As a young child, most of us have ideas, desires, hopes and dreams of what we want to do and what we want to be. For me it was no different. At the early age of 9 years old, I knew that I wanted to be an author of children’s books.
My third-grade teacher introduced journal writing to me; each day we had to write an entry in our journal on a different topic. Some days we would
have free write, in which I would create fictional stories about a dog named Mr. Phoo Phoo Poodle. Which was the name of my uncle’s dog who was indeed a poodle that I wanted so badly. This would also steer me on a journey that ultimately would have me fall in love with reading
and writing poetry as well and, thus, my passion for all things writing began.
However, when you grow up in a faith-based household and you have an obvious gift of song, one’s passion for writing becomes overshadowed, or at least in my case that is what happened. Not ignored, but definitely not nourished either.
For years I pursued a singing career. The ability to write my own songs gave me an edge up on most artists. However, I was not as impressed with my vocals, but more so mesmerized by how I was able to sing and bring my words to life.
As we know, sometimes life just happens and for me life happened. I decided not to allow pursuing what I thought was my dream get in the way of living. So, I married my soulmate and had two beautiful children along the way.
In April of 2020 things began to shift for me. As we began to adjust to our new way of life dealing with COVID-19 and being quarantined, I was slowly healing from a C-Section after giving birth to my son and helping my high energy 7-year-old daughter adjust to being at home doing digital learning.
I began to notice that my daughter, who had been reading since the age of 3, was having issues with reading comprehension. She struggled with retaining the information that she had just read.
I thought of strategies that I could try to incorporate to help her out in this area. So, my daughter and I would write short little stories about whatever her colorful imagination could think of, and then I would ask her questions about the story that we had just written. My hopes were that if she wrote her own stories, maybe she would begin to make the connections when she read other stories as well.
We would continue to keep writing even after her reading comprehension improved, and then one day I came across an ad by Crystal Swain-Bates that spoke about a free 5-day children’s book challenge. Look at the Universe work! Little did I know that taking that challenge would teach me everything I needed to know about self-publishing and ignite such a drive within me.
Before I knew it, my daughter and I had written our first children’s book: My Magical Brown Unicorn.
So, no matter what your passion is, I urge you to not allow it to dry up and wither away. Continue to water it and nourish despite what others may think. It will eventually bloom and grow.
I am proof of it.
Since then I have written a total of seven children’s books and reading comprehension journals with my daughter, which will be released in the near future.
I really believe that being quarantined due to the pandemic played a big role in me rediscovering my passion for writing and giving me the
time I needed to pursue it. For this I am eternally grateful.
2020 owes me nothing.
