For years I’ve loved writing. Writing to me is a way that we take the experiences of the day, the emotions in our hearts, the thoughts in our minds and put them together into words, so that other people may get a picture of the world through our eyes.
When I was eight, it was short stories of unwanted children, which expressed a deep sadness and never ending feeling of unwantedness that I held in my heart. In my teens it was poems, which I wrote for my assignments, but they all held those deep, deep emotions and thoughts that we would never dare share with another. I shared my depression, suicidal thoughts and heartbreak, hidden behind the lives of fictional characters or flowery words. In this, I discovered how writing helped me understand myself and that it actually helped me cope with my situations and feelings.
I had never thought of writing as a career choice, I was far more interested in the “lucrative careers” that the school system seemed to put on a pedestal. I always thought though, that someday, I would publish some of my poems or write a novel.
At the beginning of grade 12, when most of those grand decisions for our futures are made, I discovered I was pregnant. At the time, it didn’t feel like a crisis. As an easy-going seventeen year old, I just shrugged and thought, “Well I guess I know what my future holds, I’m going to be a mother!” And from that point on, I made all my decisions around this one question: What will be best for me and my child? I wanted to graduate, but it was no longer important to me. I didn’t see how it would be any use in my future, which was now motherhood. I decided to finish all my courses the first semester in school and to then work full time at my job so that I could recieve maternity leave and stay at home with my child for the first year of motherhood. After the first semester, I only needed one more credit to graduate, but I put my diploma out of my mind. I really had so many other things to focus on at that time.
As I wrestled through the next season of life, writing took a different role in my life… journaling. Occasionally I was asked to speak at an event about my teen pregnancy and then I would get to share my story, which was about the only place I shared my written work with others.
About three years later, I was pregnant with my third child and I had a dream. Now I’m not the kind of person to think that every dream means something or that I need to do what my dreams tell me to. If I did that I would most likely wake up and rob a bank, and then spend the following days running from cops, who would suddenly turn into the most terrifying bear you’ve ever seen in your life. Really. Most dreams make absolutely no sense. But I had a dream where I received my high school diploma. I woke up and wept. It seemed like a piece of my life that had been long forgotten, yet here, in the dark of the night I was crying about something I didn’t even know I had really cared about. And sitting alone in the dark, I decided right then and there that I was going to graduate before my next baby was born. The very next day I made the arrangements to earn my final credit. A few weeks before my third child made his arrival, I went to my old high school and my principal handed me my diploma.
For the next seven years I continued to journal. And then, a few nights ago I had another dream. It held the same sense of loss that seemed to awaken a longing within me that I never knew I had. In my dream, I was going to college and majoring in journalism. When I woke up, I was reminded so clearly of the first time this had happened to me and how joyful I had been to receive my diploma. The ache I had felt before returned, so I immediately (in the middle of the night), got up and started looking into colleges nearby and what they had to offer. When it became clear to me that it would still be three years or so before I would be able to go back to school, I decided that I needed to sharpen up my writing skills while I waited. Thus, I decided to start this blog, even though I’ve never considered doing anything like this before. And I think the hardest part of starting a blog for me has been this introduction, since I much prefer to just write those things on my heart that seem to flow. But there’s my story on how this blog came to be. I hope you enjoy it.
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