I can honestly thank my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Carol Kransic for introducing me to the world of journaling and encouraging me to start writing at that young age. With her inspiration, at only 9 years old I set out to write a book about my great Aunt Rose’s life. I had an old-school typewriter and I honestly thought I would write the entire book on that. Oh, what I would give to find those early drafts of that great novel. I am laughing at myself as I can only imagine what those first few pages would read. Now, here I am at 31 years old and I still have dreams of publishing a book, but on a different topic and most certainly not on a typewriter. (I will get into that more at a later time in another post). I can not thank that teacher enough for introducing me to the power of Journaling, and for instilling in me a love for writing. Each week she would ask us to make at least one entry into a black and white composition notebook and in it, we could write absolutely whatever we wanted to. She would then read them and leave us a handwritten response on the next page. She didn’t grade for spelling or proofread for grammar. She didn’t SLASH my pages with her red pen vigorously as my 5th-grade teacher so enjoyed doing. She just let us write and was so happy that we were writing and in doing that she fostered in me a LOVE FOR WRITING that I have still to this day.
I think about her lessons often and think what a great lesson and practice to establish with your students. I can honestly look back at that year in her classroom and tell you SO MANY of these kinds of stories and lasting life lessons instilled in me in that one short school year. This woman was truly a groundbreaking, earth-shattering, AMAZING EDUCATOR. If I ever come across an entry form for ‘The Worlds BEST TEACHER EVER Award” She is the first person I am nominating for it. Now I’ll be honest, while enjoy writing and as much as I LOVE to tell a good story, grammar and proofreading are NOT skills that I possess. My brain was just not wired that way. As I type this sentence right now my ‘Grammarly’ is lighting up the page like a Christmas tree. I am so thankful for the invention of spell-check. So *be warned...Perfect grammar is not what this blog is about nor will any entry in the future be textbook perfect. To me, writing is about telling your truth and letting your truth being heard. It’s about self-discovery just as much as it’s about others learning from your words. I always have found writing to be a form of therapy, self-discovery, and a way to process the world around me. In my current stage of life, my journals have been rather abandoned as I assume the roles of full-time educator, partner, and mother among other things. As a result, I have honestly thought about starting a blog for a long time...but always put it on the back burner and said, “someday!” Well... I guess today is “someday”! There are lots of people I could credit and say have inspired me to do this, or who I hope I reach and inspire with my words….but honestly, I guess selfishly I really feel it’s something I need to do for myself more than for anyone else. I hope my words and what I share can be helpful to someone somewhere, inspiring dare I say... but most of all I hope it helps me write more, and reap the therapeutic benefits of discovering more of my true authentic self. So you're probably asking what will my blog be about? I don’t know about you but I do read and follow a few blogs pretty faithfully. But I think it’s the BAD BLOGS that maybe inspired me even more. I’m tired of reading things online that I just think are WRONG and yet people are blindly following and listening to them because they are desperately seeking the guidance of some sort or another. Perhaps this will be a future entry of its own because I actually have a lot to say on this topic (stay tuned). truly I have a lot of different ideas for my own blog content. I have ideas, and inspiration to share from the world of education, art-related things, as well as funny Leo stories and #momlife things that I would love to document, process, and share in this social and modern way. But I think the driving force for me to do this and the topic that speaks to my soul...is sharing the story of my dear sweet baby Oatley. I want to share his story. I want to share our story of healing and processing and the story of our journey to parenthood. It has taken me years to get to this point, but as more and more people in my life encounter a similar situation or share stories it inspires me to do the same. I see and feel in my heart the importance of this. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to decide if the time is right for me to start this. Stillbirth, infertility, miscarriage, loss, trauma, rainbow baby mama, or whatever you want to call it or identify with...It’s this topic that has repeatedly just kept popping up all over the place the last few weeks, so much so, that it just could not go unnoticed. In just the past couple of weeks, several people who are near and dear to me have come forth with announcements about infertility, miscarriages, rainbow baby pregnancies, etc. and I just can’t help but feel that in each one of these instances something or someone is trying to show me that NOW IS THE TIME. I feel like I’ve been ignoring the signs the universe has been putting into my path for a long time, but today I choose to listen, I choose to accept that this is something that for whatever reason I feel I am being called to do...so here it goes! I think I’ll start here..I’ll start by sharing my story. Welcome to my blog and stay tuned because there is more to come.
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Allie LemriseI'm an Educator, Artist, & Mama of two sweet boys in my arms and one in heaven, who believes the world is a better place when we fill it with kindness and our truest authentic selves. ArchivesCategories |