Between Chaos and the Page: Blurring the Lines Between Motherhood and Writing, Part 2
Because it's not just about minutes in the day; it's about energy and headspace, and learning to spend them wisely.
My last post was inspired by
’s piece, The House That Held Me While I Broke, in the sense of learning to live fully in our current space, even if it feels like pieces of our lives are at odds with each other. Sometimes, we find quiet relief in giving ourselves permission to embrace it all— the dark and the light, the chaos and the calm, our biggest challenges and celebrations. We can grieve and celebrate, rage and reflect, feel the weight of sadness and understand we are not alone all in the same day.For me, learning to blur the boundaries between motherhood and my writing practice has been a hard-won lesson. Until now, I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to separate the two. My mind has always reached for some level of order, for planning, for neat edges, but that’s not where I live right now, with two teenagers and a tween, and muddling through the third draft of my novel.
Turns out, one essay wasn’t enough, because
commented on my last post and I cannot stop thinking about his words.Writing inside my life. These words echo in my mind.
When I wrote that post, I was thinking a lot about time. How, in this season of parenting, there never seems to be enough. On any day, minutes evaporate as I check household and family boxes. Getting to the page can feel harder than the writing itself.
But it’s not just the minutes in a day, is it? It’s headspace. For me, parenting sometimes feels like an emotional rollercoaster. It’s an experience I would choose over and over, but those moments when I’m on the loop-de-loop of what feels like an irrational conversation with a teenager, or trying to be in two or more places at one time—and hey, what’s for dinner?—can feel like I’m upside down, hair hanging straight to the ground, and maybe this coaster is stuck. It can take a lot out of a person.
And then there are those moments that catch me off guard, and remind me why I stepped on this ride in the first place.
A few weeks ago, in the pre-dawn hours of a Monday morning, my 6th grader boarded a bus with the rest of his classmates. They wouldn’t be back until Friday, off on a week-long field trip full of kayaking, hiking, snorkeling, bonding, and growing up. I’d done this twice before with my older kids, and they loved it. So why were tears pricking my eyes as I watched those buses lumber out of the parking lot, their taillights disappearing as they rounded the corner in the dark? I walked home, made coffee, and sat with the sense that while so much of parenting has been easier with my third due to my own experience, it was also breaking my heart. It’s the last time for everything.
On a foggy October morning, my middle son took his driving test. When we arrived, he noted that the parking space his instructor had told him to use was occupied, that the only one left was the hardest to get out of. I waited on a large cement planter across the parking lot, sitting behind the shrub so I couldn’t see my son driving away with the examiner in the passenger seat. I knew the likelihood of him nicking the curb in that tight space was low. He was ready for this test. But what if he did? Or hit another curb on the parking portion of the test? Rolled an inch over the line at a stop sign? Failed? I couldn’t watch. As I braced myself for how much I would share his disappointment, I simultaneously understood that when he stepped out of that car twenty minutes later with a big grin, my level of anxiety would skyrocket in this new phase of independence. Obviously, we’d make it through the day, either way. But all those feelings take up headspace.
My oldest is submitting college applications. Each time I enter my credit card number, paying the not-so-cheap price it costs to have an application read and considered these days, I feel the world speed up. Is this really happening? I need a minute. Will he really not be home this time next year?
For so many years of parenting, all I’ve wanted is a minute to myself. Now, as they all spread their wings—just as they’re supposed to—I want to pull them close and not let go.
Then it’s time to write. Somehow, while I miss my children before they’ve finished growing up or left for college, or try to turn off the silent freakout I’m experiencing because my new driver is out there actually driving, or trying to understand how we’re out of bananas again, I also need to find the headspace to immerse myself in a fictional world. Some days it’s a weightless transition; others, it feels way too easy to say “not today.”
And all those feelings? I’ve said this before; they are why I write. Because I am an emotional sponge and this life is too much to hold sometimes. Making it to the page helps catch the overflow, whether it’s my novel or a Substack post.
This season of my life is not just a scramble for time; it takes more energy than I have some days. Embracing the overlap between motherhood and my writing life frees up both, and I’m getting smarter about how to spend them. I’m being more honest with myself about how much time I really have, and what I can realistically achieve. I’m dismantling routines that weren’t working for me, so that my writing time is more efficient. I’m acknowledging that my heart can break when my kids hurt, even while I’m grateful for the life lessons that shape well-adjusted and good humans.
Last week I sat on the beach, watching my son surf. I had a scheduling conflict that day and had to ask another parent for help with school pickup that afternoon. Halloween was coming, and we had a full weekend ahead. My head felt so full of everyone’s needs, I didn’t have the energy to journal, so I sat and listened to the waves.
Out of nowhere, a dog trotted up and sat down next to me, snuggling her rump up against my body. She looked at me over her shoulder with deep chocolate-drop eyes, then turned and watched the ocean. I looked up and down the beach; no one was calling for her. Who did she belong to? Maybe it was the fisherman wading in the surf?
She sat there for ten minutes, leaning into me. Eventually, she ran off to play with a trio of huskies, but I couldn’t help feeling like we were both meant to be on the beach that afternoon, that we were meant to have those ten minutes together. And that sweet dog, whether she knew it or not, left me this:
You’re okay. The kids are okay. Your book is okay. You are on the right path. Take a deep breath and keep going.
As always, thank you for reading and being here.
I keep thinking about this line: “Making it to the page helps catch the overflow.”
That might be one of the truest things I’ve read about why we write. It’s less about producing something and more about creating a container wide enough to hold what life spills over. When you describe writing as a place where all the contradictions can coexist, like the the heartbreak, the gratitude, the fatigue, it reminds me that art doesn’t fix chaos... It dignifies it. 🩵
Oh Maria, I love reading your weekly posts - even though sometimes I'm a bit late getting to them. I find so much to relate to, and it really does help me to read about another mom feeling all the feelings.
Loved, loved, loved this passage: "And all those feelings? I’ve said this before; they are why I write. Because I am an emotional sponge and this life is too much to hold sometimes. Making it to the page helps catch the overflow, whether it’s my novel or a Substack post."