I did not always want to be a writer. 

I was not one of those children who carried around a journal full of stories she’d spent every spare moment composing. I have not pursued writing with a focused tenacity, blocking out all else in life. I did not go to school to study the intricacies of storytelling. I was not even fully aware of the sparks of desire that drew me towards the writen word.

Yet, somewhere along the way, writing found me. It pursued me through train-traversed countries of Europe, in the form of a small red leather-bound journal. It sat beside me in my tiny cubicle as I did soul-sucking corporate work and longed for an escape, in the form of this blog that I tentatively started. It followed me through the swamps of trailer life in Florida, across the country in an old Subaru, back to a place where I didn’t think I would live again but turned out to be a home when I needed it most, into the complexities of marriage, off to the wilds of Alaska, up to the coldest winters and warmest hearts I’ve ever known, into the depths and joys of motherhood, here to this place we now call home, and along every journey, big or small, upon which we’ve embarked. It shepherded me through birth and death and the rugged landscape that stretches between, as a new creative force was birthed from within, in the form of fiction writing. It has been a life raft, carrying me across life’s toughest and most touching times.

Still, I have never truly claimed myself to be a writer.

“I am a real writer.”

I’ve written this phrase in my journal forty-two times in the past week. Daily affirmations I’m trying to hammer into my psyche one pencil stroke at a time. Even so, my mind rebels against this notion. I have a hard time believing it. Who am I to bestow this label upon myself?   

 I’ve always been hesitant to claim labels, to define my identity, because, truthfully, I rarely feel “enough” for the weight such labels seem to carry. I’m not selfless enough to be called a Good Mother. I’m not passionate enough to be called a Homeschooler. I’m not daring enough to be called an Adventurer. I’m not creative enough to be called an Artist. I’m not published enough to be called a Writer. 

Trying on labels has always felt a bit like putting on ill-fitting clothes. They never quite hang on me the way they should. Too much here, not enough there. It feels unwieldy to walk out into the light of day with them, exposed. Everyone will laugh at me, everyone will call me a fool and a fraud. Who do I think I am trying to cloak myself in something that was never mine to claim?

Labels can feel constraining. They confine us in roles we think we must play, trap us in binary thinking of how such a person should look, should feel, should be. And at the same time, on the flip side, labels can also be freeing. They are wings that lift us and lights that lead us forward. Because it’s an empowering thing to step out into the world, scared but brave and say, “This is who I am.” 

I could spend pages listing out the ways in which I’m not a real writer, cataloging the doubts that consume me and the imposing imposter syndrome that’s always, always lurking. Keeping me small, keeping me stuck.

Or, I can claim it. I can say doubts and gatekeepers be damned – I am a real writer. 

The thing is, when we claim a label for ourselves, we don’t have to walk constricted by the expectations someone else lays upon us. We get to tailor this label with our own unique style. We get to take that worn pattern of what society tells us this type of person must accomplish and cut it, play with it, stitching it back together with the specifications that fit our own lives. There is no instruction manual for how to do this creative work, no guide telling us what we must do next. This truth, like the label itself, is both daunting and liberating. We get to make our own rules and define our personal markers of success.

For me, this year, that feels like exploration and expansion. I am a writer who is trying new things. I am a writer who is taking myself seriously. I am a writer who is learning and growing in my craft. I am a writer who is committing time and energy to my work. I am a writer who will put my words into the world.

I am a writer who is claiming it.

Whatever aching urge calls to you, over and over again, is who you already are. Go claim it.