There are some stories we carry with us for years before we realize they are meant to be shared.
For me, The Story of the Blue Lobster was one of those stories.
It began long before I ever thought of myself as someone who would enter a writing competition. The Story of the Blue Lobster was woven through my relationship with my mom, our long road to becoming parents, an unexpected blue lobster painted on a wall in Gloucester, a high-risk triplet pregnancy, months in the NICU, and the little signs of hope I learned to hold onto when life felt uncertain.
For a long time, it was simply our story.
Then I started talking about it.
When Our Story Became Someone Else’s Hope
Over the years, I found myself sharing pieces of our journey with other moms navigating infertility, difficult pregnancies, NICU stays and the uncertainty that can come with motherhood.
A few told me afterward that our story had given them a glimmer of hope. One mother-to-be even told me that our IVF journey had become a beacon of hope for hers.
Those words stayed with me.
Because sometimes, when you are in the middle of something incredibly hard, hope isn’t someone promising that everything will turn out exactly as you want it to.
Sometimes it is simply hearing, I have been somewhere hard too. Keep going.
That was what finally made me wonder if our story was something I should put into words.
Sitting Down to Write It
When I finally sat down to write The Story of the Blue Lobster, I wasn’t thinking about awards.
I was thinking about my mom, and all the ways she had continued to feel present in my life long after she was gone.
I thought about the signs that seemed to appear when I needed them most. The little moments that gave me comfort, reminded me to keep going, and somehow made me feel that she was still with me through some of the hardest chapters of our journey.
I thought about the years I spent caring for her, the decade-long road that eventually led us to IVF, the blue lobster mural that became intertwined with our story, and the moments when I was searching for reassurance that everything might still be okay.
Then came the ultrasound when we learned there were three babies.
The hospital stay at 27 weeks.
Delivering at 30 weeks and five days.
And watching our babies begin their lives surrounded by monitors and wires in the NICU.
If you’re navigating life after a NICU stay, I’ve also shared more about what those early days at home really looked like in What Nobody Told Me About Bringing Home NICU Babies.
Through all of it, there were moments that felt like little reminders from my mom, quiet signs of hope and comfort that helped me keep moving forward when I didn’t know what came next.
Writing it was incredibly cathartic.
Memories that had lived in separate pieces suddenly came together on the page, the fear, the hope, the coincidences that didn’t always feel like coincidences, and the ways my mom’s love seemed to continue showing up.
And ultimately, the three little people who came from all of it.
My First Writing Submission
After I finished the piece, I decided to submit The Story of the Blue Lobster to the Writer’s Digest 95th Annual Writing Competition.
Honestly, submitting it felt like an accomplishment in itself. I had taken something deeply personal and allowed someone outside of my family to read it. I truly had no expectation of winning.
So when I learned that The Story of the Blue Lobster had been awarded First Place in the Inspirational/Spiritual category, I was stunned.
The competition received approximately 3,300 entries from writers in 40 countries.
Somehow, this deeply personal story that began here in Gloucester had traveled much farther than I ever imagined it would.
More Than a Writing Award
As meaningful as the award is, what it represents means even more to me.
It reminds me that sometimes the hardest parts of our lives can become something meaningful on the other side. The experiences we never would have chosen can become stories that connect us to one another.
And this particular story gives me another way to honor my mom.
So much of my writing has become connected to motherhood, both the mother I had and the mother I became.
My mom never got to meet my children.
That will always be one of the hardest parts of my story.
And yet, somehow, she is everywhere in it.
She is in the lessons I carry into motherhood.
She is in the memories that surface now that I have children of my own.
She is in the signs I notice.
She is in the stories I tell them.
And she is woven throughout The Story of the Blue Lobster.
To see this piece recognized feels like a beautiful way to honor my mom and watch her story continue to unfold alongside ours.
Our Story Keeps Going
When I look back now, I think about how unlikely so much of this once seemed.
The babies we waited so long for are now running around our home.
The moments that once felt impossible have become part of a story I can tell from the other side.
And something I wrote because I felt called to put it on paper became my first award-winning piece.
I never expected that.
But perhaps that is fitting for a story about unexpected things.
A blue lobster.
Three babies.
Signs from the people we love.
And hope appearing in places we never thought to look for it.
Knowing that this story can continue to offer that little glimmer of hope to someone else, while keeping a piece of my mom’s story alive, is an honor I never imagined when I first sat down to write it.
