Writing

Though I have written ever since I could read and write likely since kindergarten or first grade I didn't write on my own that much until I was 7 to 9 years of age. I heard about people writing diaries and being an only child I didn't have siblings to share my life experiences with and often adults weren't interested in my take on things before I was about 9 or 10. So, often if I wanted to have a conversation I could have this conversation with myself so to speak by writing. The way this works is you write something down and then when you read what you wrote later your future self is having a conversation with it's previous self in time. I found this very helpful as confusing events occurred in my life that I couldn't figure out like my 16 year old cousin dying in a car accident where he broke his neck and was gone in Seattle. I think this was the first thing like this to really crush my spirit as an 8 year old that I understood. One of my cousins was dead. I didn't know him well but then he was gone and I was scared as a child. So, this was one of the many times when writing likely helped me. Other times it might be a little girl I fell in love with in my class and being too young to date or ask girls out until I was around 15 it helped to write down my feelings because I surely wasn't going to tell my parents about my feelings. Not in those days. I might casually say something to a buddy from school but even then sometimes not even that. So, writing down my feelings and experiences helped me to survive my life and not just flip out and go insane like many children did then in the 1950s when things were even crazier then (in a different way) than they are now. Things are still crazy now but in a completely different way than then.

So, writing even for a child can become a way to have self therapy even in the stories you might write that you might be trying to heal the hurts and frustrations in your life through so you can grow up sane enough to have a good and useful life and maybe live to a ripe old age someday.