Our guest blogger Kate Hopper teaches Mother Words at the Loft Literary Center.

A year ago, I designed and began teaching a course for mothers who write at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

The main reason I wanted to teach this course was because when I gave birth to my daughter prematurely almost four years ago, I was overwhelmed. Partly, this had to do with the circumstances of her birth—a scary month in the NICU followed by five long winter months quarantined at home after her discharge—but partly it was because I felt totally alone. No one told me that motherhood would be so hard. I searched for books in which some my experiences would be reflected, and at the time, I could find none. Why wasn’t there any honest writing about motherhood, written by mothers? It seemed to me that, as a society, we were (and still are) perpetuating the basic myths of motherhood: that is the most valuable thing that women can do, that motherhood will be bliss, that you’ll fall head over heels in love with your baby the moment you see her/him, etc. etc. I’m not saying that motherhood isn’t valuable, or that we don’t love our children, but motherhood is difficult and often does not feel “natural.”

I love what Katrina Kenison and Kathleen Hirsch say in their introduction to the wonderful anthology Mothers: Twenty Stories of Contemporary Motherhood: “It takes courage to write about motherhood in a culture that sets women with children on the sidelines, and it takes even greater courage to give voice to the powerful emotions and fears that swirl deep beneath the surface of our daily lives…”

So with Mother Words, I wanted to create a space where women could come together and discuss and write about all aspects of motherhood—the pain, the heartbreak, and the joy—and where they could explore their children and their roles as mothers. I wanted to create a place where this kind of writing would be taking seriously. But I had no idea whether anyone would sign up for the class.

I am now teaching Mother Words for the third time, and I have the largest group yet.

Some students come to the class with years of writing experience. Others are new to writing and new to the Loft. It’s the universal experience of mothering and a need or desire to tell our stories that brings us together. My hope, always, is that the class will help students discover a love for writing. And in fact this has happened with a number of women. A year ago, a woman who hadn’t done any creative writing since college arrived at class. Now, she is in her third session of Mother Words and has published two essays.

I use reading assignments, chosen for subject matter and aspects of craft, and weekly writing prompts to help draw out motherhood stories. Sometimes, students are inspired by something we read for class. Other times, it’s the writing exercises that spark the beginning of an essay or poem. I love that moment in class when a light goes on for a student, when she tells me that her writing is going in a completely different direction than she expected. I love being a part of that discovery.

It’s not often that we get a true glimpse into someone else’s experiences and thoughts on motherhood. When we do, we gain perspective on our own experiences.

I think Penny Wolfson says it perfectly: “Writing—like living, like parenting, like any form of creation—is always an act of faith anyway, a struggle, a dare to somehow get onto a blank sheet of paper some approximation of experiences in a single, unique voice.”

We’ll post one student essay from Kate’s class each day on Cribsheet through this week.