Featured image — “Typeset” by Paul Hudson — licensed under CC-BY 2.0

These are my first words.

There. I’ve made them. That’s a relief.

I’ve hardly written in years. There has been no big block, no reason one way or the other. But COVID happened, and shortly thereafter my return to work after more than two years spent primarily mothering. And somehow the combination of the return to work and parenting my child combined in a way that kept me from writing. So after years of being a writer, I suddenly found that I wasn’t.

Some months ago, shortly after my dad died, a man I know who’d also recently lost a parent suggested that I might turn to words to process my grief. Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me. And the fact that I hadn’t occurred to me drew me up short. There were years and years of my life during which reaching for words were my primary way of processing things. How was it that this had not crossed my mind?

For the last several months I’ve been sitting with this question — with the feeling of being a not-writer. But it seems the easiest way to begin to remedy could simply be to begin to write.

So here we are. First words written.