The Many Forms of Motherhood

Revisited in honor of Mother's Day

This week, I’m revisiting an old post about motherhood coming in many forms. It feels appropriate for Mother’s Day week. Reading this now brings me right back to the place where I was in February 2023: full of sick twisties about the book I’d worked on for years being out of my hands in a matter of months. This seems to me like so much of what motherhood in all its forms is about.

Mothering is nurturing and loving and squeezing tight, but that isn’t what makes it hard. What makes it hard is that we care so much, and over and over again, we have to let go.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

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I was interviewed on a podcast this week, and I am reeling with the vulnerability of it. The podcast, Mot(her) by

Gertrude Lyons

, explores what it means to rewrite the mother code. Gertrude and I spoke about my long journey to becoming a published author and my even longer journey to becoming a mother.

Gertrude is skilled at holding space for those she interviews, and the conversation turned raw and real quickly. I shared about some of the deepest pain I’ve been through—including losing my brother to a sudden brain aneurysm, and about my experience having a miscarriage. I shared about how feeling through deep pain has moved me forward in my author and motherhood paths and taught me what I care about most. I am not more confident or less self-critical, sadly. I wish I was. But I am bolder and braver in going for what I want despite the doubts. Alongside the doubts.

It is no accident that my conversation with Gertrude went to these places. Gertrude’s mission is to challenge traditional notions of what it means to be a mother by facilitating raw and open conversations about mothering. She focuses on mothering in all aspects of life—not just mothering biological children, but mothering ourselves, work projects, creative dreams, animals, nieces, nephews.

Gertrude’s mission dovetails with my goal for this newsletter to hold space for exploring the question of parenthood, with no right or wrong answer. As Gertrude’s work shows, there are so many ways we can mother beyond or besides having children, which is a crucial piece of the exploration.

I have learned this myself through the novel-writing process. As I shared on the podcast, my seven-year journey with my novel coming out this spring has been its own sort of motherhood journey.

Sitting here now, less than four months from the release date, I feel a bit like I imagine parents feel a few months before a kid leaves for college. The sick twisty mix of terror and pride, knowing that my book is about to have a journey all its own—one over which I have much less control. I created it, I am doing what I can to support its launch, and I will always open my arms to it. But my final opportunities to touch the manuscript have now passed, and it’s (just about) time to let it go.