When Motherhood Gives You Something You Never Expected to Create

Sometimes motherhood hands you a problem you never expected—and somehow, in trying to help your child, you discover something you didn’t know was waiting inside you.

I never set out to create a children’s book.

I was simply a mom trying to help her son.

It started with something heartbreaking

In kindergarten, I learned that my son was color deficient.

Learning that was heartbreaking for me as his mom. I kept thinking about how I could help him learn without making him feel like there was something wrong with the way he saw the world.

I wasn’t looking to become an author. I wasn’t building a business. I was trying to find a way to help my child.

I started with what I knew

Once he could read, I taught him to read the names printed on his crayons and markers. That gave him a way to learn what colors were called, even when he was seeing them differently.

I also taught him shapes.

Then I started putting ideas together.

Colors. Shapes. Creating. Learning.

Little by little, something began to take shape.

Creating changed the way I felt

This part is just as important to me as the book itself.

Thinking about my son’s color deficiency could leave me focused on the problem. Creating something purposeful gave me somewhere else to put those feelings.

It gave me happy thoughts.

Instead of constantly thinking, “My son has this issue,” I could think, “What can I create that might help?”

That question changed everything.

A book I never planned to write

In 2008, that creative idea became A Rainbow of Shapes.

I wanted something that brought colors and shapes together in an imaginative way. Something purposeful. Something that could help my son and potentially help other moms and children who were going through something similar.

The wording on the back of the book still captures the original purpose:

“An imaginative approach to help children with color deficiencies by using the primary colors of the rainbow in various shapes.”

It wasn’t a medical book.

It was a mom’s creative response to a difficult moment.

And then KidsWonderArt came back around

The book was one part of the story.

The bigger idea was always about children discovering, imagining, learning, and creating.

Years later, that same idea became the foundation for bringing KidsWonderArt back.

What started with one mom trying to help her son became something I could share with other families, parents, grandparents, teachers, and little artists.

What motherhood taught me

I used to think that helping my child meant finding the right answer.

Sometimes it means finding another way to ask the question.

Sometimes it means noticing what your child is showing you.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, it means creating something you never planned to create.

That’s one of the things I love most about motherhood. You can start out simply trying to get through one moment, and that moment can quietly lead you somewhere completely unexpected.

The thing I almost missed

If I had only focused on the difficult part of that experience, I might never have created the book.

Instead, I found something purposeful to build from it.

And that is a lesson I still carry with me:

You don’t always get to choose what motherhood puts in your path. But sometimes you get to choose what you create from it.

Read more about the story behind A Rainbow of Shapes, or explore the Creativity & Learning section for simple ideas inspired by that original vision.