By Cheryl Morai-Young
I would say that writing has helped me through difficult times my whole life. Born a sensitive, middle child into a no nonsense military family, I often retreated into books before I knew I could write. Written words on the page made life easier. Stories were possibilities. Books were my shield, my escape. I would spend hours reading. In the car, in my room, outside in a tree, in the middle of a group of people. I always had a book. My whole family were readers so this was encouraged. We'd often spend part of dinner talking about books and what we were reading. My mother read to us before school most mornings when we were young. Books helped me cope with our way of life. Moving every two to three years, and having to start over in a new state, town, and school was hard. I hated being introduced as the new girl. I could feel the kids' eyes boring into me, sizing me up, evaluating. Who is this new girl? This was in the days when, if you were new, you would have you go up in front of the whole class and introduce yourself. Usually, because we were coming from another part of the country, my accent from different, my clothes were different, what had made me fit in before was different. In essence, I was wrong. Naturally introverted, the only way I could cope with this intense scrutiny was to cry. With tears as my go to coping mechanism, I knew I had to find another way to survive. Writing about my feelings in journals became my outlet through these painful years of having to continually start over. I loved writing and it came naturally to me. When I was a freshman in high school, I wrote about my Grandma Lee, how she had lost her youngest child to a brain aneurysm, and her husband to stomach cancer, and yet she had still found a way to move forward. I remember reading what I had written outloud to my parents and when I was through, how they had sat in silence, and when they spoke they said: You have a ways with words. You made us feel. Keep writing. I had found my way to make feelings okay, and exploration on the page of these feelings, acceptable. I kept writing, majored in English and worked as an editor, a contractor, an associate in a bookstore, and currently, the library. All of my professional jobs have centered around books and writing. I have a Writing Practice group that meets every other month. We write for 20 minutes and then read outloud what we have written. And then we do it again and again until our two hours are up. This is life blood for me, connection through words. Experiences made whole. Feelings honored. I have published a few times, but it's not about publishing for me. It's about being in the moment with words. It's about being brave, being seen, being heard, and understood. And, finally, standing up before a group, and excelling. It's life. And I'm grateful.