This is all Ashlee Gadd's fault

In which I review the book Create Anyway.

I'm starting this review before I finish the book, which is pretty typical of how I write. Sit down, start writing, without knowing how it ends.

Create Anyway by

Ashlee Gadd

is a book described as a "pep talk" that encourages mothers to pursue their creative dreams alongside motherhood duties. I think that's a poor description.

I got the audiobook version of Create Anyway on a whim, because the title called to me. I'd been in a season of stunted energy, focused on mothering in that post-newborn-but-not-yet-a-toddler phase which takes up all of your time and little of your creative capacity. My days were mostly filled with trying to make sure kiddo didn't fall and hit his head, following his wobbly little body around the house like a human guardrail.

Being limited in one area seems to make me want to excel in other, not necessarily useful areas. With kiddo in a carrier I'd be cooking extra meals, laundering guest room sheets, and ensuring no single rinsed-but-unwashed dish was left in the sink. I didn't have the space and quiet to sit down and write, or take pictures, or make art, but by golly, that sink would be spotless come evening time.

You might've noticed the past tense. I'd been. By the first chapter of the book, A Permission Slip, I started to realize that this book wasn't going to be a casual listen, an encouraging but solely entertaining virtual seminar that you regret spending money on when other bills come due. Ashlee's words, in the conversational tone of meeting a friend for coffee, came into my life like perfect morning light into a dark room. Here, I heard, here's what you need.

By the fourth chapter I knew I wanted to start writing Motherlode, and before I reached the seventh I'd overhauled a dead-and-forgotten Substack account, written my About page, and posted my first story. Inspired by Making Space, I took up writing in the margins again—on the stationary bike at 5AM, jotting down snippets in my notes app while out for a walk with the stroller, or after stepping out of the shower with fresh hair and inspiration. If it was one or two sentences at a time, I was happy. Put enough of them together and you'd have a book.

A book like Create Anyway isn't a pep talk, a how-to manual, a short story collection, or a self-help tome. These categories are too small to contain it. It's what I'd call a field guide—a true writer's toolkit (or photographer's, or artist's) that is there for you to draw on when the help you need isn't found in a meal train or mom's night off. When you need to remember where your ultimate strength as a mother and a creator is found—in our ultimate Creator, with whom we have the joy of co-creating every day.

My son is a proper toddler now, walking (if I can stop him from running) around the house on his own. Writing again has, to my mild surprise, made me a better mother. I can't help but notice more of life, the moments that would make a great story, the little things we're doing that will create the whole person he's going to be one day.

If you've read this, Create Anyway has something for you. I'm on the last chapter of the book and I'm not neutral about it. I have Motherlode, fresh inspiration, and a feeling of community in mothers I've never met who are creating every day. And it's all Ashlee Gadd's fault.

I've finished the book now, but it's not over.