Writing a Book While Parenting, Working and Not Losing My Mind (Completely)

Well actually, I did lose my mind. Just not for long enough to make headlines.

When you imagine writing a memoir, you might picture quiet cabins, long walks to think, maybe even a writing retreat in Tuscany.

Mine looked more like this.

5:15am. Winter dark. A house still asleep.

Fresh coffee. A blinking cursor.

Two stolen hours before the world woke up.

By 7:15, it was school prep.

By 8:30, I was coaching CEOs and holding space for other people’s chaos.

By 7:00pm, it was dinner, stories, questions.

By 9:00pm, I’d fallen asleep mid-sentence on the sofa.

This book wasn’t written in spite of the chaos, it was written inside it.

I’m not a morning person. But for six months, those early hours became sacred.

Time to be just Kate. To write the story I promised I would.

Was it tidy? No.

Linear? Definitely not.

Worth it? Absolutely.

There’s power in creating in the cracks.

In not waiting for the perfect conditions.

In making meaning anyway.

Some mornings, the words came easily.

Others, it was just me, tea, and the irritating blink of a cursor.

But now and then a sentence landed. A truth surfaced. A memory surprised me.

That’s what made it matter.

This isn’t a cabin-in-the-woods memoir.

It’s a dining-table-at-dawn memoir.

Written in gaps.

Fuelled by tea, tenacity and the quiet knowing that something needed to be said.

If you’re trying to build something while life keeps demanding everything.

You don’t need a retreat.

You need a reason.

And just a few quiet mornings where you get to be nobody’s anything but your own.