In his book-length letter to his mother, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong asks a profound question about the language that nurtures creativity:

But why can't the language for creativity be the language of regeneration? You killed that poem, we say. You're a killer. You came into that novel guns blazing. I am hammering this paragraph, I am banging them out, we say. I owned that workshop. I shut it down. I crushed them. We smashed the competition. I'm wrestling with the muse. The state, where people live, is a battleground state. The audience a target audience. "Good for you, man" a man once said to me at a party, "you're making a killing with poetry. You're knockin' em dead.”

And yeah, why is that?

In slow contemplations about nurture this Mother’s Day, I offer the following alternatives and invite your to come up with a few of your own.

“I am building this, raising high the roof beams.” “I am learning from the muse.” “You are giving it life.” “Look at you, lighting up the world.”