Changing Times
It’s been a tumultuous week. My eldest child turned 18 years old. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big change, but technically, legally, he’s now an adult. It is weird for me, as his mother, to come to grips with the change. I’ve spent all his life till this point being the mother of a child, and now I have to figure out how to be the mother of an adult.
The tug-of-war for independence isn’t new, of course. Children are the quintessential push-me-pull-yous, and mine have been training me to let go, little by little, from the very beginning. From weaning themselves, to first days at school, to learning to drive, to finding romantic love, my children have tugged away from my side, coming back for reassurance and a confidence boost when they need it. I take huge comfort in knowing that they do come back, they do want to spend time with me, they do want to talk through their worries and doubts. Perhaps the door to childhood is closing behind us, but there’s much to look forward to as the door to adulthood cracks open.
As my eldest sets off to figure out how to be an adult, I set off to figure out the fine balance of continuing to be his support, his advocate, and his soft place to land, without quashing who he is or undermining the decisions he makes for himself. We’ll both mess up, it’s inevitable, but hopefully, we’ll also be forgiving of each other as we explore the shape of this new relationship we find ourselves in.
August Poetry Slam: Prompts
We’re wrapping up our summer break with a break from poetry and looking forward to our next Super Challenge as Rowan breaks down what a prompt is and how to use it from the other side of the judging table. Looking for ideas? She’ll even throw in some prompts at the end to stretch your brain. We’ve got your Slam right here.
Prompt Up!
Prompt Up is our optional weekly writing prompt for the fiction|poetry challenge! Here’s how it works: we choose a sentence prompt from last week’s winning nonfiction post and announce it in the kickoff. It’s your job to use that prompt in your poem or story and then run with it. The prompt is just a springboard, though: feel free to use it as your first sentence, move it, change it, or float it down to other territories.
This week’s prompt up comes to us from Ruby Bastille‘s post, Hours of Hell and Hope: Tiring, isn’t it?
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
Basic YeahWrite guidelines: 750 word limit; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Sunday; fiction or poetry only.
1. In the sidebar of this week’s post, please grab the code beneath the fiction|poetry badge and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
2. Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid;
3. Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
4. Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge; and
5. Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog.
Submissions for this week’s challenges will close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.
Thank you for sharing with us your hard work! Good luck in the challenge…
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
Asha keeps moving from one side of the world to the other. Her most recent move has taken her back to Perth, Western Australia where she grew up. She lives near the beach but hates sand between her toes. It’s a real conundrum. Asha began blogging at YeahWrite in October 2014 with this post, and YeahWrite was lucky to pull her on board as a Contributing Editor in December 2016. She is currently working on a novelette that grew from a series of flash fiction pieces. Asha is published in a variety of places including Modern Loss, PANK, Dead Housekeeping, and SheKnows. You can find her inconsistent blogging at Parenting In The Wilderness, or at her fiction blog, FlAsha Tales.
