In my blessed pre-mama New York City Days I amassed a messy, illegible collection of ranting and scribbles; all attempts at connecting my rapid manic thoughts to some form of communication. I’d always felt incapable of clearly connecting the thoughts in my mind to my mouth or pen, and being bi-polar didn’t help.

Everywhere I went I carried a little notebook, which I fervently filled with wild ideas, jotting the crazy goings on of the Astoria bound “N� train. Or my view of life from a bar stool in “7B�, my favorite east village dive. Looking back over the notebooks they are barely intelligible. Many pages are filled with point form, stream-of-consciousness observations, definitely an insight into my inability to speak up in social settings and the frustrations I burdened myself with. Always feeling as though I may have something to say, the smart sounding stuff seemed to get short circuited on the way out of my mouth. In mania I searched for one solid idea to cling to so I wouldn’t lose my mind. In depression I needed one idea to believe in, to keep me alive. Now in motherhood my daughter, Harper, is that one idea, the thing I believe in, I cling to the idea of her and she keeps me grounded.

Sitting in that east village dive I would scratch words onto paper and cut and paste words and pictures from the glossy pages of magazines, creating the ultimate, insane, scrapbook of random thoughts. 3, full, hard-cover-notebooks contain thousands of disjointed ideas, a bizarre commentary on life through my manic eyes. Real life has always challenged me, always searching for the right words, trying to say it all.

I don’t cut and paste anymore. Toting piles of disassembled “TimeOut/NY� back issues, and implements of destruction and reconstruction (scissors and glue) is not a viable option with a small child in tow.

By the end of May, I graduated from theater school, by the end of June I was pregnant. Months before the big news, I’d nearly lost my mind. I was delusional, hallucinating. Then as quickly as months of being manic had flown by, I crashed. March had brought the deepest funk I’d ever known. I was admitted to Mt. Sinai hospital on the Upper East Side for 5 days. That stay would’ve been much longer, but my insurance was insufficient and they had to cut me off. I was discharged, not even stable on new meds, and newly diagnosed as bi-polar. I was referred to the postgraduate center in midtown, where a psychiatrist who wore a purple suit with a pink shirt and polka dot tie monitored me.

When I was pregnant, suddenly I felt calmer. Jared and I left New York, leaving behind friends, teachers and manic inappropriateness. We moved back to Canada, somehow through it all, and off my meds, I remained calm. I didn’t even have a psychiatrist when I first returned home. We moved into my parent’s basement and waited for Harper to be born.

Away from New York City I had no social situations in which I could feel stunted and inferior. I also had no creative outlet. No plays to be in, no scenes to work on, theater going was out of the question, movie nights were scarce. Here, in Edmonton, there was no “N� train to ride and observe routine bizarreness, no “7B� to sit in and cut and paste on a Sunday. Everything shifted in the silence of motherhood.

Jared began university in the fall after Harper was born. I was home alone with this new baby, all day long, five days a week. I was a lonely mama, but now the experience of mothering gave me the base from which I scribbled and ranted. Looking back over those “new mother� notebooks, they are somehow clearer and simpler. Not a spewed mess of random ideas, but something built on a foundation of real experience; an idea I truly believed in.

Having been an actress and student in my pre-mama blitz, writing is an avenue I’d never fully explored. I wrote, sure, but none of it made much sense. When it did make sense it was embarrassing, or something I was proud of secretly, but not willing to share. In a scramble to meet moms, I searched every nook and cranny of the city until I’d compiled a comprehensive list of happenings. I decided I had poured too many hours into this project to keep it to myself. I felt with this calm I’d never known before, that I did have something to say. Somebody out there might want to listen.

I called my first essay “Meeting Moms and Teaching Tots.� I sent the article to a local parenting quarterly, “Birth Issues� and it was published. I hoped it would helpfully outline the many baby-friendly outings and doings for mamas around town. I’d finally found a great playgroup and I was attending la leche league meetings, but those were only once a month. When I wrote the article, I included everything I’d uncovered, even if I hadn’t done it myself. I may have felt quiet and disconnected in attempts to converse in playgroups, my words dried up when they hit air, but flowing out my pen I was able to rework, reword, clarify and for once, communicate.

When I saw that first article in print, a fire was ignited. I wrote another, then another, and another. I started searching out submission calls that suggested a theme on which to write. After a while I started a blog, and went back to a stream-of-consciousness style in writing about my day with Harper, the everyday stuff, things I wanted to share but didn’t fit a theme. I took the time during Harper’s naps, to pour my mind onto the page. Through writing articles for “Birth Issues� I made some good friends. When my friend Skye, moved away, she asked me if I would like to be a new co-editor. All this only one year after “Meeting Moms…� was first published. Now, I write a regular column “Sunny Days,� it’s a sort of editorial that may or may not stem from the theme of each particular issue. It wasn’t long before I started submitting essays to other magazines both online and in print.

