For as long as I can remember, I have found solace and even some surprises  in writing. As a teenager, I thought I just might be the next e.e.cummings.  In a move many years ago, my mother inadvertently threw away a box of all my teenage journals. I’m not sure if I wanted to thank her or thwack her. Maybe they would be abysmally crafted and embarrassingly trite, but I’d surely be curious about that teenage girl and her thoughts, dreams and nightmares.

 In my first year of college with an eye towards a major in creative writing and a career in magazine writing/editing or something of the sort, I had Mary Cheever, an author in her own right, as well as the wife of the more celebrated author, John Cheever, as a professor. She managed to squelch any imaginings I might have had about my talents as a composer of prose. She ridiculed my writing and raged on about just how corny and calculated my poetry and short stories were. Hurt and disheartened, it was years before I put pen to paper again.

 Looking back on that now, I feel while her criticism may have been warranted I only wish it had been delivered to my young blossoming self in a more kind and open-hearted way. Perhaps I could have actually heard and integrated it then and used it to create finer work, to actually improve my skills and techniques, instead of shutting down. And while I did move to New York City, I never did pursue working at a magazine.

 The next time I really have any record of writing again is a journal I started when I found out I was pregnant with my firstborn son, Sky. He has that now–I gifted it to him on his 18th birthday. When I reread it, I was enthralled by the ecstasy I was feeling and the energy I put into growing and birthing that baby boy and in birthing myself as a mother. The journal ends shortly after he was born, surely a result of the sheer overwhelming and joyful task of having a newborn.

 From that point onward, right up until today, my writing has been sporadic. I did newsletters from 1993-2009 for our weekly produce customers with thoughts on sustainability and organics, recipes for our vegetables and fruits and the like. My mental meanderings have another peak after my divorce, when it seemed a perfect place to purge the full range of emotions I was working through. I sent home long descriptive emails to loved ones when I traveled. Then in 2010, I launched this blog http://www.northcountryfarms.wordpress.com. Here I saunter through a range of topics that I find therapeutic to me to get into writing and hopefully interesting to others who might read them. But, mostly I write for me. Just to say what I need to say. Just to put into words what my often scattered thoughts and fragmented feelings present to me.

 Recently, I reconnected with a person I have had no contact with in about 50 years. Yes, 50 years. For reasons I cannot fathom, he saved letters I had written to him while he was in the Navy in the late 60s. When he found them, he dove down the internet rabbit hole and found me and my blog. In subsequent emails, phone calls and texts, he reminded me that we both had spoken all those years ago about our passion for writing. It sparked me into realizing that expressing ourselves in words and sharing them can be powerful. For ourselves or for others. And it reminded me to just keep at it. I think it’s good for my soul.