Am I a writer who mothers, or a mother who writes? Am I a sailor who mothers, or a mother who sails? These questions often swirl in my mind, like a boat unsure of which direction to go. We all try to define ourselves by the roles we play, but maybe the real answer isn’t in choosing one role over another—it’s in accepting that we can be many things at once. Life, like a backpack we carry, holds both light and heavy moments. As we grow and our children grow, we realize that we are constantly evolving. There’s beauty in the journey of motherhood and self-discovery, in all its messiness and wonder. The most beautiful part? We’re never truly finished. There’s always more to uncover, more to learn, and more to embrace. And in that constant unfolding, we find our true strength—not in being one thing, but in being all of who we are.

In Amarillo, nothing felt familiar—not the suburban streets, not the orderly rows of houses, and certainly not the buildings stacked atop each other like bales of hay in the city’s heart. I had come from a place where life sprawled outward—fields stretching to the horizon, barefoot days spent chasing fireflies, and people who spoke in the rhythm of cicadas. Here, everything rose up, as if the world were trying to press me into the ground.

I didn’t fit. My clothes, my accent, even my wiry frame marked me as different. I was the redneck farm girl who didn’t understand why sidewalks replaced dirt paths or why the sky seemed smaller here. At night, the shadows cast by streetlights through the canopy bed’s frilly lace convinced me that monsters lay in wait. By day, those same monsters followed me into classrooms where my sharp mind didn’t help me make friends, only made me more of an outsider.

The typewriter became my sanctuary. Its keys were solid and predictable, a grounding rhythm I could control in a world that felt like a storm. When I pressed down, the letters landed on paper in neat, orderly lines, as if it were possible to make sense of things after all.