They said I could be anything I wanted...

Years ago, an elementary school teacher fed me daily, snack-sized encouragement to write and take up space with my voice. She devised lessons that were miracle-grown to my imagination, blossoming into the most vivid aspirations. When I was a kid, they told me I could be anything I wanted, and I believed them.

I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to be a healer to the world. I wanted to be impactful. I wanted to be a teacher and an author.

Of those five aspirations, I'm certain of only a few things: I'm consistently striving for the first and try to convey that through the themes in my tales (but I’m bad at it when I’m driving); I'm fairly certain I will never complete the second---but through my stories I hope to heal at least one, even if it is just myself; I am likely to never know if I have successfully reached the third, though I hope I get close by nature of the fourth thing. I am, by trade for over twenty years, the fourth, though I do not necessarily define myself by it, because often the teacher is the student. As for the fifth, this is my journey.

Ultimately, I have officially begun my life's goal of becoming a published author. However, this first book I'm currently querying agents for has been living rent-free in my head for nigh on 30 years. It has just recently gotten too big for the space, and I had to evict it to paper. I hope that I have done it justice. The characters: Gabriel, Cat, Jean, Benoit, ... I've typed their stories long into the nights, and I miss their voices in my head. When I said I wanted to be an author, I never dreamed it wouldn't be my stories I told.

This journey is for this little girl — my younger self. Because she is watching, and they told us we could be anything, and we believed them.

My sixth-grade self: the year I internalized the idea that I could be anything.