[Long-time readers will recall that sometimes readers write to me wanting advice, so I put on my Aunt Dorcas persona and answer out of my experience and opinions. This one especially struck a nerve, so it’s really long. I invited a few young mom friends to weigh in as well. Pop some popcorn and join us.]
Dear Aunt Dorcas,
I have always loved to write. Actually, it’s more correct to say I'm one of those people who HAS to write. When I was single, I blogged when everyone else was asleep, long after midnight, when I could get into my creative zone and be undisturbed for three hours.
Now that I'm a new mom, the urge to write is still very much there - only it's scolding me because I'm not writing. I still want to write, but I no longer have long stretches of alone time. I am exhausted and want to sleep. My creative zone is elusive. I'm afraid I'm becoming one of the stale-minded, shallow-thinking moms I criticized when I was single. (I am more gracious because I know now that mom life requires you to be VERY practical. Also, it's hard to think deeply when you're sleep-deprived and flooded with post-partum hormones.)
The housework is never done, the toddler needs a lot of attention, and writing seems less important than either of those.
Yet writing feels like a calling for me, something I need to process life, and a gift I've been given to share with others. There is a bit of guilt in the mix since God gifted me with the passion and skills to write and probably expects me to use them. (Also because people keep signing up to my dormant blog and asking when I'm going to write again.)
Is writing possible in this "new mom" stage of life? How can I make it work with the life I have? If it's not possible, how should I deal with my internal pressure to write & the guilt of not writing?
Thank you for considering my question!
--Rhoda
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| Aunt Dorcas is having way too much fun with AI-generated pictures |
Dear Rhoda—
Thank you for your question. I could have written something very similar at your age and stage. I nodded knowingly at the list of demands competing for your energy, and I laughed a little too hard at “I'm afraid I'm becoming one of the stale-minded, shallow-thinking moms I criticized when I was single.”
I have a feeling you and I aren’t the only ones, so this is not only for us, but for all of them. Also, while I will address writing specifically, this relates to all of us who wrestle with conflicting callings, guilt, and longings for what was.
Let me get settled in my rocking chair with a cup of Earl Grey tea, and I’ll reminisce about my own path to where I am today.
I’ll also pull in some wise words from young-mom writers who shared with me.
Here are my thoughts and suggestions:
1. First—the big picture: life transitions are hard, and few changes compare to the switch from being single to being married with children. I found it confusing and upsetting and identity-shaking, even more so than the upheaval in our lives, five years ago, when Paul was seriously injured and suddenly the roles we had held for 25 years as pastor/teacher-and-wife were finished.
So my first bit of advice is to recognize what a big change your life, body, and work have taken, and to be patient with the transition. Some lucky people make the switch smoothly and easily. For many of us, especially if we have gifts and aspirations outside of domestic duties, the transition is much harder. It takes time and grace to find your way, so extend those gifts to yourself.
2. Evaluate the hunger you feel for leeks and garlics. [Numbers 11:5] When I was a young mom, I had an inordinate craving, but no time and few resources, for doing crafts, especially sewing, knitting, and counted cross stitch. I find it odd, now, that that was a more desperate, deep-down longing for me than wanting to write. Eventually, I found time to sew because the children needed clothes, but the cross stitching had to wait until my third baby was a toddler.
Now, looking back, I think: It wasn’t about the crafts!
In high school and beyond, my natural gifts were used and applauded, but after I had babies, my gifts were buried, and I had no time for hobbies, expression, and impulsive fun.
I had never taken the time to process how my difficult pregnancies and colicky babies, combined with a move thousands of miles away to a different cultural setting, totally changed my sense of who I was. I hadn’t grieved or journaled or even recognized this loss for what it was. I hadn’t taken care of myself at all. So my unsettled mind fixated on strange things, as though they would satisfy my soul.
I think the question to ask yourself is: Is this longing to write wistful and nudging or obsessive and out of all proportion? If it’s the latter, dig down for the griefs, the unprocessed regrets, the broken places that need to heal, and the ways you need to ask for help and care for yourself.
When we went to Kenya for four months in 2003, I had an incessant craving to shop in a secondhand store again. By this time I had the experience to know that it wasn’t about the shopping and the grace to laugh at myself. I asked Jesus to fill those longings with himself, and He did.
However: normal longings are healthy. You’ll learn to tell the difference.
3. We assume that if you had children, you’re an adult. But sometimes it’s hard to be a grownup and embrace the fact that having children calls, at least for a season, for the sacrifice of your time, figure, sleep, hobbies, money, fun spontaneous dinners with friends, and fulfilling ministries.
Not everyone sacrifices all of these, and sometimes it’s only for a short season. But my advice is to go into it expecting to lay aside good things for the greater investment into a new little life.
It is worth it. This is the time to be an adult and take a clear view of what’s involved.
A key word is SEASONS. Not even the most high-energy among us can do everything all at once and do it all well. Each season brings specific tasks and challenges that require focus and time. You’ll be most content if you embrace the season and all it requires of you. Believe me, it will pass. In the next season, doors will open because of your faithfulness in this one.
