Writing

 Writing can help your soul cope with whatever you are coping with in life. It helps (even if you never intend to publish what you write) to write about what is happening in your life.

Often you don't have the right people to have the exactly right conversation you need to move forward in life.

I discovered this first between 5 and 8 years old as an only child in the 1950s. I learned when my cousin died who was 16 and I was 8 years old that writing about what I was experiencing and reading it later helped me cope with my life.

As an only child I was scared when my cousin broke his neck driving into a house with his friends. So, I needed to write down my feelings to move forward without this cousin as he was the first I had lost in my family at that point at age 8 when he was 16.

Next, I lost my mother's father which since I didn't know him very well wasn't the problem for me that it was for my mother and she and Dad resigned as ministers from the Los Angeles Church they were in charge of because of my grandfather's passing. It was okay because my father worked as an electrician and my mother always worked part time too even when they were ministers. They were just very busy. So, after this they actually had more time for me which was good because I was 12 and moving towards becoming a teenager then.

So, writing can literally save your life if you are kind and understanding enough to yourself like I was capable then and now. It helped to have good parents then that didn't smoke or drink and who were stable though who had dedicated their lives to their beliefs and their family. I was trained from 8 to 12 because of this in many ways to be a minister too.

However, by 21 I realized that I likely might not belong as a minister simply because I'm too independent minded for that. I never fit into any one box exactly because I'm a free spirit and a free thinker which I believed in most ways has served me well all my life.

By God's Grace

Just remember if you are kind to yourself and those around you your writing might save your life and the life of your family one day whether you choose to share it with the world or not.