My Kids Don’t Care That I’m a Bestselling Author—And That’s Exactly How It Should Be

Originally posted on My Literary Life

I hit a bestseller list for the first time before I had kids. It was thrilling. I refreshed the rankings way too often. I screenshot the emails. I celebrated with my husband and called my parents. It felt like the kind of moment I had been working toward for a long time.

And I still look back on it with pride.

But now, with a four-year-old and a two-year-old in the house… success looks a little different.

These days, I might find out I hit a bestseller list while I’m cleaning Play-Doh out of the carpet. Or while one kid is yelling that their banana broke in half and the other is crying because I dared to sing the wrong version of the clean-up song. There’s no champagne. Just applesauce. And a lot of it. Everywhere.

And my kids? They don’t care at all.

They don’t care that I have books in bookstores. They don’t care that I run a business or represent authors or speak at conferences. They care that I show up. That I make snack time silly. That I read their favorite book the right way, with all the voices, even when I’m tired.

And while part of me sometimes misses the uninterrupted, polished version of success I had pre-kids…the truth is, I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

Because now, when I write a story, I think about them. When I help a new author get published, I think about what it means to follow a dream—even when life is messy and loud. When I do school visits, I picture their faces in the crowd. I think about what it would mean to them to see someone standing up there, doing what they love.

My kids don’t need to understand my career for it to be meaningful. In fact, it’s better this way.

They remind me that who I am isn’t tied to metrics or milestones. It’s in the moments. The presence. The persistence. The way I chase dreams and change diapers. The way I keep going even when the sleep is short and the days are long.

So no—my kids don’t care that I’m a bestselling author. But they’ve made me better at everything I do. And that, to me, is the biggest success of all.

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