What Motherhood Did to My Writing (That I Never Saw Coming)

Nov 21
2 min read

By Ana Harrison

Most of my life, I’ve been a night owl. When it came to writing, nights were always the best time for it.

After a long day, I’d open my laptop, make myself a cup of tea, and sit in silence to write. Like every writer, sometimes the stories came easily and sometimes they didn’t.

Still, I had that time - the quiet and the space - for my imagination to come to life, and the tools to bring it into the world.

Then I became a mum.

Very quickly, I had three children under four, and for almost four years, I couldn’t sit down to write. I kept waiting for the perfect setup I was so used to having: the calm, the order, the solitude.

Of course, I couldn’t find it.

After my third was born, I began to feel so much inside me (emotions, thoughts, reflections) that I needed to pour them out somehow. I wanted to share, but I had no idea how.

My baby was almost always attached to me in a sling, I barely had any movement in my arms, and I had two little ones to care for. Sitting down with a laptop and a cup of tea was simply impossible.

So I started recording notes. Small thoughts that came to me about the life I was living, about my feelings, and about this beautiful, busy season of motherhood.

At night, while the two older ones were sleeping and I was nursing the baby, I’d go through those notes and shape them into longer reflections.

It was around that time that I discovered Substack and decided to create an account to share my words.

I had no big expectations, but soon I began receiving comments from readers who related to my stories and shared their own.

That’s when I realised the warmth and power of community, and also how much my writing had changed.

There’s clearly a before and after motherhood version of Ana.

My stories now have more colour, more detail, more emotion.

The way the leaves move on the tree, the walk to the park, the colour of the food, the little dialogues… everything has become richer and more meaningful than anything I’d ever written before.

So much happens in an ordinary day that simply describing it becomes a whole story full of small, beautiful, and deeply relatable moments.