When Dr. Jessica Zucker first asked if I was planning to come to L.A. for BinderCon, I thought the clear answer was, “No.” The professional development conference, which launched in New York last year for women and gender non-conforming writers, sounded like what my career needed. But it was also across the country. My 14-month-old daughter needed me, I reasoned. I needed her.

Jessica is another writer and loss mom. We originally connected through essays we’ve published about our children. (Sharing begets sharing.) “There is a panel on loss that I’ll be attending,” she continued.

And then I knew I had to go.

Still, I hesitated. I hadn’t left H. for much longer than three hours, let alone three days. Technically, I could go. My body is my own again. After giving it willingly through 55 weeks of nursing, we successfully weaned. The infection that lurked and surfaced for a year finally receded, its root cause never found because it may well have been this grief, too. The emotional trauma lodged in the physical body, unscathed by round after round of western medicine. H.’s body is also her own. I’ve watched in inverse wonder as everything that goes in is now independent of me. Just a couple of months ago, it was the opposite. The crisis has passed.

So last weekend, I woke early, listened to H.’s breathing in her dark room, drove to the airport, and flew to California for the very first BinderCon L.A. The Facebook group sensation turned bicoastal, biannual conference was born in reaction to Mitt Romney’s reference to “binders full of women” when speaking of his hiring process. The chance to attend this symposium meant far more than talking about my book.

With speakers like The OpEd Project founder Katie Orenstein, it was a true call to action, to make sure our stories, opinions, and perspectives—disproportionately represented across media—get out of the binders. According to the Project’s research, as of 2014, women’s voices accounted for 21 percent of opinion writing—and that’s a greater percentage than their current contributions to Television (16 percent), Congress (20 percent), or Corporate Boards (15 percent).

Why is it so vital to ask, “Who narrates the world?”

“Because the stories we tell determine what we think about what happens, which determines what happens next,” Orenstein said.

Then came the final panel on the second day and a chance to listen to writers I admire talk about what has happened to them, the Death & Loss that has impacted their lives and their writing:

• “What helped me the most were other people’s stories… I have a debt to repay to do that for others.” —Nicole Belanger

• “I just didn’t care what anybody else thought and that was incredibly liberating.” —Emily Rapp Black

• “I wanted the loneliness.” —Niva Dorell Smith

• “Write because it feels good, because you need to, and because it helps you. It will turn out perfect at some point.” —Claire Bidwell Smith

• “Go from a perspective of abundance. We need all the stories. Yours, too, will be a gift.” —Mattea E. Kramer

• “Women are opening up the conversation about grief.” —Rebecca Soffer

I stood and told them they were why I was there. I asked a question about writing such as ours and the risk of sentimentality. It was and wasn’t what I wanted to say. One question couldn’t encapsulate what it really meant to be standing before them, after three years of writing about Lorenzo and leaving H. at home for the first time and wondering if I am ready to publish my memoir purely because the manuscript is. I wanted to ask so much more about audience and editing and memory and individual loss vs. universal relatability. Our losses and circumstances differed, but my pulse accelerated because we shared the same motivation to turn raw grief into meaning this way. And energy comes from harnessing that strength in shared company.

I sat next to a woman I’d met a few hours earlier—conversely, plenty of time to share our stories.

“Your son?” she leaned over and asked. “Did you name him?”

#chainlinkheartproject at BinderCon.

Lorenzo, I wrote with pride in my notebook and showed her. He was why I was sitting in that chair at all.

I drew a heart next to the second “o”. I am doing this more lately. Leaving hearts in my wake, giving them away. For so long I have been collecting and photographing them, craving the connection. The search lives on, but perhaps now, so filled am I of heart, I can spare some.

Back home with H., I am using the energy and the overflow to push the story farther. To. Pitch. The. Book. To remember that creative health can feel as important as physical health. To model that for my daughter.

I must narrate the story for her sake, too.