I’ve written this personal essay a thousand times. Every time, the story comes out a little differently. I tell different parts of the story, in different ways, with different words. One thing,
however, remains the same. I am resilient. In every version of my story, I come out of the center of the storm. I may be marked, ever changed from whatever storm I came through, but I remain standing. Sometimes, I wonder if I ever had any choice. It has always felt that I need to move forward, no matter what. There was no other way but through. I credit this resilience to my mother, and the way she raised me.
I moved around constantly as a child. My mother raised me on her own and did everything she could to ensure she and I had a bright future. She started back to college while I was a
a toddler and attended two universities chasing after her Ph.D. in Vocal Performance. We spent time in Ellensburg and Seattle, often moving in the middle of the school year. Being introduced to university life as a child opened my eyes to a new world that most children do not get a chance to witness. I would even go as far as claiming that some of my oldest memories are of me sitting in on college courses, which inspired a love of culture, language, art, and researching at a young age. Attending classes ranging from foreign language to music theory, I had the opportunity to be involved in my mother’s education and to be acquainted with many college students and professors before the age of ten.
I remember one time I sat in on a foreign language class. I was six at the time, and the daycare had closed for some reason, so my mom got permission from her professor to bring me in as long as I wouldn’t disrupt class. So, armed with my crayons and copy paper, I drew quietly as the class studied verb conjugations. This seemingly innocuous day changed my entire six-year-old world. I found a possibility of an unimaginable number of ways to describe my world. I predict this created my hunger for knowledge. My mom helped fuel that hunger by helping me become an early reader. I started reading back the picture books she read to me nightly which caused her to buy hooked on phonics books for me. Determined to challenge myself, I learned to read in a short period and began reading small chapter books by first grade. Thus began my long love affair with literature.
Of course, when one reads, one begins to have their own stories to tell. I have always had an active imagination and I uncovered the lure of writing about characters and worlds that lived in my head shortly after I started reading. I still have stories I wrote as a child in my savings box (everyone has those, right?), and I take them out every once in a while to look back on the ideas that spilled onto the page. I loved language classes in school, but my favorite classes were those where I had the ability to create stories or write. It really is part of my essence.
Despite creating being a part of who I am, I took a hiatus from creating for a while. I found myself unhappy and afraid of the future. I eventually made it back to college, and like mymother, I was a single mom. I originally came back to college to get a finance degree. The first English elective class I decided to take was technical writing, and it's that class that changed my mind. I found joy again as I created technical documents for my assignments. When I went to CWU, I chose to declare my major in Professional and Creative Writing. Throughout that program, I grew as a writer, both creatively and professionally. I have published work, and I have the tools necessary to publish creative work once I decide I'm finished with my stories.
So how does this tie into resilience and determination? Well, just like me, my writing takes on a stubborn way of the mouth and just keeps coming back to pester me. And so, just like my writing, I take on a stubborn way of the mouth, and get back at it. I always finish what I start, it might just take longer than expected.
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