In honour of the fact that I’ve been solo-parenting and giving pretty much all of my attention to my little ones over the past several weeks, and having very little time for writing/reading/dreaming of my own, I want to post a link to a blog that I first found a couple of years ago when my oldest was still my only, when I hadn’t yet figured out how to carve out time and space for my own work. The blog is Carrie Snyder‘s Obscure CanLit Mama, and finding it was a revelation for me. Carrie Snyder writes so eloquently, practically, beautifully, inspired-ly, compellingly, and frankly about the work of mothering and writing that finding her blog helped me to make sense of my new role in a way I hadn’t been able to yet. It gave me a model, and helped me to do the work of envisioning  a future I could willingly inhabit. I still check in with her blog most days, and it continues to offer a way forward, a path through the trees. So, I share it here, in the hope that it will cheer you on your path, too.

Carrie also has a new book out, a novel in stories called The Juliet Stories, which has been receiving a lot of very good attention. I’ve begun reading it, and it’s very good. Every mother-writer should buy this book–and one for a friend. Not only for her own sake, which would be reason enough, but also to support the continuing work of perhaps the pre-eminent Canadian writer-mother, not obscure any longer. It would be hard to overestimate the value of voices such as hers.