How to Write When You Care About Others

I'm back and seriously though, I'm back. I'm just being gentle now.

Team, fans, frenemies, colleagues, hi. It’s been some time since I dusted off the Quick, While The Kids are Sleeping portal - so much so that the format to the landing page has changed significantly. Guilty, and I am SORRY! You should, and I hope you do, expect more of me.

There are no excuses even though I have ten million excuses.

The truth excuse is, I got spooked. Bad.

One of the last QWTKAS I wrote was a super raw and honest look at the experience I was having about changing my last name post divorce.

It was real, I meant and experienced every word in there, and the consequence of bearing it all to you, is that I hurt people in my world. Never in a million years would I want to hurt these people, but I did, and when I was writing and sharing I wasn’t thinking about them, I was thinking about me. I was thinking about how good it felt to let it all out.

I’ve worked hard to make amends with them since, including by being mindful about what I put out into the world here and on social media, perhaps to a deficit. I also took the post down, because there is truly no need for the hurt to just sit there like a blister, even if I was proud of the writing.

Not to get too maudlin, but this is the struggle of the writer. How do you stay honest and real and raw and not drag others who have also had experiences and feelings of their own along for your ride?

Gah, it felt so good to write it. I truly ended up regretting it.

The experience turned me into a writing turtle. It’s not that I’m not writing - I am.

It’s that I’m not sharing, and that’s so weird and adult of me, and I don’t love it.

Here’s my conundrum:

What I want to share:

EVERYTHING. Literally everything. I love blabbing and sharing and analyzing and I am prideful about being an open book.

My mission in life is to put others at ease, and to create connection in the murk and the mess and the uncertainty however that looks in our individual lives.

It’s what I crave in my connection with others, and because of that, my tight knit circles are comprised of the “real ones”. The people who aren’t afraid of imperfection, are candid and honest and will show their scars. I love them, and more than anything, I want to protect them.

What I think I should share:

Less. Much less. My mantra these days is “Do no harm. Make beautiful things.”

Where does this leave me with my writing?:

I am writing a novel. Novels are fiction, and people will have their feelings and thoughts about it no matter what. The great thing about novels is that authors make them up. They are not real. If someone in my world thinks that something unsavory I’ve written in my made up, fictional novel is about them, they can shove it. It might be loosely based on them, but I assure you, it’s not them. And person / people if you don’t like the depiction, maybe you should have behaved better around me in real life? Bottom line, it’s made up, and not everything is about you. OK?

How about here? In this Quick, While the Kids Are Sleeping Space?:

This is where it gets so so so so hard.

My kids are 15 and almost 12. They are no longer conveniently “sleeping”, so that I can squeeze in my fun in the in between hours. They, it turns out, are the ones having fun now!

They stay up later than I do, and their social calendars include epic sleepovers in places like Brooklyn and Westfield. They are teenagers, both of whom are taller than me, and what comes with that is my desire to shelter what’s left of their childhood with me in my home.

I both want to keep them protected from the details of my divorce to their father, while the most natural and immature side of me wants to tell them everything so that they FINALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED.

How can I possibly do that when I don’t even know what happened?

I mean, I do, but it’s not a linear story to tell. It’s tangled, and messy and has episodes and different textures and subtext and sub plots and seasons upon seasons upon seasons.

Most of all, they adore their dad, and he has his own script and his own story to tell. I want to, and it’s my job to, honor and protect that for them as well. This is their life too, and adult decisions have impacted the course of it forever. How I feel is of little interest to them, and honestly, I get it.

They have their own script - each of them - just like I have mine of my parents’ divorce - and when they write theirs, I have big hopes about what they might say about me, however I can’t guarantee it.

I hope, and this is sincere, that they write me in as the zany mom who is always in a caftan and big wooden earrings, and that sometimes I’m the character to offer up a nugget of useful wisdom before I hop on the back of my latest suitor’s Harley.

All of this to say, I’ll do my best here.

I’ll do my best to mitigate harm by asking myself if my truth is necessary to tell.

I’ll do my best to be kind without compromising the depth of what I am trying to offer you through my words.

I’ll do my best to hold back from you the most raw and pulsing of details even if what I’ve put on the page gives me chills and cuts at the essence of what I’d like you to know.

If I’ve deemed that bleeding little nugget cuts in other ways, I need to put it away for a while. It’s for my eyes only. If it’s really good, I assure you it’s something I’ll use for a character in a book someday. I’ll share it eventually, I’ll just turn it into a work of fiction.

These are my new rules. I hope we can still play together, and I look forward to sharing the shape of my life with you all again.

Being a single mom is unique. It’s fun at times - really super duper fun.

There are also times when I am making coffee in the morning on a day when my kids are with their dad, and I find my throat burning with the swell of tears that only come when you are spontaneously flooded with fear and overwhelm.

There are times when I am also flooded with relief, gratitude for the opportunity to start a new kind of relationship with my kids, and I relish in my newfound freedom.

I want to share all of this with you.

It feels important and worthwhile, and so I will do my best to do that. To write about my life from my honest places, and I will do my best to honor the people I cherish most in the world while I do it.

I’ve missed writing for you, and I am excited about our time together again. I am always evolving and am standing by with curiosity to see where this takes us.

Until next time,

xo