Nurturing someone through life’s trials, cheering them in their successes, and truly understanding someone’s emotions, how they move, feel, react, and succeed or fail is what mother’s do. It’s who they are. It is also what a writer does, and that is why it works for me because I am both.
Being true to the story. Being the vessel in which the story can be told and the instrument in which to tell it. Becoming part of the characters, feeling their emotions, the pattern of their breathing, and the way that they believe and how they believe it, gives me purpose as a writer. Like advocating for a child, I am advocating and bringing to the surface the characters that are otherwise unknown.
I am late. Late as a writer, late in my realization that I can be a writer, but not late in my love of writing and my knowledge of how strong words can be. How they have changed and molded me, and how they can have that same affect on others. Late, but on time if that makes any sense at all.
A native Atlantan, whose family is as much a part of the landscape as the ribbon of highways weaving through it, I have not left, though many times I have tried and thought I wanted to. Knowing now that I don't, I currently live in the North Georgia mountains with my son, and lead my quiet double life as a writer and a mom of a burgeoning rock star. Because I know that dreams happen.