Dungy, Camille T., “Inherent Risk, or What I Know About Investment: On Balancing a Career, a Child, and Creative Writing”, “Guidebook to Relative Strangers: journeys into race, motherhood and history” (Norton 2017)

But when I thought about who I was to become when I became a mother, I hadn’t pictured Toi. I hadn’t pictured anyone, really. When I thought about who I was to become when I became a mother, I mostly felt very alone.

I think of the period between learning I was pregnant and accepting my new life as a professional and a mother as period when a fourth wall fell. At first I thought I was alone in a boxed-in space. I felt sure that the woman I’d worked thirty-six years to become would be pushed aside by someone else. I held off announcing the pregnancy, worried how my colleagues and mentors would take the news. But when I revealed my condition, I saw that I didn’t have to disappear into oblivion. I would join a larger community that had been there all along. (78)