Infocus: with JANE founder Annika Hein
Image by Odin Wilde
“I’m still so freshly postpartum and Vahla isn’t in any care so I’m mothering much more than I’m working and neither of us is exercising or meditating as much as we’d like, but you know we make it work and to us the pay off is worth it. ”
Annika Hein is the editor-in-chief and creative director of JANE Magazine, a beautiful biannual fashion and fine art print publication she runs with her lover Odin Wilde. She is the mother to Vahla Inès (2.5) and Erling Astor Ocean (5 months). Annika takes photos and writes poetry. If you have the pleasure of reading her poetry, you may start to weep. Her words, a cascade of reflection and knowing, so gracefully pieced together. Originally for Western Australia, Annika certainly understands the concept of being fluid, inhabiting six houses in the short space of a year, finally grounding here in the hills of Naarm. Freshly postpartum, she shares with us the unpacking birth trauma, her experience moving into postpartum with two kids and her relationship with her partner. Generous like her big oceanic heart, Annika’s story is quite something. There is a lot to learn from this very talented and very sensitive creative. Personally, I feel more whole after reading it. Please consume with pleasure.
Image by Bobby Clark
Tell us about Jane Magazine (what it is, how it was conceived and what it means to you personally).
JANE is a slow art movement considering and challenging the dialogue around creative intention and consumption. The brand is centred a biannual fashion and fine art print publication that we produce and publish twice a year. The magazine and the community at large explores the disciplines of art, photography, fashion, philosophy, and poetry.
We launched the magazine in 2016 at a time where Odin and I weren’t feeling particularly supported or inspired by the industry. Neither of us come from big families so I support we’ve always sought that kind of connection through our work and art practice.
Our intention was and continues to be, to create something that was guided by heart and love and creativity, rather than consumerism. To cultivate an overarching change in artistic consumption and creation, while nurturing a community that goes beyond the pages.
We wanted to feel hopeful and inspired again particular within the confines of our industry: Despite there being such a huge shift to digital content and publication we believed there was something special and nuanced about a print publication that was worth fighting for and preserving.
This step away from consumerism and focus on community however is a constant push and pull and at times works to our detriment as neither Odin or I are particularly great at marketing ourselves or what we’ve created with the brand. We’ve always hidden behind the idea that the right people will see it when they need to and they’ll connect with and respond to it in the way they were always supposed to. The industry at large continues to operate under the guise of a lot of smoke and mirrors and illusion so its easy to get caught up in the facade and loose sight of what’s important. Honouring the sacrifices we make to do this work and create this magazine while also ensuring the narrative we’re telling is authentic and real is something we’re working on and have many ideas that we hope to build upon for 2023 which will ensure JANE’s future.
Print media and publishing gets more and more expensive and difficult each year. The work is gruelling, it is energetically and financially demanding, but it is important—both individually and collectively—and thus we always find a way to continue our mission.
Despite the obstacles we feel so honoured and humbled to work with such inspiring artists and creatives and really proud that we’ve fought so hard to create a legacy of soulful and considered publishing through our approach and a community that will hopefully hold our vision tall well into the future.
You and your partner Odin work in such a unique way. You parent/ raise kids together, you collaborate professionally and you inhabit and share the same space. How does this work? Can you describe the dynamic you share?
I know this dynamic wouldn’t work for everyone, but for us there’s never been another way, we’re just better together. We’re a really good team and without ever specifically delegating we’ve kind of just taken on specific roles within our home and work life that play to our strengths, lucky for us these strengths compliment and support each other—for example I’m really good at planning and organising so I make the grocery lists and keep on top of our production cycle and timelines, whereas Odin is amazing under pressure and also excels with a specific task to do so he usually cooks us dinner each night and heads up a lot of the logistics for printing and production. We always joke that my role as a creative director and his role as an art director and designer within JANE transpires into all the other elements of our lives. I do the menu and the shopping but he does the cooking. I plan the top level creative but he creates a story and finds the right team.
We go for a walk all together every morning and I think this helps to ground and centre our family in preparation for what we need to achieve. We also always eat breakfast and dinner together and unless one of us is up working late Odin and I make sure to go to bed together each night. It was obviously much easier before we had children, but now we just constantly adapt and rearrange things to best suit each new season. I think it helps because our work is just as important to us as each other element in our lives so it all kind of folds into each other and we have one big calendar or timetable… You know, it’ll be things like: OK today we’re laughing a new chapter on JANE PRIVÉE, our private online platform, so that all needs to be uploaded and edited, and also Vahla has swimming lessons and we need nappies. We just divide and conquer and each task is given the same level of importance.
