Building a Room of My Own: On Finding Silence, Space, and the Freedom to Create

...and the voice that found me there

“If womanhood, motherhood, heck…humanhood feels like a sacred spiral, part spiritual practice, part primal scream, Momtemplative, is where you’ll feel seen and hopefully a little less alone in this human family we all find ourselves in. I invite readers to slow down, give yourself a lot of grace as you contemplate life, and everything in between. Because, let’s be honest, there’s a lot that happens in the in-between.”

“Do you ever feel like the big secret is that we are gods? We fuc-ing create life. We are so powerful.” Rachel Yoder

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I didn’t expect an essay written in 1929 to speak directly into my life in 2025.
But that’s what happened the first time I read A Room of One’s Own.

I felt as though Virginia Woolf had reached across space and time, listening in on my thoughts knowing the quiet ache of a woman longing for her own space and the freedom to create.

Note: All Virginia Woolf quotes in this piece are taken directly from her 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own, woven into my reflections as imagined conversation.

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My husband had just left the house to run an errand.

The moment the door closed and the house went quiet, I felt myself exhale, not just in my body, but in my mind.
A stillness settled in.
Suddenly, there was space for my own thoughts. Space to reflect without the possibility of someone interrupting me with a question or asking, “What are you doing?”

And then, as if her spirit from beyond had been waiting for this quiet moment, her words from her essay emerged from inside me…a conversation began between two women separated from 100 of years but connected none the less by the longing for a place to be free financially and creatively in mind, body and spirit.

Virginia: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Me: When I first read that line, Virginia, it felt like you had stepped into my own thoughts. I had surprisingly never heard of A Room of One’s Own until recently, but there it was. You had written my longing into words nearly a century before I named it myself.

I’ve been carrying this thought around for months, the need for a space to just be with myself, by myself…to create. To linger. To not be interrupted. To have time with my thoughts without having to retreat to some corner of the house, hoping not to be disturbed.

I think many women feel this way. Mothers especially…women brimming with creativity and art waiting to be born. But without the time and space, without a room of their own, those ideas never get the oxygen they need.

I have felt that at a time when I was in the thick of raising four children and my only escape, was the bathroom floor, a closet or hiding in the car in the driveway to catch my breath, to give ideas the chance to take shape.

Virginia: “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

Me: Yes, the mind can be free, but I’ve learned that without physical space and uninterrupted time, that freedom is fragile.

In my mind, I can see it:

A small cottage in the countryside on the outskirts of a quaint village, secured by my own financial means.
Cobblestone path, roses climbing the walls. Inside, minimal and peaceful. A writing desk facing an open window with wooden shutters, the country air drifting in. Dryed sunflowers perched inside a handmade clay vase I found at the village market. My space is unapologetically unkempt, papers on chairs, notes posted around my space of ideas yet to be fully birthed. No one questioning or trying to “clean up” my creative mess.

My own creative chaos.

The quiet is my own, available for me to receive what floats in the air to be captured by my creative pen. No one calls my name. No one asks what I’m doing. My thoughts move freely, uninterrupted.

Photo by Lois Portelli on Unsplash

And I often wonder who I/we would truly be if I/we had that room, a space of my/our own with uninterrupted time to fully create.
Who would that woman become?
What would come fully online from within her if she had unlimited time and no financial constraints?
Who would that mother, the woman working full-time, the single mom raising children, the supportive wife be if she could come fully alive creatively, without interruption?

Virginia: “Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor…”

Me: I’ve been married for over twenty years. Most of that time I stayed home raising my children, not earning money of my own. This was a choice I made and have zero regrets making it, but definetly there were many times where I felt emotionally ungrounded, fearful and even angry not being able to have the personal financial means to expand my creative landscape.

Now, as an empty nester wanting to write full-time, I feel the pull for financial independence more strongly than ever — to create when, where, and how I want, without calculating the cost or asking for permission every time I want to get away for a weekend or more.

And yet here I am, depending on my writing to give me the very thing I most need to write freely.

Yes, women have come so far. You would be astonished, Virginia, at the spaces we’ve carved out. Women dominating certain creative spaces online, flourishing in publishing, politics, creative stages, workplaces, and not only thriving financially in a patriarchal built society but creating opportunities that were once locked away from us.

But your words cause me to pause and think: the room is not just a room.
It’s not just four walls and a desk.

It’s the unbroken stretch of time where the mind can wander.
It’s the financial breathing room that lets a woman write the truth as she sees it.
It’s the refusal to let our creativity be an afterthought.

And I think about how many women have never been given that chance.
How many have stories inside them that the world will never hear because there was never a door they could close or an income that could sustain them long enough to write.

A room of one’s own and financial independence aren’t luxuries.
They are the ground on which a woman can build her truest work.

The place where she is free to create without asking permission.

The room is not the end.
It’s the beginning.

My hope is that we all find ours.

With warmth and wonder,

Sherry🦋

I often wonder who my first paid subscriber will be — maybe it’s you. Like the first dollar a small business frames on the wall, your support would mark the beginning of this creative journey. But whether you subscribe for free or paid, I’m deeply grateful you’re here and part of this room I’m building with words.