Heidi Reimer's Blog

The first summer of my relationship with my now-husband—an enchanted summer, naturally—he was acting in New York City, playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Jack in The Importance of Being Earnest. I was a country girl from Northern Ontario who’d seen only one professional play in my life (and that was one in which he starred, the first time I ever laid eyes on him).

I’d packed all my belongings into my backpack and shouldered my guitar—in a backpack carrying case, naturally—and taken the train from Toronto to New York to be with this man. And thus began my immersion in the world of actors.

Plays seen again and again; pubs afterward to analyze the plays, the process, the director’s vision or lack of it; gruelling tours, vans and hotel rooms and shows in Asheville and Atlanta and small-town Tennessee; long-distance relationship as a matter of course; the constant uncertainty of when the next job will be and where it will be and how the bills will be paid; filming in Times Square in an Armani suit one day—or performing at the White House, or being feted by luminaries—and the next day, you’re unemployed with no idea if you’ll ever work again.

And always, always, the art. The transcendent music of Shakespeare’s language, the story illuminated on a stage.

In the last two decades, I’ve often been the one non-actor at a table of actors. Struggling, especially in my insecure twenties, to contribute to conversation that is all about making the show. Struggling with the invisibility and solitariness of my own art form, and envying the legitimacy of the actors’ presence in a company, their employment by a theatre, their designated role. Their collaborative, co-creative work.

What did I have? A notebook, a pen, a deep desire to write novels. (Also, back then, very little confidence or knowledge of how to do it.)

This summer it’s 20 years since I took that train to NYC, and I’ve since married the actor and lured him to Canada, where he is now the artistic director of the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival. We can call it a loving nod to our 20th anniversary or at least serendipity that the plays he chose for this year’s festival season are A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Importance of Being Earnest. The same two plays I watched him in that first enchanted summer together 20 years ago.

This year’s acting company arrived in town to begin rehearsal two weeks ago, and last night I hung out once again in a room full of actors. These days I’m considerably more comfortable in the theatre world and in my own artistic practice, and I’ve also long since found literary community and spent plenty of time at tables with other writers. 

This summer, with my debut novel’s publication on the horizon, when I get the inevitable question in theatre circles of whether I too am an actor, I’m deriving some amusement from saying, “No, I just embed myself in their lives and steal their experiences for my own art.”

Because that, it turns out, is kind of what I’ve done. My husband jokes that our relationship is the most dedicated project of immersive research ever, because the novel that’s coming out next year is about actors. The Mother Act wouldn’t exist without Richard, without the life I didn’t quite realize I was entering when I boarded that train.

There have been challenges in our life together, times when being with an actor (sorry, darling) has felt like a terrible life choice. The long separations, the instability and uncertainty and financial precarity, the difficulties of balancing two demanding creative vocations that did not always feel like they gave back enough to justify the sacrifices. I’ve reflected more than once on the phone call early in our relationship when a garbage truck clunked in the background on Richard’s end and he remarked that the trash collectors probably made more than he did, and I laughed. Obviously he was joking. I was in love with an actor—so much more glamorous than being in love with a trash collector! 

He was not joking.

If I had married a lawyer or a doctor or a trash collector, would my life and my artistic path have been easier?

I’ve noticed a pattern in my own writing and in my coaching with other writers: your biggest challenges, the things in life that can feel like they’re keeping you from the flow and ease you dream of in your practice—that’s your material. That’s your creative gift.

Not that I would say being with an actor is my biggest challenge. Mothering, though, and a deeply restrictive patriarchal religious upbringing? Those have definitely been two of the hardest things I’ve had to swim through, things that have felt some days like they’ve kept me from doing and being and becoming what I most need to do and be and become. They also happen to be two other cornerstones of The Mother Act. 

My material. My creative gift. 

If you’re local to Eastern Ontario, come see A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Importance of Being Earnest at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival this summer. They really are enchanting plays. Being with actors actually is, a lot of the time, pretty awesome.

Posted with love and thanks to my husband, whom I just asked to read this to make sure I wasn’t saying anything too bad about him (such as “being with an actor has felt like a terrible life choice”), who said, “I’m not going to censor you!”

My birthday was at the end of May, and I celebrated with my birthday ritual of throwing things while yelling.

The ritual began six birthdays ago. It was a milestone year. A year that might make you feel you should’ve made a success of yourself by now—or at least have achieved some major goals, or at least have turned yourself into a reasonable facsimile of a grown-up. I spent the day hiding in a back room at the job I’d come to hate, weeping.

Let’s not be coy here: it was my 40th. Six years ago, the milestone birthday was 40, and I’d been working doggedly at becoming a novelist since I was eight, and I had nothing concrete in the visible world to show for it, not even a wealth-building career I’d prioritized over creativity. (Not even a stability-building one!) 

I was barely making survival money at said job, freelance writing other people’s work in the evenings and weekends, writing fiction but facing rejection after rejection.

