Am I Too Late to be a Writer?

As a little girl, I would sneak a book from the shelf, find a words-only page, and scribble, pretending I wrote it myself. I didn’t even know how to write yet. Growing up, notebooks and journals brought me joy as well as writing essays, short stories, and heartfelt letters. At the time, I didn’t think this was anything special. I figured everyone found different things “fun”, but it didn’t have any meaning toward their greater purpose in life.

It wasn’t until a solo trip to Greece in my mid-twenties that I was clued into my love for writing. One of the women that I met in Greece asked me, “What are you passionate about?” I told her, “Aside from my family, friends, boyfriend, and my dogs, I’m still figuring it out.” As I said this, I pulled four notebooks out of my backpack, each one a journal with an assigned theme. One for reflection, one for letters, one for planning, and one Line-A-Day journal. “Maybe it’s dogs?” I answered again, obliviously. She couldn’t help but stare as I put my hardbound journals on the table with a thud. “Of all the things to bring with you to the other side of the world, you found it worthwhile to carry four hardbound journals the entire way on your back? And you don’t know what you’re passionate about? But sure, maybe it’s dogs.”

She’s right. I do adore dogs. But she also made an excellent point about my abundance of journals. My passion was always writing. I just didn’t know it. Writing just felt right. By the time I realized this, I had already graduated from nursing school, found a great job on a step-down ICU/telemetry unit, and was working with a fantastic team that I quickly made friends with. I loved my job. I’ve always been honored and grateful to be a nurse. But, considering I still have the same four journals plus at least ten more at home, safe to say that writing belongs in my life. But then a thought enters my mind, “Am I too late to become a writer?”

In high school, I was fortunate enough to have an incredibly encouraging English teacher who recruited me into writing for the school newspaper, but other than that, I didn’t write for myself. Then I went to nursing school, and aside from one semester of prerequisite Creative Writing and Speech/Public Speaking, I didn’t have time to write. After nursing school, I got my first full-time job, where I was on the night shift. This allowed me to write on my sleepless nights off, but then COVID hit. Coming home from work, I was so exhausted that all I could do was shower, maybe eat, sleep, and then wake up to do it all again. I was a COVID bride, then we bought a house, and I tried to find space in my life for writing. I wanted to experience the same “fun” I had with writing as when I was a little girl again. The room in the house with the most natural light became my little library, and here I tried to create my writing routine.

Over the years, I’ve written a couple of small blogs, a self-published poetry book, and accumulated too many unfinished journals to count. I even had the honor of being featured in a couple of publications alongside talented creatives. However, I never felt that I had integrated writing into my life as much as I would have loved. Then, there were weddings one after another, and I was either a matron of honor or officiant for them all. Writing speeches and ceremonies brought some of that creative writing fun back into my life. So much so that I was ready to start my writing journey again. I had a new book idea, started a manuscript, and had ideas for the proposal. I would finally catch the momentum and get on the path toward becoming the writer I always imagined, the writer that that little girl scribbling in his storybooks dreamed of. I could see the plan laid out in my mind. But you know what they say…

“If you want make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

I didn’t write a book. I had a beautiful baby boy. And he’s already the best thing I’ve ever created. So, I put a pin in writing.

Being in the newborn trenches with my husband, I figured putting writing on the back burner would be an easy, albeit temporary, option. Considering every waking moment was dedicated to the baby and our “sleep” (meaning an endless series of one to two-hour naps) and postpartum depression was lurking, creativity didn’t seem to be accessible. We were in survival mode.

What I didn’t anticipate was this: when you become a parent, you constantly exist in two contexts. Yes, we were in survival mode, trying to keep our vulnerable little newborn alive. But existing along with that survival was a gentle, yet heavy presence: sentiment. Everything had new meaning. And the writer in me wanted to swim in it. With writing on the back burner, I ignored those itches to write. Until I couldn’t.

