People hear that my father was 50 when I was born and assume I was ready to lose him.

But how can you prepare for the one who held your whole heart?

I was 29 when he died (2017).

We were close. Not just in a father-daughter way but in a way that felt grounded and safe.

He made the world make sense.

When cancer took him it felt like the laws of gravity changed.

I thought that was the heartbreak that would define me.

But then seven years later (2024) I lost my mother.

And I realized…my dad had my heart but my mom had my soul.

I’d been caring for her since I was 12.

Chronic illness shaped our whole rhythm.

Doctor appointments. Meds. Emergencies. Recoveries.

She got sick often but she got through it.

That was the pattern. That was our faith.

And then she got better.

This is her at her healthiest:

No oxygen, walking across town every day (even with two-thirds of a partially amputated foot due to diabetes), doing for herself, spoiling her beloved dog Hannah who I got her for Christmas (and now care for), finally getting a chance to enjoy her life, just being my mom.

So when she got sick again I didn’t panic.

I didn’t think this is the last time.

I thought we’ve been here before.

But this time she didn’t make it.

And it wasn’t just shocking, it was disorienting because when you’ve been a caregiver for most of your life danger doesn’t look like danger anymore.

It looks like routine.

It looks like “I’ll check on her in a few.”

It looks like trust in a future you didn’t realize was already gone.

And the guilt of that lingers in places even grief can’t touch.

I still ask myself why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I know?

Losing my dad broke something in me.

But losing my mom after years of caring for her, growing up beside her, and planning to grow old with her shattered what was left.

We used to joke I’d be 80 and she’d be 102 like Sophia and Dorothy from The Golden Girls.

She was supposed to be the constant.

The one who stayed.

The one who saw me through.

What people don’t understand is that my grief didn’t come in one clean wave.

It came in layers.

It came from two directions. Losing a father who steadied me and a mother whose illnesses made me her witness, her nurse, and her tether.

People think having an older dad means you had less to lose.

They think having a sick mom means you had time to say goodbye.

They don’t understand that some deaths are still sudden even when they come after long battles.

They don’t understand that caretaking blurs the line between normal and urgent.

That I wasn’t just grieving the moment she died, I was grieving every moment I thought we still had.

This is what compounded grief looks like.

Not just sadness but guilt.

Not just missing someone but mistrusting yourself.

Not just loss but undoing.

There are days I still feel like a daughter in limbo.

Grieving a father who had my heart.

Grieving a mother whose soul I tried to protect with everything I had.

And still trying to figure out who I am without either.

Thank you for reading. These words are part of my own return to writing amid loss. If they resonated with you, know that they were written alongside the work I do here at Remote Writing Jobs where I help other writers earn a living even as I relearn how to keep living myself. Becoming a paid subscriber for $15/month helps sustain both.

Every time I see a writing job that carefully describes the role but says nothing about pay I feel a mix of exhaustion and disbelief.

I get it. Budgets shift, roles evolve, or maybe someone hopes the applicant will just be excited for the opportunity but hiding pay isn’t harmless. It wastes time and perpetuates inequality. For freelance writers and creative professionals time and energy are limited currencies. We can’t afford to spend hours crafting applications only to discover the budget was never aligned with the work. Pay transparency shouldn’t be revolutionary, it should be standard. Every writer deserves to know what their labor is worth and anyone hiring should show that they value it.

This frustration led me to build remotewritingjobs.org. Not as a hobby or side project but as a space where writers could trust the opportunities listed. A place that honored their time and craft and modeled care and precision the rest of the industry too often ignores.

I spend most of my days in spaces no one notices.

I’m a writerpreneur. I build a business from words. I’m both the architect and the laborer. Every morning I wake to an inbox full of listings to verify, opportunities to curate, and writers to support. Every evening I go to bed with a sense of accomplishment that no one else will witness.

People often misunderstand this work. They see a paywall and wonder why I would charge. They assume I must be idle while the world calls this work.

They don’t see the hours I spend vetting leads or the conversations where I fight for fair pay and creative autonomy. They don’t see the grief of losing my mother suddenly and unexpectedly in 2024 that slows me down or the hope that keeps me moving forward. They don’t see the labor of building a bridge for other writers while still trying to cross it myself as one.

