WHY I WRITE

I’ve been writing stories since middle school, escaping into a world of imagination to entertain myself and work through the anxieties of a busy mind. The practice didn’t stop as I got older. I’ve used writing as a form of Art Therapy long before I knew there was a word for it. Poverty and Mental Health Problems were at the root of my parents Alcoholism. They spent every ounce of their energy on working to live paycheck to paycheck and then drinking just to relax.

They were just trying to keep their head above water. They didn’t understand the effects of emotional neglect on their children because their parents had done the exact same thing when they were growing up…and their parents did the same thing. That was just family life in the Midwest Rust Belt.

Thankfully, things have gotten better. Generational cycles are changing. Therapy is not as stigmatized as it once was. But that leaves a few generations in between the broken and the healed, a whole large group of people who have the understanding that life didn’t need to be as painful as it was yet don’t have the gift of apologies and closure. It leaves many of us with complicated feelings and grief that is hard to put into words.

Sometimes it’s easier to explore those feelings from a distance, adjust the volume and make the mundane problems of real life a bit more entertaining, but the core feeling is still there. Helplessness and Hope. Fear and Bravery. Love and Pain.

We are all stories in the end.