Mother of the Moon

Carving Out Time to Write at the Margins of Motherhood

I used to have a dream of writing and publishing my own Fantasy books.

Then I became a mother.

In the summer of 2022 I had our daughter who I have been taking care of at home since, and just last month I gave birth to our son in our 100 year old Danish farmhouse on a snowy winter day.

But before all that, back in the winter of 2020, I had an idea for a Fantasy book in which the Mother would be the main character, a werewolf trying to protect her baby, and Motherhood would be the main theme.

It was a good and original book idea, I thought, as Motherhood is seldomly explored in the Fantasy genre, where parents and especially Mothers are often missing, dead or even killed off at the beginning of the story to set off the hero’s journey (think of Lily James in the Harry Potter series).

My book was to be called: Mother of the Moon.

The idea would stay with me as I walked the woods in the moonlight, with my baby in the pram, caught in the too sleepy to eat, too hungry to sleep cycle.

“When the baby goes to sleep, then I can write,” I thought.

But when the baby finally slept after several times in the frosty night with the pram and inside, trying to nurse a crying baby by the fire, I was too tired, exhausted even. I had to go to sleep.

The idea would roam in my mind again when I nursed throughout the night with the light of the moon lingering in the bedroom curtains. I was imagining different characters, plotlines and settings.

“I will remember this in morning, and if I get up a bit earlier than my children, then I can write it down.”

Before I know it my two year old is up, in the blue hours of the early morning. The same moon as yesterday is still visible in the morning sky as we are collecting firewood from the woodshed to get a fire going once again, or letting the chickens out for the morning.

That’s when I think:

“Perhaps tonight. If the two year old goes to sleep at a reasonable time, and if the baby doesn’t fuss, then, perhaps, I can write.”

And so goes my days and nights. The moon goes from new to half to full, and I watch it carefully. Thinking, planning, dreaming. But less and less seldom, do I do any actual writing.

I write one sentence in my morning pages, and then baby wakes up from its 5 minute nap. I write an idea for a book, and my two year old just dropped her yogurt on the floor. I start writing a Substack newsletter, and -.

Sorry, just had to take care of two sick children, and now it’s a week later, it’s late in the night, and the moon is shining once more.

My desk at dusk.

I have to be honest, it really hurts not to have time and energy to finish or focus on my writing. Nevertheless, this is the season I am in right now.

I am a night crawler, a nocturnal animal and a shadow.

I am a Mother of the Moon.

That is why, for now, I won’t let myself do any further planning of my writing. I can dream, yes, as it is really the dreams that get me through a lot of the difficulties of Motherhood, but planning ahead, no.

No Notion, no “when the baby sleeps, then I can write”, no deadlines.

I am only setting myself up for failure when I wait in vain for just an hour of focus.

Still, I refuse to let myself become like a mother in the typical stories. Missing, expendable, or at best: a side character.

I want to still be me, and being me means writing. I am still the main character of my own story.

That’s why I write now only at the margins of Motherhood.

I think of book and newsletter ideas when my baby cries out in the darkness of the woods. I write them down in the light of my phone in the middle of the night when everybody else is asleep, but I am up, several times, to nurse, to hold, to comfort. I write incomplete sentences all throughout the day in my “morning” pages.

In the blue hours of dusk and dawn, with a baby on one arm or a toddler at my feet, or in the night, by the moonlight, even for just a couple of minutes while both my children are sleeping.

That’s when I write.

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What to read next?

Why I Write

How Can I Balance Creativity and New Motherhood?

In Appreciation of the Mundane

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