Zibby Mag

By Ashley Clayton Kay

For twenty years, I secretly hoped I’d find some other hobby or skill that I loved as much as writing.

Before I became a mother, I didn’t know what my passions were. I couldn’t articulate my opinion well, except in writing, and my gut led me through life in surges of impulse and intuition.

I hadn’t realized this was even a problem until I become a mother. But that urgent need for safety, joy, and fulfillment in the lives of those around me changed the approach I had for my own life.

And yet, outside of my family and friends, I still had trouble prioritizing what I was truly passionate about, which was writing. When it came to writing, I told myself that I just didn’t have time, I wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t worth it, or that it was just for fun.

For twenty years, I secretly hoped I’d find some other hobby or skill that I loved as much or that might be more lucrative. I kept looking around for the career path that would be just as satisfying and creative.

I kept switching workplaces to try to pin it down. I thought if I could just find that sweet spot in my career, I will have arrived.

But halfway through the breastfeeding stage with my second child, the pandemic came, and any career doors that might have still been cracked open were abruptly closed. Finally, I realized I needed to stop looking outside myself for answers and listen to the internal voice telling me that writing was not just for fun — it was so much more than that.

For twenty years, I secretly hoped I’d find some other hobby or skill that I loved as much as writing.

My passions and the great joys of my life were the only things that would get me through this big unknown, and writing was right up there with motherhood on the list of things I loved.

Still, the truth about my relationship with writing was hard to face. As much as I believed in myself as a writer, I didn’t have a lot to show for it. I often looked around for someone to blame, but once again found that there was no external solution to an internal dilemma.

Last April, I asked the writer within if she would carry me through. The answer was yes. She would. She did.

Although it added new stressors, pandemic motherhood stripped away a lot of the cheap thrills and secondary pursuits that had always distracted me. The surprising part was that I didn’t miss any of those things the way I thought I would. But how could I? I had everything within those four walls, under one roof — everything I loved.

I’m not saying it wasn’t hard; the year was devastating in so many incalcuable ways. Over and over, I lost all control of my ability to attend to anything outside of the house. When I went out, I wore more masks than just the fabric one. Yet writing always returned a modicum of control. Nothing could break me as long as I wrote it down. Forget quantity or quality, just keep writing.

I often looked around for someone to blame, but once again found that there was no external solution to an internal dilemma.

I was told writing couldn’t sustain me, and I listened. But last year made me realize that it was sustaining me — it always had been.

In desperate moments, I hoped the grace and magnitude of motherhood would relieve me from writing. I thought that motherhood would be all-consuming and writing would quietly fade into the background.

But all that motherhood did was throw those passions into sharp relief. Before I was a mother, I had nothing to compare writing to. I had jobs — a career — and none of that felt as meaningful. Writing didn’t feel like work or a career, and for that reason I didn’t know how to categorize it. A calling, I supposed, but one I didn’t know how to answer.

When I became a mother, I discovered there is no call to answer. Motherhood takes over and there you are. You’re a mother, whether you have the skills or money or time or support, or even if there’s a pandemic. For the rest of your life, you’re a mom. Every single day, in the middle of the night, driving in traffic, at work. When you’re forty-one. When you’re eighty-seven. And I recognized, more clearly, that’s how I’ve felt about writing since I was eight years old.

I was told writing couldn’t sustain me, and I listened. But last year made me realize that it was sustaining me — it always had been.

People say you can’t wait for the right time to have children because it will never happen. Similarly, if I waited for the right time to take myself more seriously as a writer, it would never happen.

In motherhood and creative endeavors, you show up and work at it and hope you’re getting better, and that process never ends.

Some days are great and others make you question what the heck you’re doing; some ideas are great and others make you question why you wrote them down. There are epic parenting fails and so many query rejections and a million typos and late nights and early mornings and messes everywhere. But this is who you are, for better or worse, for the rest of your life.

A mother. A writer.

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Ashley Clayton Kay is a counselor, mother of two toddlers, and author-illustrator of the children’s book, Little Alfredo the Green Tomato: A NICU Story. She is a writer at BestReviews and Slackjaw with bylines at Parents.com. When not writing, she can be found drinking coffee with marshmallows.