“A woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have, the egg that formed you was once an egg inside your mother when she was just a foetus inside your grandmother”
This was a giant project. Begun (possibly not sensibly!) the year my second daughter was born. The project had deep roots, growing out of earlier research into family life, and the role of the matriarch, within the community of Knowle West. It was also rooted in my personal family history and in a longstanding fasciation with maternal lineage that had crystalised moments after giving birth to my first daughter.
The project began on Mother’s Day 2012 with four mothers around a kitchen table eating traditional simnel cake and enjoying a refreshingly frank discussion of motherhood. It developed into a three year, participatory arts project exploring the theme of maternal lineage, and culminated with a public exhibition opened on Mother’s Day 2015 attended by over 70 women and children, with local and national press coverage:
Woman’s hour.
BBC News Online
Bristol 24/7
Mother in the Mother then received further Arts Council funding to run more workshops and collect new stories from a diverse range of participants. Eventually the stories became a book, published by Womancraft Publishing in 2019. Stories explore themes including: love, loss, healing, young motherhood, non-biological mother’s, family estrangement, mental and physical health. maternal ambiguity, twin pregnancy and adoption.
“The group allowed us the space to voice things that had previously been unspoken. It was powerful stuff!”
“It gave me the sense that my journey is not alone but is unique. An inspiration to actively connect and share more with other women.”
“This was valuable, emotional, well structured, inspiring, interesting, an empowering one off.”
