I can remember all of my teachers throughout elementary school
referring to me as a writer.
Girlishly giddy, I wondered if that was really true. In junior high my favorite
English teacher, Ms. Hennessey, said that "I should really think about writing
someday" because my stories were so beautiful. When I think about my child-self,
my little girl memories, all that young girl wanted to be was a storyteller, a
poet, an actress, a person who gathers words like a florist chooses flowers and
then arranges them in beauteous bouquets, delivering them to delighted
recipients. I believe there has always been a writer within me. For me, writing
is spiritual and connects me to all living.
Secretly, I have never stopped hoping that one day I would
become that writer my teachers all recognized in me. At a certain point, I’m
not sure when, I abandoned that youthful dream and I connected with other callings that fit: homemaker, wife,
mother, and now grandmother. I found usefulness, beauty, and nobility in each of these roles. I love all of these defining hats, but what I still want to be,
in a dreamy far-off kind of way, is a writer. When I write, I can see things
that I can’t otherwise see. I become less "stuck" and my thoughts and feelings flow freely from my fingertips. I am able to make peace
with my past and frolic with the future in a way that gently moves me towards God and quietly reassures me of our infinite worth to Him as flawed and fragile human beings. At my keyboard, things make perfect
sense, in flashes and glimpses, and thoughts and emotions line up into black
and white rows. Those little lines feed me and fuel me, like a power smoothie
sliding down the back of my throat. Somewhere along the way I forgot I am a writer. My pink and white dreams
faded and I shelved this intrinsically natural and creative piece of me.
At forty seven, I needed
to write like middle aged men need sports cars. The unexpected death of my
sweet father left me murky, tangled, and teary. I know now that my loss and
introspection placed me on a path back to myself. I found writing as one of my
first markers. When I was engulfed in grief, I wrote about it. When I was
lonely, displaced, and as I watched my only daughter and last child bolt from
nest to New York, I wrote about it. When I needed to find a class (any class)
to fill my nights while my husband travelled on business, I chose an Adult Ed.
writer’s workshop and began writing as therapy. It was there I began to reconnect
with my own wholeness-- physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
This past semester has
been an extension of all of that. As time consuming and stressful as it sometimes was working and going back to college, I welcomed the opportunity to write each week for English class, as
I excavated and polished the raw, the emotional, and the very spiritual. My
love for the written word and my ability to massage thoughts and feelings and
lay them down, line upon line, is inherent. It is real. I have been refreshed in
the basics, giving me the confidence to continue nurturing this heavenly gift.
As I leave this first, and oh—so—important writing class, I do so with a renewed
gratitude and reverence for all of the
written word around me, those words and teachings written by the hand of God,
and for the secular writing that continues to both
inspire and sustain me. I have joyously reclaimed my right to write in
an active form of communion with myself, God, and my pen.
