Reshaping Motherhood Narratives: Unveiling the Power of Unfiltered Writing

Inviting Mothers to Document and Celebrate the Everyday with Words

After I had an emergency cesarean for the birth of my daughter, Eliza, I spent most of my time sitting with a full bladder and a baby in my arms. My body had been stretched, bruised, sliced, and patched back together in a way that made me feel like a Thanksgiving turkey. It had produced a celebration of joy for us all but what remained of me physically was a carcass of trauma no one wanted to ask about.

I spent those first 18 months of motherhood constantly holding and juggling - trying to “make things work” while providing for my daughter. While I waited for my mother to lift my 7-pound miracle from my arms, (in the two hours between my husband leaving for work and her coming to help me in those post-surgery mornings), I tucked Eliza on one breast like a fragile football. I fed her and used a pillow to write in my notebook.

As she got bigger and I tried managing my best to reintegrate myself into adult life outside of the newborn incubator, I would write on my phone any contact nap I was allowed energy to stay awake.

Motherhood has completely transformed the way I work, the way I create, and the time in which I can choose to be creative.

In the days before giving birth, I was able to carve out periods to read or write simply by waking up earlier. Since my first morning as a mother, I have had no such luxury, but it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it?

Motherhood has given me a desperate need to create and I must do it quickly, as if my very life depends on it before the clock (my child) alerts me back to reality’s needs. If I find I can schedule time to be alone and create, my overactive brain goes into “sleep mode” or I feel longing for the family time I could have had. The lack of time to sit and write means I must find new ways to scratch the itch.

Creativity in motherhood is the calling to keep life going. I found I could fill that calling by cooking a new meal or finding a new way to run a business while caring for my daughter on a busy Saturday. Little by little I have chased the need to create.

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Has that been you as well? I’ve included some writing prompts below.

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I wondered if I was alone. I assumed my isolation was imagined since there are around 4 billion women in the world and life experience has already taught me that we are all yearning for something. I pondered these questions the most when I was nursing in the middle of the night; who do I write to when it’s 2 am?

It has been my creative pursuit to write and relate to other mothers who are working at home or in the office, who are pouring out their love and carrying the mental weight of their families; and connecting with them on a deeper and more consistent level. It’s why I started the newsletter Motherhood Minute. I didn’t know where to have conversations about motherhood as an expansion of self so I started them. It is my hope with this newsletter, that you will feel connected to yourself as a mother and to others who you may not know yet.

We can do this through writing.

The Power of Words in Motherhood

“Writing is best seen as a lifelong lab experiment, where one can either play and delight in the process of trial and error or hide away their work into an unshared notebook of mere data collection. We must ask if we think the world ought to know and be inspired by our work, or if it was meant to be lost outside of ourselves.”

These were words I had shared a year after starting the newsletter, Motherhood Minute, but it neglects to mention a third, obvious option. You can express the messy, vulnerable, beautiful, mundane life you lead without sharing it outside the frames of a notebook. It does not need to be shared publicly nor does it need to be totally lost once the present thoughts have passed.

This is an invitation to write about the hard things, the beautiful things, yes, but also the deeply mundane things.

Write about how your house is never clean despite the endless piles of laundry and dishes you wash.

Write the three sentences that documented you had five minutes until the baby cried awake after a night of constant caretaking. Witness the days and weeks between the times you wrote in a notebook. Collect your random cell phone notes as historical fragments of the legacy you are building.

I invite you to practice this imperfectly: learn how to accept that plans will change and morning pages will turn to evening thoughts, or that the pages might go days or weeks without being filled.

Do it anyway. Act like nothing has happened and keep returning.

To practice accepting this invite to write is to hold space for yourself. You are a mother. It is time to practice emotional resilience as much as it is to teach it to the children we raise. You don’t need to apologize for not having the capacity to create the way you used to or compare yourself to how “they” can create.

Who might they even be?

Writing Prompts

Identify who “they” are in your life. Who do you compare yourself to or imagine judging you for the things you’d like to share?

Do you ever censor yourself while journaling? How do you censor your experiences in motherhood to yourself, and to others?

Is censoring ever a good thing? Is it harmful to censor yourself? What defines your definition of “good” things to write about in motherhood?

Have you faced any trauma revolving around motherhood in your notebook? Is there something stopping you? If you pray, write your prayers in your journal and ask for guidance and healing. Meditate on scripture that comforts you.

Thank you, friend, for reading words that often feel like I’m being spilled upon the page. And if you are inclined, please pray for me. I feel like I have three projects I’d love to finish but everything is jumbled.

-Chanel Riggle