Mishka

That’s Babywearing International, not Baltimore Washington International…

If you’re a member of thebabywearer.com, please go to this thread to vote (“like” my post) if you love my submission.

I submitted this to an image contest to try and win some lending library items for our local babywearing chapter (this link will probably only work if you’re a member of the BWI website). They’ve been quite helpful and an all around bunch of great folks. I started wearing JaegerThing1 when she was about 4 months old and have somehow managed to stave off a woven wrap addiction (I currently only have two). I do have to stifle myself a little when I see other moms and dads babywearing. I can get a little over-exuberant about it. I like to help out folks who are new to wearing and don’t know a lot of their options. I always point people towards the local Babywearing International chapter.

Anyway, about this illustration… I had a bunch of ideas and not a lot of time so this is the one that came out. Maybe another time, I’ll do some of the other illo ideas I had. They were a bit more representational and less presentational (which is often a criticism I get of my illustration work).

This was a tough one, really, because the theme is so open-ended. And because babywearing is so much about everyone, I didn’t want to do an exclusive illo. However that is indeed what I’ve done. Another goddess. I am just drawn to drawing goddesses I guess, so apologies to the men right off the bat.

My sketchbooks of the last 20 years show me that I have always seen women as goddesses. I look to other women for guidance, inspiration, and often spirituality. When I became a mother, one of my goddess friends introduced me to our local babywearing group. I had inherited a mei tai and had been gifted a Moby, two Ergos and a Pikkolo and I needed help figuring out what to do with all these things.

Now, as a mother of two, I find that wearing my children is essential if I want to get anything done. All of the moms in our playgroup have now had their second children and even the ones who didn’t wear their first are now starting to wear their second. I am happy to be able to guide them.

I am blessed to be among these groups of mothers helping and supporting mothers. Even on our worst days when we haven’t slept at all and are covered in food or milk and whatever else our kids have wiped on us, trying to muddle through dinner time and feedings to bedtime, and we feel like complete crap, we have this wonderful network to insist to us that we are wonderful radiant goddesses and that we created these little lives and continue to nurture them, our partners, and if we can manage a little time to ourselves, ours as well. My image is one of those times, when you can just savor being in the moment. And the strawberries. They’re in season here now, too.

Also, at the suggestion of my husband, I tried color pencil for the first time in aeons… so long, in fact, that the only pencils I own are watercolor ones. I did not use water on this though I may go back and see what happens. I did screw up the color on the border oval pretty badly. I had to clean it up in Photoshop. I never can get 100% away from the computer anymore.