Motherhood and Storytelling

Eleven years ago, I shared my motherhood story on the stage at the Memorial Art Gallery for Rochester’s first-ever Listen to Your Mother event, reading a piece called Tangled in Leather.

I remember how nervous and excited I was to share it out loud.

At the time, I had already been writing about motherhood and blogging regularly here. I was working on a book, trying to understand what it meant to tell the truth about ordinary life in a way that might connect with others. The story I chose centered on infertility, highlighting the quiet consuming experience of trying to grow a family beyond the child I already had.

It took me over a year to get pregnant with my son, but I didn’t think much of it then. Later, trying to conceive became different. More complicated. More clinical. More emotionally tangled.

The essay was about all the things I tried in the hope that my body would cooperate. Appointments. Tracking. Waiting. Bargaining with myself. And eventually it became about stopping. I had reached a point where it no longer felt right in my body or spirit, even if I couldn’t fully explain why.

What Motherhood Taught Me About Storytelling

Looking back, I think that experience was one of the first real sparks that taught me to trust myself.

Not loudly. Not dramatically.

Just quietly, in the way motherhood often teaches us things.

There is so much invisible work in parenting. So much emotional labor that never announces itself as labor at all. You carry worry, hope, guilt, love, exhaustion, fear, gratitude–sometimes all in the same hour. And often you carry it silently.

That’s partly why storytelling matters to me.

Not because every story needs to be shared publicly. It doesn’t. Some experiences belong only to us. But when people do choose to speak honestly about their lives, it creates something important. A kind of recognition. A reminder that someone else has stood in their shoes and survived.

Sometimes hearing words out loud loosens the grip of shame or loneliness.

And loneliness, if you stay in it too long, can convince you that you’re the only one struggling.

Over the years, I’ve realized infertility was not the only difficult chapter in motherhood for me. There have been many others.

Parenting shifts and changes shape as your children grow, and so do you. But what has stayed consistent is how deeply moved I am by the women and men willing to tell the truth about their lives– not polished truths, but real ones. The complicated ones. The funny ones. The painful and contradictory ones.

I see pieces of myself in those stories.

This Saturday, a new group will step on stage at Hochstein School for this year’s Listen to Your Mother. They’ll share their motherhood stories that make people laugh, cry, reflect, and remember.

And that’s the beauty of it.

You don’t have to be a mother to sit in the audience and feel something shift inside you. These stories are about relationships, identity, family, loss, resilience, love, and memory. They’re about being human. About paying attention to the lives we’re living while we’re inside them.

If you go (or watch the livestream), let yourself stay present.

Listen closely.

Let yourself feel whatever arises.

We spend so much time pulling ourselves apart and comparing ourselves to everyone else. Spaces like this remind us to do the opposite. To witness each other more carefully. To build each other up instead of tearing each other down.

Eleven years later, I am grateful I said yes to sharing my motherhood story. And even more grateful that others are still gathering to tell theirs.