“But you have a beautiful family,” my mother tried to console me. “That is true success!” Which made it even worse, because in the patriarchal ideology that ran deep through my youth, raising a family is what I had been raised for. But here I was at 40, and yes, I had a family, and yes, I loved them, but I did not want them to be the one and only thing I could point to as an achievement.

A couple days after the actual birthday, I gathered with my yoga-teaching, ceremony-leading sister and a small group of close friends for my very first birthday ritual of throwing things while yelling.

Prior to the actual day, before I knew I’d spend it crying at work and feeling every stereotype of over-the-hill doom, I’d planned to usher myself into this new decade with joyful, purposeful consciousness. I’d thought deeply about what I wanted to shift and create in this next season of my life, and together my sister and I had developed a series of releasing and intention statements to help me do this.

On the day of the ritual, I stood at the top of a ravine surrounded by this intimate circle of support. I picked up a rock to represent each fear, doubt, or belief I wanted to release, shouted my releasing statement, and hurled the rock into the ravine. Then I stepped, literally and metaphorically, into the new intention I wanted to bring into being.

It changed my life.

Not immediately. And not only because I threw stuff. But what’s become evident to me as I look back on that day a mere six years later—living a completely different life, having uncovered self-sabotaging patterns I didn’t even know back then I was perpetuating, having stepped into a level of flourishing, fulfillment, and impact that felt completely aspirational then—is that intention is powerful.

Forming a conscious intention, then directing your mind, spirit, and actions toward it, is a little bit magic.

The action piece is crucial, though, which makes it not really magic at all. I checked in with these intentions regularly, I took scary new steps, I started therapy, I invested in my own growth, I adopted a word of the year (CHANGE) and made choices to align with it. But it started with the releasing and intention-setting.

There was very little in those statements that was tangible. This wasn’t a goal list. It was things like “I release all fear of the judgment of others. I call in boldness to do, say, and be exactly who I am.” Things like “I release all self-doubt and lack of faith in my abilities. I call in confidence and true belief in the value of what I have to offer.”

When I said those things at 40, I did fear the judgment of others and I did not feel confident in what I had to offer. Much that was on the list related to what I’ve since realized was myself faithfully obeying the covert command of my youth: Play small. Small is virtuous, humble, safe. Small is the right size for a woman to be.

Last year, I turned 45. That also felt milestone-ish, equidistant between 40 and 50, not a crone yet but nowhere near my maiden self either. I read through my 40th birthday statements, and every single one was now simply the reality of how I felt within myself, the way I was showing up, the work I was doing. 

I decided it was time to throw some more objects of nature into another natural resource.

This time I was solo, and I biked to a secluded spot on the St. Lawrence River near where I now live (with my beautiful family). As I called out each of my new releasing statements, I threw a rock into the river. On the final one, I said out loud, “I release playing small.” I threw the rock. I said, “I step into the enormity that I am here for.”

As the words left my mouth, the rock plunged into the water and the ripples expanded, concentric circles growing bigger and bigger. Not small anymore. Huge. I was so delighted. I hadn’t even planned the symbolism. I laughed and laughed.

A few days ago, it was my 46th birthday, blessedly free of milestones. I biked back to that same spot on the river and reviewed last year’s statements. Some of them are a work in progress, but for most there’s been giant movement in just a year. I’m giving myself till my 50th to finish bringing them into being, and then I expect I will create some more.

But just for fun, I said the “playing small” statement again and threw a rock and watched the ripples expand, and I laughed about it all over again.

Because the symbolism is awesome. Because some objectively big things are now happening in my external world. And because I really do feel that I’m releasing playing small. 

This doesn’t mean there aren’t still growth edges I’m bumping up against—discomfort zones to do with permission and audacity, to do with safety and exposure. I do have days I want to retreat under the covers and not come out. But on the whole, I feel confident that I have the tools and the support to keep growing into that bigness.

If there’s a body of water near you, I recommend throwing some things into it. (Not litter. I mean, like, rocks.) With intention. With purpose. Then, watch the ripples flow.

Recently I broached the subject of maternal ambivalence with my teenage daughters. I asked if it made sense to them—if it felt possible and true—that “I fantasized about walking out on my kids” did not equal “I didn’t love my kids” or “I wished they didn’t exist.”

Because when my daughters were much smaller than they are now, I did fantasize about walking out. Instead of doing that, I wrote a novel about a mother who carries out that escape fantasy and a daughter who lives with the fallout. That novel is soon to be published, and I’m in the pre-publicity stage where my publisher is asking me to write answers to questions like “What compelled you to write this book?” 

Gulp. It’s time to decide whether I’ll be hiding behind fiction or whether I’m brave enough to answer truthfully and publicly—and the biggest consideration is how will it affect my daughters if I do?

I really don’t think I’d have been capable of following through on child abandonment (and I’m not just saying that to cover my butt). But when I was in the throes of early motherhood, under-resourced, overwhelmed, my identity and intellectual life and creative dreams thoroughly decimated, I understood women who do walk out. I got it. I wanted to.

But in a culture that has smashed a lot of taboos, this still feels like a thing you’re not allowed to say.

