Daisy Girl Press

Writing when I don't know what to write...

Admittedly, this will be one more post about not writing anymore/enough. And I'm not making any grand promises or even planning to write more frequently. When I feel it and I can carve out a few minutes, I'm going to do it.

Baby steps.

In related news, it's no secret around our house that I haven't written much of anything since 2011. I got pregnant. My life became consumed with cluster headaches, doctors appointments, and keeping my blood pressure down. Then in 2012, along came the most wonderful thing in the world- my little boy, and my attention has been 100% focused on him ever since. He's just so fascinating and so much FUN!

Most of my adult life I've heard the stories of women who lose themselves to wifehood or motherhood and they "forget who they are" and end up twenty years down the road crying to Oprah or to their friends while recounting the most poignant parts of an "authenticity" episode of Oprah. I've heard of moms whose biggest regret is not staying "true to themselves" and "putting their needs last" to those of their family. The conversation always seems a little "either/or" and tinged with resentment. At the surface, I'm finding myself presently in their camp. But I'm talking myself through it a little differently, I think. Instead of losing myself, I think I've just found a different part of myself- the mother part of me- that wasn't there before. And I think these parts of myself can move fluidly to the back and to the front of my life if I let them.

They're all there. No part of me is lost. I just have to make a little more of a concerted effort to make room for all the new stuff while keeping the old stuff as near and dear as I always have. I don't know that I've been that great at it so far, but we're only two years in. I'm still a newby, so I'm cutting myself some slack.

The last two years have been huge growing years for me. First, I had a baby. What a strange new world that was. But I navigated it and managed to come out of it in one piece. Then, I got a promotion at work that came with a massive increase in challenge and responsibility. I'm learning lots of new things about myself this year. I'm learning how to manage my time. I'm learning how to prioritize. I'm learning to have confidence. I'm trying to let go of my "the bottom is going to drop out any minute" mentality when it comes to things I know I can do well. I'm learning how to be comfortable in a leadership position, when inadvertently, no matter what I've done to try to avoid it, there's a target on my back simply because of a title. I'm managing my way through these things and I'm only 2 months in.

As a family, we're trying to get back into the swing of life after spending a good 2 years completely focusing on the baby. It's time to emerge back into the world again. One of my good friends says when you have a baby it's like a bomb goes off in your life and you have to figure out how to put things back together in a normal way again. But the bomb analogy just brings to mind images of severed limbs and dead bodies, so... maybe it's like a confetti bomb. It's gone off and now you have to decide what other fun things you're going to do at the party. Cute decorations aren't enough.

So we write. We play music. And we put the baby to bed every night at 8 p.m. sharp.