The Importance of Writing as a Mother

I wrote in the beginning of Mama, Mama, Only Mama,

Memoir is a hard beast for family to live with; just ask my mother. At the very beginning of my writing career I sat in a memoir workshop and listened to writers argue about the ethics of writing about children. Yet, raising children has been the single most important thing in my life. Not writing about it seemed to nullify its significance. Children matter, and parenting matters, and mothers are still women with needs of their own.

I’ve been asked more times than I can count, “aren’t you afraid your children will read your book?”

Yes, and no. I tell my children that Mama, Mama, Only Mama, like my previous memoir, Girlish, was written for grown-ups. They will only understand Only Mama after they have children of their own. I am currently writing middle grade fiction and they are actively involved in the plot development and character arcs of those books. They are my first beta readers. I write fiction for them, I write memoir for me. They understand that, at least so far. But of course I worry. Worrying is an essential component of my parental modus operandi.  

When I was in high school, my mother used to say, “life begins when the kids move out and the dog dies.”  I didn’t care for the comment at the time. As a mother myself, I see that what she was really saying was that she was exhausted—that everything rested on her shoulders and she’d just like a day without being responsible for anyone else. That realization that mothers are still women with hopes and dreams of their own is in many ways a theme of Only Mama, and something that our culture needs to celebrate and make space for, if we’re ever going to have our value recognized.

There are no Odes to Wiping Noses in the annals of civilization, but that doesn’t mean mothers weren’t singing them. It just means no one thought they were worth writing down. What we preserve is what we value.  

In that memoir workshop referenced above, I was told that women stop writing about children when they reach somewhere around the age of twelve. Luckily for me, my kids are 11 and 13. I am aware of the self-consciousness inherent in that age group. Yet, sharing our stories is how we find empathy for others and mercy for ourselves. If my book softens one person’s judgement of another mother, or if my book helps one lonely mama feel better about herself and her life, then all of it will be worth it. Memoir is a calling—a way of reaching out through space and time to form connections with others. It allows our readers to walk in our shoes for a few miles. I believe that literature can change the world by both being a reflection of ourselves or a glimpse into another experience. If mothers aren’t part of that tradition, or if only perfect shiny mothers are included in the body of literature, we all suffer.

Oh, and it helps that my kids have a different last name.

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Lara Lillibridge is the author of Mama, Mama, Only Mama (Skyhorse, 2019), Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home (Skyhorse, 2018).  She recently compiled and edited an

anthology, Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility (forthcoming Cynren Press, 2019) with co-editor Andrea Fekete. Lara Lillibridge is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. In 2016 she won Slippery Elm Literary Journal’s Prose Contest, and The American Literary Review’s Contest in Nonfiction. She is a reader for Hippocampus Magazine and was selected to judge AWP’s Intro Journals Award for 2019.  Read some of her work in Ms. Magazine, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Advocate, Hippocampus, Luna Luna and Salon.

MAMA, MAMA, ONLY MAMA: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent―From Divorce and Dating to Cooking and Crafting, All While Raising the Kids and Maintaining Your Own Sanity (Sort Of), Lara Lillibridge

A Single Mom Shares Her Inspiring and Funny Tales of Parenting, Full of Love, Advice, and Humor

Being a single mother means relaxing your cleanliness standards. A lot. Being a single mother means missing your kids like crazy when your ex has them, only to want to give them back ten minutes after they come home. Being a single mother means accepting sleep deprivation as a natural state. Being a single mother means hauling a toddler, a baby, and a diaper bag while wearing high heels and a cute skirt, because you never know when you’ll meet someone. Being a single mother means finding out you are stronger than you ever knew was possible.

Since birth, Lara Lillibridge’s children wanted, “Mama, Mama, only Mama!” whether they were tired or just woke up from a nap—whether they were starving or had just finished a bowl of goldfish crackers. Over ten years later, not much has changed. Between hilarious episodes and candid stories, Lillibridge offers the bits of advice and enlightenment she’s gained along the way and never fails to commiserate on the many challenges that come with raising children in a non-nuclear family. This creative, touching memoir will resonate with single moms everywhere, whether solo parenting is new territory or well-trodden ground for them.

Written in the style of a diary with blogs, articles and recipes tucked between the pages, Mama, Mama, Only Mama follows Lillibridge and her two children, Big Pants and Tiny Pants, out of divorce, through six years of single parenting, and into the family blender with a quasi-stepfather called SigO. Complete with highly useful recipes such as congealed s’more stew, recycled snack candy bars, instant oatmeal cookies and a fine chicken casserole that didn’t pass Tiny Pants’s “lick test,” Lillibridge grows into her role as mother, finds true love, and comes to terms with her ex-husband.

BUY THE BOOK HERE

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