There’ve been plenty of times in my life when I felt like I lost my writing voice, but none more-so than after my son was born.
In the newborn tunnel of late night feeding, pediatric appointments, nap schedules, and my own recovery, that voice was just…gone. Maybe you haven’t experienced that in the postpartum phase. If not, I’m glad. But if you have, you know it can be a real source of grief.
You sit down to the page, and the words and ideas that used to flow are suddenly just…fog. You start to wonder if your imagination has disappeared. If your creativity somehow got left behind.
But here’s the truth no one tells you: Your voice isn’t gone. It’s changing.
My son is almost three, and I still find the voice comes and goes, and my friends with older kids say the same. So I can’t tell you for sure when that switch will flip and your voice will just always be there again.
But I can tell you that, every time you hear that voice after a silent moment, you’ll realize it sounds different. Stronger, maybe. More complex for sure.
Here’s the good news: You don’t have to just sit around and wait for your voice to come back. You can take action—even small, gentle, irregular action—to find it whenever you’re ready.
What It Means to “Find” Your Voice
When we talk about a creative voice, it can sound like some a mystical thing—rare, difficult to find, and available only at a cost.
In reality, your author voice is simply the filter through which you experience the world and express it on the page. It’s made up of your rhythms, your emotional honesty, your worldview, your humor, your values. It’s not something you invent—it’s something you uncover, layer by layer, by writing through your real life.
That means every new season—every joy, loss, exhaustion, or change in routine—reshapes that voice. Which brings us to one of the most profound life shifts there is.
How Motherhood Changes Your Author Voice
Motherhood doesn’t silence your voice, thank goodness. It redefines it.
Before kids, you might have written with relative ease—uninterrupted mornings, coffee that stayed hot, thoughts that had time to stretch out and wander. Then life condensed. The edges of your day blurred. You began to write in the margins, if you wrote at all.
But that compression can forge something new.
Your words carry urgency now, and a kind of unfiltered truth that only comes when your time and attention are in much higher demand. (As Taylor says, your energy is expensive.) You learn to get to the heart of things faster. You write about small moments with greater tenderness because they’re the ones you actually get to live in.
Your voice deepens, softens, matures. It becomes rooted in the tension between self and care, longing and love.
You may not be writing more, but you’re feeling more. Your fears have changed and deepened, and so have the things that bring you joy. Your inner strength has changed its shape, and your perspective on identity and legacy has undergone a radical transformation. Maybe you think about the future in a whole new way. All that new emotional depth can make your storytelling richer than ever before. And even if you’re not actively telling stories right now, that depth will be there when you get back to the page.
The Permission to Change
All that is to say, finding your author voice again after a life transition isn’t about getting back to who you were. It’s about meeting who you’ve become.
Your creative identity will never be static. It will always flex with your life, and that’s a good thing. (Case in point: My angsty love poetry was considered “great” when I was 14. Nobody wants to read the same stuff from my 34-year-old self.) What matters most is showing up for your voice however it sounds now—not chasing a voice that belongs to a version of you that no longer exists.
Give it a try: Write one sentence. Capture one image that stops your heart. Notice one truth that feels too small to matter. Those tiny moments are probably where your new voice is hiding.
You Haven’t Lost Your Voice—You’re Growing Into a New One
Your writing voice has lived through everything you have: the exhaustion, the joy, the interruptions, the rediscovery. It maybe quieter right now, but it’s still yours. And I’d be willing to bet it’s wiser.
If you’re ready to reconnect with it, I created a free guide to help you build a sustainable writing practice that fits your real life. It includes ten simple, practical tips and twenty gentle prompts to get you writing again, even in the busiest seasons.
Download your free guide here.
Because your stories still matter, and your voice is still yours. It’s just waiting for you to listen again.