1.
An essay I write and read publicly touches a woman named Callie—a writer, something I want, am trying to be—in the audience. Afterwards, she introduces herself and we begin to follow each other online. The writing she writes is the kind of writing I want to create. Her stories, real stories, read like chapters out of my favorite books; the stories are true. Captivating. Curated. Crafted. They’re about motherhood, but not complaining or advice-laden or precious. Nor are they so raw you bristle and turn away disturbed. No. It’s the experience of living a life while being a mother in this world. And on the website she writes for, a collaborative motherhood blog (I don’t know what else to call it) all the writing is this same kind of real writing, writing that I dream of doing, writing I want to be doing. And there, I find other writers who write the way I want to write.
2.
I traveled to Chicago last weekend to meet with almost 40 women, only two of whom I had ever met in real life before.
3.
An idea comes to me, and I write an essay. Correction: I don’t just write an essay—it doesn’t come out like a fully formed child. It grows and gestates and develops. I feed it and hold it and edit it for months. Months and months and months. When I eventually let it go, I submit it to the motherhood blog that isn’t like all the other motherhood blogs. The one without lists or advice or advertisements. The one with just stories. I hold my breath and wait and wish and pray. When my essay is accepted weeks later, I cry. I have wanted to write this way for so long.
4.
Should I admit that when I started to teach writing workshops, I had never taken a formal writing course in my life? But women who wanted to write the way I wanted to write, the way I was trying to write—crafting real life into an essay worth reading—found my courses. And like a midwife, I asked for what they could give and then asked for just a little more: bring me your love and loss, and I will help you cut straight through the surface layers of nice and sweet and objective until, together, our shovels would clang against the deeply buried rocks, the ones of substance and meaning and value. I asked this of them and time and time again, they gave it. Of me, they asked for a belief that their story was worth telling. I always and forever would say yes.
5.
Another essay I submit is rejected. But then another is accepted. Then another. And I can remember exactly where I was and the date and who was with me when, via email, I am invited to be a regular contributor to this motherhood blog, to be a part of the team. We write together, but soon it seems like we are living life together. In time, we create a space for mothers and creatives, because this is exactly what and how we want to be in the world.
6.
Of the women I meet in Chicago, I ask almost everyone their name because I am not great at names and don’t want to pretend I am, but when I see these women, and connect their names to the stories I have read of them, and while I don’t know all the details of their lives—How old are your kids? Where exactly do you live? Do you like Mexican or Italian food better?—I do know how one woman felt one summer afternoon when her son hugged her; and how a walk through a corn maze became a metaphor for wanting another child; how she started writing poetry; and what Santa means to her. Through the years, our collective storytelling, and our desire to connect through our stories, connected us.
7.
“I’m headed to the hospital.” “Pray for my daughter.” “I am struggling.” The team and I write together and outside of the public eye, share our real lives. But we live hundreds of miles apart. Some of us have never met. The same thing happens in the creative motherhood group we’re all a part of. The group that will meet each other in Chicago on a perfect weekend in September.
8.
A proof starts with a beginning and a known end. The most elegant are simple and use the least amount of explaination to connect the two parts. The middle is where the author must get creative, sometimes writing sections in non-squential order.
9.
To tell stories is one thing. And to have someone read your stories is another. But to shape and form stories, real stories, with real people, stories upon stories over years upon years, to build connections the way stones in a stream make a path from one bank to the other, means concrete relationships form. Real realationships. Ones that are so true, that when we meet for the first time in Chicago for a weekend retreat, it’s as if we’ve known each other for years.
10.
Because, the truth is, we have.
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"Because the truth is, we have." 😭♥️🙌🏻
Surely I've told you that the hours before I heard you give your story I had thrown in the towel on writing. It had all gone to crap. Whatever I had was no more. I sat on that Red Line resigned, in my most dramatic of all ways, that writing had left me. And then your story. I remember the opening line so very well, "I am angry with my mother," and I sat up, and you gave me the magic back. You showed ME how I wanted to write. You still show me that.