I’m starting NaNoWrimo, but I’m doing non-fiction. I hope you will stay with me this month as I blog every day what I hope will grow up to be some kind of book one day.
At the end of the story I have to look back to the beginning. Where is the beginning? It’s actually somewhere before I can remember. It’s where I was learning to read signs and billboards and TV Guides. I was learning to love words without even realizing it. My mother read me stories and as I got older, when she couldn’t keep me in books from the library, ended up letting me read the “adult” ones she had checked out.
I didn’t know that I was going to want to write. I didn’t know that when all else failed me, my love for words and reading and writing would bring me back to a place of wanting my life back again. I had no idea that when my life got hard, over and over, I’d find a refuge in putting words together for others to read. I definitely never dreamed that one day I’d want to put lots and lots of words together to tell other people how I felt and hope to make things easier for someone else who might be struggling.
For once in my life, I am going to write my narrative for other people to read. Then I’m going to rewrite that narrative so that it might heal the hard things that have happened in my life. I’m going to tell you some of the lies I’ve been told, and I’ll tell you how I learned that those things were actually not true. Why? Because back in that long ago time before I can remember, I learned to love words and what they could do. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I remember reading books that helped me feel better. It wasn’t until I was even older than that, I learned that my writing could reach out to others and make them feel better and less alone. That was when I realized that I had finally found something I was good at.
I don’t know who will read this. I don’t know if anyone will read this. But if you find it, I hope it will touch your heart. I don’t want you to feel alone. This is my way of living beyond the fear the lies made me feel. This is all straight from my heart without editing. It’s scary as it can be, but I’m going to put words together and tell my story in hopes that someone else might live beyond the fear too.
Finding Our Voices Together 