Looking in the bathroom mirror this morning, I could not hold back the words that were waiting to spill: “Loser. Look at you, afraid of everything, afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Yet you think you can tell others how to do it? Whatever. You call yourself a good mom? What kind of mom doesn’t set a positive example for her kids to follow? What kind of mom makes it look like it’s OK to have your head in the clouds instead of your eye on the goal? Ship up or forget it! Loser.”

“Uh, Mom, who are you talking to in there?” my son asked, apparently overhearing my self-loathing speech.

“Just myself,” I said, coming out and pasting a smile on my face.

“Did you call yourself a loser?”

“No.” Liar “I wouldn’t do that.” Liar, liar, pants on fire!

“I heard you. Why are you calling yourself a loser?”

Was I going to continue lying? Was I going to get scared of how he would react to calling myself a loser? It’s not like I was giving myself a motivating pep talk. I was looking into the face of a woman who keeps squandering her days away, putting on this show that she’s so busy, when in reality, a whole lot of nothing gets accomplished.

I sighed. “I feel like a loser. Years keep passing and I have barely anything to show for my writing. I just don’t know if I’m meant to win at this game. It always feels like I’m losing,” I explained.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” my son said, patting me on the head like a child. “You might as well give up and move on. Cut the strings that tie you to this dream. Forget it all. I bet you could get your cashier job back anyway.”

I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t this. I was speechless, which is an occasion that does not come often.

“Or,” he continued, “You can keep pushing on like you teach us to do. You’re only a loser because you aren’t trying. I never hear you talk about rejections anymore. Why?”

“Well, umm, see…” I stammered. “It’s probably because I don’t get rejections.”

“And why don’t you get rejections? Every writer gets them. I get them!”

Suddenly, I felt two years old, digging my toe into the carpet, hanging my head, as if I had just been caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

“I haven’t gotten rejections because I haven’t sent any submissions, “ I muttered.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, leaning in.

“Because I haven’t done anything, OK? I haven’t submitted in a long time. I haven’t even tried,” I said, louder than I meant. I mean, who likes to be lectured by a thirteen-year-old?

“See. You’re not a loser after all. You’ve just been a quitter. And I do believe you don’t allow us to be quitters, right? So I demand you get in that office and write, and send out your writing, and then send out more. You’re good enough, Mom. And the thing is, you know that. We all know it. If you’re going to call yourself names, you should start with, ‘Winner,’ because that’s what you’ll be once you stop all this quitter stuff.”

The bus came then and my son had to run off to school. In his wake, I was left feeling both like the child and like a good mother. I had done well enough so far to set a good example so that in my time of need, my child could help boost me back up.

He was right. I wasn’t a loser…I had been a quitter. I would be a loser if I really did give it all up, but I can’t win if I don’t get back in the saddle. My son’s words of wisdom, passed back to me from however long ago they had been given to him, became a stepping-stone for me. And I immediately pulled up my unfinished essays and began hunting possible homes for them. But not before returning to the bathroom mirror, where I proceeded to say: “You’re not a loser. You are a wonderful mother and writer… I am a wonderful mother and writer and I have the power to make my dreams come true. I am not a loser and I am not a quitter. And I will never allow my children to have to see me as such. I will face this fear and be all that I am worthy of being.”

Are you being all that you are worthy of?

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Writer, Mom, Etc.. Archive 2004