Writing Again

It's been nearly three years since I blogged.

In 2010, after my last post, my obstacle was my lack of confidence.  I was home then with my three kids, ages 12, 9, and 1, and I had plenty of time to blog.  But I had no ideas.  My days were a blur of feedings and naps and trips to the playground and the soccer field and the horse barn.  I was happy in my motherhood -- enormously blessed in my beautiful children -- and terribly stunted in my own sense of myself as an individual.  My therapist at the time had a great name for this state.  "You're in the hallway right now, Kelly," she'd reassure me.  There were lots of doors sitting there, waiting to be opened, but in 2010, I was not yet opening doors.  And somehow, there wasn't a lot to write about in the hallway.

I spent the first half of 2011 turning forty (Quelle horreur!) while immobilized with a catastrophically broken ankle.  I'd fallen down the stairs carrying 18-month-old Erik Allen and landed on the concrete garage floor sparing his head and busting my bones.  I had time.  Boy, oh boy, did I have time.  My anger, though, was too close to the surface to dare writing.

In August 2011 Erik Allen turned two and I went back to work.  Since then, I've been teaching at a neighborhood high school in Baltimore.  I'm a working mother.  I love my work and am fulfilled by the relationships and challenges it brings me.  I love my children.  They are smart and funny and creative and fill our home with so much love.  I watch the mommy wars with amusement because I do have it all.  For the first two years of this, though, my head has been spinning.  Personal reflective writing has not made it onto the short list of time allocation priorities.

But last week I attended a College Board Summer Institute in preparation for teaching AP Language and Composition next year.  We spent a good portion of the week writing and reflecting on our own writing.  I realized how much I missed the quiet moment of putting thought to page.

I am no longer in the hallway.  So now, I must write.  There is so much to write about.