I remember telling my mother once that I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think I was 6 or 7 years old at the time, and I recall Mom’s response: You want to be a mother.
Of course I did. Mom told me so. She was a mother and she was happy, so that’s what I wanted too.
Things have a funny way of working out. I am a mother now, my oldest child is 21, the next one is 20, and my youngest would have been 14 this past January. That’s a story for a different post but let it be known that I am, indeed, a mother of three children. I am a wife, and a daughter, and a self, and an employee, a student, a sister in Zion, a minister of sorts, a Daughter of Heavenly Parents who love her, and I love Them.
In the back of my mind, though, and for a long time, there has been a little voice saying “you are also a writer….”
And so I started to write poetry, and to journal, and to write random things to try an express my opinion in small ways, because to be small, yet still get the words out of my brain and onto the page is better than keeping them in my brain. I have no idea if anyone is ever going to read what I write. And honestly to have my words on a page where someone else can read them and either judge me harshly, or love me more, is so scary to me as to make me want to close the computer and never ever open it again. I always felt like my life was an open book, and yet I know it is not. My children won’t know what I don’t tell them. My opinions and thoughts mean nothing if they aren’t expressed. My testimony shrivels and dies if it isn’t borne. The words have to come out and be written and spoken and read and heard.
I think, though, that one of the scariest things about writing – and especially about writing in a way that gets seen by people that maybe you don’t know – is judgment. Judging is a part of human nature. We are all, all of us, judging something all the time. Is this worth my money? Is that worth my time? Do I agree with this person? Do I disagree with that person? Am I willing to speak up and say something and be judged in return? Is what this person is saying something that changes how I feel about that topic? It is so scary.
So as I start to jump into this new unknown and put my thoughts out there for eyes to see and hearts to feel and minds to judge, I will keep in mind that I am not the product of the judgment of others. I am, indeed, a mother of three children, a wife, and a daughter, and a self, and an employee, a student, a sister in Zion, a minister of sorts, a Daughter of Heavenly Parents who love me,
And a writer.
Chocolate Chips and Marinara 