Your Journey: Your Way

Published: November 25th, 2023

Life is a journey. We surely agree, though our respective journeys follow varied pathways. Whether long or short, smooth or bumpy, your journey should always represent and characterise YOU. Our journeys help us to find and understand ourselves. I have just completed my memoirs, and I hope they represent my personal journey – travelled my way. 

From when I first ‘discovered’ its self-healing powers, writing has led my journey: and saved me from myself: a strong assertion. From being a highly sensitive and under-confident teenager – then through love relationships that brought their share of challenges, my story, like that of many others, has been one of intense drama, throughout which I have often felt myself drowning between a split personality. My memoirs are written from the perspective of four roles that have characterised ME for almost forty years: woman, teacher, writer and mother/grandmother. 

So, my writing journey? My first piece was an article on depression, published (1988) in the ‘Christian Herald’ magazine. From that moment, as I translated dark thoughts and emotions into written words, opening my heart as I did so, writing has become my leading role on a stage where we are all, as Shakespeare asserted, mere players. I wrote from the heart. 

My teacher role inspired me to write fourteen books (published by Routledge) for school staff, plus a further five for parents, about how education could be improved for children with SEND. I also drafted a novel (finally published 2023), as well as articles, short stories and poems, some of which saw publication in magazines. Two recent books, one a whimsical reflection on issues I care about (2021), and a historical novel (2023), now float aimlessly around in the huge sea of Amazon self-publications. 

So, writing has helped me to finally triumph over the challenges and stumbling blocks along my pathway, and propped up my other roles – especially that of ‘woman’: having shone a lit candle into personal periods of darkness.

Writing, at its creative best, also has the potential power to create meaningful triangular connections – linking writer, message and reader. Writers need to be readers. Writing and reading support each other.

Your journey – your way. Do these thoughtful words reflect inner and outer selves: being happy and confident in our own skins, having the courage to express our thoughts according to personal values and never deviating from what we each regard as ‘goodness? Writing, heart-felt, has characterised my journey. The poem emulates these reflections.

Ode to Life, Positivity and Writing

Life’s too short, no time to waste, 

Seize your moments with great haste.

Seek the best from every day,            

Find your gold beneath the grey.      

Glimpse that nugget, gently shining,     

Inside your cloud’s silver lining.

See it, smell it,

Taste and touch it. 

Your senses wired,              

To be inspired!

From that purpose deep inside,

Cultivate your sense of pride.

Make, create, invent and do,

Paint on your skin that inner you.

From the elf upon the shelf,

Steal some magic for yourself.

Then, as you WRITE,    

Your soul takes flight,      

Your spirit feeds,             

And your heart bleeds.  

« Back to Blog