4. Even as you accept adulting and the season you’re in, recognize that you are still a human being with needs for nutrition, sleep, conversation, showers, personal fulfillment, spiritual food, and, in your case, personal expression and time to write.
This is a delicate balance, and some of us teeter on the tightrope and take a few tumbles. If you don’t meet the needs of your mind and body and spirit, you will pay dearly for it, sooner or later.
If you ignore or neglect your children to pursue your own agenda, they will pay dearly and so, eventually, will you.
Rather than careening through this stage, madly typing instead of sleeping at 11 pm, grabbing a brownie just to briefly satisfy your hunger, and resenting your baby for crying when you thought you had ten minutes to outline an article, you need to be deliberate and intentional. Ideally, you’ll sit down with your husband and come up with a plan, even if you’re like me and are better at careening/resenting than planning. What is urgent, what is important, what can be let go, can you carve out an afternoon of quiet a week, and what would it take to get everyone through this stage intact?
When we had three little children, we would take one night a month when Paul took care of the whole after-supper and putting-to-bed routine while I madly typed a form letter. I jotted notes all the time on calendar margins and bits of paper, then on the designated evening I gathered my notes and poured them all into words and paragraphs, organizing my jumbled thoughts into orderly lines and calming the chaos.
Not only did it keep us in touch with family, it scratched that creative itch and released the words tumbling in my head. In addition, I wrote a short monthly post for the intra-mission newsletter, the Grapevine, while we lived on a reservation in Ontario. I remember Paul watching the children while I ran to the school office to use the computer in peace and whip out that Grapevine article. It was an informal assignment, perfect for that season, and I could tell stories or wander off topic or try to be funny. I got positive feedback from others in the mission, which was just what I needed.
Sheri Yutzy, who has young children AND a book deal for her fiction/fantasy work, took time to answer my questions about how she makes it all work. I thought she was very wise.
One of the most useful habits I’ve built as a busy mom of four is a set weekly period to write. I write for 3-4 hours once a week. Even 20 minutes every Thursday evening, or whenever someone in your life is able to give you that space, can be enough.
I’ve found that if I know my writing time is there for me, the guilt about not writing every time my children are happy or napping. I can focus on housework or dinner prep or gardening and not be distracted by that nagging push to write.
I plan what I’m going to write during the mundane tasks. Then when my time begins, I have a clear idea of what needs to be put down on the page.
That clarity allows me to accomplish much more than I would have in stolen minutes throughout the week.
Sneaking in writing here and there may work for some people, but for those of us plagued by “writing guilt” I find it’s better to set boundaries around the writing time.
As mothers, it’s tempting to neglect our creative gifts because we think we don’t have time. But I t believe you’ll find that a short, focused period of creativity will rejuvenate you more than expected and allow you to create more than expected.
5. Prepare now for the time in the next season, maybe next month or next year or ten years from now, when you’ll have a little more time to write. I suggest you follow my example and jot notes on random papers and calendars and notebooks so you have something to jog your memory when you sit down at your laptop. Keep a notebook in your diaper bag, post-its on the kitchen counter, and files of ideas on your notes app if you prefer a phone to paper. You’ll be so grateful you did.
My children had a way of saying the most clever things at the supper table, and I would leap from the table, grab a pen, and write down the quote of the moment on the back of an envelope. Other thoughts and ideas appeared in calendar margins, beside sermon notes, and on 3x5 cards on my desk. I relied on all of them when I wrote columns or blog posts.
6. Remember that your words and skills accumulate. A little bit over and over will grow into an article or book. Hone your skills through journals, notes, letters, whatever you can fit into the corners of your life. A letter to your grandma, full of carefully chosen words, is part of your calling and part of a process, building your skills for a later day and a wider audience.
7. Be discerning about whether your writing is a hobby, a calling, or a life vocation. I got this thought from my young friend Esta Doutrich, who says,
“I feel like writing is one of a lot of things that I’m sometime supposed to do. But I haven’t felt yet that writing is my vocation, like it is The Calling on my life.
I think that makes a difference because someone like Sarah Clarkson is a mom of many children under age 6 and has written books, very carefully, but her vocation is an author. Her last book is ironically on the subject of quiet, and she had to have many extensions on her publishing contract. She’s someone who had to adjust their writing based on their season of life, but her writing is still vocational.”
8. Don’t get locked into one idea of what writing ought to look like. Back in the 1980’s and well into the 90’s, the only real option for articles and stories was shopping them around to publishers until you found a magazine or newsletter or Sunday school flyer that would buy and print them. It was a grueling process. Experienced writers would have a whole system going of paper manuscripts in manila envelopes constantly cycling out to magazines and back home and out to another potential publisher.
Even though I published a few stories, this process never worked well for me. I faced rejection from the markets I really wanted, like Today’s Christian Woman magazine. I was far too disorganized to market efficiently.
The internet changed that scene in ways anyone under 40 can’t fully comprehend. With a blog, you could publish your own articles, for free, without waiting on the mail or on slow editors with foot-high slush piles. This fit my style like cardigan sweaters on grandmas. Free, self-directed, impulse-driven, and expanded by word of mouth.
