When the Newborn Finds Its Neighbourhood
What a young book can teach us about beginning, belonging and growing without comparison
There is something deeply humbling about bringing a new book into the world.
After the writing, rewriting, editing, formatting, cover design, uploading, checking and finally pressing the button that says published, there is a strange silence.
You have done your part.
The book now has to begin its own journey.
You can no longer sit inside every page and explain what you meant. You cannot walk beside every reader. You cannot decide who will discover it, who will ignore it, who will recommend it or who will never know it existed.
You become something different.
You become its guardian.
And perhaps that is why I smiled when I recently noticed something happening around After the Wedding Ends on Amazon.
Our newborn had started crawling among the grown ups.
The newborn has entered the neighbourhood
After the Wedding Ends is still a very young book.
It has barely had time to find its feet.
Yet there it was, appearing alongside other books in the relationship and marriage space.
Some of those books already have readers. Some have accumulated reviews and ratings. Some have been around long enough to establish their identities and find their audiences.
Others are actively being promoted through Amazon advertising.
And there was our little book.
Crawling among them.
There is something beautiful about that.
Not because being placed alongside other books means that we have arrived.
It does not.
It does not mean Amazon has declared our book better than the others. It does not mean we have suddenly become established. It does not mean that the journey is over.
It simply means that our newborn has begun to find its neighbourhood.
And sometimes, that is more than enough reason to celebrate.
We often expect newborns to behave like grown ups
Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes we make with our beginnings is expecting them to look like someone else's middle.
We publish a book and immediately compare its sales with books that have been selling for years.
We start a business and compare its revenue with an established company.
We begin writing and compare our first manuscript with someone's tenth book.
We start building an audience and become discouraged because someone else already has thousands or millions of followers.
We look at another person's harvest while we are still watering our seed.
And then we wonder why our beginning feels inadequate.
But a newborn was never designed to behave like a grown up.
A newborn crawls.
A newborn falls.
A newborn gets up.
A newborn tries again.
A newborn explores the room one small movement at a time.
There is nothing embarrassing about crawling.
Crawling is movement.
There is a difference between proximity and arrival
This distinction matters.
Being in the neighbourhood does not mean that you own the neighbourhood.
Being alongside established books does not make a new book established.
Being visible does not automatically mean being successful.
Being noticed does not mean being finished.
But neither should we dismiss the significance of being there.
Sometimes the first evidence that something is beginning to move is simply that it has entered a space where movement can happen.
That is what I want to celebrate.
Not arrival.
Movement.
Not status.
Possibility.
Not comparison.
Belonging.
Our job is not to force the child to run
As guardians, we have a responsibility.
We must nurture the book without suffocating it.
We must introduce it to people without begging them to love it.
We must market it without allowing marketing to become its identity.
We must listen to what readers say without allowing every opinion to determine its direction.
And perhaps most importantly, we must give it time.
There is a temptation, especially in today's world, to believe that everything must happen immediately.
Immediate visibility.
Immediate sales.
Immediate reviews.
Immediate recognition.
Immediate success.
But meaningful things rarely become meaningful simply because we demanded that they grow faster.
Some things need time to develop roots.
The neighbourhood matters
A book also needs to find the people for whom its message makes sense.
After the Wedding Ends is not simply a book about weddings.
The wedding is the doorway.
The real conversation begins after the celebration.
What happens when the flowers disappear?
What happens when the photographs are stored away?
What happens when the guests return home?
What sustains two people when the applause becomes silence?
What happens when love has to become practice rather than promise?
Those are the questions that gave birth to this book.
And now the book has to find the people who are asking those questions.
That is why finding its neighbourhood matters.
A book does not need everyone.
It needs the right readers.
Perhaps we need to become better guardians of our beginnings
There is something else this little experience has taught me.
We are often very good at protecting established things and very impatient with new things.
We expect a newborn business to behave like an established company.
A new author to behave like an established author.
A new relationship to behave like one that has survived decades.
A new dream to produce the results of an old one.
But beginnings require a different kind of stewardship.
They need patience.
They need encouragement.
They need room to make mistakes.
They need protection from unnecessary comparison.
And they need guardians who understand that growth cannot always be seen immediately.
Let the newborn crawl
So, for now, I am happy.
Not because After the Wedding Ends has conquered anything.
It has not.
Not because it has arrived.
It has not.
I am happy because our newborn has begun to move.
It has started crawling.
It has entered a neighbourhood where other books are already living, growing and finding readers.
And that is enough for today.
Perhaps tomorrow it will crawl a little further.
Perhaps one day it will stand.
Perhaps later it will walk.
And perhaps, in time, it will run and then, fly to foreign countries.
But I am learning not to demand the running while the crawling is still teaching us something.
Because crawling is not failure.
Crawling is the beginning of movement.
And perhaps there is a lesson here for all of us who are nurturing something new.
Do not despise your beginning because someone else is further ahead.
Do not abandon your seed because another person's tree is already providing shade.
Do not measure your newborn against grown ups.
And do not mistake crawling for going nowhere.
Sometimes, the most important thing a new creation can do is simply begin moving in the right direction.
Our newborn has found its neighbourhood.
Now we will nurture it.
We will introduce it.
We will listen.
We will learn.
We will keep writing.
And we will let it grow.
May it keep crawling.
May it eventually stand.
May it learn to walk.
And one day, perhaps, may it run.
But when it does, I hope we will remember the little book that once crawled among the grown ups and taught us that every journey has to begin somewhere. 🌱📖
About the author
Dibi Jackson Monyepao is the author of Umbrellas of the Soul: Walking Through Life’s Storms with Grace and After the Wedding Ends: What sustains a relationship when the celebration is over. His writing explores life, relationships, leadership, resilience and the reflective wisdom found in ordinary human experiences.
The celebration may last a day. The relationship must live through every season that follows.
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