Yabbit the Rabbit began as my mother’s idea, but it took me years to understand what she had really given me. What started as a family phrase became a race against time, memory, love, and the creation of The Rabbit in the Moon.
Director Christopher Nolan often returns to one theme in his films: time. In Memento, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet, time is not just part of the story. It becomes the pressure surrounding the characters.
In many ways, Yabbit the Rabbit was created under that same pressure.
Not at first. At first, Yabbit was only an idea. A phrase. A character my mother imagined long before I had the discipline, confidence, or emotional understanding to bring him to life.
The phrase that started Yabbit the Rabbit
To understand where Yabbit came from, you have to go back to the 1990s, when my mother, Barbara Bedner, used to answer my hesitation with one of her favorite phrases:
“No more yeah-buts.”
I was a kid who often liked the idea of trying something new until it was time to actually do it. Then the excuses would start. “Yeah, but…” became my little way of stepping away from discomfort before I had to face it.
My mother saw the pattern clearly. She started imagining a rabbit who did the same thing, a little character who always had a “yeah, but” ready when something felt hard, scary, or uncertain.
That was the beginning of Yabbit the Rabbit.
To read the full origin story, visit: https://www.yabbitrabbit.com/parent-resources/origin-of-yabbit-the-rabbit
The spark that waited for its moment
When I was in college at the turn of the millennium, my mother encouraged me to create the world of Yabbit the Rabbit and write his stories. I loved writing, but I did not feel ready. The idea had come from her, not me, and I had no real sense of where to begin.
She did not feel confident enough to write it herself either, so the idea sat quietly.
On March 24, 2004, I purchased the Yabbit the Rabbit domain name, hoping that would finally create momentum. It did not. Registering the domain was easy. Finding the heart of the story was much harder.
Looking back, I can see the irony clearly. I may have been the child who inspired Yabbit, but my mother was the one who truly believed in him first.
My mother never stopped believing in Yabbit
My mother’s belief in the character never faded.
The last written correspondence I have from her about Yabbit is dated November 8, 2007. She had met a children’s book illustrator who was looking for a story for children ages 7 to 10, and she encouraged me to connect with her.
Once again, I hesitated. I was caught up in my own career, my own plans, and my own life.
I told myself there would be more time. More time to write. More time to figure it out. More time to return to the idea when I finally felt ready.
There is a painful kind of clarity that comes from realizing how often “later” is just another version of “yeah, but.”
When time became impossible to ignore
In July 2024, I received a call from my mother’s memory care home. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2018, and the nurse told me her health was rapidly declining.
That call changed everything.
For years, I had carried this extraordinary idea around with me while telling myself I would get to it eventually. But eventually had run out of patience. My mother had given me Yabbit, and I had spent years answering the opportunity with my own version of “yeah, but.”
In that moment, there could be no more yeah-buts.
It was time to honor her imagination, her belief in me, and the character she had dreamed up long before I understood why he mattered.
Why Yabbit finally had to be written
When I finally returned to Yabbit, I no longer saw him as just a playful character from a family phrase. I understood him as a way to help children who hesitate before beginning.
Children do not always avoid things because they are lazy or difficult. Sometimes they avoid because the first step feels too big. They want to try, but they freeze. They want to join, but they hold back. They want to be brave, but they need the beginning to feel smaller.
That was me as a child. That was the feeling my mother recognized. And that became the emotional center of The Rabbit in the Moon.
Yabbit gives that hesitation a name. The story gives children a way to see the feeling without being shamed by it. And the Tiny Brave Hop Method gives parents, teachers, and children a simple way to respond: not by pushing harder, not by saying “just be brave,” but by finding one small step forward that feels possible.
To learn more about using tiny brave steps with hesitant children, read: https://www.yabbitrabbit.com/parent-resources/how-to-help-your-child-take-tiny-brave-hops
A story my mother never got to see finished
My mother did not get to see the finished book the way I wish she could have. That is the hardest part of the story.
But The Rabbit in the Moon exists because of her. Yabbit exists because she saw something in my childhood hesitation and turned it into a character. She understood, long before I did, that children need language for the moment when they want to try but cannot quite begin.
That is why this book will always belong to her imagination first. I wrote it. But she dreamed him up.
Buy the Book
If your child hesitates, freezes before trying, says “I can’t,” or needs courage to feel smaller, The Rabbit in the Moon was created for that moment.
Yabbit is not fearless. He pauses. He worries. He feels the size of the journey before him. With Snail’s steady support, he learns that courage does not have to arrive all at once. It can begin with one tiny brave hop.
That is the story my mother imagined years ago, and the story I finally understood in time to bring into the world.
