It’s all about how to get it started it again.
A six-year-old girl with long dark braids, I ran up to the front of my first grade classroom wearing my red sparkly shoes with rainbow laces. My teacher, Ms. Hintz, squatted in front of me and handed back my card I’d turned in with the first story I’d ever written in pencil on the inside. I took the card from her hand and stared at the little unicorn I’d drawn on the very top of the card, when she said, “Erika.” I looked up. “You are going to be a writer someday.”
Always a dreamer, always a great storyteller, I’d lie in the grass, watching the clouds roll across the sky or the stars twinkle at night, imagining great people and their lives, and all the what-ifs.
College created a giant distraction and I became trapped in the whirlwind of decisions with what I wanted to do—I forgot how to sit still with my thoughts. I dabbled a little in everything, from Dietetics, Zoology, Landscape Architecture, Advertising, and finally settled in to Fine Arts/Graphic Arts and Communication. I've been in the professional world of Communications and Public Relations for more than 10 years, serving in just about every capacity you could imagine.
After my son was born, I had a really great dream about writing. I couldn’t shake it, and I learned how to be still again, to read books I enjoyed, and how to listen to the whispers of my imagination, slowly surfacing.
Two years later, my daughter was born. Watching my kids grow and play, and how they processed the world, helped push me to cycle back to my one earliest and biggest dream—writing. So I am writing, and I haven’t stopped since. I write every day after I’ve tucked the kids in their beds and they are sleeping soundly.
Finally, thirty years later, I’m doing what I knew I was meant to do.
Erika Beebe
Erika Beebe's Blog
