singing games – but nothing felt worse than the idea of someone playing with me out of pity. So I also spent a lot of time on the edges of playgrounds pretending like I didn’t care. I do have one early, vivid memory of recess, though, that doesn’t fit seamlessly with the lonely ones. I’m about 6 or 7, sitting in a corner of the playground with a couple of girls from my class, picking bright yellow dandelions. I’m not sure how it started, but soon, we were rubbing them onto our cheeks. I’d seen my mom apply blush in the car a thousand times, turning her face from side to side as she eyed herself in the drop-down mirror on the visor. I felt like a sophisticated adult, mimicking the sweeping motions I’d seen so many times from my mom’s hand. The dandelions were paintbrushes, tools of expression and autonomy. But once we’d turned our cheeks yellow, we weren’t ready to be done. We painted our eyelids, then our forearms and knees. We came back inside looking like we’d gone swimming in the sun. Mrs Wallace, our queenly teacher whose hair was pulled into a french bun every single day, was not pleased with us. But I still think about that feeling of creative discovery and agency almost every time I see a juicy yellow dandelion.  

(Photos by Anastasia Pagonas)

How did motherhood change your creative practice? 

It’s wild and kind of devastating to think about how much time I had before my son was born. It rarely felt like it, but from my current perch on toddler island, my pre-mother self had an abundance, a bounty, an ocean of time in which to create. I was used to paddling out leisurely into the middle of that water to sunbathe a whole hour before taking my time to figure out what and how I wanted to write. Now it’s more like trotting along a narrow, swiftly flowing river with very clear edges, and if I don’t keep up, little fish with sharp fangs will start sucking out my blood. Something like that. And also, there’s something uniquely generative for me here. Because nothing sends me to writing more than my need to understand, and, like so many others, motherhood for me has been an intensely bewildering, taxing, confusing experience. And in particular, the intersection of that motherhood with disability has been especially sharp. The first year and a half or so, I was stuck inside a very punishing narrative about myself as a mother, which really hinged on the idea that I wasn’t a real one. If ever I dared to say it out loud, I knew it sounded silly, but it didn’t feel silly. It felt like the truth everyone knew, but would never dare say out loud. Everything that felt hard about new parenthood – which was a lot (of course it was – hello!) – I blamed directly on my paralyzed legs. Slowly, slowly, I’ve realized this is an act of storytelling. And stories can change. In some ways, that’s been a lot of my creative work over the last year and a half. Finding and nurturing a new story about motherhood and disability – paying attention to all the moments, real and textured and not easily sorted – to tell a nuanced story with infinite folds. There are so many ways to tell a story – how do I want to tell this one?

What mothers inspire you?

I want to sit at the feet of Caitlin Metz as a full-time disciple. Their son is about six months younger than mine, and I’ve watched with wide-wonder-eyes as they’ve merged parenting into their creative practice. Caitlin makes art about motherhood that feels like it was pulled straight out of the deepest, darkest, lightest, best and worst parts of me, but they also make beautiful, surprising art with their kiddo – the two of them are often co-collaborators. It’s truly something to witness. 

What do you hope your kids will learn about creativity from you?

When my son was about two years old, he started to get really frustrated by his inability to draw things exactly as he saw them in his mind. He’d ask his dad or me to draw for him, or he’d get frustrated and throw the markers. One morning we were scribbling on paper together, and his frustration escalated really quickly, culminating in a loud, howling, “I’m not good at markers!” And at the sound of his distress, a bellowing, wild-eyed giant crawled out of me and took over as parent of the situation. I’ve played this moment over and over again in my head, mostly because I wish I could rewind and do it all over again. But this is what the loud giant said, looking intensely into my child’s eyes, gripping both his hands in mine: “You ARE good at markers. Every single thing that comes out of these hands is magic. Do you believe me?” To which my toddler howled, even louder, “NO!” 

Now, I think the more nuanced idea I was trying to funnel into him was that there is value in the simple act of running a pen over paper – that art doesn’t have to look any certain way to be worthwhile. But even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I heard something sharp in them – an expectation I often put onto my own creations. An expectation that sounds something like perfectionism’s stage parent – “This thing better be absolute MAGIC. Every set of eyes that beholds it better turn to stars, otherwise you’ve failed.” And THAT is the opposite message I want to instill in my son. My response clearly had so much more to do with me than him. 

These days I try to offer a safe space for him to express through each stage of the creative process. To be a source of understanding when he feels frustrated –I know that feeling, too, love! It can be hard when things don’t come out just like we want. I try to make alongside him and express my process, too, narrating when I’m struggling or when I “flub” something. I hope he learns that sometimes, the “flubs” are the whole point – the most cherished bit. That creativity is inextricably linked with discovery, and sometimes you have to wander for a long time before you find what you’re looking for. I hope together we can appreciate creativity as a process instead of a product. Instead of tuning outward (What will turn their eyes to stars?), I hope we learn more and more to tune inward (What makes my eyes turn to stars?). Like so many other parts of motherhood, I have to learn and practice these values if I ever want my son to know them, too. And that’s served as a pretty strong motivator for me.

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Rebekah Taussig is a Kansas City writer, educator, and parent of one wild, wonderful three-year-old. Bolstered by academic knowledge and personal experience, she strives to tell stories that enhance and complicate the way we think about disability. You can find more of her work in TIME, on her Instagram, @sitting_pretty, in her memoir in essays, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body, or you can follow her work and sign up for her newsletter at www.rebekahtaussig.com.

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Hi! I’m Heidi. Writer. Editor. Mother. I’m interviewing 100 creative mothers, because I believe the more we see other mothers making beauty and meaning in small moments, the more we will be inspired to make our own kind of art, whatever that may look like during this intense season of life. Support the project by sharing with a friend.