If you don’t have children, it’s okay to express doubts about devoting your time, finances, body, brainpower, and emotional energy to domesticity and decades-long responsibility for a dependent human. I underlined line after line in Sheila Heti’s Motherhood and was so grateful for her transparent questioning of the toll modern motherhood exacts—but she doesn’t have kids, which means these questions can be a kind of thought experiment, free of any charges of neglect, with no living humans to interpret or misinterpret what that ambivalence means about their very existence.

If you do have children and you write fiction about a mother who neglects or leaves her kids, it’s okay to gesture to some kernel of related personal experience as long as you quickly distance yourself by emphasizing that THIS IS TOTALLY FICTION I WOULD NEVER EVEN THINK THIS. I’ve read more than one interview with a novelist-mother who takes this approach, and I’m always left feeling cheated or tricked in some way, slightly shame-faced that here I was relating to their bold fiction while they deny their own identification with it.

It does feel important to me to be truthful as I begin talking about my novel out in the world. Important for the current overwhelmed, under-resourced woman in the throes of early motherhood. Important for the child-free woman feeling pressured by societal encouragement to reproduce and hoping her doubts will magically evaporate the moment the baby’s in her arms. Important for the woman who wants a child but isn’t sure she wants to be a mother, not in the traditional culturally-sanctioned way.

But—just in case I’m sounding confident here—I’m worried about this honesty. 

In my novel, the mother (an actress) creates a one-woman show called The Mother Act when her daughter is a toddler. The daughter grows up in the shadow of this scathing depiction of maternal ambivalence, and she’s harmed by it. Now that my book—also called The Mother Act—is about to come out, and now that my daughters are not toddlers but teenagers fully capable of reading and making meaning, this plot point is feeling even more fraught. It’s also very meta. I don’t want the art I’ve created to have the same damaging effects as the art in the story.

But I have to believe that my decision to be honest is ultimately for my daughters too, these two sensitive, perceptive, scary-smart young people I’m privileged (let me be clear) to have in my life. These girls are making their way into a world that has certain expectations of what it is to be female. If I want them to be free to discover and speak what’s true for them, doesn’t that start with setting my own example?

But maybe I’m just saying that to make myself feel better? 

I’ve been writing novels since I was 8 years old. In Spring 2024 (many, many years since I was 8 years old), my debut novel is coming out with a dream team of passionate advocates at Random House Canada and Dutton in the US. The book deal was officially announced this week. I’m so proud of this novel and so grateful to be here after decades of keeping the faith, doing the work, failing and failing and failing better, learning how to be not just a writer but the writer I wanted and needed to be. 

But my deep relationship with the creative process and my understanding of myself as a writer have emerged not from this week’s shiny book deal pinnacle but from those decades of quietly, invisibly learning how to show up for and stay with my writing.

And even though it sure is nice to be able to point to that book deal as evidence that I know a thing or two as a writer and coach, I’m just as proud of those decades of faithful apprenticeship that looked, at the time, a lot like failure.

It’s in those decades that the First Draft Novel Coaching Program is rooted. 

You might relate to some or all of my experience: 

I spent years pushing myself hard in my writing, judging every word as it appeared on the screen, my need to succeed so high that writing two sentences could take an hour. 

I spent more years in a pendulum swing in the other direction, following my intuition with no plan, nurturing my perfectionist self through the discomfort of learning to let go of control, but ultimately wandering in a lot of aimless circles with no engine to drive my novel attempts forward.

Complete freedom on the page can be as immobilizing as writing from a judgy analytical mind. For me, creative liberation and successfully completed novels have come through the middle path of freedom within a framework.

That, combined with getting conscious about psychological blocks (for me, those included self-doubt, insecurity, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of letting go) has created powerful transformation in my creative life.

It does the same for the writers I work with now. 

In the First Draft Novel Coaching Program, we write a raw, fast first draft of a novel with gentle awareness and conscious shifting of the doubts, fears, and limiting beliefs that might have been standing in the way until now. 

And we use the same 4 creativity-sustaining principles that enabled me to finally claw my way out of struggle on the page and into ease and flow: 

Freedom within a gentle framework supports creativity.

The subconscious is where your meaningful material lives, and getting out of analytical mind is what allows you to tap into it.

Focusing on process rather than product frees you to write with vitality, presence, and flow.

A consistent creative practice is the bedrock of a flourishing writing life and will sustain you through the creation of your novel.

With those 4 principles, and within the supportive container of the 12-week coaching relationship, we’re able to nurture and sustain an ecosystem where creativity can flourish. 

It isn’t magic, but sometimes it feels like it.

If you’d like to know more about how this novel-writing process works and what a coaching relationship feels like, you can learn more here. 

You’ll also find a link to book a discovery call with me here. I’d love to talk with you about your writing, your novel idea, and whether coaching could be the right step to help you finally write the novel you’ve been trying to write for decades. 

Because even though I believe my path was the one I needed to be on, I don’t believe learning how to write a successful novel has to take as long as it took me. I created this program so that, for you, it doesn’t have to.

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash.