Revision (noun): Process of rethinking and modifying a draft, document or project to improve its quality. It’s the process of rethinking and modifying a draft, document, or project to improve its quality, structure, and clarity. It goes beyond simple editing or proofreading, often involving significant changes to arguments, content, or organization. The goal is to refine the work to meet its intended purpose effectively.
When you revise a piece of writing, you don’t just scrap the entire draft. You take out the parts that don’t work and keep the ones that do. You reorganize sections for clarity. I didn’t need to drop everything in my life. I needed to remove some people and things.
First, I focused on the things I knew I wanted to keep. Obviously, my children were first on the list. Motherhood has been one of the best things to happen to me and not just in the ways that people mention. Then I went through the important relationships and decided whether to keep them as is or revise them in some ways. My relationship with my mother and husband were two that needed significant revision.
However, becoming a mother has been the most life-changing experience for me. It’s changed me in the expected ways that people talk about all the time, but there were also so many unexpected ways. Like finally finding my voice in a way that allows me to stand up not only for others but for myself. It also validated my feelings about my grievances with my own mother. Growing up, I’d hear adults say wait until you’re a mother, you’ll understand your mom more, and that hasn’t been true for me. I found myself realizing that every time I thought my mother was being abusive and/or unkind to me, it was valid. The way she treated me has so clearly been improper, and I would never feel okay treating my sons in that manner.
It was during the initial separation from my ex husband, I realized that being my mother’s daughter was no longer a role I wanted to play. Navigating the grief of losing both my maternal grandparents and my marriage while simultaneously showing up for my kids throughout helped me see that my mother was not ever going to be who I wanted or needed as a parent. I knew she was grieving, but she was also a mother. A mother who wasn’t there for me during one of the worst moments of my life. A mother who I never really felt was there for me emotionally or physically during the darkest moments. And if I’m honest, a mother who caused some of the darkest moments in my life. Accepting her for who she was helped free me from the constant need to update her on my life.
While becoming a mother was an amazing addition to my life, becoming a wife was less exciting. It probably doesn’t help that I never really wanted to get married in the first place. However, everyone around me insisted that if I wanted children, getting married needed to be in the plan as well. There were signs that I was unsure of marriage. First, I was soooo annoyed when anyone mentioned that my wedding day would be the best day of my life. At the time, I thought it made me irrationally angry because of my pregnancy hormones, but the truth is, my life’s accomplishments being reduced to less significant than the day a man asked me to be his wife felt very condescending. There were signs that I shouldn’t go through with the marriage (a post for another day, maybe), but ultimately I chose to get married because I was pregnant and because I thought the man I was marrying genuinely loved me.
In Latin, revision means to see again. So, if you could see your life again, what would you change?
For me, revising my life was about retaining the parts that made me feel most like myself – motherhood, friendships, and career. It was clear to me that I absolutely could not be my best self (or best piece of writing) while staying married. I also couldn’t continue to put energy into attempts at a mother-daughter relationship with someone who was incapable of truly taking accountability for the ways in which their actions continued to harm me as an adult. Reducing the relationships between my mother and my husband was the biggest revision I made in my life at the time. There were other people and things cut, but these two relationships were the hardest to remove. Choosing to end my marriage came with the loss of his side of the family as part of my community, which, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting. I truly did believe that they loved me and would still include me, seeing as everyone knew how hard I had worked to make our marriage work. It was painful to realize that no matter what my ex-husband had done to me, his family was going to ice me out and side with him, but it was another lesson for me when it came to abusive family systems and the person who shines the light on accountability. More importantly, it allowed me to revise what family really meant to me.
For a long time, I thought my choices were to stay the same or start over completely. What I’ve learned is that there is a third option: revision. I could keep the parts of my life that feel true, meaningful, and make life worth living while letting go of the roles, relationships, and expectations that no longer fit. Revision is not a failure. Revision is growth. It is the courage to look at your life with fresh eyes and ask, “What would make this story more honest?”
The beautiful thing about revision is that it doesn’t require you to pretend the first draft never existed. Every chapter, every mistake, every relationship, every loss helped shape the person holding the pen today. Revising a life isn’t about erasing the past or becoming someone entirely new. It’s about looking honestly at the life you’ve written so far and deciding what deserves space in the next chapter.
And maybe that’s the real work of adulthood, not living a perfect first draft, but giving ourselves permission to revise.
