Multiple Things Can Be True At Once

A reflection from the final stretch of pregnancy

I am currently growing another little earthling in my belly and something is happening that I remember from last time…this deep, unavoidable reflectiveness that creeps in during the final months. Like my body is quietly asking me to take stock before everything changes again.

When I was pregnant with Elio I was filming my Go Gently documentary series, editing it through the pregnancy and in the early postpartum haze. Somewhere in those final weeks of pregnancy something shifted. I found myself looking back at every creative expression I’d had since I was young. Even as far as acting from age nine, we really start expressing ourselves long before anything has a name. I started, for the first time in a long time, feeling genuinely proud of what I’d made and what my body had carried me through. That feeling doesn’t come easily to me. It still doesn’t. I am sure you can relate. But pregnancy has a way of forcing a kind of tenderness towards yourself that ordinary life doesn’t always allow.

Me pregnant with Elio because I really don't have many cute photos this time around! Photos by Monroe Alvarez-Mosher

Then Elio arrived and rocked my world in all the best ways and some of the hardest ones too. The early postpartum months were a shock I hadn’t fully prepared for. Suddenly being someone’s primary source of nourishment, their external nervous system, their everything. It was messy and beautiful and humbling in a way that lasted much longer than a few months. It gave me a new found respect for anyone who is a caregiver in any form. You give so much of yourself. You have to be so incredibly patient. Some days you just want to pause the ride for a second.

And here I am three years later. Doing it again. During the hottest months of the year…again.

This pregnancy has been physically harder. I’m chasing a toddler, I’m three years older, I’m running on considerably less sleep than I’d like to admit. I’ve also stayed busy, partly out of necessity (trying to get everything done before maternity leave, whatever “everything” means) and partly because I genuinely feel inspired by the work I’m doing with Hello Earthling right now.

But in these final weeks the same thing is happening. The reflection is back. And this time what keeps coming up is this:

Multiple things can be true at once.

I can love Elio as much as I do and have room to love another baby. I can love working on my own projects but sometimes wish to work in a bigger team. I can love where we live and still ache for London sometimes. I can want to completely switch off during maternity leave and also know I’m going to miss working. I can feel like a creative person one day and like my only identity is “mum” the next. All of this can be true at once for me.

I used to think clarity came from making decisions. From constantly moving forward, figuring it out, landing somewhere definitive. Motherhood has slowly, persistently taught me that nothing is actually that finite. We are always in progress. Sometimes things move forward and sometimes it genuinely feels like a billion steps back and both are just part of it.

Before I close out there is something else I want to share, a project I’ve been quietly sitting with for a long time. Eight years ago I started writing a story. First as a script, then in various other forms, through what feels like a million different versions. A few months ago I finally sat down and wrote a publication pitch for it as a novel. I sent it out not knowing what to expect.

And today the story has found its home with a publisher that feels so right.

I’m still a little in shock honestly. I never thought I would be an author when I landed my book deal for Go Gently and I never ever thought I would be an author of a novel! But here we are. It has been the most beautiful reminder that good things can take time. That a project you’ve been quietly carrying for years isn’t necessarily going nowhere. It’s just waiting for the right moment to ripen.

In a world where content moves so fast and everything feels urgent, I hope that’s useful to hear. Whatever you’re sitting on, it might just need more time.

Lots of love to any other earthlings growing a baby through these hot summer months. We’ve absolutely got this.

Bonnie x