When I was a child, I used to talk a lot. I was always going on about this or that, yammering about one idea or another. At some point, I was told to shut up. It was not likely an intentional put-a-lid-on-it moment meant to silence me, but adults around me did not have time to listen to and help me process all of my childish musings. Fortunately, I found journaling as a place to express myself.
I started writing in a journal when I was eleven years old and my family had just moved across the country to a new town. I was going from a sunny childhood in the Caribbean’s private schools, the Caribbean’s private schools to teenage angst in Michigan’s public schools. I had a lot to learn about the world around me like a little plant that had been transplanted only to develop root shock from the dramatic changes. Everything was hard to navigate from weather changes to social pressures. My journal was a place where I could record ideas. I can’t say that I wrote daily, but I wrote consistently—especially when I was in the middle of a mood that I did not understand. Those diaries were my lifeline.
For many years, I wrote to figure things out. I never imagined publishing or being an author or even sharing my work with anyone else. I wrote because it helped me understand myself and the world around me. I saw things more clearly. I let myself express all of those bottled emotions. It was a private release and an escape. For decades, I would not even identify myself as a writer despite having studied it in college and having written volumes of journals. I was a scribbler who used writing to know myself. This is still the foundation of my writing career—write to know and understand.
A decade ago, I crashed into a midlife crisis. As I entered the tenth year of my PhD studies, I had to either finish my dissertation or fail the program. I decided to give up my job at a prestigious international school as an English Department Head to create enough time and energy to complete my degree before it was too late. As summer gave way to fall, I sunk into a depression. I realized that I had not only given up my treasured identity as an educator, but I had lost the majority of my former friends who were old colleagues. In addition, I gave up my financial independence for the first time in my adult life. I had to rely on my husband and a small bit of savings. In summary, my life that had been full of purpose and connection became a lonely abyss of frantic doctoral research.
I was an insecure human being looking for connection. I was vulnerable and impressionable as well as desperate and uncertain. With such uneven footing, I went out into the world looking for new friends who could support and encourage me as I completed my education and looked for a new job. Unsurprisingly, I found people who were equally unhealthy and unstable, but who had the resumes and social standing to make me imagine otherwise. The drama that ensued cascaded from one relationship to the next, from one belief to my entire world view. I found myself questioning everything and trusting no one. The crisis nearly tore my life apart and destroyed me with it.
However, I survived because of a story that eventually will become a trilogy—it came to me in flashes after difficult meetings or when I was cleaning up messes. A Duke and Duchess stepped out of my head fully formed. They brought their equally pretentious friends, Lord and Lady, with them. On another occasion, Grand Tock materialized when I read an old Chinese fairytale. Then came Pyrrha—the heart of the stories and lessons I wished to communicate to my younger self. These snippets of amusing understanding came to me in fits and starts between the agony of perpetual research and everyday chores. They were the reflection of my day-to-day life fictionalized, reorganized, and illuminated.
Thus, during this period of finishing my dissertation and finding a new job, I lost my way in life and had to find a story to make sense of the devastation and shame. I wrote because I had to write a new story in order not to lose my mind. My journals were filled with an imaginary world where I could work out my real-life dramas on the page. Slowly, I realized that these musings were not just for me and I had to put them into a book, so I wrote Pyrrha’s Journey. The book was the means by which I externalized my problems so that I could look at them and understand them.
Fortunately, these days, I am not facing such a mountain of grief and frustration, yet I still write. I write because it helps me see my ideas more clearly. I write because it is a way to meditate. I write because I still—like my childhood self—have a lot to say. That is a good place to be—I’m writing for myself and sharing it because I hope these ideas may help someone else too.
Why do you write?
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