Gemma Hartley

When I made the decision to become a stay-at-home mother, the choice was an easy one.

Minimalism is great in concept, especially when you’re looking at someone else’s well-curated life. Declutter, simplify, own only things that bring you joy. This is all well and good for the twenty-something living in a one bedroom apartment, beholden to no one. When you’re a parent, however, minimalism gets a lot more complicated.

My husband and I have been together for 12 years, eight of them married, four of them teenaged.

My six-year-old son got into the car after school and declared he only wanted to have one kid when he grew up.

Sometimes, I think back to all the ridiculous things I did for boys when I was younger and cringe.

Becoming an adult didn’t magically open me up to their world and their psyche as I thought it would. Even having children of my own did little to unravel the mystery of my parents, because I wasn’t really interested in exploring honestly. I have always been concerned with who my parents were in relation to me, not who they were on their own.

Welcome to #RavsWriters, an opportunity for you to get to know some of th

When I was a teenager, I felt very certain that I was not a feminist. I didn’t exactly understand the textbook definition of feminism, but I had a pretty good sense from the negative connotation I had gleaned while growing up in a narrowly Christian setting.

I am sometimes painfully envious of other (usually childless) writers who are doing the very thing I swore I would have done by now — publishing a novel.