At the moment, we’re both stretched pretty thin. I’m still so freshly postpartum and Vahla isn’t in any care so I’m mothering much more than I’m working and neither of us is exercising or meditating as much as we’d like, but you know we make it work and to us the pay off is worth it.
Image by Odin Wilde
Do you feel like creativity and matrescence are inextricably linked?
Yes in a way. I feel like they are linked in their conception, but not in execution. At the moment I have lots of ideas and feel very creative but I have no time to action any of them. It’s almost like I’m in this period of rumination where I’m observing a lot and letting a lot of these new experiences wash over me and kind of just happen to me but I’m not yet at the point where I have the space or brain capacity to really dissect and interpret them into creative work. I need a lot of time and space to create and this season of early motherhood doesn’t really allow for that. I write as much as I can and just trust that I’m digesting it all in a way that will allow me to call on it when I need it.
I also feel like matrescence alters the axis of your creativity, or it did for me at least. My perspective changed and because my work is so closely centred around my every day lived experiences the tone of my output was adjusted and given a beautiful quality of softness and vulnerability. There’s an undercurrent of motherhood in just about everything I do now and the negative connotations from society that will inevitably come up because of that is a whole other conversation.
What does the term “ full” mean to you?
I think of life and then of course I think of love. I think of a big, full, messy life bursting with love and community and chaos and creativity. To be full and fat from life and love. It’s a feeling really or maybe a sound, an energy? There’s children playing and laughing and racing about. There’s things everywhere, music on, people are talking and touching and smiling. It’s warm and sunny, but not too hot and it’s the late afternoon before the sun’s started its descent and there’s still time for one more drink or a piece of cake and for someone to say let’s all grab an easy take-away dinner and eat it together in the backyard on picnic blankets while the kids run on the lawn. It’s bumping into someone on the street and saying hey come back with us for tea. It’s laughing so hard at nothing and crying because you think you’ve finally found it, the community and the people that litter your life with love and make you forget about all the things that never really mattered. It’s catching your lover’s eye across from the table and with a wink or a nod knowing that it’s all going to be ok. It’s her eyes and his smile, every time.
A lot of this feeling comes from this sense of community or belonging that I associate with big families. Odin and I don’t have that, so it’s quite interesting to see how we strive to create it within our work. I am painfully nostalgic and sentimental, so my special place or my dream vision is thinking about Christmas Day in twenty or thirty years time and I have three children home for the holidays and all their children and their families and it’s loud and messy and full love. I want my house to be the house where all my children and their friends come back to. I want it to be full.
The hours you do your best work are…
In the dark of the night, once I get out of my own way and actually sit down and get into a rhythm.
Congratulations, you are now a mother of two. How did you best prepare your daughter for the welcoming of your son? Is there any literature for adults and children you would recommend?
I had some birth trauma and PTSD to work through from Vahla’s birth and we also planned another home birth for Erling so much of our planning was actually centered around preparing for the birth. Vahla witnessed her brother being born and because of all the conversations we’d had about birth she was completely at ease and full of curiosity. However, because this was our focus in the lead up we kind of dropped the ball on preparing her for the aftermath and the fact that she would be a big sister and that there would be a baby added to our family dynamic and what that meant. I did manage to wean Vahla about 6 weeks before Erling was born so she was prepared for the fact that the milk was no longer hers, but other than that we kind went in blind. Hindsight’s a beautiful thing and I’m sure there are lots of books and role play activities that we could had done with her, but our focus was on healing trauma and we succeeded in that.
Image by Odin Wilde
I'm sincerely sorry that you experienced birth trauma. Can you please tell me some rituals that helped you unpack your first birth? Did the process happen when you were pregnant or after Vahla's birth?
I wrote a lot. A lot, a lot. Almost as though I was willing myself to move through it and “get over it”. I was obsessive in my thoughts about what happened and felt stuck in a kind of loop replaying things and becoming hyper focussed on really small details of the event. In a way, it worked and I now really treasure those pieces of writing. I saw a cranial sacral therapist, only once, because of COVID. And then I did a closing of the bones ceremony and a placenta burial. Nothing really seemed to fully resolve what I was feeling or processing within my body and to be honest I think I actually just ended up disassociating from it as a way to move on. I also spoke with a midwife (not the one present for the birth) who had experienced the same trauma of a PPH and retained placenta during a home birth. She shared some information on EMF tapping, via email, but I actually didn’t even open or click the links until I was pregnant again.
