It’s been two months since AWP, but I finally want to talk a bit about one of the two panels I managed to attend while there. This panel felt like it was tailored to me. The panelists talked about the exact issue I’ve been struggling with these past few months. The panel’s title? “Barefoot, Pregnant, and at the Writer’s Desk: Managing Motherhood and the Writing Life.” When I saw that this panel was being offered, and furthermore, when I saw that it was in the morning and so before Damien would be on duty at the New Ohio Review table, I almost, sort of wanted to believe in a higher power (well, not really, but you get the idea). It felt like destiny.

I told Damien, “If I only make it to one panel during the entire conference, it should be this one.” And I was right. I won’t go all hyperbolic and say this panel changed my life, but it did help me, and I came away with some concrete ideas on how to be a mom without giving up my writing self. I’m going to break this up into two posts because there’s so much to share from this one panel.

Katy Reed is a journalist who, since becoming a mother, has carved herself a niche writing articles about motherhood. Reed talked about how, when she first became a mother, she thought she was “doing it wrong.” Parenting guidebooks, she said, would lead you to believe if you aren’t stimulating your baby’s brain every second of every day, your baby will turn into a brain-dead zombie. She described, also, the “rosy, blissful, peaceful glow” parenting books and articles seem to think all mothers are supposed to emanate when they’re spending time with their babies. This didn’t match Reed’s experience at all. Sometimes you’re tired. Sometimes you’re busy. Sometimes you don’t even know how to stimulate your baby’s brain, since (in my experience), half the suggestions they offer in the guidebooks don’t even get your baby’s attention.

So Reed took her own feelings of shame over “doing it wrong” and began to write about them. She offered, as a result, mothers like me, who are struggling with the same sorts of feelings and uncertainties, an alternate way of looking at motherhood. I imagine, too, that in the process she came to terms with her own style of parenting and accepted it as legitimate.

Though Reed didn’t offer any concrete suggestions on how to juggle motherhood and writing, hearing her talk about her own feelings of inadequacy made me feel much better about my own. This is exactly what I’ve been going through. For the first couple months of Amalie’s life, I’d pass into hysterics fairly often, frantically telling Damien over and over, “We aren’t stimulating her enough. We’re messing her up! We’re terrible parents!” It was incredibly reassuring hearing someone else talk about having felt the same way, and knowing that her kids turned out just fine.

Kate Hopper is a nonfiction writer and a contributing editor for Literary Mama. Hopper shared her experience juggling writing a book while raising her young daughters. At one point, when she told one of her daughters, “I love you more than anything,” one daughter asked, “Do you love us more than your book?” Ouch! Hopper calmly explained to her girls that if she had to choose, she would choose her daughters, then added, “But I’m really glad I don’t have to choose.”

Hopper found that the time is there to write—when your kids are at preschool, for example—but you do have to make writing a priority. She recommended that writing parents should figure out what they can realistically do as far as writing goes—what goals and schedules can you reasonably expect yourself to keep?—and then really commit to it. Writing as a parent is different from writing without children in that way. You have to be very disciplined. Before she had kids, Hopper could procrastinate and waste time waiting for inspiration. Now, when there’s a window of time, she has to use it.

While finding the time to write can be difficult as a mother, Hopper, like Reed, seemed to feel that writing helped her to deal with the struggles of motherhood. “The truth is,” she said, “I can’t imagine motherhood without writing.” I can’t, either. As fulfilling and rewarding and all those other cheesy things as motherhood is, writing is a much needed break from it all; it’s a means of thinking through and understanding yourself and your child(ren); and it’s a way of hanging on to your old self, of being more than just a mother.

Next week, I’ll tell you about nonfiction writer Hope Edelman and fiction writer Jill McCorkle’s takes on the subject.