Becoming a mother takes time

Over twenty years ago, there was a rush of books on the market with titles like The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Father, followed closely by The One Minute Mother. They were meant to reassure us that we could still be effective citizens, leaders, and parents in the remaining minute we allotted ourselves between other tasks. Focus was key.

But sometimes, focus is not key. Sometimes, we need to lose focus in order to let life in. Sometimes we need to dawdle, linger, wonder, hang out, hang around, and hang back in order for anything worthwhile to happen. One simply cannot hurry up and nurture. Nurturing takes time.

Ten years ago, I gathered a collection of letters I wrote to my child when I was pregnant with him, and created a book called Love Letters Before Birth and Beyond. I joined the letters with “journal starters” and blank pages to inspire pregnant women to keep their own journals. Unlike many pregnancy journals on the market today that focus on the physical aspects of pregnancy, mine explores the emotional, spiritual domain of becoming a mother. My book has had a quiet and loyal following. Some women have bought second copies for subsequent children and many buy books for their friends. I get pictures of “love letter babies” at Christmas time.

When I recently showed my book to an editor at a publishing house, thinking they might like to buy the rights to reprint it, she said, “I’m sorry, but we’re not interested. Pregnant women don’t have the time to keep a journal these days.” She went on to describe her vision of what real life is like for most women: running from home to job to home to friends to job, grabbing food and lattés along the way. “Who has time to write?” she declared, not as a question but as a statement of fact.

If that’s true, I thought, if there isn’t time to write in a journal before the child is born, how can there possibly be time to have a child? When will there be time to rock the baby? Read a story? Go for a walk? Point out the wonders of this amazing earth along the way? The thought of no time to write now, before the child is even born, made me sad. Until, that is, I realized that it simply isn’t true.

Taking the time to write and reflect is a choice, and according to the Oprah Winfrey show, many women do. A woman writes in a journal because that’s where she finds herself. That’s where she listens and hears what is uppermost on her mind and heart. For a woman keeping a pregnancy journal, that’s where she welcomes her child, where she explores what kind of mother she most wants to be.

I won’t say that it takes only a minute, but even ten minutes a day of journaling can put a mother in touch with herself and her child. Keeping a mother’s journal isn’t just for writing down hopes and dreams. Expressing fears and doubts on the written page helps reduce the stress that such a large, impending change can create. Studies show that babies in the womb receive a mother’s emotions through their shared chemistry, and a relaxed mother creates a more conducive environment for her baby’s growth and well being.

I gave the collection of love letters I wrote to my son, Zach, when he was seventeen years old, right before the book was published. A newspaper reporter asked him if there was anything in the book that surprised him. Besides discovering that he had been conceived as a cure for the hiccups, he said, “No, I have always known I was welcomed and loved.”

What could be more important than that?

Mary Knight, who recalls in the above article how she wrote love letters to her son, Zach, recently received the following letter from him on her birthday. The letter was read aloud after a performance of The Magic Fan at Whidbey Children’s Theatre in Langley, Washington. Mary rewrote the beloved children’s book by Keith Baker into a play, with a premiere at the Children’s Theatre in March, 2008. From Mary’s initial vision, the play unfolded as a collaborative creative effort of adults and children, and was truly a magical event.

And the investment of time she made in writing letters to her son 28 years ago has come full circle to bless her now, as she invests her time and energy in other pursuits.

Mom,

Zach