One night, after what felt like hours of screaming and crying, I finally got the baby down. However, I couldn’t sleep due to the leftover adrenaline (and the coffee I had earlier that day that I decided was worth the risk). These are the moments that can make or break a new mom. Being left alone with your thoughts, knowing you should “sleep when the baby sleeps”, but knowing these are the rare moments you get to yourself so you wish you could do something fun, but then you feel guilty because there’s so much to do around the house, then you realize how much time has already passed mentally debating this, then you do the math and it’s already been a couple hours since the last feed started so the baby will wake up any minute now and all of this was for naught and you should’ve done something but you wasted time and let yourself down and now you’re finally winding down so maybe you’ll slee- oh wait, now the baby is crying… And that decides that. *insert cleansing breath here*

So, after a few of these internal debacles accompanied by some crying of my own, I decided to preemptively choose the “something” that I would automatically do in situations like that. What’s something that I could do on the fly, could stop at the drop of a hat without guilt, and would help me feel good about myself? My mind automatically flashed back to the four hard-covered journals I brought to Greece. I opened the Google Docs app on my phone and created “The Milk Drunk Diaries”. Over the coming weeks, the Milk Drunk Diaries would prove to be my solace. It was separated into four sections: free-flow writing like a diary, mama mantras, poems about motherhood, and notes for my son to read one day.

A common occurrence for new mothers is a crisis of identity. Not only is a new mom saying goodbye to the life she used to live, but she also becomes a different version of herself. She doesn’t know this new version instantly. It’s an oftentimes grueling process filled with self-doubt, fear, and the grieving of who she used to be. Oh, on top of all that, she’s taking care of a new little life. By free-flow writing in a sleep-deprived state with a mix of anxiety, postpartum depression, immense purpose, and the greatest love I’ve ever experienced coursing through me, I started to get to know the new me on the page. I still am. So far, we’ve got a good thing going.

But the writing projects and plans from before I got pregnant were still gently tapping my shoulder, reminding me that they’ve been patiently waiting their turn to be brought to life. I would turn to them with tired, apologetic eyes, thinking they should just move on to the next creative mind. I was still recovering from creating and delivering a precious baby, I didn’t think there was any way I could create much else. I wrote the Milk Drunk Diaries out of survival. I thought my days of writing for fun were over. I thought I was done getting to be creative. If I thought I was too late to become a writer before, I figured it was definitely too late now.

It’s undeniable that becoming a new parent has its challenges. You find yourself tested to the point where you feel like you’re getting to know yourself for the first time, much less your new baby. There is so much trial and error. So much juggling, both externally with tasks and internally with priorities, feelings, and thoughts. But here is the thing — the key to all of this, the good, the tough, the easy, the nonsensical… It’s creativity. That’s when I realized:

Parenthood isn’t a distraction from creativity, but a practice in it.

You can read all the baby and parenting books you’d like (which I honestly recommend), but there will inevitably be things that they just won’t cover. Your baby, your home, your family, and your situation are unique. For the sake of balancing survival, sentiment, and let’s not forget, your sanity, it’s important to do what you can in those make-it-work moments.

For me, The Milk Drunk Diaries allowed me to access the part of myself that I knew and remembered from before motherhood. Instead of forcing the writing that I used to do into my new life, I integrated my writing to the needs of my new one.

This isn’t the only way creativity is making a guest appearance in my motherhood chapter so far. I’ve had to put socks on my babies hands because mittens never stay on, use disco lights on the ceiling to negotiate a peaceful swaddle, and mimic the serenity of a quiet lake by letting the faucet slowly drip into a plugged sink so that my baby could touch the water with his feet and catch his breath after a half hour straight of screaming and crying. One of my favorite mama mantras: it’s only weird if it doesn’t work. If creativity is an immense part of my new life, writing can be too.

I always envisioned what kind of parent I would be, and those expectations are being challenged every day. But through these challenges, I am learning and becoming the mama that my baby needs.

That little girl who imagined she was writing in her picture books is still in here. She just didn’t know that the journey to becoming the writer of her dreams involved becoming a mama first. So, here I am. Writing about being a mama and more.

So, no. I’m not too late to become a writer. I always was one. I still am. And now, I have my newest little muse.

And maybe one day, he’ll scribble in some of his storybooks too.