Beyond Motherhood
Embracing the role of a Creative Midwife
When I was eighteen, I took the exam that would determine whether I’d get into college in Brazil. One of the questions required an essay, and while I don’t remember the exact prompt, I remember what I wrote.
I had just discovered Socrates’ concept of maieutikos: the idea that knowledge can be drawn out through conversation, like a midwife helping bring a child into the world. His own mother was a midwife. That detail stayed with me. It still does.
At the time, I thought I’d become a teacher like my parents. I poured my heart into that essay, not knowing it would earn me a perfect score and a spot in the Arts program. I also didn’t know that this metaphor of midwifery (of helping something come into being) would quietly shape the rest of my life.
This is what I do now. I guide, I witness, I create space. I help bring to life brands, stories, ideas, and expressions that weren’t fully formed before. And in doing so, I’ve learned that creativity isn’t just about producing something beautiful. It’s about honoring what wants to be born.
Years later, during a season of my life marked by infertility, that same metaphor came back to me. I heard it clearly, as if whispered into my chest: you can still create. It doesn’t have to be a child. You have the power to give birth to anything you want.
And so I do. Through writing, through design, through strategy, through the work of building something real. This weekend, as Mother’s Day approaches, I’ll be thinking of all the different ways we mother. All the dreams we carry. All the lives we bring into form.
Here’s to the midwives of ideas, the artists of vision, and the force inside each of us that knows how to bring something into the world with care 💐
