Motherhood Prepared Me for Rejection
No Mom! You're such a Boomer. Don't be a Karen. You have negative aura. The sighs. The eye rolls. The tea-kettle escalation from being asked to pick up their shit to full-blown screaming. I’ve heard it all as a mom of four. Nothing prepared me for motherhood, but having teen children has definitely prepared me for rejection. For five months, I parked my ass in a chair and ground out the chapters of Grief, Grace, and Garlic Naan, a travel memoir with a CIA hook I was sure would land a literary agent in weeks. Instead, I learned what every debut memoirist without a celebrity platform eventually learns: the market is not exactly a feeding frenzy. An agent is more likely to drink from the Ganges than devour buttery, delicious garlic naan. Still, the writing made one thing clear: I’ve never felt more alive on the page, and I’m no quitter. Motherhood already trained me for that. This week, between delivering consequences to my 15-year-old for sabotaging coaching relationships on t...