Baking Cookies in Babylon: Early Childood Professionals' Development and 'Arting'

This study engaged mid-career early childhood professionals---women who are first and foremost caregivers---in a process that prioritized self-care: rest, relaxation, and reflection 'making' art. The study drew from critical feminist theories of empowerment and embodiment and from psychoanalytic theories of lack (a psychical loss/space), jouissance (intense emotional energy), sublimation (channeling energy into productive artifacts and acts) and singularity (the hope of an vision of the 'self' as ever-evolving and capable). Emergent themes were that the professionals valued the ethical consistency of using best practices from their discipline (inquiry, openness, supportive environment), that they struggled with/learned from continuums of restriction and renewal, that they felt using art allowed them to recognize their need for both care and vision in their lives and in career. Art also brought forward recognitions of the life-spanning intuitional gifts within caring. They recognized and affirmed with each other that their curricular selves are complex, have ambivalences, are ever under-construction and interestingly not bound to time.