I don’t think I really didn’t actually properly processed what happened until I was pregnant again. Once I started searching for care and had to relive and retell the story over and over again I realised I was still healing and still very much holding onto the trauma. One midwife also officially diagnosed what I was describing as PTSD and I think that label really helped me. However then I was faced with the challenge of finding care and support for my second birth and someone who would properly listen to what happened instead of just layering on their own fears and labelling me as high risk.
I fought really hard, really really fucking hard, for what I knew I needed and I did a lot of research and had to relive that trauma many many times, but I eventually found the most amazing home birth midwife who unpacked my birth story with me and together we moved into a realm of healing. I worked very very hard on myself and my healing throughout my pregnancy and, Mel, my midwife helped me a lot with that. We would just speak for hours and hours about what happened, how I was feeling, what I was scared of - she really made me believe in myself again and took some of that burden off my shoulders.
I started really paying attention to my dreams, I did a specific meditation throughout pregnancy about releasing fear, and had regular Chiro appointments throughout my pregnancy. By about half way I wasn’t scared any more, I stopped having dreams about it going the same way as my first and most importantly I was able to speak about my first birth without my whole face going red, my heart racing, or my voice shaking. I stopped have a physical reaction.
I ended up birthing my son basically unassisted, with Mel arriving a mere 3 minutes before he emerged. There wasn’t a second during my labour where I doubted myself or faulted in my knowing that I could this and that my story would be different.
What’s so crazy, is that I met a mother on the playground recently who had the same midwife as I did for my birth with Vahla. She didn’t have a PPH or anything like that, but I could just tell in her voice that she had trauma to unpack and she said that despite her birth being “normal” or “successful” on paper she cried a lot after it. And it was her second birth. She said she just didn’t have that elated feeling that she was expecting and kept replaying things that had happened during her birth. I saw much of my earlier self in her. So much of our story was the same and I felt sad knowing that this woman had experienced these things and that unless she did the work, she’d now be living with that trauma. But then I also felt really proud and content because my voice was no longer matching the shakiness in hers. I felt like I was talking about the experience from the other side. And it felt really good.
Can you share with us what the four corners of your home felt like in the first two months as a family of four?
Milky and magic and salty and soft and simple and full of vulnerability and love and deep listening. Erling is a total star gazer and we joke within our family that it’s his first time landing here on Earth. He’s so grounding and full of cosmic wonder. Every time we locked eyes, we were pulled into his orbit of love and stillness during those months.
But it was also completely polarizing and utterly overwhelming, tumultuous and a little isolating. We moved a lot during my pregnancy, interstate to NSW and then the floods happened, and then there was mould in our house so we ended up moving for the sixth time in 12 months just 2 weeks before I gave birth. And into temporary furnished accommodation. I had influenza A and a sinus infection and had to try and think about the personal things I’d want around me during our birth and then in the postpartum period. We also didn’t have much community support in the area and both Odin and I are from very small and very separated families so we didn’t have a village to rely on there either. I think there’s a lot of focus at the moment on the fourth trimester, as there should be, but what I don’t think gets spoken about much is the fact that unless you already have strong family support or community network in place then it’s actually up to you to arrange it for yourself and that comes from a place of financial privilege. Meal deliveries and postpartum doulas are a blessing and wonderful service for new mothers, however I think it’s detrimental to speak about these things without also addressing why there is a need for them in the first place. The deterioration of community and the challenges of not living intergenerational are never highlighted more than when you have a new baby.
I had grand plans to follow the principles of forty days of rest, or the golden month or whatever you like to call it, but I was also mostly alone with a toddler and a partner who was simultaneously sending a magazine to print. I have a little but of guilt around my 4th trimester with Erling, which is something I need to let go of, and I also have the comparison of Vahla’s 4th trimester which was during the peak of COVID lockdowns. But it’s hard to think about the fact that I was three weeks post-birth and going to the playground or getting groceries alone with two kids because I also needed to parent my toddler.
A meal that makes you feel cared for.
Seared salmon with mashed potatoes and green beans with a glass of something light and natural and fizzy. And then something sweet and crunchy for after.
Follow Annika’s journey here.
https://www.janebythegreyattic.com/
https://www.instagram.com/annika_hanne/
Image 1 & 4 by Odin Wilde for Friends with Frank, featuring their latest collection.