All Time is Quality Time

I'm grateful to be able to share Jeannie Ewing's writing again with you today. She exudes kindness and isn't scared to talk about the difficult things in life. In this essay, Jeannie reflects on the busyness of motherhood and how she prioritises her writing in spite of it—because art is life-giving, not a luxury.

Jeannie writes at I Grow Strong Again.

I’m having another baby—the third in four years, which means a grand total of five. Five kids doesn’t seem like a lot when you’re Amish or Catholic, at least when you’re not a contracepting Amish or Catholic. And I am among the rare one percent who is both Catholic and non-contracepting. But now I wonder: how did I get here, so sullen and brow-beaten and weary?

How did I allow myself to freeze every time I hear a baby wailing, because it means I cannot respond quickly enough to her needs? But the biggest question of all is the one I cannot bring myself to confess, at least not aloud, and it is this: Who have I become?

When I was about ten years old, I carried aspirations of becoming a published author, but my mom told me I’d become a mom like she was, that maybe I’d go to college for an education to make me a great conversationalist, but the highest honor for a woman was to become a mother. I never told her I didn’t think about pregnancy or holding a baby or changing a diaper. In fact, on the rare occasion when I saw mothers with infants, I recoiled in horror.

Instead, I wanted dreams of using my mind and all the ideas and images I’d conjure while daydreaming on a summer afternoon—while lying on my back, hands behind my head, fingers intertwined, lazily watching the clouds morph into ice cream cones or bunnies or even dragons and unicorns. I spent hours daydreaming as a child, because time stretched before me in a long, continuous line with no end in sight.

There was no quality or quantity to the minutes and hours and days and years. When I was ten, five minutes felt like an hour. But now, pregnant at almost forty, I think, how did motherhood usurp my ability to wander and wonder without consideration for the clock?

Now I am a published author, but no one wants me to write for them anymore. I don’t know why, exactly, except I’m told by editors that my voice is “too heavy.” I can guess what that means, but I never ask them to elaborate. I don’t really want to know the answer.

When I announce my fifth pregnancy to a close friend, he says, “Well, you’ll have to set your writing aside, because being a mother is your primary vocation.” Did I mention he is a priest, this friend? I want to tell him that writing and motherhood are not mutually exclusive pursuits, but instead I sit with phone in hand, mouth agape, as if suddenly it is filling with sand. My throat feels dry and parched and scratchy.

My voice becomes a desert in this moment.

I consider abandoning my creative work. I believe maybe it is the right thing to do, the only option while I complete the very tasks I once abhorred when I was young and child-free: changing diapers and washing bottles and sitting in the family room at 2 AM with a ravenous infant while the rest of the house sleeps.

Ironic, considering how hard I’d tried to achieve pregnancy when I discovered I had a short luteal phase and low progesterone and low thyroid, which likely pointed to infertility. That was nearly ten years ago, and I had to fight to both conceive and to maintain a viable pregnancy—first with painful HCG shots every other day, then with progesterone support and frequent blood draws throughout.

Now, all I want is to never carry another child to term, never have my womb expel another human, never be told that motherhood is my gilded trophy, and I am the grand prize winner of what all good women hope to become.

Abandoning my writing means abandoning myself. Words flow from my hands like pine sap on a humid August day: thick and viscous and sweet. Words have become my haven, my beacon, my herald, my benediction. What will I do without the ability to mold and shape a story—my story—if I place the pen on my desk with the intent never to return?

Raising children has become my sole destiny, it seems. Or so I’m told. Not always overtly, but the cues remain. No one questions who will become the primary caregiver of this new, fifth baby after it’s born. No one asks, “Will you or Ben be registering the baby for school? Which of you will notify the physician and drive to all the well-child appointments? What about vaccines? Who will deal with midnight feedings and diaper rashes and colic?”

The reason no one asks is that it’s obvious who will tick off the mundane and inane happenings of raising a human: the mother, me. Caregiving is an expectation thrust upon me, unspoken with no preamble and no discussion. I have no stake in the matter, no way to combat societal underpinnings that point to the mother as the main source of nurturing and comfort and responsibility.

Which is why I write. I write, because I must.

I know I am only as good as my children are healthy and adjusted. When visitors pop in and out of my home, they remark how rosy Joey’s cheeks are, how Sarah seems to be doing so well for a child with so many disabilities, how sensitive and kind Felicity is, how effervescent and social Veronica has become.

They do not notice the dark blue crescent moons under my eyes or the gray hairs adorning my temples or the saddlebags hanging over my jeans or the way my lips curl downward instead of toward the sky. They do not appear concerned for my welfare, as long as my children are thriving. When they are well, I must be, too.

But the notebooks know my secret. They wait for me to fill their pages, and I am greedy with the twenty minutes every day I afford myself to write. On the page, I liberate myself from what suffocates and chains and binds. On the page, I am not invisible. I do not disappear. Instead, my inner vision incarnates, and the words breathe, as I do. They give me breath. They give me air.

Jeannie Ewing is a nationally recognized speaker and author exploring how grief and change shape identity. Through emotionally rich storytelling, she helps audiences embrace life’s contradictions. Connect at jeannieewing.com and read her work at jeannieewing.substack.com