Making of a Mom: Keeping Poetry Alive in Motherhood

Before becoming a mother, I primarily identified with my passion for poetry. When I encountered the small talk question, “What do you do?” my answer was, “I am a poet.” When I set up my LinkedIn profile in college, the description read poet.

After completing a BFA in creative writing, then an MFA in poetry, I decided to move to a new city where I knew there was a thriving poetry community. My focus after graduate school was to keep poetry the priority of my life. I had no job lined up, or even the thought of one, but I did have recommendations on where to find poets and poems. I would not identify with any profession; I would identify with poetry.

In my new city, it was easy to make a commitment to poetry, but I found something else there too. At a poetry reading—of course—I met the man who became my husband. Our poems look very different, but we have similar ideas and tastes about the art form, and I found myself happier than I ever remembered being. To marry a poet was so natural.

But when I became a mother soon after, I realized how unprepared I was for my new reality as the primary caregiver to a newborn. In the all-encompassing nature of motherhood, I lost myself. Days and nights alike were filled with my daughter’s needs, and I no longer knew how to meet my own. I did not have time for any of my previous interests, and even if I did, I had no energy for them. I spent so much time up at night breastfeeding and scrolling on my phone. I was stuck at home all the time because the country was in lockdown during the pandemic. This exhausting, lonely, and depressing experience of new motherhood was not at all what I was expecting.

It probably goes without saying I did no writing during this time. Even during pregnancy, with morning sickness and lockdown, I could not bring myself to poetry. I had nothing to give. Periodically someone would ask about my writing, and I could never give a positive response. Often they would come back with how my daughter was my poem now, and I hated to hear this. Undoubtedly, the love I discovered after giving birth to my daughter is unlike anything I have experienced. Still, I did not want her to replace my love for poetry. I did not want my identity to be as a mother only.

I have heard motherhood described as a death, and I dwelled in this death for a long time: For a full three years I did not write and I barely read poems. But the more accurate description is motherhood as rebirth, which is the angle I was failing to see.

I am not the same person I was, and my priorities have shifted. But when almost everything in your lifestyle has changed, it is difficult to see this as merely one phase of life rather than your whole future. And that is precisely what I had to learn. There is an adjustment period for all of this!

My motherhood and my artistic ventures are not opposing forces in my life. I was mourning my identity as a poet because I could not let go of my previous ideas about creating poetry.

Motherhood has necessarily transformed my creative process, and I had to get used to the idea that my old practices are not the only way to accomplish what I want to do. Though at times I wish I could sit and focus on writing for hours on end, I am called to tend to my children. I had to learn that this is not interruption, that my sparks of inspiration and creativity are not sparks at all—they will not simply vanish because I must care for others. They are not abandoned. I hold onto them, consider them, and produce more thoughtful work now because I have been afforded the space to dwell in them.

Learning to integrate poetry into my motherhood has been a journey, and continues to be, but I am finally feeling a balance I never thought possible. I read poems to my daughters, I write while they sleep, and I am thinking all throughout our days together.

I thought giving birth would find me as a poet learning to mother, but really I experienced it as a mother learning to keep poetry alive too. The priorities have shifted but they are both still there. I am a poet, I am a mother, and one does not take away from the other.

Editor’s note: Making of a Mom features stories about the ways motherhood transforms a woman. If you’d like to share your story, review our Readers Write guidelines here.