It is an early Saturday morning, and I am standing at the bottom of Mount Royal. I don’t think I can climb all the way up the mountain or even make it halfway. Mt. Royal, which is in the city of Montreal, immediately west of Downtown Montreal, Quebec, is only a small mountain with 400 stairs to get to the top. The stairs are not built in one straight line. They are arranged in such a way that small blocks of stairs spiral at different angles, left to right and back to the left again. Accessing the top of the hill is not clear; the angle of the steps makes my head spin. I am anxious, scared even, but determined to take on the challenge. I climb Mt. Royal anyway. I take one step then the next step, and just like that, one block of stairs is complete. I keep going up, to the top of the mountain. I am out of breath but very satisfied with my perseverance. Soon, climbing reminds me of motherhood. …

We’re delighted to announce Raising Mothers’ 2022 We Are The House: A Virtual Residency for Early-Career Writers, which is a year-long online residency with Raising Mothers for one BIPOC nonfiction writer. The residency is dedicated to helping early-career, underrepresented writers who are also parents build their writing portfolio. The 2022 recipient of We Are The House: A Virtual Residency for  Early-Career Writers is Kya Mara. Learn more about the residency here.  What places inspire you to write and create? Nature and the outdoors-at-large inspire my thoughts and lead to my writing and creativity. I write anywhere really. For example I once had words flowing out of my mind and hands once in an emergency room. I like to write in the dead of the night when I can hear silence, too. How do you balance being a writer and a mother? Honestly, I do not! [laughs] My writing tends to suffer with hardly any time to write or finish a piece, or when it is finished, I fail to edit it. But motherhood inspires my …