The other day at the library, I found myself standing between two familiar rows—Fancy Nancy and Digger bedtime books—the sections my kids always drift toward. I was off somewhere in my head, thinking about my client projects I’m behind on the kids summer schedules or that weird noise the car’s been making, when I felt Joey watching me. Not the books. Me. Not just staring. Watching.

And it landed, in a very specific, soft & seismic way, that truths often do when they sneak up on you— she’s watching me grow up, just like I’m watching her.

Joey is four, and she already knows exactly who she is. Or at least, she’s decided for now—and she defends that identity with the intensity of someone who hasn’t yet learned how to doubt herself. She insists on wearing long sleeves in the middle of summer. She pairs princess dresses with light-up sneakers and walks around like she invented the look. She wants independence. She wants to be in charge. And I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’m jealous of her confidence.
Jealous of the way she assumes she belongs in every room.
Jealous of how sure she is that her voice matters.
Jealous of the way she moves through the world without that constant second-guessing I carry like a shadow.

It’s not the loud kind of confidence, either. It’s deeper. It’s the kind that comes from not yet having learned to doubt yourself. She doesn’t walk into a room wondering if she’s too much. She doesn’t shrink to make other people more comfortable. She doesn’t ask permission to take up space—she just takes it. I can’t remember the last time I really felt confident in myself. And now I spend so much time trying to get it back. That confidence. That ease. That sense of being allowed to want.

Joey’s not trying to be brave. She just is. And watching her, I realize—I don’t just want to protect her from the world. I want to protect that part of her from disappearing. She is wildly tender and wildly dramatic. She’ll kiss Remy’s forehead and then, two minutes later, yell that everyone needs to leave her alone forever. Her questions are constant, oddly timed, and usually impossible. She wants to know why rain falls and why people die and why she can’t have a pet flamingo. She is exhausting and exhilarating. Being her mother feels like living inside a constant audition for someone else's life—a test you can’t study for but still desperately want to pass. She’s not here to make things easy. She’s here to make things true.

And underneath all of it—under the declarations and exits and demands—there’s this softness. She still says, “Hold me mama” at bedtime. Still slips her hand into mine when she’s tired, like she’s not even thinking about it. And she watches me—really watches me—as if I hold some answer she’s waiting for but doesn’t know how to ask. She is, in so many ways, a four-year-old version of everything I used to be, and maybe still am under it all: curious, opinionated, complicated, unafraid to want more.

I’ve spent so much time focused on teaching her, raising her, guiding her—as if that’s all one-directional. But she’s watching me figure things out in real time. And the truth is, I’m just a few steps ahead. She’s four. And in a way, so am I. A four-year-old mother. Still new. Still fumbling. Both of us beginners.

And in the midst of watching Joey, watching me, I was thinking—she is witnessing something I rarely give myself permission to name: this very messy, very humbling journey of personal growth I’m stumbling through. She sees the cracks I try to patch, the moments where I lose my temper and then try to course-correct. She sees the pauses I take to steady myself before answering her endless questions. She sees the breath I hold when I feel overwhelmed, and the breath I finally let out when something soft lands.

She’s not just watching the polished moments. She’s watching the in-between. The ordinary. The honest, clumsy attempt at becoming someone worth watching. And I catch glimpses of that person too—this woman I’m turning into. Sometimes, I don’t know whether I want to claim her. And the thing is, the world doesn’t really make much room for that internal conflict. Especially not for mothers. We’re supposed to be solid. Selfless. Sorted out. We’re supposed to tuck our needs in so tight we forget we ever had them.

But I haven’t forgotten.

It’s disorienting—growing up while someone else is depending on you to have already arrived. But maybe that’s what Joey is teaching me, just by being herself: that all the contradictions are ok— in fact they are very important teachers. To be certain of one thing, and then on another day feel entirely unsure. To know that the days will feel very slow, and mundane, but the years will blink by. That I can feel like the best mom in the world at 10am and a total disaster by lunch. That I’ll make rules for her that I can’t even remember, or be disciplined enough to follow through on. How I can be full of love for my partner and feel completely lost in a marriage at the same time.

