I stopped writing regularly ten years ago when a baby girl with a century-old soul entered my life. I had no brain space to recall the plot of the book I had been working on before she arrived. I also had no words for the bursting love I felt toward this squishy smoosh who loved to question the natural world like a tiny philosopher. I had to answer important questions about where our spirits live before we are born. "Are we all in a pile somewhere?" We had to incorporate an imaginary dog named "Ketchup" into our dinner routine if eating it was going to be successful. We got to teach this little brain to read so she could research her own answers since she found Ben and my answers inadequate and sometimes unanswered. "Do they put little pieces of the moon into flashlights so that they glow?" Like most parents, we lived in the juxtaposition of being utterly in love and exhausted.
There were a few months when my daughter was a toddler that I tried to reclaim the joy of writing stories again. A few friends and I started a writing group where we discussed plot twists, character development, and strategies to fit more writing into our lives. Bailey wrote the most clever and comical observation about the cult-following of Wildbird baby carrier. Meanwhile, our gang of two-year-old daughters donned babushkas and strands of plastic pearls, pushing pink plastic shopping carts around the dining room table. During this time I did write some prose on co-sleeping, observations on counting with a toddler (and the insistence that four did not exist), and other topics that a tiny niche of people would maybe find interesting at a very specific time. But isn’t that the beauty of personal narrative and writing simply because you love to write? These are the writings I hold most dear to my heart. These were the type of writings that I sought out at night while nursing my second baby in the glow of my phone screen when I felt so tired, so over-touched, and like I was the only person awake in the city. Words of other mothers were a tiny emotional lifeline in the stillness of two a.m.
It was a year before I became pregnant with the second squishy baby when I started acrylic painting thanks to Amanda Evanston. Amanda lived in my Sesame Street neighborhood (a magical place at that time of my life) and every day, twice a day, I parked my car in front of Amanda’s home so I could drop off and pick up my daughter from childcare. One summer Amanda covered her garage in the most vibrant paintings of wildflowers. I became obsessed with the process of painting flowers and landscapes using "chaos layers". This was the creative outlet that kept me connected to hope when I spent nine months with pre-partum depression. Painting was a gooey and spectacular outlet that required just enough headspace that I could muster. I am eternally grateful for Amanda’s instruction, encouragement, and beauty during this time of my life. I am so thankful we became friends in the process.
But words. Words are what I fall back on for memories. Encouragement. Understanding. Knowledge. Reflection. Beauty. Stories. Stories are groupings of meaningful words that help us connect. Stories are the reason we can grow in empathy. Share in an otherwise unfamiliar perspective. Find the bittersweet beauty, heartache, injustice, pain, tenderness, redemption, hope, and just general human-ness that either levels us to the ground or grows us. Stories are what I look for in myself, a situation, others, and in healing. Stories reveal how big, glorious, and faithful God is and stories can help us do better/ do best when really hard things happen.
I do not believe this world needs the noise of more words in 2023. Truth: no one needs to hear my voice or musings. There is nothing special here. But then I think of the morning I found out I was pregnant. It was a little unexpected and I felt stunned. I remember instinctively falling back on what was routine and comforting. I turned on my favorite radio station and then poured through the words of a blog, Hulaseventy, that I had followed since undergraduate college. I found immense comfort and even excitement while reading this amazing artist-mom's stories about herself in the context of her family. Her words were an unknown lifeline that she had thrown out into the world years before but there I was in 2013 eating them up like a comfort food.
So why bother to write when the world could probably use more silence and stillness? A friend from many years ago encouraged me to keep writing so that my daughter could see me prioritizing a passion. I also write to preserve little landscapes of my life and the people I am so fortunate to spend time with. Going back to the previous blog posts I strung together between 2001-2013 can be super cringey but it is also so sweet. It is there that I can live delicious moments twice: recorded conversations that make me giggle or think deeply, observations of my niece and nephew when they were small (and are now in their twenties!), or the rewarding nature of my job detailed in a story form. It can also reveal the reality of a spectrum of emotions, mistakes, or things unseen at the time but obvious now. So.... Who wants to read the stories of a not-super-exciting and introverted mind? Who reads blogs anymore? If no one else, I do.
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*Photo: Amanda Evanston's garage has been the backdrop of our Halloween pictures since 2017
** Fun resource Dive: The Secret Garden painting class. Worth every penny.
