Piper Nuelle

I’m a proud Mumma Bear to two beautiful little girls, they are my world, my everything and I could not see a life where I didn’t have them in it. I am also a writer, a self-published author and a blogger, which is my passion. But I was asked a question the other day by another author who doesn’t have children, and they asked me whether I thought having children makes juggling a writing career harder, especially when trying to gain any form of success… And it got me thinking.

My first answer is of course yes, it is a lot harder to juggle a writing career when your a mum, especially when you are their sole carer, and there could be many reasons for this such as being a single mum, or in a full time job and having kids, or having other responsibilities on top having your kids, or having a husband or partner that works a lot and maybe cannot take much of the responsibilities where it concerns the kids and their upbringing and wellbeing.

Now, take my own life experience for example, I’m not a single mum, I am married to their dad and he is still with us (Luckily, because he almost wasn’t – And that is not because he wanted to leave, but someone nearly killed him in a hit and run) and normally in our relationship that meant both of us being responsible for the upbringing of our kids but this circumstance left me almost feeling like a single mum in some ways because my poor husband had almost been taken from me and it took a whole decade of operations for him to even semi recover, even now with a leg amputation there are still many days when he struggles.

When our girls were little we both worked, tried hard to put a roof over our heads and be responsible parents. But, due to the accident my husband was in that left him fighting for his life, I became the sole parent in some ways and a carer to him. And unfortunately, that meant my writing dreams from yonder years had to be put on the back burner until a time where I could focus on it.

When he was run over our kids were very young, so I was doing all the school runs, the cooking, the cleaning, the washing, the playdates, the family commitments, the after school clubs and so on, as well as care for him. Which meant I had very little to no time for me. I had all these idea’s swimming around in my head that I desperately wanted to write down. I had seen competitions I wanted to participate in. I had a degree that I wanted to apply, enrol onto and do… But I just couldn’t manage to juggle anymore plates than those I already had spinning. Plus, I had next to little to no help from family or friends. And then the Government didn’t want to help, I was being punished monetarily for being a mum and a carer and for working because I had to drop my hours to part time to care and be a mum but also if I worked too many over a threshold I would get money taken away from me, I couldn’t win. I couldn’t bend anymore without physically snapping in half, it made me ill and I ended up with Chronic Fatigue on top of my chronic illness of Endometriosis! I just couldn’t juggle anymore, and I cried myself to sleep sometimes as I watch my dreams shatter and vanish… All because of someone else not paying attention to the road… It wasn’t even really due to me being a mum and having kids at all that the juggling became too much! It was all down to someone else who had hurt my family, and instead of being able to share the family load, it all landed on my shoulders. But this is my life experience…

Everyone’s life experiences are different…

Generally speaking, and this is mostly just my opinion on what I have experienced and witnessed in this world is that usually the norm is women will put their lives and careers on hold when they have children. Which usually set’s back any hard work the woman has done to get where she is at that point. And then trying to snap back into the writing and or business grind is hard, and trying to juggle deadlines, meetings, nappies, school runs is indeed very difficult.

The mental load of this modern world of needing women to be the bread winners, wanting and needing a good career, but also being the one to solely bring up and look after a family is exhausting.

The world has changed so much from when the working world was the mans sole domain and the house was the women’s. There are of course some people that can live this way and want to live that way, they are happy being the man of the house and the sole provider and the woman as the stay at home and kept woman. But some woman don’t want that, and some can’t have that. The governments of the world want women to have children and to bring them up and teach them, clean and look after their homes but then they are also told they need to work full time to make money and provide, and in this modern climate two jobs are needed by the parents to just keep the rent paid and a roof over their heads and that’s not even taking into consideration childcare costs.

Bring this back around to the field of writing and basically being your own ‘Boss Bitch’ and writing and selling your own books and experiencing the ‘juggle’, it is so very hard and then trying to hunt down any form of success is sometimes, unattainable.

The writing world is already a difficult one to crack. Their are agents to try and catch the attention of. Publishers to try and impress. Editors to appease. Then there is the competition of other writers in the world who have already got their feet in the door. And then their is self-publishing which for some people is easier due to the lack of time they can spare looking and hunting down publishers and being rejected, and then their is marketing and selling your book to try and get eyes on it and people reading it.

Then there is also the decline in magazines, with many going out of business or online only meaning there are less writing jobs out there to be had. The there is blogging and vlogging which is a kind of saturated market and also hard to crack. And don’t even get me started on social media!!!

As a mum and having your children they come first before anything, which can mean having opportunities arise but having to decline them because you don’t have child care, or the start and finish time is at school drop off and pick up so you cannot be in two places at once. Or the money you would use to promote your business or your books is needed to buy food, pay for nappies or keep the hot water on. It for many mums and mothers out there it is a never ending battle of trying to survive and juggle.

And to be honest as a mum, all you want is for your kids to be proud of you, and to be successful so their life can be better and so they don’t have to suffer and they can have everything you couldn’t. You want to be their provider, their mother, and also the person they look up to so they have ideas, goals, hopes and dreams.

Life is indeed hard for a mum, it is hard to juggle writing and finding time as a mum, it is hard to try and find any form of success. But success is also figurative to the individual… Some may see it as finally finishing that one book that had inside them, that could be their life goal and once written and done they are happy. It could be to someone else the money and financial side to it, to be able to live comfortably by selling their art, their books. For others it could be fame and recognition, to show people around you what you have achieved. Success can be anything to anyone… But as a mum, writing, juggling and finding success is hard but totally worth fighting for.

What do you think? Do you have kids? Have you found juggling a writing career or any business hard when you had kids? And what about success? Let me know.

xo Piper xo