Making Space to Seek
I recently had my first article published on the blog of Well-Read Mom, a national book club group whose tagline is "Read More. Read Well" which is something I can very much get behind. I've been participating in Well-Read Mom for about six years now and I absolutely love their mission and the books that I have read as part of the group, and so it was a real thrill to have one of my submissions featured on their blog. Be sure to check it out!
I began attending Well-Read Mom meetings a little more than six years ago. At the time, I was contentedly single and had just entered my 30s. I was not actively pursuing marriage or family. Still, the friend who invited me to the group assured me it wasn’t “just for moms.” Upon looking at the year’s book list, my heart fluttered with interest.
Some of the books I had already read but were favorites worth re-reading, some books I had heard of but never had a chance to read before, and some were unfamiliar but seemed intriguing. Though I was an English/Creative Writing major in college and have been a lifelong reader and writer, I had never belonged to a book club before. However, I was nearly a decade post-college and craved not only the stimulation of good discussions but also the guidance about what books were actually worth reading.
Earlier that same year, I had begun deleting my social media accounts after recognizing the detrimental effect they had on my mental health and also my productivity as a writer. With the banishment of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and finally, my beloved Pinterest, I found myself with more time on my hands and more space in my brain to take in new ideas and relationships. Without the emotional load of checking the status updates of so many “Friends,” I had the energy to get to know new people, both the women in the book club and the characters in the books. For the first time in years, I found myself being filled instead of drained because I was experiencing real encounters instead of the fleeting, yet somehow still overwhelming, images and thoughts on a screen.