I wasn’t planning to have a revelation on Christmas Day.
I was on pain medication, recovering from surgery, wrapped in a blanket, half-listening to the familiar sounds of a movie I’ve seen more times than I can count. We put on Little Women because it’s comfort. Because it’s safe. Because it’s the kind of movie you can drift in and out of without missing anything important.
Or so I thought.
That story has lived alongside me for decades. The book too. Little Women isn’t just a favorite, it’s a companion. One of those stories that helped shape my inner world before I had words for it. It sits comfortably in my personal top five, alongside Dead Poets Society, The Princess Bride, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Avengers: Endgame which probably explains a lot about me, honestly.
So I expected nostalgia. Familiar lines. Predictable tears in the usual places.
What I didn’t expect was to see the story differently.
Maybe it was the fog of recovery. Maybe it was the tenderness of a hard year. Or maybe it was the fact that I had just come back to writing in a serious way and was finally paying attention.
Whatever the reason, this time I didn’t just watch Jo March.
I watched her write.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
I’ve always connected with Jo. Her ambition. Her restlessness. Her refusal to quietly accept the life everyone else seems ready to choose. The ache of loving your people fiercely while still feeling pulled toward something more has always felt personal.
But this time, I didn’t see her primarily as a sister or a dreamer or even a woman navigating adulthood.
I saw her as a working writer, and that changed everything.
Jo wasn’t blocked. She wasn’t waiting around for inspiration. She wasn’t romanticizing the process.
She was producing.
While living in New York, Jo was writing sensationalist fiction for a tabloid-style newspaper. Thrilling tales. Lurid, melodramatic plots filled with pirates, villains, danger, and exaggerated romance. Stories designed to sell quickly and be consumed just as fast. Potboilers. The literary equivalent of whatever people were most likely to grab off the shelf that week.
And she did it for a reason.
Jo needed the money. Her family needed the money. Beth needed medical care. Jo wanted financial independence and a way to contribute that didn’t require her to disappear into a life that didn’t fit her.
This wasn’t selling out.
This was survival.
But even as the stories sold, Jo felt uneasy about them. She called them rubbish. She knew they didn’t sound like her. She sensed the gap between what she was capable of and what she was producing. She was successful, but uncomfortable. Published, but not fully present in her own work.
That tension is what makes her conversation with Professor Bhaer so quietly devastating.
He doesn’t tell her she lacks talent. He doesn’t dismiss her discipline or ambition. He doesn’t tell her to stop writing.
He names what’s missing.
He criticizes the work as empty. As lacking honesty. As writing that may entertain but doesn’t reflect the depth of the woman he knows. And then he says the line that finally landed for me this time:
“You must write from life, from the depths of your soul. There is nothing in here of the woman that I am privileged to know.”
And then, almost gently:
“There is more to you than this if you have the courage to write it.”
Not more effort.
Not more output.
More courage.
That’s the pivot.
Jo isn’t told to abandon writing. She’s invited to change how she writes. To stop borrowing voices and start trusting her own life as worthy source material. To move away from what sells fastest and toward what’s truest.
Watching that unfold felt uncomfortably familiar, because this year, I came back to writing in a big way.
Writing has always been part of me. From the time I was little, books were my safe place. They articulated feelings I didn’t yet know how to say out loud. Writing lived in me early, even when it didn’t always have room to grow.
Then life happened.
Writing didn’t disappear.
It got placed on a shelf labeled someday.
Responsibility is loud. Practicality is persuasive. Careers, families, bills, and the sensible path have a way of winning if you let them. Especially if you’re someone who takes obligations seriously and doesn’t romanticize risk.
And if I’m honest, it wasn’t just logistics that pushed writing aside.
It was fear.
At different points, I was told I wasn’t religious enough to write anything spiritual. That my faith wasn’t tidy or authoritative enough to count.
At other times, the voice was internal. You’re not smart enough to write about work or leadership or culture. That belongs to people with more credentials and more polish.
Somewhere between those messages, I decided writing might be safest if it stayed private.
Because writing, when you care about it, is exposure. It’s offering your inner world to someone else and hoping they handle it gently.
So I waited.
I built a career. I showed up for my people. I learned. I listened. I gathered stories without quite realizing that I was doing exactly what writers do when they’re not writing yet.
But the shelf doesn’t erase the longing.
It just postpones it.
Every now and then, writing would tap on the glass. A sentence would form while I was driving. A paragraph would take shape during a meeting. I noticed how often I reached for language when I was trying to make sense of something complicated or human.
Still, the question lingered.
Who would I even be writing for?
The spiritual crowd might find me too grounded in real life. The business crowd might find me too grounded in real people. The experts might wonder who I thought I was, speaking with this much audacity.
So writing stayed shelved. Not abandoned. Just deferred.
Which is why watching Jo March write the way she did hit me so hard.
She wasn’t writing the truest thing she had to say yet. She was writing what felt acceptable. What felt publishable. What felt defensible. And in doing so, she kept herself just safe enough to keep going, but not brave enough to be fully seen.
I recognized that instinct immediately.
Because choosing someday is often just choosing safety in disguise.
And eventually, someday asks to be answered.
When I picked writing back up, I didn’t ease in. I tried different formats and tones. I focused on consistency. I challenged myself to put work into the world regularly. I built momentum.
And I’m proud of that.
But if I’m honest, not all of that writing came from the deepest place in me.
Some of it came from deadlines I set for myself.
Some of it came from wondering what might perform well.
Some of it came from wanting to prove that I could do this now.
Some of it was fine. Not bad. Just safe.
Watching Jo again reminded me that productivity and authenticity are not the same thing.
You can write constantly and still avoid writing the truest thing you have to say. You can be disciplined and published and still feel disconnected from your own voice. You can succeed and still know there’s more in you.
Jo’s story isn’t about rejecting structure or money or ambition.
It’s about recalibration.
About choosing to let truth lead instead of performance. About trusting that your real life, with all its complexity and contradiction, is enough to write from.
That pivot isn’t glamorous.
Writing from life is slower. Riskier. Quieter.
It doesn’t always announce itself with applause. Sometimes it feels like hesitation. Like a sentence you almost delete because it feels too exposed. Like a piece that takes longer because you’re still figuring out what’s true.
That’s usually the work that matters.
Because when you write from life, you don’t get to hide behind tropes or trends or formulas. You can’t borrow someone else’s voice when the words land too close to the bone.
Writing from the heart removes your armor.
It asks you to trust that your lived experience is enough. That your perspective matters. That you don’t need to sensationalize your story for it to be worth telling.
That’s the courage part.
And that’s what this season feels like for me.
Not abandoning deadlines.
Not rejecting structure.
Not pretending metrics don’t exist.
But refusing to let them be the loudest voice in the room.
Clicks and likes can tell you who noticed. They can’t tell you who was changed.
Jo’s pivot reminded me that writing that lasts isn’t always the writing that sells the fastest. It’s the writing that recognizes someone including the writer.
I don’t want to write just to be seen.
I want to write so someone feels less alone.
I want to write so I feel less divided.
There is more to me than what performs well.
And there is more to you than what’s easy to publish.
If you’re a writer, or want to be a writer, or you’re someone who keeps circling the thing you love and wondering if you’re allowed to take it seriously now, hear this:
You’re not late.
You’re not behind.
You’re standing at the same crossroads Jo stood at, between what works and what’s true.
And the invitation is the same.
Write from life.
From the depths of your soul.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t have to make it loud or impressive.
Start where you are. Say what’s honest. Let it be human and let it be yours.
Trust that what’s real will last longer than what’s loud.
The rest will catch up.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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