Molly Surno: On the NICU-mother perspective and children easing her anxiety

Advice from a curator and cultural programmer

Meet our next creator, Molly Surno:

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Molly Surno
Kids: Sy, 4; Benny, 2
Location: Ridgewood, Queens
Vocation: Cultural programmer, artist, curator
Links: Push Projects, Molly Surno

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The phrase “me time” has always made my skin crawl. Even though one of my favorite things in the world is to be by myself. But there is something so infantilizing about turning your personal needs as a human being into something that’s cutesy and trendy and, often, expensive. 

The commercial world wants your me time to be doing yoga. Or getting a massage. Or splurging for the entire spa package. Or going out for disgusting California Chardonnay with your girlfriends. And it’s all tangled up in the nefarious web of wellness culture—remember how healthy and pure it all once seemed? Ah, the early 2010s. Such an innocent time. 

I try really hard not to think of going for a run as me time. Or getting my hair cut. Or going grocery shopping solo. Or reading a book. Those are all delightful things that make me feel good. But they’re not me time. They’re just…time. They’re just part of life. Is a father having me time when he watches a football game? No. He’s just watching a football game. 

My interviewee this week, the vastly talented Molly Surno (you can thank her for Kickstarter, TEDx, and countless art experiences in NYC and beyond), gives us the perspective of a NICU mother. Her experience made her resent the concept of me time. Instead of bemoaning not having the luxury of time for herself, she considered her role as the mother of a hospitalized newborn, and the demands that put on her, to be akin to a calling, and she rose to the occasion with appreciation.

After our chat, I wanted to redefine the concept of me time. When our kids are little, if we can just stop pressuring ourselves to continue producing at the same rate, if we can slow down and be content in this stage, then we can use that time as an incubator. We can hone skills, we can experiment, we can think, we can research, we can reassess. We can take time for ourselves, yes, but also for the pursuit of our art. We just need to get a new name for it—or even better, not name it at all.  

Now, Molly, in her own words…

On choosing to spend time with kids:

I am very passionate about trying to spend as much time with my children as possible. I had a single mom who worked all the time and was in school. I didn’t see her that much. I don’t want to replicate that experience for my kids. 

I don’t want to lose this time with them. I’ve just had to get really creative about my time. You know, I don’t get manicures. I don’t have long lunches. My showers happen late at night. Sometimes they don’t happen. I’m willing to sacrifice other components of my life. And I feel really at peace with that because it’s not something I want to negotiate.

On shifting from the New York hustle to domesticity:

I had a really active, interesting, unorthodox work history because I hustled. I created a lot of opportunities, and I didn’t negotiate on a lot of things. I wanted to be involved in really interesting projects, which often meant I was starting from the ground up. I was the first director of Kickstarter when there were six people in a room around the table. I helped start TEDx when there were two of us. Once I developed and formalized something was when I would transition to my next thing. 

From We of Me, a performance Molly did as part of an art gala at Greystone Mansion in L.A., where the three women repeatedly brushed their hair in response to deafening static coming from nearby amps.

I worked with the Getty Museum. I worked with every major museum here. I was doing different installations and whatnot. And it took a lot of work to make it excellent. I got a bit burned out. I got a bit disenchanted. And my work life slowly became, I don’t want to say less important, but I just held less of that New York fever of you have to be everywhere at once and you have to go to all the openings and you have to be at all the events. I just started to domesticate a little bit before I had a kid. 

On your kids seeing you as their mother and not a public figure:

I became a classic pandemic baker, and I never stopped. And then I got an urban homesteader vibe. And now I’m fermenting. And I didn’t want that to just be this moment in time. I actually wanted to raise a home where my kids saw me being creative in a quotidian way, in a daily way, and not just at the Met Museum.

I was listening to this podcast between Flea and Patti Smith. She left the limelight when she had kids. And she said her children never knew that she had this major public persona. They just knew her as a mom that, like, packed lunch. And yeah, she would dance around the kitchen and knew the lyrics of every song and read them poems. I really resonate with that. I want my kids to really see me that way. 

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I have very prolific friends with really big public personas that are extremely active and creative in a world outside of their home. And I’ll have these flare-up moments of anxiety, like, “Am I doing enough?” And I am constantly revisiting Patti Smith and thinking, “Why are we so obsessed with having to work through the early years?”

On giving yourself time to experiment:

I feel like I’m honing my craft right now. We live in a world where the process of experimentation isn’t given breath. We’re just so product-driven and not process-driven, and there’s not that much room for experimentation. We kind of have to produce something perfect. You don’t get to try it, fail, do something else. 

For me, I started baking. I’ve had a huge experience in my garden. I’ve had a huge experience in my kitchen. And I think about utility and art, and I’m kind of creating this whole series right now on radical domesticity. I don’t know what it will become, but I’m playing around with how your domestic life can be so radical, can be so creative. And this is my research time. This is the time that I’m writing, taking notes, making recipes. It’s not to share on Instagram. 

Molly is doing the in-house programs for Eventbrite’s Reconvene, an accelerator program that grants $20,000 to four individuals to launch an event series.

On the frivolity of “me time”:

Both of my kids had very, very challenging beginnings that involved stints in the NICU and some big health complications afterwards, which blows up your whole sense of importance and value, and where you want to be, and where you want to delegate your time. NICU moms have a different transition into parenthood.

I actually really resented this, like, “make sure you have me time” because I thought to myself, I am doing this thing that I’ve been tasked with, that my body’s been tasked with, and my emotional and whole world view has the opportunity to surrender to this and enjoy it. Or I can resist the process and make it like, “Why isn’t my life the way it was before?” Or like I have to integrate my life before. It really is the shortest, longest time. It really goes by so fast. My baby’s already two and already making sentences. It’s just such a flash in the pan, and I will have a lot of me time in my life. 

On no imposter syndrome with motherhood:

I don’t think there’s that much excitement in our culture for being a mom. There’s a lot of pride in having a kid, but a lot of fear and resistance around the transformation. But I still get butterflies. When little kids are like, “Oh, there’s Sy’s mom,” I get butterflies. It’s like when you’re excited to call your partner your fiancé. There are just those moments that I feel really tingled by.  

There’s so much conversation right now that I don’t relate to. I have a very different perspective. I feel more myself as a mom. I feel more myself having dependents. I feel less anxious. I like not thinking about myself. I felt way more anxious about what my place was or what I should be doing before I had kids. And now I kind of know exactly what I need to do. I know that my kid needs to be fed. I know that they need their exercise. I know that they need their stories. I know that they need their imagination fed. I know that they need a lot of cuddles. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about myself, but it gives me this very concrete purpose that’s non-negotiable. And not anything that I feel imposter about. 

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Thank you, Molly, for sharing your story!

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*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.