Writing For Her
For years, I have been told that writers need to know who they are writing for.
Find your reader. Picture her. Know what she needs, what she struggles with, what she hopes for. Some people will even tell you to give her a name.
It is very good advice.
But in my typical fashion, I challenged and bucked against it a little.
Who is my reader? Why do I need to define a reader in such detail? Can’t I just write when the Spirit moves me?
Maybe part of my resistance was because my writing has never felt as though it fit neatly into one particular box for one particular reader. My stories have changed because my life has changed, and the people who have found themselves in my words haven’t always been the people I would have thought to identify as my “ideal reader.”
Besides, I have always felt deeply convicted that I write first for God. He gave me the gift, and I want to use it for Him and for His glory.
I still believe that.
But maybe that isn’t the whole answer.
About a decade ago, after bravely spending a long weekend at a fall writing retreat with others from my online writing group, I sat on a 2-hour plane ride home with lots of new knowledge, creative energy, a pencil and journal in hand, determined to figure out exactly who this reader of mine was.
I wrote and wrote, filling pages with everything that identified her. What mattered to her, what she struggled with, what she longed for, and all the things I wanted to speak into her life and her pain point, so that my words might console.
I filled page after page.
I tried to picture her and her life.
But I couldn’t name her.
Eventually, I heard the pilot’s voice telling us to prepare for landing, so I tucked away my pencil and journal. When I made my way to the curb with my luggage, my family was waiting for me with big posters welcoming home their momma and wife after a long weekend without her. What a greeting. What a weekend that filled my creative cup.
And then, I was quickly swept back to my vocation and ordinary life. I would get to writing eventually.
For a time, I forgot about that reader.
Months later, I opened that journal again.
I reread everything I had written about the woman I thought I was supposed to be writing for.
There I was.
All over those pages.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t name her.
I was writing for me.
When I first felt the call to write and share my words, I was trying to make sense of my own life, including things I didn’t yet dare to write about. I wrote about motherhood, marriage, faith, and raising a family, and sometimes simply about keeping a home. I tucked many of those stories away, some of which I am only beginning to share now.
I was in the trenches of raising babies and keeping a home, trying to build a strong, healthy, and faithful marriage and create a steady, beautiful home while searching for witnesses, guidance, and role models I hadn’t always known myself. I often wondered how you build something healthy when some of the examples around you have been broken.
So I wrote.
As my life changed, my writing and focus changed with it.
Maybe threads were being stitched together long ago.
Early in life, I put myself through college, working toward a degree in education and eventually becoming certified in both elementary and special education. Long before I became an advocate for my daughter, though, I learned something about advocacy from my mom.
Her hearing began declining when I was only about 10. She often struggled to tell people that she couldn’t hear them, and my mom sometimes tried to hide her hearing loss, worried about inconveniencing others or being a burden. I encouraged her to speak up for what she needed, even when she didn’t always feel able to do it herself.
Years later, when I became the mother of a daughter with progressive hearing loss who would eventually become deaf, I evolved and wasn’t just her mom, but also her advocate. And eventually, one of the most important things I could do was teach my daughter how to become one for herself. I thought I was to write about hearing loss and my daughter’s journey with it.
I learned God would call to me so much more to it than that. That was her story. I only knew a part of it.
It doesn’t escape me now how the Lord had been preparing me long before I understood what I might need any of it for.
Maybe that is one of the ways He works, weaving together our experiences, knowledge, and gifts, preparing us in ways we may only recognize when we look back.
I wrote because writing helped me understand what I was living.
I wrote because writing helped me understand what I was living.
Heather Lebano
But life kept changing. Crosses grew heavier, and searching for truth and hope became a lifeline.
There were other hard things, new losses and other stories I never imagined would become mine to tell. My husband was handed a terminal cancer diagnosis. I became his medical advocate and then his caregiver while we continued raising and launching our four children. I lost my mom in the middle of his illness, too.
And then I lost my husband, and life kept moving forward.
I became acquainted with grief.
Eventually, I began writing from inside of widowhood and grief, as I do now, trying to understand how we carry tremendous loss while continuing to live the life we are given.
I am becoming aquainted with rebuilding.
I wrote as I tried to find new rhythms and rebuild a life in which my identity and vocation had been so drastically altered, even while my deepest identity in Christ had not.
I wrote because I see the ripple effect of how faith saved me, and the strength I carried came only through Christ.
The stories changed because I changed. The experiences I have lived through have refined me, drawn me closer to God, and increased my faith.
And without a doubt, writing has helped me understand so much of this.
Looking back over what I have written in different and difficult seasons has also helped me see and remember things I may not have had the capacity to hold onto while I was living them.
Along the way, something else happened.
I have begun to understand my reader differently.
Because my reader doesn’t necessarily need to have a daughter with hearing loss, she doesn’t need to have cared for a husband with terminal cancer. She doesn’t need to be a widow. She doesn’t need to have lived my particular life at all.
She only needs to recognize something of herself within the words I write.
