I am the third-born of four sisters. Yet I cannot pride myself in taking on the “big sibling” roles like my oldest sisters. I definitely didn’t dream of being a mother or playing many parenting games as a child to practice for the future. However, as I grew older I knew that I had so much love to share and started a family.  Once I was a mother I searched for ways to parent “perfectly.” My favorite phrase became, “Why is there no manual for parenting!” As a lover of reading, I found comfort in books like How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, and The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children by Dr. Shefali Tsabary. Through a writing group, I discovered Raising Mothers, which wasn’t just a magazine about parenting but one for people of color like me. Reading about other mothers’ parenting challenges and finding the time to write was reassuring. And also seeing different women being authentically themselves was …

Today is my birthday. As I sit by the shores of Lac du Moulin in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Quebec, and consider hiking to Lac Seigneurial, I stare out at hundreds of Canadian geese making a nasal, one-syllable honk almost in unison. Some of the geese are in one place while others swim gracefully. Further on is a devoted couple of swans. They are engrossed in themselves and don’t seem to acknowledge anything else as they float nearly still on the water. I have brought my yoga mat and my journal, eager to jot down all the things I believe will flow to my hands—it is my birthday after all. I have the day off, and I think that I am more attuned to my creativity today. All I have wanted for my birthday, besides seeing my mother in person after three years, is to come out to St. Bruno to have time alone with my thoughts.  It’s so peaceful. After removing my shoes, I step barefoot on the crunchy leaves. My red T-shirt and black sweatpants blend …

It is an early Saturday morning, and I am standing at the bottom of Mount Royal. I don’t think I can climb all the way up the mountain or even make it halfway. Mt. Royal, which is in the city of Montreal, immediately west of Downtown Montreal, Quebec, is only a small mountain with 400 stairs to get to the top. The stairs are not built in one straight line. They are arranged in such a way that small blocks of stairs spiral at different angles, left to right and back to the left again. Accessing the top of the hill is not clear; the angle of the steps makes my head spin. I am anxious, scared even, but determined to take on the challenge. I climb Mt. Royal anyway. I take one step then the next step, and just like that, one block of stairs is complete. I keep going up, to the top of the mountain. I am out of breath but very satisfied with my perseverance. Soon, climbing reminds me of motherhood. …

We’re delighted to announce Raising Mothers’ 2022 We Are The House: A Virtual Residency for Early-Career Writers, which is a year-long online residency with Raising Mothers for one BIPOC nonfiction writer. The residency is dedicated to helping early-career, underrepresented writers who are also parents build their writing portfolio. The 2022 recipient of We Are The House: A Virtual Residency for  Early-Career Writers is Kya Mara. Learn more about the residency here.  What places inspire you to write and create? Nature and the outdoors-at-large inspire my thoughts and lead to my writing and creativity. I write anywhere really. For example I once had words flowing out of my mind and hands once in an emergency room. I like to write in the dead of the night when I can hear silence, too. How do you balance being a writer and a mother? Honestly, I do not! [laughs] My writing tends to suffer with hardly any time to write or finish a piece, or when it is finished, I fail to edit it. But motherhood inspires my …