Remember the first moment you held your tiny baby in your arms? Powerful and beautiful, right? It’s a moment that changes you forever. But motherhood alone does not define you. That’s exactly the reason why it’s so important for you to tell your stories.
Motherhood is too often devalued.
There’s no salary for motherhood. No title and no promotions. When someone asks you what you do for a living, what’s the reaction when you tell them you’re a stay-at-home-mom? We live in a world that parses the role of mother into monetary value or warns women not to leave work because of how much money they will lose.
This is exactly why we moms must tell our stories. The memoirs, the fictions, the funny stories and the ones that are too painful to tell but something inside you tells you must share anyway.
What defines a mom?
If you’re a mom, you’re used to balancing and remembering many things once. You’re often overloaded. People expect a lot from you without even realizing they expect so much. You’re probably too hard on yourself, too.
To those of you who wonder when you’ll ever see privacy on the toilet again. When you’re constantly pulled in too many directions, and you’re priority usually goes to others before yourself. Then this is for you…
If you are a mom, writing is the easy part.
Me and Lila in Italy by Lake Bracciano
What makes a mother, makes a writer.
What have you published? It’s the first question people ask when you say you’re a writer. Because, again, what you’ve been paid to produce becomes the public measure of your worth. Yet being a writer is so much more.
To be a writer, you have to work hard with no promise of success. You will fit writing into the spare corners of your life. You will stay up late writing or you will get up early. At times, you will find yourself at tedious ends, not wanting to do the work, not wanting to push through and attend to those tiny details, but you will do it anyway.
People will regularly give you unsolicited advice about what you should do. You will be judged as good or bad for what you write.
You will either ignore that judgment or it will worm its way into your brain and make you forget that your opinion and intuition comes first. You will lose sleep and worry and wonder if you’re doing enough or the right thing. You will judge yourself harshly.
You will put in more words, time and effort and yet throw away parts to which you have grown irrationally attached. It will hurt to separate and realize that while some bits may be lovely, even perfect, you cannot hold on forever. You will make changes and move on.
In between all this, you will have moments when you’re at peace and loving what you do. You will forget to care what others think. You won’t do it for reward or accolades or money or prizes, though they are nice. You will do it for those sweet moments when the act of creation is enough when you look around and say, “Yes, I did this, and it is good.”
Sounds familiar doesn’t it, mama?
Tell the story of motherhood.
In 2012, an article called Mom Stays In the Picture went viral when a mom told how she couldn’t find photos with her in them. It hit home because moms too often take family photos. We make sure the kids look cute, and make sure everyone else is in the frame. But we don’t appear in the photos.
Why aren’t you in the picture? Because you don’t like how you look in photos? Or you’re still holding baby weight? Or you’re too busy doing other things? Or you’re putting other people first and forgetting yourself? Or what other reasons are holding you back?
Do you hold back from telling your story?
Do you think you have nothing to say? Or perhaps you mistakenly believe your story isn’t interesting enough to tell. Tell it anyway. Write about yourself, your childhood, your friends, you silly moments, your fears and your loves. You can write about your children if the moment moves you, but if not, write about something else. Follow your instinct. Trust yourself.
Your experiences matter and I guarantee there are others who will connect to your stories. This is your audience, your people. Your story is important, and you must tell it because it is worth being told. You must tell your story, because if you don’t tell it, who will?
