It was Mother’s Day last year when Montz resident, Jaime Rich, sat down to write a poem.
“I felt like the world makes such a big deal about pampering mothers on this one day, but for me, Mother’s Day is just like every other day,” Rich said. “It’s not this magical day off from motherhood.”
Rich, a mother of six, loves motherhood, but on that day, the endless to-do lists – homework, cooking, chauffeuring to practice and activities and all the other daily tasks of motherhood – felt overwhelming.
“I was on social media and just really letting myself get down,” Rich said. “I was really just throwing myself a pity-party.”
But then, something shifted. A little voice in her head told her to flip the script: find joy and look at life a different way.
“When I listened, my whole perspective changed and beautiful lines of poetry just came to me,” Rich said.
Over the next few days and weeks, Rich started sharing the poem with others who expressed feelings that she identified with.
“I sent them my poem, and they sent back to me such beautiful words of gratitude and questions of if I had thought about publishing it in some way,” Rich said. “I thought they were all just being nice. Until there were too many of these messages and words of encouragement to count on one hand.”
Rich, who moved to Louisiana with her husband after attending college at Mississippi State University, decided to take a leap of faith. She researched the process of publishing a children’s book.
“Moms read to their kids all the time,” she said. “They often don’t get to do a lot for themselves, but I could reach both caregiver and child this way.”
Rich’s self-published book “Little Things,” is available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Books A Million, Google, Kindle, and more.
The main message in the book is to find joy in the “Little Things” in life, Rich said.
“We live in a world that is so fast paced and constantly changing,” Rich said. “We are bombarded with how we should look, what we should eat, where we should vacation, the types of jobs we should have, the fitness level we need to have, the vacations we should take and more. Life can get so chaotic that we forget to enjoy the little things, to slow down and notice the little things.”
Rich said moms are especially overwhelmed as they try to juggle so much. But fathers, grandparents and other caregivers also feel this way.
“We get overwhelmed by the meal prep, the fights over kids eating the dinner, and cleaning up the sticky messes,” she said. “But sticky fingers mean our children had food to eat. That we were able to provide that food for them.”
All caregivers deserve and need to be seen and heard, she said. They should know they are not alone.
“Raising children and raising a family is the hardest job but it can also be – and is supposed to be – the most rewarding,” Rich said.
Rich said she hopes that readers will feel recognized and validated by the message in “Little Things.”
“Life is hard and messy, but is oh so beautiful,” Rich said. “I hope that little readers feel these same things. They are so intelligent and more emotionally intelligent than I think we give them credit for. They know these things too. They need this message too.”
Rich said she has always loved to write. She remembers the poems and short stories she wrote as a child and into her youth.
“I even had a teacher who published a book with a collection of her students’ poems and one of mine was included,” Rich said. “I have always loved writing essays and papers for school, and I love to journal.”
Rich said her advice to other authors is to go for it.
“As I have learned through this whole process, you never know who needs to hear what you have to say,” she said. “Even if my book touches just one person out there, I feel like I will have made a difference, and you will too.”
Rich said the experience of publishing her first book has been rewarding.
“My self-confidence has grown, and my self-worth validated and reaffirmed,” she said. “I have learned so much about not just the whole writing and publishing process, but also about myself. That has been priceless to me.”
