Not Done Yet (And That’s Kinda the Point)
If you’ve ever attempted to write a deeply emotional memoir while raising two kids who live at the intersection of Travel Baseball Boulevard and Competitive Dance Lane… while running a small business, serving on a nonprofit board, and remembering to feed people (and by people, I mean your children… three times a day plus seventeen snacks)… hi. I see you. I am you.
Let me be real: I thought I’d be further along by now. I had big plans. My goal was to publish by this September; ideally with a polished manuscript, a cute launch party, and a guest list full of people telling me how brave and brilliant I am. Instead, I’m over here loading the dishwasher for the third time today, asking myself if I actually wrote that last paragraph or just emotionally composed it in my head while wiping another blob of jelly off the fridge.
I love spending the summer at home with my kids. I truly do. I wouldn’t trade these fleeting days for anything in the world. But let’s not pretend it isn’t wildly hard. Alone time to write? BAHAHAHAHA. My creative window shrinks down to whatever scraps of quiet I can steal between snack refills, camp drop-offs, sunscreen battles, and breaking up fights over who got the last blue freezer pop. And even when I do sit down to write, it’s not easy.
Because this isn’t just storytelling…it’s soul work. Writing a memoir, especially one rooted in trauma and transformation, means digging up the past I’ve spent years healing from in therapy. It’s delicate. It’s draining. It’s deep, emotional work. Every word I write feels like I’m laying another piece of my heart on the page, and sometimes I just don’t have the emotional capacity to do that on demand. I’m not just writing a book; I’m metabolizing my life.
And on top of that, there’s everything else. The world is on fire. Our country is in crisis. Our local school board has become a battleground for equity, inclusion, and politically-fueled gaslighting, and I can’t not care. Advocacy isn’t just something I do on the side. It’s core to who I am. When I see injustice, I speak up. When I see humanity crumbling, I can’t look away. So yes, the world needs this book, but it also needs people who are willing to stand up, right now, to the atrocities happening on our very soil.
But here’s the gut punch: I can’t do it all. And I’m continuing to learn that doesn’t make me weak. It makes me human. If I keep saying yes to every fire, every fight, every feeling, I’ll never finish this book. And this story matters. Not instead of the advocacy work, parenting, and doing all the life stuff, but alongside it.
At any given moment, I’m juggling motherhood, client deadlines, emotional landmines, social justice work, and a very high-maintenance dishwasher. I’m not lost, I’m still finding myself within this story. And when I do, I’ll be able to give you the very best of what I’ve learned.
This is the work of heart, not hustle. It deserves time. It deserves tenderness. And it deserves the grace to unfold on its own damn timeline.
Thanks for sticking with me, and for cheering me on even when the most I’ve written in a day is a grocery list and an emotional text to my therapist. The book is coming. The words are rising. And I’ll keep writing… one messy, honest, soul-filled sentence at a time. Because this isn’t just about writing a book, it’s about sharing a journey that I hope lights the way for someone else on theirs.
