Write Like a Mother with Glory Edim and Others (August 1st deadline!)

Yesterday, more than two dozen mothers met on Zoom together to learn with Glory Edim about generative memoir. It was a beautiful community of connection and vulnerability about writing about the deepest parts of ourselves. She specifically said yesterday that she wrote about how motherhood has shaped her creativity.

While we don’t always write about motherhood, it’s a part of us and ourselves that we can’t deny both in the writing process, in how we write, and what we write. Glory’s session honored all of this.

She wrote a bit about how motherhood has shaped her on her Substack before we all convened:

Glory reflects on a quote from Alice Walker: “Keep in mind always the present you are constructing. It should be like the future you want.”

This resonates so much with us from Scribente Maternum because the present with children is wrought with so much. We’re constantly being pulled in multiple directions, hardly ever pulled to invest in our own well-being. It makes us wonder whether we even have time as mothers to reflect on the present.

That is where writing comes in.

For Glory it was writing her memoir. She writes:

Writing my memoir gave me permission to tell my story - then having my son made me realize that what I desired was not more visibility. I longed for stillness; a much quiet inner life that did not depend on applause. I need to grow like a flower. I imagined myself as an orchid, not because orchids are delicate, but because they require particular conditions to thrive. I began asking what conditions my own life required — and what I would have to dismantle to create them. So, the end of my relationship came abruptly but with certainty. I longer felt felt safe with him. My creative reinvention was a much longer process. I had to learn how to become someone new while still being someone’s mother.

How many of us mothers can relate to this?

Whatever our personal circumstances, motherhood is most definitely a different way of being. At Scribente Maternum we honor motherhood as that way of being and the various evolutions of our personal and writer selves as mothers.

Does this resonate with you? If so, consider joining us in October in Baltimore (October 22-25) to write with Glory along with Christine Platt, author of The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living With Less and Less Is Liberation: Finding Freedom From a Life of Overwhelm. We will also be working with writer and therapist, Emily Souder on centering ourselves with reiki.

We can’t wait to see you there!

Register here!