What Is a Mother Allowed to Write?

It’s 5:00 AM and I’m writing in a corner of our bedroom that I’ve cordoned off with a curtain. This is now my office. My old office became the baby’s room. Like many aspects of my postpartum life, my new space feels scotch-taped together. My desk, a thrifted school desk, is cute but so small that yesterday I elbowed my tea to the floor. I keep knocking my chair into teetering piles of books. My daughter’s baby blanket is spread across my lap.

In this space, I recently made final edits to the manuscript for my first book, She Was Wild Grass. As I edited, I was pleased by the textures and confidence of my language. I know my book is good. I am good. Yet I also feel a leaden anxiety pressing into my gut, a feeling that reverberates into my days and nights, making me pause while stirring the soup I cook for dinner and wake with my heart racing. 

My book is nonfiction, all true, including its moments of violence and darkness. Material I needed to write through in order to move beyond it and turn toward beauty. To be the best moth...