For All Writer Mamas

Anna Ingwersen is my childhood best friend, aspiring novelist, and author of a new blog called Mother Freakin’ Writers. She’s running some great interviews about writing and mothering.

You gave all this up for us?  [My children] were sad for me, and at that moment I was sad for me too, but it was also important to tell them this–because of all the things I could say to children about the time they spend on earth, this is the most important–If you are lucky, you get to make choices.

I was lucky. I chose to make Halloween costumes, and birthday cakes that looked like pirate ships. I chose to direct school plays and teach poetry workshops. I started a film club and we made great films. I was part of a wonderful group of people who sold pizza for a year and earned enough money to build a labyrinth at my kids’ school. I had the pleasure of knowing all their classmates, and sharing with those kids my love of words, and most of all, watching all of them grow up together. It was a great pleasure. It was an enormous pleasure.

I think I chose well. And most significantly, I had the opportunity to choose. And nothing about that is sad. But it was also important to tell them every choice is a trade. Something for something else.

And that morning earlier that summer when I woke up in bed with all my regrets I was thinking about that, too–of the conscious decisions you make and how they tally up, how they are the sum of your days. Go here for more.