Member-only story
The Power of Our Words
Someone from afar read my story, and it made a difference
I’ve mostly lost the urge to write. I began here a few years ago with stories to tell. It was cathartic to put words to some of my life experiences, many of them hard. Some days, I was driven; at other times, it was more like work. But I was dedicated to pursuing this mission of being a writer, and for a time, I felt like one.
Things changed last fall. The habit left me when I went away to sea to work for a month. I returned to a life busy in different ways, and at the same time, it appeared that I wouldn’t earn money from my words in the same way I had. Motivation slipped from me like a mouse from a toothless cat.
And yet the other day someone important read one of my stories. She wasn’t sure how it came into her line of sight; algorithms are strange things. A coincidence she wondered? I think not. I don’t believe in them. How was she important to me? She reminded me of the power that our words have. How they can convey messages that matter.
The reader was a young woman who had tragically lost both her parents and was struggling with what to do on the anniversaries of their deaths. My story was about the loss of my son and how I commemorated his birthday this past year.