Today, most blogs have disappeared, and the primary publishing system is social media, focusing on visual messages rather than writing. I’ve heard from multiple sources that publishing on social media is now a prerequisite for book publishing, and Tyndale and Revell won’t look at your manuscript unless you have thousands of followers on social media.
YouTube and Tiktok work for some Mennonite women, but it’s a lonely world for conservative women without internet access, women who don’t have the time to produce visual content, and introverts who want to express themselves in 1000-word essays or even novels.
I transcribed this from a WhatsApp recording from Esta: Women in the decade of my generation had children about the time that blogging started to become more obsolete and the rise of social media began. I have found for myself, and I know this happened to many women, about the same time that we were becoming mothers and had less time to write, the place where we would have been familiar and where it would have been a fairly easy, more casual, but still long form platform, it drastically changed in those years when we didn’t have time to be focused on writing. Then we look up, we want to write, and we feel very disoriented because social media is not a great place to do writing, blogging has kind of disappeared, and we don’t have the mental space or energy to try to figure out where to write.
I also think about those writers I’ve read memoirs about who did not listen to the season of their life and wrote to the detriment of their family. Lucy Maud Montgomery did this I think, and even Madeleine L’Engle. Their children had hard memories of those years. Even though God might be calling me to write, I’ve always wanted to make sure children are more important than books.
Writers are creative by nature, and I encourage those excluded from the current “must-do” mediums to take opportunities that show up and to find quirky and fun ways to write and publish. This phase will pass and, who knows, your creative outlet might be the next big thing.
Until then, start by taking seriously any request to write, if you can fit it in.
I said “yes” to writing for mission and prison-ministry newsletters, even though they were small and not literary or impressive. Later, I happily snatched the opportunity to have my own column in a large newspaper. Would the latter have happened without the former?
Then, I’d encourage you to follow your whims into creative writing that emerges from your current stage, supplies, impulses, needs, and even limitations.
In 1981 I moved from Minnesota to Oregon to teach at a church school. My landlord had a copier in his office that he gave me permission to use, no doubt with teacherly purposes in mind. I don’t think he had a clue that I would type up a little newspaper called The Eye and make numerous copies on shiny chemical-scented paper and distribute them to all my family and many friends every month or two.
Five years later, I was living in the wilds of Canada with a husband and new baby. The Eye died a natural death in this new stage, but as mentioned before, a monthly form letter was birthed out of necessity and opportunity. My letters were photocopied until the day we got a primitive computer, more like a glorified word processor, and I could type and print it all at home, watching in delight as it spooled out of the dot-matrix printer.
What do you have in front of you? What do you enjoy? Can you write letters with paper and ink, adding sketches in the margins to unleash your creativity?
Could you print and publish a neighborhood or extended-family newsletter, write curriculum for a children’s Bible study, or write for the Budget? Can you and your children make up stories, write them down, and illustrate them?
Can you sit down with your grandma and type up her stories, then photocopy them as gifts for the grandchildren?
My friend Sheila Petre wrote poems and self-published them in an adorable little book, bound by her children using ribbons and wires and twine.
Another friend, Janessa Miller, started a subscription-only email newsletter about life in Alaska.
She says, “I have sent out a couple of newsletters and I have enjoyed it. I like that they are just going to people who are choosing to be there and not the whole internet. I like that it’s forcing me to write something down and try to tell a little story. I still feel like I’m trying to find my footing and don’t know exactly what I’m planning to do with everything, but I’m glad I took your advice and just jumped in because I figure I will learn along the way. I fully credit your push, by the way! I never would've gone for it without that conversation.”
Few things are as gratifying as someone taking my advice, so Janessa’s message will fuel me for a week.
Remember: It’s ok to ignore the current publishing scene and just have fun doing what you do well with what you have on hand.
9. Remember that if you write, you need something worth writing about, which means living a lot of life outside of writing. My friend Bob Welch reminded me of this when I asked for advice about starting a Substack account. “If you want to be a writer, you need to have a life so you have something to say,” he said, and told of being in a public-speaking class where most of the students wanted to be professional communicators but had no well of knowledge or life experience to draw from. “You need to follow your dreams,” they said, and I wish I could convey Bob’s dreamy tone as he imitated them. Thankfully, he assured me that my life had plenty of content to draw from.
So, when you have sick babies and no sleep, remember that this suffering will provide not only something to write about, but a depth to your character that will make you worth listening to.
In conclusion: your gift and calling are still there, and they will wait for you.
There are things you can do now to keep the flame alive.
When the time is right, you will have wise and worthwhile things to say.
That’s all for today. I wish you wisdom and clarity.
Aunt Dorcas
Rhoda said in a follow-up email,
The idea that those little bits of writing accumulate is a new thought. Usually they get written, then lost forever in my "blog ideas" folder, or in some random place on my phone. Maybe I need to do better at revisiting old ideas. That could be very helpful. I will have to try that and see where it takes me.
I appreciate your reassurance that my gifts and calling will wait for me, and possibly get better with years and life experience, even if I'm not able to write now. I've been afraid those things were slipping away since I'm not writing much at the moment. That feels hopeful.