I was coming out of my lonely mama shell and into the world of meeting moms. My whole life I’d been “one of the guys,� I always had trouble connecting with my female peers. I’d had horrific experiences as a kid trying to fit in with the girls. It never felt right, so I surrounded myself with admiring male friends and basked in their infatuations. I felt safe, needed and powerful. Sure most of them had fallen in love with me, at one point or another. What’s a girl to do? They were my best friends. I miss them. Some I miss just cause they haven’t called me this week. I know I’m there in their periphery. But is a shame that some are gone now, one is dead, and several choose not to be in my life anymore. It was only when I got pregnant, that I really connected with a few of my female classmates, but they are back in New York.

Now I was a mama and it was time to meet some women, to try and be a part of something different. Once you become a mama that is what you are first and foremost. Anytime I meet someone new, it seems to me that I am “the one with a kid.� I am not just one of the gang anymore. Whether they exclude me or I do it myself, it is true, I have a kid; I am a mom, and that is who I am before an actress, writer, teacher or friend. At least being a mom gives me some much-needed confidence, because I finally feel certain about who I am.

And I quickly discovered I was far from mainstream. I found a few local mamas who were left of center and like-minded. I found friends online, other mamas, other creative mamas. Before long a whole new world was open to me. This “hip mama� subculture was the niche I finally fell into, and for once, I fit. Mamas who come from all over the world share their stories in zines and post written work on message boards. Even though I have mama friends here in Edmonton, our key connection is that we are mothers, and not that we are mamas who write, or act, or do anything other than mother. Online I found creative support, sympathy, empathy and honest critique. Finally not just from my husband, but for the first time from other women. Jared is wonderful, he reads all my work, and he doesn’t worry about offending me. His criticisms fill the margins, but he is no mama.

This was just the beginning. I had only just discovered this wonderful world of creative support from mamas. And there is still a long road ahead. I have so much to learn about mothering and about writing. It is life long learning. Learning that changes with every shift, New Year, next step. I have skills to hone. I now have the avenues to take when I need feedback.

When I’m manic everything is an insane race. I always feel like I need to get to my destination right, fucking, now! It is a panic. I don’t even know what the destination is, but it feels as though my head will explode if I don’t get there fast. Until Harper’s birth, I’d never found the time to be patient. Mothering has not only taught me that I have deep within me patience and a sense of understanding, but a grounded knowledge that I have the rest of my life to get where I’m going (and sometimes that knowledge really pisses me off).

Harper sets the pace, and she is in no hurry. If she was, she might miss out on discovering the everyday wonders that I often take for granted. If she has taught me one thing it is: life is not a race you want to win. Winning will get you six feet under at the ripe old age of 30. Still, it is so hard for me to slow down and think, but it’s probably safer that way. At least I’m not out of breath anymore, no longer in fear of crashing. I breathe, I play, I reflect, and with fresh pictures of Harper in my mind, I write. Some days it’s nothing at all, not even 300 words, some days I do so much.

When I feel inspired those manic tendencies are hard to fight. I want to get it all done, I want it to be good, and I don’t like stopping till I have a complete draft, as rough as it may be. It may be hard to fight, but Harper always brings me back. You can’t “10 more minutes� a little girl who needs you NOW! I finish the sentence, let it go, and come back later to the work again, and again, trying to get back on that train of thought.

Mothering feels like a solid foundation and knowing what my role is gives me the ability to be a little more grounded within myself. It is so much easier when I myself understand where I am coming from. It is a skill to balance creativity and motherhood, a skill that requires fine-tuning and practice. Constant practice. It is certainly not without sacrifice or compromise, but it is infinitely more rewarding than packing away your dreams, simply to be called “Mom.� Ugh.

It is because of Harper that I am able to intermittently form concise and intelligent thoughts. Seeing them in print is, again, the icing on the cake. Being a mama is the greatest asset in terms of my creativity today. I know I’m crawling not sprinting, but I do feel like I just might arrive someday, wherever I’m supposed to. These days the journey is the important part. The goals change, morph, evolve, still blurry somewhere along the distant horizon. Maybe the goal was becoming “mom�, but I doubt it. Seems to me “mom� is just the means by which I’ll arrive. No matter what I become, being a mother is how I will get there, dancing.