Notes From Labor of Love: Amanda Jaros
I’m sitting in the sunshine as I write this, on an early spring afternoon, a few months after the release of Labor of Love. It has been such a pleasure to see the book in print and to hear friends and writers enjoying the stories. It’s hard to believe it was two years ago that I began soliciting writing from the staff of Literary Mama. I had an idea and no clue how to implement it, but I had motivation and enthusiasm, and I figured I would just give it a shot and see what happened.
Reading the submissions and working with the writers was the highlight of this whole project. I love editing and after many years administrating Literary Mama, I was glad to get back to reading essays, poems, and stories and seeing these creative minds at work. It’s exciting to look at a piece from the outside, searching for the nugget of truth. And it’s fulfilling to give a writer feedback and see the work come back sharper and stronger than before. More than anything though, I loved experiencing people’s stories.
Motherhood is a universal experience, and yet it is unique to each of us. I suppose that’s the beauty of sharing our stories: We find understanding through the joys and sorrows that overtake us, camaraderie in anecdotes of sleepless nights and piles of laundry, and compassion in the tales of illnesses or challenging relationships we haven’t experienced ourselves. At its most basic, Literary Mama and this anthology are about giving mothers a voice to share whatever it is that they are going through.
That, at my core, is why I have felt so passionate about Literary Mama over these 11 years. That’s why I took a shot in the dark and went for it with this project. I believe motherhood is an intense, rewarding, life-changing, and wild ride. I also believe that motherhood is not honored or respected as it should be, and that our society has long neglected and ignored the needs of mothers. And yet, it is we mothers who define the depths of love, we who sacrifice our lives for others, we who make decisions that shape the future. Mothers deserve to be heard.
As I sit in the sun reflecting on all this, I couldn’t be more pleased that with Labor of Love, I was able to offer an opportunity for some to be heard. And the voices that spoke up are thoughtful, powerful, and wonderful. I hope you think so too.
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Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology was released on January 26th, 2024. Edited by Amanda Jaros, this collaboration with Small Harbor Publishing celebrates Literary Mama‘s twenty years of publishing the best writing for and by mothers. We asked the contributors, all Literary Mama staffers from across the years, to share thoughts about their writing process, their inspiration, or their work in the book. This is the final post in this Literary Mama blog series.
Labor of Love is now available on Amazon.