The Art of the Fully Integrated Self
By Lauren Jane Clancy
“I’m hungry!”
“Where are my shoes?”
“No! Not that outfit!”
“She’s not sharing with me.”
“I don’t want to go to school!”
At 6 a.m., the cries cut through the dark. I jolt awake—heart pounding, breath tight. My long-depleted adrenal glands fire as though awaiting a drill sergeant’s command. Twice already tonight I’ve been summoned. No pause, no mercy—just the relentless call to rise.
My body aches, not in the way a hot bath can fix, but with the slow, relentless erosion of sleepless years. Alas, there’s no time to lament.
Breakfast awaits. Three-year-old twins to wrangle. Teeth to brush, backpacks to pack. I’m half-dressed, mentally rehearsing a Zoom call while scrolling through emails—hoping whatever I threw on looks halfway professional. Somewhere in there, I remember to breathe. I slam back an espresso, often two.
This is the story of a single working mom raising identical twin girls while holding herself to impossibly high standards. I demand that I nurture my artistic passions and creative projects, show up fully for toddler mom life, and still perform in the corporate world that pays most—though certainly not all—of the bills.
Just this week, a restructuring was announced that may affect my role come January. The kind of uncertainty that arrives quietly but lands heavily—right before the holidays.
And yet, I push onward. I paint, I write, I create. In the middle of this pandemonium, art is where I dissolve, where freedom reigns—music blasting, paint and mess everywhere, the rip of plastic from a new canvas, the pungent smell of molding paste. I obsess over newspaper fragments, images, and words that inspire me, saving them for my next piece. Here, I let go of the perfectionism that dictates most of my days and dive into the unknown of play.
The studio is where I shed the mask of corporate gloss and the endless demands of motherhood. Even the ego of appearance falls away. I rarely match, wear no makeup, and look the antithesis of “presentable.” I can simply be me—unedited Lauren—a rare occurrence.
It’s a relief to mold exhaustion, ambition, joy, and fear into something tangible. The canvas absorbs the karmic chaos and reflects back something new—something sacred, almost ritualistic. Sometimes drenched in color, other times neutral and calm, it mirrors my longing for a simpler life. Each meditative brushstroke is a spiritual offering from my sovereign soul.
Naturally, I carry mom guilt into the studio. I can’t be in two places at once, and there’s agony in that. Still, I persevere—hoping I’m a better mother for carving out time for my beloved art and my beloved self.
At times, I second-guess my work, question my place in the art world, and even wonder whether I’m an impostor with no business showing my art at all. When your art is abstract, there’s no template to follow—it can leave the mind as unsettled as life. With abstraction, there’s no scaffolding, no certainty to lean on. You simply free fall, and the judgment is as fluid as the work itself.
There’s a strange love in that—the headiness, the contradiction, the cerebral struggle. It exercises my mind, demanding both control and surrender.
People often ask how I “juggle it all.” Truthfully, I don’t know. I just do. I have to is probably the best answer. I stumble, fall short, and doubt—but I also feel empowered, motivated, more passionate and inspired than ever. I’m propelled by a feverish momentum, magnetized forward by the striking awareness of life ticking by in flagrant disregard of its observers. I don’t want to squander a single moment on the mundane if I can help it.
Art teaches me that imperfection itself is part of the process. The drips, the cracks, the layers beneath the surface—these are what give a piece its depth. They reveal beauty in the broken and strength in the unfinished.
Miami, with all its contradictions—luxury and grit, sunshine and storms—mirrors this perfectly. It’s not a city of neat categories; it thrives in the collision of worlds. And maybe that’s why I find my footing here—as a mother, a corporate professional, an entrepreneur, a writer, and an artist.
The fully integrated self isn’t about balance, as if life were a scale to measure. It’s about merging it all together—allowing the messy, conflicting parts of ourselves to coexist. Art shows me how. I’m still humbly learning.
So tomorrow, when the alarm goes off and the chorus of demands begins again, I’ll take a breath. I’ll make breakfast, snuggle the twins, log into my call. And later, I’ll return to the studio—brush in hand—ready to turn the human folly of our world into something meaningful, if only to me.
That is not just the art of survival.
It is the art of the fully integrated self.
Lauren Jane Clancy is a Miami Beach–based artist, writer, entrepreneur, and single mother of twin girls. Her work explores themes of alchemy, existentialism, and transcendence, blending the chaos of modern life with the quiet grace of creation.