Mama’s Writing is Raising Mother’s monthly interview series, curated by Deesha Philyaw. How has parenting influenced your writing? Parenting has influenced my writing in a sort of a roundabout way. Although my social media followers often told me I should write for a living after reading my posts that found levity in the ups and downs of parenting, I didn’t start writing professionally until I actually had to take some time away from my children — and I turned to writing as a coping mechanism to deal with the grief. I rarely directly write about my children; their father is a very private person and prefers not to have their stories shared widely. However, I have mentioned them in a few pieces, and I did write an essay for Catapult about dealing with postpartum depression and trauma around my son’s very premature delivery. I have been writing more “mommy-related” pieces, but as a reporter and not an essayist. I wrote an article about Oregon’s decision in November to decriminalize narcotics, and the impact that will …

Bassey Ikpi is a writer, performer, mental health advocate, and author of the instant New York Times-bestselling book, I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying, a debut collection of essays about living with bipolar II disorder and anxiety. Bassey first gained public acclaim as an internationally recognized poet featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. She has been published by The Root, Huffington Post, Essence, and elsewhere. As the founder of The Siwe Project, a mental health organization, Bassey created the global movement #NoShameDay, an initiative that aims to reduce stigma and increase mental health awareness. RM: Can you talk a bit about the process of writing a memoir and deciding how much or how little to include about your motherhood experience? BI: I was very clear with my editor and even my first agent about this. The agent thought I should add something about motherhood, and I said, “No, I’m not even going to put it in the proposal because it’s not happening.” So it was a firm decision made on firm ground. I told …

  Mama’s Writing is Raising Mothers’ monthly interview series, curated by Deesha Philyaw. Are there days when you feel like a mother who writes, and others when you feel like a writer who is a mother? I had my first baby, Daya, in the fall of 2019 as a forty-five year-old, seven years into my writing career and just months after my first book Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar was published. During her first few months, when I was fortunate enough to have childcare, I saw myself as a writer who was a mother. I was struggling with figuring out “what next” after my first book, which had been a passion project but also with feelings of guilt for leaving my child with someone else while I scurried to my writing space to wrestle with words on a page. But then the pandemic hit, and I no longer had childcare and a strange thing happened as my husband and I juggled child care on top of our work. I found that although …

  Mama’s Writing is Raising Mother’s monthly interview series, curated by Deesha Philyaw. Are there days when you feel like a mother who writes, and others when you feel like a writer who is a mother?  At this stage in the game, I feel like a woman who is a mother and likes to write. I don’t identify as a mother, if that makes sense. I’m a woman. A Black woman. A Black woman who does many things, primary among them – mothering. I also write and dance and do makeup and read bones and on and on. I’m waiting for that moment when I feel like a capital W Writer and beyond that, an Author. I think once I’ve had my pieces published in a few different outlets, get paid for it, and folks engage with the things I’ve written, I’ll feel like a Writer. But when I see my book on a shelf with Maya’s and Toni’s and Octavia’s and Stephen’s … well, then … Bitch, you’re an Author! How has parenting influenced …