A New Year’s Update from Tara
It’s 9:17 a.m. and I’m at the desk, sitting down to the empty page to write to you. This post is a personal New Year’s update, on where I’m at and what is coming next.
Before becoming a mother, I woke up, no alarm, because I was just done with sleeping (what a concept) around 6 a.m.
I’d grab my laptop and in the stillness of early morning, sit down at my dining room table to write. I’d work deeply for a couple hours – writing a blog post or a new article, or a poem, or a book chapter.
Around 9 a.m., I’d be spent, done with that highly focused and glorious creative time. I’d make myself breakfast and chat with my husband, who’d just be getting up.
Today, I wake up very differently. I open my eyes because a little boy is saying, “Mama. Mama. Maaaamaaaa. Maaaaamaaaa!!!”
I carry him as he reorients himself to his room, our house, this earthly realm. He wakes slowly.
I make coffee for me and breakfast for him. We play. There are more than a few heart-bursting with joy moments.
The kitchen gets newly strewn with sippy cups and playdough and half eaten eggs. I feel again like I’m losing the battle against this new quantity of stuff, and this new level of mess.
We transition, slowly, to whatever he’ll be doing next – usually time with another important grown-up in his life.
After all that, I make my way downstairs to this desk to write. The world is not silent as it used to be during my writing time. It’s buzzing already. I’m not close to my dreams like I used to be when writing. My mind is not empty. I’ve done a hundred things already and my being is full of them. And of course, I’m far more tired than I used to be.
But thankfully, the empty page takes me back, almost as well as early mornings did, to that spacious place from which we create.
About a year ago, I wrote that I feel completely reorganized by motherhood. It’s only become truer, the reorganization more deep and bewildering and complete.
I am in that process of letting go of the old and finding my way through a foggy new landscape to the next emerging me, and the life she’ll have.
My friend Lianne Raymond sees the chapters of our lives in terms of metaphors of organic growth – times for planting seeds, times for putting down roots, times for branching out and bearing fruit. I sense that the past decade or so for me was one of branching out and bearing fruit. And now is root time. Rooting down. I feel soft, heavy, humble.
I do not anticipate that my work will become less important to me. But it has already become less important to my ego. Hunger for accolades and achievement seems to be slipping away. The interest in what’s already here is greater, for me, than it’s ever been. And the call to be more courageous in my work is strong.
One thing I know for sure, my writing is going to get more honest and braver this year – that is my promise to you. Less concerned with what others may think and more loyal to what I believe is possible, and what I believe must change.
And, I’m so excited that with this new year, the Playing Big paperback book is out in the United States. (My next post will be about this – stay tuned to see the beautiful new cover and hear all about what I’m truly so happy about with this edition.)
I’ll be spending much of the several months sharing about the Playing Big book out in the world – lots of podcasts, speaking, and events with women’s groups and increasingly coed groups, too.
On that note, San Francisco Bay Area women, please join me next week to celebrate the paperback release at this event at The Hivery. The Hivery is an incredible organization that I love, and this event is going to be so special.
So, that’s some of what is on the horizon, and what’s in the soil, for me.
What is changing for you? What is present now?
Wishing you a year filled with learning, grace, and connection.
Love,
Tara
