How Becoming a Mother Made Me Into a Writer

When my daughter Lila arrived after 36 hours of labor, my days became flat. At first, in my exhaustion, I was grateful for the simplicity of those first moments with her. But as the weeks passed, then months, I became sluggish, bloated, disinterested in what was happening outside of our home. I berated myself for early motherhood failures. Lila required formula to keep her weight up. Each time she chugged a bottle from my husband’s hand, I cried at my inability to provide for her. All I thought about were my failures, what I wasn’t able to accomplish—in motherhood and life. I loved her deeply, so deeply I began to disappear. My world became small, centering only on this tiny human being. It might sound overly harsh, but I lost myself.