Maybe she knows what it is to have life turn out differently than she planned. Maybe she is learning to advocate for someone she loves, or finally learning to advocate for herself. Maybe she is caring for someone or grieving someone. Maybe she is standing at a threshold she didn’t expect.
Maybe she is raising children while carrying her own heartache. Or she is trying to believe God is still present when life looks nothing like she thought it would, while trying to notice sunrises, sunsets, blooming flowers and beauty in life when it al has felt so hard.
Maybe she is trying to figure out who she is becoming now, or learning that moving forward doesn’t mean leaving everything behind, especially after loss. Maybe she is clinging to her faith, to Jesus and finding comfort being wrapped in the mantle of the Blessed Mother, because that is where she finds peace.
Maybe her life did not turn out the way she planned, and she is discovering there can still be hope and joy, purpose and calling along a path she never expected to walk. Maybe she is learning that she can find the strength to move forward even if it is only one day at a time.
Maybe she is simply searching for a soft place to land.
Perhaps I don’t need to tell her—my reader—exactly where she belongs within my story. I can trust her to find herself there.
Over the years, readers have written back to me after reading a particular reflection. They have told me something I shared helped them understand their own grief or gave language to something they couldn’t articulate. Sometimes a story helped them better understand or support someone they loved. Sometimes they simply felt less alone. They found encouragement or hope or recognized God differently in their own circumstances. Maybe they found themselves knee-deep in prayer when they had never prayed before.
Many times, their circumstances looked nothing like mine.
That has shown me something important about finding our reader.
Our subject matter is not necessarily our reader. And the thing we create/write isn’t always the deepest thing we are offering.
The circumstances may be specific, but the human experience beneath them often isn’t. We write about our specific details because that is where we have lived. It is our story, and inside the details we share in our work, we can find the universal questions we all carry:
How do I love someone well? What do I do when life changes? How do I carry something I cannot fix? Where is God in this? How do I begin again? Who am I becoming in light of this uncertain life? How do I find hope or joy while or after living through dark seasons?
Perhaps that is where the reader finds us. It’s is where we find them.
Maybe finding our reader isn’t always about inventing someone whom we want to read our words.
Maybe it is about recognizing her in it and trusting that she might recognize something of herself in us, too. Maybe it’s about trusting God will allow those who need to read your words to find them.
Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us as writers and creatives who keep our eyes fixed above and cling to hope, Jesus taught in stories.
He spoke about seeds scattered on different kinds of soil, a shepherd searching for a lost sheep, a woman sweeping her house for a lost coin, a widow who gave all her “mite,” a father watching the road for his lost son, a Samaritan stopping beside a wounded stranger. He took ordinary things. His listeners understood and used them to reveal something deeper about God, themselves, and one another.
The circumstances of the stories were particular, but the truths within them reached far beyond the details.
Maybe that is part of the gift of story and, really, part of the gift of creating anything meaningful and being willing and able to share the vulnerable parts with others.
We offer something personal and specific, and another person recognizes something universal within it.
A painter may paint a landscape, but what someone receives from it may be peace or a sense of home. A musician may write about one particular loss, but someone hears her own heartache inside the song. A photographer captures an ordinary family moment that someday becomes a family’s treasure. A writer tells one very specific story, and someone whose life looks nothing like hers suddenly feels understood.
Maybe that is part of how we find our reader.
Not by assuming she has lived the same story we have, but by considering what within our story might meet her in her own.
Who might need these words? Who might recognize herself in them? Who might need the hope, encouragement or truth we have learned through living something she may be walking through now?
Maybe the reader isn’t always who we think she is.
Along with a conversation I had with my daughter last week about who we write for, a simple, but meaningful request inspired the words in this essay.
Claire Dwyer, the leader of the Vocare Mastermind I joined this summer, invited our cohort to do something this week. She asked us to find a photograph of ourselves as a little girl, somewhere around 5, 6, or 7. Old enough to have hopes and dreams, but young enough to believe they might actually come true.
Claire suggested we put her photograph somewhere you can see it while you work and then create something for her.
Write for her.
This reflection is for her.
Writers and creatives spend so much time thinking about what we are giving everyone else. Who needs this? Who will read it? Who will buy it or publish it. Will anyone share it? Does it fit my audience? Is this what people expect from me? Is my writing worth reading?
But perhaps there is another person we sometimes forget.
The person creating it.
Maybe you write for her, too.
The little girl you once were possessed gifts before she understood they were gifts, before she knew whether anyone would approve of them or whether they could become a career, a ministry, a book, a painting, a retreat talk, a song, a business or online shop, a vocation or simply something beautiful she offered to the world.
She had those gifts before she measured their worth by how they were received, before she compared them to everyone else’s, and long before she knew about platforms, algorithms, followers, book proposals, sales, reviews, rejection letters, contracts, or engagement.
For me, that little girl loved to write and tell stories. She created because an urge inside her wanted to create.
Maybe yours did, too.
Or she simply followed what delighted her. Maybe she noticed things. Made things. Imagined things. Paid attention to things other people seemed to walk right past. Maybe she sang or drew or danced or told stories or just kept journals. Maybe she stopped to smell the flowers. Maybe she didn’t have a name for any of it yet.
