Today is my daughter’s tenth birthday. I’ll spare you the complete emotional melt down, but please allow me one moment of freakout. HOW IN THE HECK CAN SHE BE TEN? SHE WAS JUST BORN YESTERDAY! Whew, okay, I feel better, now. Here we both a decade ago--ah youth.
Everyone either knows or has read about how motherhood changes a person—how much your life revolves around that little dependent being. How your self-esteem suddenly deflates when a baby doesn’t sleep or swells when she can write her name.
This week, a friend reminded me of a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. I’ve only had a brief chance to peruse it, but I was struck by how her writing lessons mirrored parenting lessons—perhaps some lessons are just generally important in life.
She writes, “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” I laughed a little at this one. I’ve written plenty of things that turned out to be pure crap, but I didn’t know that at the time. Likewise, a select few things haven’t been all bad, but I didn’t realize it in the process, either.
