I once had a creative writing professor tell me one of the most important things for me to nail down as an aspiring writer is good writing posture. “Get yourself a good chair, and don’t make a habit out of slouching. It’ll ruin your life, even if your career as a writer makes your life.”

Good writing posture for me has always been focused on cultivating the right aesthetic to therefore cultivate the right mindset. Early morning sessions in my pajamas with a steaming mug of tea. Cool rainy days at my favorite bookstore, sitting upstairs amidst scatters of antique furniture as fog coats the windows. Sunny days at my favorite house-turned-coffee-shop, light filtering in as my iced lavender matcha sweats on the table beside my laptop. Sad music, always (it makes me more pensive). Phone tucked away (if my attention span is playing nicely).

Oh, how things have changed.

I’m sitting cross-legged, with my son stretched over my nursing pillow as he feeds from my right boob. My shoulders are hunched as I reach across him to type on my laptop, which is perched on a pillow. Thank goodness for long arms.

I have things to do, and this cluster feeding business is quite the time dump.

When I saw those two pink lines, rupturing my world into the before and the after, I was terrified. I was convinced I was going to lose myself in motherhood.

What that meant: I was going to lose writing.

At the time, I was working a full time, demanding job in tech. I wrote every single morning before work and every single weekend, allotting as much time to this passion of mine as I could. But I couldn’t see a world where I managed to maintain the current structure, while also caring for an entire human being. I was going to have to give something up, and in the hierarchy of what mattered most between my well-paying job, my child, and my passion that thus far had gone nowhere, my passion was the clear loser. Writing would have to go.

Writing was my identity. I didn’t know who I’d become without it, and yet I feared I’d have no choice. Life gets in the way of your dreams, doesn’t it? I supposed this was when my dreams would be forced to quiet, lips sealed by the urging of more important things.

How wrong I’d been.

At five months pregnant, I lost my job.

At six months pregnant, I signed with my dream literary agent.

At seven months pregnant, I started to build my list of freelance clients, solidifying my role as my own boss.

At eight months pregnant, my debut novel went out on submission.

At nine months pregnant—just two weeks before my son was born—I accepted my dream book deal from my dream publisher (but mum’s the word, for now…we’re not announcing more than that for a few months).

I used to view motherhood as sacrifice. And it is—I was sliced open to bring him into this world after thirty nine hours of fruitless labor. I now sleep in two to three hour stretches. I am, for lack of a better term, an on-demand milk cow. And I don’t cry anymore—I weep. I saw a quote that said, “A part of me died on that table,” and in a way, that’s true. Or at least, it is for me. There are pieces of myself I’ll never get back. But motherhood, I now see, doesn’t need to be loss.

Motherhood is nothing less than the art of creation. It’s an artistry, motherhood. No different from writing—this long, hard but rewarding road to creating something permanent. A being who has your lips and your husband’s nose and holds your hand as he suckles the nourishment your body provides. Like magic, almost, the ways in which we adapt in motherhood. The ways in which we make ourselves smaller, allowing that tiny being to take up more space. The ways we fit in what makes us feel most ourselves, so we can show our little nineteen-inch worlds that there’s whole galaxies beyond our living rooms, ready to be explored.

The ways dreams can come true in a flash.

I am officially on deadline, slowly inching towards the release of my debut novel. Writing is how I’ve gotten back to myself, to the version of the mother my son will be most proud to call his mother. I don’t have the luxury of slowing down, of wading into motherhood while I also step into my new life as a debut author. And I don’t want the luxury of slowing down either.

This—writing—is my dream. And it came true, I think, because of motherhood. Not in spite of it. And though my definition of “good writing posture” has morphed into any position that allows me to tell my story, I’d happily wave goodbye to the aesthetic of my pre-motherhood writing life in favor of typing notes on my phone during the three am feed, my son’s little hand clutching at my chest, like I’m the very thing anchoring him to this world.