teachers

The other day I got to briefly catch up with my third grade teacher. I had run into her husband at a workout class and he invited me to meet up with him and my teacher at a nearby restaurant. it’s funny how life works, how time ebbs and flows and reunites us with the people that helped pave our path. This particular teacher always thought I’d be a writer. Sometimes it helps to go back to the people who knew you before life happened, before you started conforming and losing sight of what makes you YOU. As a child I filled diaries, etched pages with my memories, with my thoughts and inner most feelings. I lived life through those pages, my fonts changing with my age, the feathered stroke of my pen turning to angry flicks in high school. I fell in love in those pages, grappled with my eating disorder, memorialized where I was during 9/11. I learned how to hold grudges, how to forgive, how to own up to mistakes. I mourned the loss of a classmate, the ink smudging with my tears. I shed all my secrets in my writing, I allowed myself to let loose the lies I’d accumulated to protect my ego. I allowed myself to breathe. But somewhere along the way I started second-guessing myself. Is there any worth in the way I arrange words? Will anyone want to listen to what I have to say? Will sharing my stories help someone or only expose my flaws? Am I a writer or just someone who writes?

All I know for sure is that I learn best about who I am through my writing. I am able to sort through my thoughts, to make sense of the noise in my head. When I write I feel connected to something greater than me, what some call a “higher power,” what some call “God.” To create is to heal, to create is to connect with Source, to create is to find purpose. Maybe my teacher thought I’d be a writer because she could sense that I found some sort of purpose through my writing. Maybe she believed in me before I could believe in myself.

Teachers come in different forms. In the heartaches of a broken relationship. In the loneliness of a fractured friendship. In the shared connection with a stranger. I am grateful for all the teachers in my life, for their ability to see me through a different lens, to point me on my path, to support me in my dreams. I am grateful for all life has to teach me. And I am grateful that I have my writing to help me learn and grow.