Writing is my main source of creativity. My outlet.

Words mean an awful lot to me.

I LOVE words.

I love talking. I love listening. I love music, movies, poetry, television….I love writing…and there is no writing without reading.

The first novel I read as a very young child that blew me away was Where The Red Fern Grows. I remember being completely surprised at the emotion a page of ink could have. In my 30’s now, that memory still sits in a frame on the shelf in my mind.

Words. Wow.

I hadn’t ever put much thought into the beginning of understanding words for myself, and my mother isn’t here anymore for me to ask her, but when my eldest child went to kindergarten..when she learned to read… I cried.

Within the first few weeks of school, my daughter came home and showed me something. It was a pinwheel of beginner words that she pulled out of her backpack and started reading. My jaw dropped and tears filled my eyes. I called my husband at work and said “LISTEN TO THIS…SHES READING!”

We had been working on her phonograms, but when it all started coming together, I felt as if an entirely new world had just opened up to her.

Literally, a whole new world.
I’m playing off Disney here, but the scene in Enchanted when Giselle pops up into the new land through a sewer lid…..that’s exactly what I saw happening to my daughter in Kindergarten.

And now my son is there too.
It’s just so amazing. I’m watching my daughter as a seven year old write stories and read anything! I’m now witnessing it all over again in my 5 year old son who cant get enough and wants to try to read every word he finds.

Even my two year old…she knows her letters..she knows some of the phonograms..she knows they mean something.

They do.

These words…they mean something huge.

Words are powerful.

They can tear down..they can build up…they tell stories..they share how we feel..they can describe anything. Relationships can be built..or broken…with words. People can be judged..or praised…with words.

Words can be beautiful, detrimental, destructive, expressive, uplifting…creative.

Words are power.

And now my children have that power.