Because I do feel lost. Not in a forgetting-my-passwords kind of way, but in a deeper, quieter way. I thought I’d be more found by now. More sure. More anchored to something that feels like mine.

Searching for direction. For a version of myself that feels whole. For a creative life that can coexist with the demands of parenting. For a path forward that doesn’t require me to choose between being a mother and being a person.

Letting go of Nooks—my bookstore, my dream, the softest, bravest thing I ever built—was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It wasn’t just a place to buy books. It was a little universe I curated from scratch. A place for the inner child, the quiet reader, the not-yet-healed grown-up. It was where magic could still feel real, even on a Tuesday afternoon. It was mine—not just in ownership, but in heart, in every shelf and sticker and story I chose. And then one day, it wasn’t mine anymore. The goodbye was quiet, and mutual. But then it was just… gone. And something inside me hasn't felt quite right since.

I’ve tried to explain my feelings about the bookstore—the strange grief of letting go of something that felt like it held your self—but I’m never quite able, and it feels like I should be over it by now. Still, more recently I have found myself just needing to talk to someone who might understand the weird, aching tenderness of it all.

Earlier this week, I spoke to one of my favorite children’s book authors, Mac Barnett. I was feeling embarrassed I didn’t have poignant questions—just the quiet hope that someone who got it might see me. Might understand the ache of letting something so personal go. And he did. He got it immediately. He said something I’ll never forget. He said Nooks beamed out to him. That even though he’d never been there, he knew what I was trying to do. That what I built mattered. As if being told you mattered, even if you’re not doing it anymore wasn’t the exact thing I didn’t know I needed to hear. That maybe, sometimes, that’s what we’re really doing when we make things—we’re sending out beams. Trying to find each other. Trying to find ourselves. And that hit me in the place that still feels raw.

Because when you let go of something that once defined you, there’s this fear that maybe you disappeared with it. That the part of you who dreamed, who built something out of nothing, who believed so deeply in stories and spaces and softness—that maybe she’s gone, too.

But talking to Mac reminded me: just because the shape changes doesn’t mean the meaning is lost. The work lives on. The love still beams out. And lately, I’ve realized—maybe the beam isn’t a bookstore anymore. Maybe it’s Joey, watching me from the corner of the library. Not looking for answers, just wanting to see me try. Maybe she’s not just growing up in front of me, maybe she’s helping me grow up, too. In her small, relentless way—by needing me, by studying me, by loving me without conditions—she’s helping me feel found in a season where I was sure I’d always feel a little lost.

And that might be enough.

Because maybe I’ve spent so long chasing clarity, chasing the “what’s next,” chasing proof that I’m not lost… and in doing so, I’ve missed the truth sitting quietly beside me: that this—this mess of mothering and making and wondering—is the beam. It’s already happening.

It’s easy to believe the lie that unless your creative output is big and public and polished, it doesn’t count. That if you’re not publishing, posting, producing, you’re failing. But I’m learning to recognize the quieter ways creativity shows up, even in this season of life. The way ideas brew in the back of my mind while I’m pushing a swing or washing the dishes, or combing knots out of Joey’s hair. The way words start to form when I’m pacing in the middle of the night with a feverish kid. The way making doesn’t always look like making—it looks like paying attention, like noticing, like holding onto the thread even when you can’t follow it all the way just yet.

We live in a world that constantly asks us to measure our worth—to seek validation, to define success in visible, external ways. We shape ourselves in the reflection of others, chasing achievement not just for what it brings, but for the way it shields us from the sting of failure. And beneath it all, there’s this quiet, private ache: a longing to matter. A fear that we don’t.

"I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself."

— Kafka

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