Allowing Myself to Write
I wanted to write as a child. I wanted to learn words, descriptive words, intriguing words, select words. I wanted to read those words aloud with feeling. Mostly I wanted to write. But I wore blinders from an early age that showed me one way of being, the way demonstrated by my grandmother and mother. That meant going to school and marrying, having children and putting all my energy and gifts into raising them.
Thankfully, they encouraged education. If something should happen to my husband, I might need to work to support my children. My aunts worked when their husbands could not support them, one as a kindergarten teacher, the other a nurse. While I respected what they did, I did not feel drawn to their work. They were not fulfilling a calling they were keeping their family going.
My mother thought an executive secretary’s job was ideal. My father’s office was the only one I was familiar with and it ran on cigarettes and stale black coffee. That’s what its putrid scent told me. However, there was a supply closet stacked with legal pads and pencils. The aroma of a fresh pad of paper held some attraction.
Wanting to write as a teen, I signed up for the yearbook and high school literary magazine. Encouraged by recognition I continued. Yet no one ever suggested I become a writer. I’d never heard of any teacher suggesting writing as a profession. Just as no one suggests becoming an artist of any type. It’s too risky, better to play it safe in some dependable career.
Even so the bravado of youth prevailed, and I declared my English major in college. I read and wrote and did well but never saw myself as a writer. I was some kind of wannabe groupie of the literary scene. Not really a part, just a fan, having worked in a bookstore and an audio book recording studio. Three years after my graduation from Ashland I asked for a recommendation to grad school for Library Science. After one semester in, “culling the collection,” I dropped that plan.
Caring for my children led to the field of lactation consulting that claimed me for many years. Collecting a history, I learned a person’s story. A single person metamorphosed into a parent before me. I was steeped in the sensory, thematic details of human life.
Now nearing sixty, I have given myself permission to write. Thanks to the structure of a Master of Fine Arts program, I have built a daily practice of writing that is healing and wholesome. A note on my desk reads, “I am breaking with old patterns and moving forward with my life.” Writing feels like play, time disappears and I rewrite toward something beautiful on the horizon. Writing has always called me, I only needed to let the blinders fall away. I was the one that held them in place all along.
