Happy Birthday!

Last updated on: July 3, 2026 at 8:14 am by Sherry Antonetti

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Happy Birthday! 2026-07-03T08:14:08-04:00 Sherry Antonetti

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Today I am sixty. I am not out of experience, so I must still have stories I need to integrate into my soul, things I need to share. The flatness of the writing process for me right now indicates, I need to tread new paths. Over this weekend, I’ve written four thousand plus words and deleted all but these because the ones before didn’t wander enough to bring me somewhere I needed to be but didn’t know before.

Where do I need to go and why?

I started writing back in 2004, as a lark. It was a way to let my brain jog around the park while being surrounded by children. At the time, I was a mother of six, and needed to have a touch of reflective time to gather my wits for addressing the needs of an infant, a toddler, a hyper four year old, a first grader, third grader and fifth grader. That whole time is a blur, but writing helped slow it down.

Now I am sixty, and my youngest is fifteen. Toddlers are a distant memory, but the present day still presents enough chaos that reflection is required. How do I identify outside of the role of Mom, teacher, friend and wife –one would think that’s enough titles, but my brain and heart hears that list, and it feels like I am assigning who I am via what I do. I recognize, it’s also who I love, and who loves me –so it’s bigger –so why does the title, “Writer” matter to me, such that I feel “less than,” because I haven’t been published lately, and haven’t finished a composed piece I felt wandered somewhere new?

Because I love the wandering. That’s the answer, writing for me is the equivalent of Bilbo’s, “I’m going on an adventure!” and leaving without a spare hanky. Being a mom, a teacher, these roles require I plunge forward but also be prepared –and there’s a reasonable structure to where life leads these days because most of my kiddos are adults. I have much less sway but the pathways for the most part are familiar.

Begin again!

Writing involves falling down a chosen rabbit hole of thought and responding accordingly to all the mock turtles and white rabbits, unbirthdays and tea parties that present themselves. It’s why I chaffed when an administrator this year declared we wouldn’t need to teach children how to write. AI could take care of the writing. I wish I’d thought then to point out, mechanics are not what you teach when you teach writing –they are tools within. You teach the art of reflection and connection. Kids desperately need to learn how to connect their feelings and their thoughts to what they encounter in stories and the world. Writing is how that happens.

There’s a current phrase, “go touch grass” which captures what the creative process has always done for me. The hard quiet of reading a book, going to a museum, sniffing the ocean, playing the piano, writing, going to adoration, to help me wander further into my interior castle than I knew I could. My writing as of late had drifted into a sometimes hobby. With that loss of reflection, I found myself a little lost in my own thoughts –less alive, less color, less depth, less feeling.

Restarting the discipline is hard, especially when you have years of proof of how you don’t finish. It takes a stubbornness to restart, and to remember wandering is not drifting, wandering is a deliberate going for its own sake. I chose it anyway. Happy Birthday to me.

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

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