THE WELL OF MY LIFE
When I was seven years old, I dressed my cat in doll clothes, set her on a sunny windowsill and read her my first story. She didn’t like the outfit, but she did like my attention. She knew she was important to me and that I valued her. Her feed back (purring) told me as much.
I now realize that writing is necessary in my life, and an audience is absolutely vital. I can’t set people in the sun and read to them, but I can meet them where they are in life and perhaps provide a truth that will keep them turning the pages. As a child, Nursery Rhymes fascinated me and later, Louisa May Alcott and Lucy Maud Montgomery impressed me: I would become a writer! However, too many attractions led me into other interests and soon, my dream was set aside.
Meeting the love of my life on a ball field at the age of fourteen poised a question for me. Should I put my running shoes on or learn to keep score. I did the latter. Quite a few years later, as a young mother of two ambitious boys, I connected again with my story telling skills, often thinking, "I could write a story like that." I remembering one Saturday morning, sitting at my kitchen table, looking at a copy of Victoria Holt's newest novel, thinking I'd like to do that. My first page did not impress me and it went to its rest in the garbage pail.
Three more children joined the troops, and I developed cooking and domestic skills, learned hockey and baseball rules, attended and watched music lessons and turned our kitchen into a restaurant so everyone met schedules and deadlines on time. Writing Sunday school lessons awakened within me again the love of telling stories. Then writing lyrics and later music for youth groups opened other opportunities. It seemed there were no limits of interests for me. During my stay-at-home years with children, I finished my Grade XIII piano and continued to merge story with song. While I still had the dream of writing, I hadn't learned the skills, so I turned to painting, creating story of colour and texture, without words.
As an adult student, I went back to school and completed a B.A. at Waterloo University, and a M. D. at University of Toronto, finishing with a Doctorate of Ministry from Trinity College & Seminary later in life. In 1982, I was ordained to serve in the United Church of Canada and, with my family settled in Alberta. Upon returning to Ontario, I served in two additional pastoral charges before retiring in 2000. Through the years, I continued to write enough to satisfy my promise to self, but not enough to quiet my desire. In 2000, I decided to revise and finish some of the writing that I'd begun over the years as well as put pen to paper with projects that continued to beg recognition.This I continue to do, with each day being a gift of insight, motivation and creativity. So how does all of this initiate writing? Read How Writing Reflects Life. HOW WRITING REFLECTS LIFE
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like child . . . " (1 Cor. 13:11) My early reading reflected this and my conversations and scribbles confirmed it. (Much later, I still take great pleasure thinking and reasoning with my grandchildren. In our stories, cats talk, birds sing, dogs bark words, rivers whisper, and trees wave, clap their hands and provide a protective canopy.)
As a youth poetry held my passion, mostly love sonnets about the boy who sat in front of me, or the farm lad who carried in the wood to keep the fire burning in our one-room school house,
Then with teen-age love came the mystery of relationships. Marriage and building a home directed creative energy towards the family. I filed lyrics in the piano bench with scribbled chords and melody lines. I stuffed stories of failures, celebrations, values and faith into folders and boxes. These would provide an interpretation of that period, later.
When our daughter, Debbie, died in 1972, I began to discover how some words facilitated healing while other words and actions wounded. I kept a journal during the years following her death, which I later published as WinterGrief.I realized during my under-graduate years that I was actually writing, shown in many essays, interviews and projects. Granted it wasn't the kind of writing that I wanted to do - but it was still writing. After ordination, my family and I moved to my first pastoral charge in Edgerton, Alberta. In the busyness of a minister's daily routine, I journalled. Much later, this writing contributed to my memoirs: Take Time to Make Memories. This period also laid the foundation for a biographical novel, Labour of Love (unpublished). Considerable time passed before I submitted A Lifetime of Writing to Canadian Author's magazine, and they spread it across two pages with pictures. In my years of service to the church, I wrote more than 1000 sermons. I often thought some of them would take on new life in a book, but it seemed they served their purpose on a Sunday morning. For my doctoral writing project, I explored the roots, biases, traditions and biblical interpretations that limit women to serve as ordained ministers. One day, this might see publication.
Reflecting on life and looking for the lessons, has given me opportunity to develop valuable resources for writing.There are treasures in every conflict, healing, failure or challenge in life experiences. Broken relationships in abandonment, rejection and loss offer links to personal writing assets. Celebrations, achievements and, divide-and-conquer situations add fodder to the mix. How does this happen? All of this inspires, motivates and initiates thought. And in the process, we are strengthened to dig deeper.In mentoring writers, some have said, "I can't write now, I'm too upset." Or perhaps, "I don't understand this myself, how can I write about it?" Believe me, this is the time to attempt writing something . . . anything, it is times such as this that the passion runs deep and offers a new level of raw truth. 