She was simply becoming who God created her to be, long before she understood what He might someday do with any of it.
Heather Lebano
What if part of our creative work is remembering her?
Who were you before you started questioning the gift? What did you love to make? What stories did you tell? What did you notice that other people seemed to walk right past? What made you lose track of time? What did you dream about before you learned to edit your dreams according to what seemed reasonable?
And perhaps even more importantly, what happened to her along the way?
Maybe someone dismissed the gift. Maybe someone laughed. Maybe someone told you there were more practical things you should be doing. Maybe you shared something vulnerable, and someone didn’t receive it well. Maybe you were rejected.
Maybe life became busy or uncertain, and there simply wasn’t room anymore. Maybe you began comparing your beginning to someone else’s middle. Maybe you stopped because you thought nobody was paying attention.
Or maybe you simply grew up and forgot.
Thinking about who my reader is, and looking at the picture of that little girl I once was, suddenly has me back on that airplane almost a decade ago, filling page after page with everything I knew about the woman I thought I was supposed to write for.
I couldn’t name her then.
Months after that trip, and after a very hard season, I would discover myself all over those pages.
Now, all these years and life lessons later, I am being asked to look even further back. Not just a decade ago, but decades ago.
At her.
The little girl I once was.
The timing feels especially fitting as I try to understand better who I am becoming in the face of an unimaginable loss and discern God’s will for my life in this season.
Perhaps looking back at who she was is somehow helping me understand the woman I am still becoming.
That is part of why her heart matters so much.
The heart of the reader does, too.
What if one of the ways we discover whom our work is for is by remembering who we once were?
It’s not because our reader has to be exactly like us. She doesn’t need to have lived my circumstances or carried my particular losses.
But she is asking a question I once asked, or she needs the encouragement I once searched for. Maybe she finds herself standing somewhere I once stood, trying to understand something I have since learned through living it.
Maybe she needs something I wish someone had placed into my hands or put on my heart years ago.
Maybe she simply needs to know she isn’t alone.
Maybe this is why I need that photograph of that little girl—me—beside me while I write.
Because God knew her before she knew any of this; He knew what He had placed within her. He knew where her life would take her. He knew the people she would love and the things that would break her heart.
He knew the stories and crosses she would someday carry, the words she would someday need to write, and the woman He would continue forming through it all.
Perhaps the same is true for you.
There may be things you have lived that you never would have chosen. Things you know now that you wish you didn’t have to know. Questions you have wrestled with. Places where God has met you. Things you have learned through loving and losing and failing and beginning again.
Somewhere out there may be someone who needs what you can offer now precisely because you have lived it.
Because sometimes we discover whom our work is for by looking at what God has already formed in us, what we have lived, what we notice, what we care about, and what we once needed ourselves.
Something happens to us when we faithfully use our gifts, too. We aren’t only creating something for someone else. We are being formed in the creating. We are becoming who the Lord calls us to be.
When I write, I make sense of what I have lived. I notice things I might otherwise miss. I remember and grieve. I give thanks. I discover where God has been. Sometimes, in putting words around the life I have lived, I recognize the woman I am still becoming.
Maybe there is healing in that, too, even when it comes slowly—in God’s time.
I think this is part of what it means to use the gifts God gives us. We offer them outwardly, but somehow, mysteriously, God uses them to form us inwardly, too. To heal us and to draw us closer to Him and His Sacred Heart.
So the next time someone asks you who you write for or who is your reader…maybe don’t begin only with demographics or a list of qualities belonging to someone you have conjured up in your creative mind.
Begin with a photograph.
Look at the little girl you once were and remember what she loved. Then look at the person you are now.
What have you learned? What have you survived? What truth do you know now that you wish you could place into those little hands? What has God shown you? What has drawn you closer to His heart?
Who were you when you needed what you now know when you share your stories?
There may be your reader.
After all these years of trying to understand who I am writing for, I am beginning to understand that there was never really only one answer.
I write for the woman somewhere on the other side of these words who needs encouragement or hope, to feel seen and heard.
I write for the person who sees a piece of her own story inside mine.
I write for my children because these words are part of the story I will leave them. I write so they can remember parts of their dad’s story, and of ours together, that only I now hold.
I write for God because ultimately I want my life and my words to point toward Him for His glory.
I write for me, too.
For the little girl I was, that one in the photo. For the dreams she dared to dream. For the future she imagined. For the life she pictured that did not grow as she planned.
For the woman I am.
And I write for the woman God is still calling me to become.
Maybe faithfulness is simply tending what God has given us and offering it.
And trusting Him with who receives it.
Today, I write for her, for the little girl, in the photograph. I write for me.
And for you, my dear reader, who may have needed the words I shared here today, yesterday, or the ones that are still to come.
I think this is part of what it means to use the gifts God gives us. We offer them outwardly, but somehow, mysteriously, God uses them to form us inwardly, too.
Heather Lebano
