I want to be a mom but I haven't written a book yet

How to trust the timing of your life

Hello to all 4,000 of you! How surreal. Thank you so much for subscribing to this newsletter. Today’s newsletter is a very personal reflection about wanting to be a mother one day. I was so nervous to send this out. X Sarah

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In January, Jennifer Savin, the features editor at Cosmpolitan UK, wrote a great piece about the to-do lists that many women carry around before they become mothers.

To source anecdotes for this piece, she posted an Instagram story asking for examples and I responded immediately. Now this was something I could contribute to! I’ve been carrying a mental to-do list for ages.

I had two big things that I needed to do before bringing someone else into the world. 1.) Heal my eating disorder. 2.) And write a book.

I always assumed the former would be more difficult than the latter.

But I’m proud (and shocked) to say that I have for the most part defeated my food demons. I eat decently normally, without a diet, and I like the way I look, for the most part, and I can hear the internal monologue of my thoughts without food noise interrupting every single second in my brain.

I think this is the closest to body acceptance I’ve been since I was six years old.

The second accomplishment, the book, has not been accomplished.

To be clear, it did get started.

I was meeting regularly with a book agent about a book four years ago.

It was going to be a memoir about leaving New York and quitting drinking and stopping dating. I gave the book the working title of “Love Drunk” and then “How to Quit Absolutely Everything.” It was going to be Devil Wears Prada on Wall Street meets Eat, Pray, Love. I loved the idea and I saw it clearly. I could envision it on the shelf.

I started working on it. But the further I got into it, something shifted.

By the time I moved to Spain, I knew that, despite meeting with my writing group in earnest, that I couldn’t write this book. The story hadn’t been fully lived yet. It wasn’t done writing itself, so I couldn’t write it.

For me, creativity is less about creation and more about channeling, or downloading. Every idea I’ve ever had has felt fully delivered in my brain for me to bring to life.

So then when I had to write the first 40,000 words, I balked. I couldn’t see the whole story yet. And I hated myself for not being able to.

Now, with time and space, I can see that it was so hard to write because it wasn’t done yet. With a few more years, maybe I’ll be able to see the point in the story. And then I can write it again.

So to summarize, the book. It’s not happening yet. It needs to marinate.

That brings me back to the original point of this essay, the to-do list.

I have a ticking clock inside of me that is insisting I write the book before I become a mom. And I’d like to become a mom in the next few years.

So that’s when my controlling, fearful brain takes over.

Because what if I miss my opportunity and I don’t have enough time in the future and all my creativity disappears?

Can I be a mom if I haven’t achieved all my goals?

Can I be a mom and still retain my creative self?

These are the questions that have danced inside me over the last three years as I got married and set up my life for its next chapter.

First, before getting married, I had to be sure that I wanted to have kids in the future.

So as such, I went on an academic exploration. I read the book Women Without Kids (a great read) and went to a meet-up in London. I resonated with much of what was said, but I didn’t see myself completely in it. I got clear that I did want to be a mom one day.

But I had still had questions: Was I allowed to want to have a big career and creative life and want to be a mom?

The answer, I decided, was yes. But the bigger question was, “How?”

So then I became obsessed with trying to figure that out.

In looking around my life, I saw that there were many women I wholeheartedly admire who are becoming mothers or already are. I’ve had to sit on my hands to not ask them a million billion questions.

Two weeks ago, I interviewed Pip Durell, founder of With Nothing Underneath, who has a young child. I had to bite my tongue from asking her during the interview, “How do you do it?”

Because I know that we, as women, aren’t supposed to ask mothers that question at business events. I know full well the reason for it. Men don’t get asked that. We shouldn’t diminish their accomplishments. Etc. Etc.

But that is the question I want to know more than anything.

How do you do it?

The answer, I might guess, is probably more simple than it seems. Perhaps, you just do it.

This is the lesson I’m learning more and more as I get older. There is no perfect time for anything.

You can’t control the timing of your life and when exactly things will happen.

Take for example me and my husband‘s move to Scotland, which I had desperately tried to avoid because I wanted to move back to New York or London so that I could focus on my career.

The irony, of course, is that moving to Scotland has turned out to be the best thing to happen to my career ever.

I’m so glad that I didn’t get what I wanted because what happened was so much better.

So that’s all to say that I have come to believe in the inevitability of destiny. You always become the person you were meant to be.

Simply put, I have to trust the timing of my life.

What’s meant to happen, happens. Regardless of my mental to-do list and preference for the order of things.

And what I have to do is trust and throw away my timeline.

Trust that the book will happen when it needs to happen.

Trust that starting a family will happen when it needs to happen.

To do that, I will have to move through this next chapter of my life with curiosity. What will unfold? What will be born first?

And for now, I will just look at those who are a few years ahead of me with curiosity—reveling in gratitude for those who have decided to share about their experience (like the lovely Mari Andrew for example!) because it’s so helpful to know what might be ahead.

And as I turn these questions over in my head, I feel more and more connected to all of the women around me.

I imagine that many of us are exploring similar questions—regardless of what each person chooses. And I’m reminded even more so to move with compassion for those who might want different things or have a different circumstance.

Each of us with our hopes and our anxieties, our mental to-do lists and unique realities, facing down the same existential questions.

Why am I here?

What do I want to do?

Each of us alone, but together, are just trying to figure it out.

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