The first listings I curated were painstaking. Every link and description had to be double-checked. One mistake could cost a writer time, money, or trust. I spent hours reading job posts, scrolling through emails, searching for hidden fees, and filtering out false promises. I still do. I learned to spot patterns, subtle red flags, and opportunities that seemed shiny but were hollow. I learned to protect the people who would rely on this work.

It was exhausting. It was invisible. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing because, frankly, I wasn’t sure anyone would understand. Friends and family asked what I was working on. I told them vaguely, “I curate jobs for writers.” They nodded politely and moved on. Few grasped the care, hours, decisions, and emotional labor.

Being a writerpreneur takes persistence, focus, and sometimes loneliness. It isn’t glamorous or a title that resonates with people who only value the conventional 9-to-5 grind. It’s endless, careful, demanding work that has to be done because someone has to do it and writers need a place where they can trust the opportunities they’re given. And there are no shortcuts to doing it well.

The work of a writerpreneur isn’t just for others. It’s for us, too. It means creating a system that honors precision and integrity while sustaining yourself. It means building trust while learning to trust your own labor. It means reminding other writers that they deserve opportunities that respect them, value them, and pay them fairly.

There were days I doubted it all. Some mornings grief made it impossible to face the inbox. Some nights I lay awake wondering if anyone truly valued what I was doing. To the world it was just a job board. To me it was everything and still is.

I’ve learned that being seen isn’t the same as being valued. The hours I spend curating opportunities and advocating for fair pay are often invisible but they’re essential. Every rejection of a subpar listing is a decision in service of trust. Every conversation pushing for compensation is a decision in service of dignity.

Every job I include is verified, every listing has pay disclosed upfront, every opportunity is filtered through the lens of a working writer. This isn’t a small task, it’s hours of research.

Every subscription and message from a writer who found their next opportunity through my work reminds me that the labor matters and it’s worthy…that I’m worthy and the infrastructure I’m building matters.

Building RWJ wasn’t a straight path. There were moments of doubt, technical hurdles, people who refused to disclose pay, and the mental load of running a resource that so many people relied on but few appreciated.

Slowly, it took shape. The directory became a place where writers could find quality paid work without worrying about being exploited, transparency is standard not optional, care, integrity, and respect are baked into every listing, and unseen labor translates into real impact.

Thank you for reading. These words are part of my own return to writing amid loss. If they resonated with you, know that they were written alongside the work I do here at Remote Writing Jobs where I help other writers earn a living even as I relearn how to keep living myself. Becoming a paid subscriber for $15/month helps sustain both.

Haikus for Women is back.

I created this project in 2019 as an intuitive collaboration between my original haikus and your photos. I’d receive a photo or find one myself to use as my muse, sit with it, and write whatever it evoked in me and what I imagined the woman in it might need to hear.

Order a custom haiku

I never used any background information beyond the photo itself. In fact I preferred not to know who she was, what was happening when the photo was taken, why she chose it, or what she wanted me to see. Without the story attached I could follow my own response to the visual instead of someone else’s explanation of it.

I found myself drawn to the details that could easily go unnoticed like the tension in a mouth, a hand resting somewhere absentmindedly, the particular kind of tiredness behind someone’s eyes, or the way a woman could look completely composed and still seem to be carrying an entire weather system beneath her skin. Those details were often where I found the poem and the more I worked this way the more I realized how closely it matched the way I naturally write.

What began as an experiment became one of the clearest expressions of my craft.

That’s also what made it difficult to leave this project behind. I stepped away from it several times over the years partly because I wasn’t always sure what to make of it. There were moments when I wondered if it was meaningful work at all or if other people would look at it and think it was silly, indulgent, or just plain stupid. I questioned whether something as small as writing a few lines in response to a photo was worth taking seriously but this project matters to me and I don’t think I can dismiss that anymore. Poetry is my first love and I’m not finished with it yet.

That also means I want to honor the art I make from it so I’ve decided to bring it back as paid commissions. I’m at a point in my life where I can recognize the value of my work as a writer without feeling the need to apologize for charging for it. I’m not charging for three lines of poetry, I’m charging for the years of instinct and practice that taught me how to distill observations into something worth reading.

This is for the raw edges of womanhood we’re so often told to smooth over and a way for me to further showcase my ability with words through storytelling.