Maternity: "Giving birth is a crossing in itself," says author Julia Kerninon

In her novel Liv Maria, Julia Kerninon, a 35-year-old author, already explored the questions of the couple and motherhood, which she tackles in a story just published Touching dry land*, at the based on his own experience. Mother of two young children, she explores the intrusion that motherhood constitutes on the body, the individual and the couple. But also on the creative process at the heart of this fascinating literary story.

You explore in your story the fact of being a writer, wife and mother, why are these identities that do not necessarily seem reconcilable?

The legendary canonical image of writer is masculine. By definition, she is not a mother. Especially since it is men who have held power in literature for centuries. In fact, they were not very interested in the description of family life, intimate life, life at home. This is one of the obvious reasons why the figure of the writer is not a mother. More abstractly, to do literature is to claim to steal the time necessary to make right to an interior and personal life. Artistic creation competes with childhood. As far as I am concerned, I have no trouble reconciling the two for a lot of obscure reasons. When I go to bookstores for my books, people are surprised: how do I manage to leave my home when I have children? But I admit I never asked myself the question. The answer is very simple, it's a job like any other. And then, they have a father, my children.

You wrote a doctoral thesis on the figure of the writer entitled Chaos does not produce masterpieces. Writers, work and legend, why?

I always wanted to be a writer. I have always written, even when I was a little girl. After the baccalaureate, I started to wonder: how should I organize my life for this to be possible? What does the life of writers actually look like? How do we organize ourselves to deal with the irregularity of income? How to manage the writer's pride in the face of the reality of success or failure? Do the authors manage to start a family? This is the reason for my doctorate on the subject.

Isn't Touching Solid Earth the story of a conquest of writing, of the status of the writer?

I would rather say that writing is an ambition that I quickly took seriously. So, I tried to give myself the means to build a life where I can spend the most time with books, reading and writing them. Conquest is undoubtedly something more triumphant.

I go back to the birth of your first child, which you recount in your book and after which you write "I suddenly discovered myself so fragile, as if I had become a little girl again and that I had to grow up again, go through all the my life to come to this”…

It's one of the cool things about being a parent: having kids takes us back to our own childhood. In an almost violent and magical way. Everyday life also brings us back to it constantly: by doing things for our children, we become aware of what our parents have done for us. One does not become a mother to relive one's childhood, but one does not escape, it seems to me, the fact of going through it again. And then giving birth is a journey in itself. I allude to it in this sentence: after giving birth, and I don't think I'm the only one to have experienced this, I found myself completely defeated, I found myself destroyed, not so much physically as internally. Even the vocabulary I had used until then did not allow me to describe what I felt.

You write about feeling a desire to escape.

I don't think all women see motherhood as their final destination in life. Maybe some, yes. As for me, I love being a mother, but I also love a lot of other parts of my life. The secret is that it takes a lot of energy to take on everything that matters to us at the same time. But if I don't do that, I feel like I'm disappearing.

The character of Liv Maria in your eponymous novel (Ed. Iconoclast), who chooses to flee. Is it an exploration of this possibility of escape?

My desire was from the outset based on the idea of ​​portraying a mother. And it was necessarily more interesting to portray a transgressive mother. However, what is worse as a taboo for a mother than leaving? The mother who says no, I'm going to choose myself before my children and I'm going to do what I want to do rather than stay where duty calls me. Paradoxically, I only allowed myself to finish this book when I had children. I felt more legitimate to write it. And obviously, thanks to this novel, I play on this fantasy, like an idea that makes me feel free. However, and in fact, I deeply believe that my children can and must bear the fact that I have a secret life, that I have a life of my own, that I am not entirely dedicated to them.

You often come back to the tenacity, the work, the rigor to succeed in writing...

The myth of the writer is an act of disobedience. People, when they imagine a writer, they imagine chaos. It is for this reason in particular that they ask themselves the question of children and the fact of reconciling them with writing. But, it's not me. Rather than trying to be a different person, I crafted a narrative around what was true that started out as an obedient, careful, patient girl for the job. And it's true, I'm willing to rewrite the same page ten times if that's what has to be done.

When I was younger, when I lived alone, I wrote at night, of course, because it is the most pleasant time to do it. But, by living as a couple, it is a rhythm that we abandon. And having children, even more. They gave me a daily framework: they are at school or at the nanny's and I write every day at my desk. I began to work much better. And then it is also a question of wisdom. If I start sulking because I can't write then I'm never going to be happy.

At the end of Toucher la terre firme, there is this sentence "To write books, I left everything". What does that mean?

I've done everything in my life hoping that one day I'll get to almost exactly where I am now. Today, my books on library shelves look perfectly in place. But, I vividly remember the time when that was not the case and it was possible that I would stay out the door forever. I always wanted the same thing, at 5 years old and at 35 years old. It wasn't the boldest choice, nor the biggest choice, but it was a reverse choice, a gamble. Spending as much time isolating myself to work, as much time reading. Luckily, it pretty much worked for now. But imagine if I had ever failed to publish or if what I had published had not worked. I would have thrown part of my life out the window, literally. I always wanted to have the books and the children. When I got the books, already, I couldn't believe it. And then the children, I wondered what was hanging in my face… I was afraid of the danger. This is also Touching solid ground, having managed to rebalance a couple around my children, to continue to have a love story in the middle of a family, to make your boat sail through difficult waters.

*Touching solid ground, Julia Kerninon, the Iconoclast, 15 euros.