This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.
What Chapter Are You…
Leaving:
The chapter of “just us.”
In:
Experiencing pregnancy for the first time.
Entering:
The chapter of motherhood.
Somehow, I am roughly twelve weeks away from entering a chapter I once imagined I would skip entirely: motherhood.
For years, I believed motherhood simply wasn’t in the cards for me. More than that, I had always been squarely in the camp of “motherhood is not required for a full life.” My story did not need to include pregnancy, labor, diapers, strollers, teething, or midnight feedings in order to feel meaningful. This wasn’t something I told myself to help me sleep better at night. I genuinely believed there were other ways to nurture, other ways to guide, and other ways to love.
When I met my husband, I didn’t expect that belief to change. I did not think some grand plot twist was waiting for me in the form of a nursery.
Mothering, outside the care I offered my students and the relationship I was building with my stepson, was simply not a role I pictured for myself. I met my stepson when he was already well into his teenage years, with college looming and a mother very much in his life. I was learning the ropes of parenthood, but I did not experience motherhood from the beginning.
Even as I write that, I can hear how strange it may sound. But he already had a mother, and he was already nearing the edge of adulthood. So I entered #stepmomlife hoping I could become a trusted adult, a steady presence, and maybe, with time, a valued mentor more than a bonus mother.
And I was content with that. Until I wasn’t.
I can still hear my father telling my stubborn twenty-four-year-old self that I might believe I didn’t want a baby, but that all of it could change when I met the right person. I was adamant that he was wrong. I even remember feeling absurdly triumphant when marriage to my first husband changed exactly nothing about my feelings on having a child.
It turns out my father would be having the last laugh right now if he were still here, because my first husband was not the person who would change my mind.
As a writer, I know stories form in their own time. You can’t rush the transformation of a main character. The setting has to make sense. The emotional groundwork has to be established. The change has to feel organic, not forced. Standing on the other side of heartbreak, I believe this current plot twist was simply biding its time.
From the moment I met the man who became my husband, my perspective on motherhood began to shift, slowly at first, then unmistakably. It terrified me. It felt bizarre to have spent my entire life believing one thing about myself, only to discover that my father may have understood something I couldn’t yet see. With the right person beside me, my heart began to make room for a different future.
Now, I find myself not merely considering a plot twist, but actively living one.
My entire life, I’ve been a planner. And yet, after Covid, divorce, and losing my father to Lewy Body Dementia, I should have known by now that there is only so much I can control. Maybe that is why this new chapter has surprised me so much. My husband had already offered me one thing I once believed was out of reach: a second chance at true love. Now, together, we are stepping into another.
Still, as I inch, or maybe waddle, closer to the chapter I’d label “Baby Kicks in ’26,” I find myself in a state of disbelief.
What if I screw it all up? What if I let myself and my husband down because nothing ends up coming naturally? How will it feel to become one of two people a tiny human relies on completely for survival? What if this was a chapter I was never meant to enter?
But the reality is different. I have persevered through every previous chapter, including the ones I once thought would be impossible: divorce, grief, loneliness. And then there is the chapter I refuse to give up on. I may not have published a novel yet, but that has not stopped me from writing them.
So how does one measure success in motherhood? Maybe the third trimester is as good a time as any to realize that I cannot possibly know every answer in advance. I cannot plan my way into being perfect. But I can show up every day for my son in the same way I have been showing up for him throughout this pregnancy: with my whole heart.
Entering a new chapter is never easy, not even when the chapter is joyful. Newness is still uncertainty. It is still unfamiliar terrain. But maybe that is exactly what makes it so full of possibility.
I am not just entering a new chapter. I am beginning a brand-new novel.
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