Doctor Leo Buscaglia wrote “if you wish to let the reader know who you are you must tell the story in your own words or we won’t be able to see who you really are.”
But no matter what happens to us we can work it into the legacy of our lives because we all have a unique story if we dare to share — to go apart — to delve into the deepest recesses of our minds and to tell it like it was.
It has been said that Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of The Little House On The Prairie series, was believed to have been more interested in leaving her story behind rather than the money she might make from the stories she wrote.
Erma Bombeck, the late best selling author, and syndicated columnist said “It’s not the money that you make but knowing your words reach people you will never meet.”
I never met Erma personally yet she forever touched my life helping me to achieve more than I could have ever achieved without her encouragement when she dedicated a column to me on February 26, 1986 after I sent her a copy of a $5 check that I received for a poem that I wrote.
That column went out in over 900 newspapers across the country and keeps me going long after she died in 1996. She knew what she was doing.
We all need a little encouragement.
We can’t make it alone nor would we want to. The late Zig Ziglar, best selling author and motivational speaker, said “if you will help enough other people get what they want you can have everything you want.”
I have had so many people encourage me that if I were to start naming names I would surely offend someone. It’s safe to say that the late Craig Durrett and Jeff Benson and Jeff Gauger,who wer well loved editorial page editors, of The Shreveport Times, encouraged me more than they ever knew.
It takes courage, of being open, to finally find your voice but before we do we have to speak from the heart. It’s not easy being transparent because there are just so many things we would rather keep secret. We have to protect ourselves because we have all committed enough sins to surely condemn us but we need to strive for honesty in our writing.
I still don’t feel safe telling about the homeless situations I would have been in had it not been for being rescued by Christians yet I have been on the very edge of homelessness not to mention going into an orphanage as a child due to poverty.
I encourage you to write because it has been my form of therapy while in the orphanage and when I was recovering from a nervous breakdown in 1981. Life isn’t easy but our struggles makes us who we are.
All it takes is picking up a pen and jotting down a sentence each day. The sentences multiply into pages easing the pain of what you are going through.
I hope my words have encouraged you to write.
The joy I feel comes from knowing God is the one who has pulled me out of the ditches and through all the tight places in my life!
Contact Sarah at [email protected]