Like A Blind Man Pouring Tea
It takes a lot of courage.
When my son was in his first year of preschool and my daughter still small enough to be lugged around in the detachable part of her car seat, I liked to spend our three-hours of allotted nap-time sitting at Bru, a neighborhood coffee shop on the corner of Franklin and Vermont in the east LA neighborhood of Los Feliz.
Years earlier, my husband and I had purchased our first home just a few blocks away, and even before our children were born, I spent a significant amount of time at Bru drinking coffee and working on a novel that I eventually finished, failed to get published, and ultimately shoved in a drawer.
After that, I took a break from writing so I could focus more on being really anxious — a past-time before, during, and directly following childbirth that had felt as important, time-consuming, and miserable as a full-time job.
Motherhood, like writing, demanded an enormous amount of courage. I came to each with the sense that I was meant for it, but also with a fear of failure so crippling that not putting myself out — whether for playdates or rewrites — seemed safer than taking risks.
Still, after my daughter was born and I’d already survived two years of constant worry, I realized I was ready to channel all of that blighted energy back into something creative.
