“You never get over the fear of writing.” ~ Maya Angelou

One day I said to my husband of over thirty years, “Remember when I used to be fearless?” He’s known me since we were in our early twenties and he looked at me that day the way he has many times before–with total, absolute confusion. In hindsight, it does seems like a random thing to say while in the middle of chopping salad vegetables for our dinner. Truthfully, I’d been mulling it over for quite some time and he just happened to walk into the kitchen when I was ready to let those feeling out.

I reminded him of the time many years ago when I brazenly walked into the offices of a local newspaper with our toddler on my hip and asked to speak to the editor-in-chief. What I got instead was an assistant editor who should have been managing editor, but it was near the start of the nineties, when qualified women were still unfairly passed over for promotions like dodgy-looking shrimp at an all-you-can-eat buffet. She led me to her cubicle office, thinking, dreading I’ll bet, that I was there to complain about a recent editorial piece or wanted to share a gossipy news tip. Or maybe I came to beg her for a part-time secretarial job just to get myself out of the house. I don’t actually know what she was thinking, she never said. To her credit, though, she offered me a chair so I could put my daughter on my lap, and then she listened to me.

When I was done speaking, the editor asked why I thought I was qualified to write a freelance book review column without any prior experience. (Other than the fact I was a star reporter of my high school newspaper and had some college creative writing classes under my belt.) I told her that I read all the time, more so since becoming a stay-at-home mom, and that her newspaper was lacking in opinion pieces written from a young woman’s perspective. I remember staring at each other for an uncomfortably long moment as I bounced my child on my knee, radiating nervous energy. Finally she said something that I’m positive surprised us both that day: “Write me a sample book review and if it knocks my socks off I’ll give you a shot.” Not sure if I knocked her socks off, but I did earn my shot at a monthly book review column and other freelance work that I continued to earn for a few more years.

Now a bonafide newspaper columnist, I decided that I’d gained enough confidence to leave my first born in somebody else’s care for a few hours a week to take more college writing classes. To say I thrived in that environment as a mature, more confident student is an understatement. I loved every minute of it and didn’t take a single moment for granted. It didn’t bother me that most of my nineteen year old classmates called me Mom. They only ever did so with affection and, I like to think, a little admiration for sticking it out for another semester while expecting a second child.

During that time, I wrote fiction and poetry, short stories, and heartfelt pieces about new motherhood and my life so far. I was asked by an instructor to read one of those stories in front of an alumni audience in a large college auditorium. I was close to nine months pregnant by then and had to waddle down a long aisle and up several stairs to a stage. I still remember standing there, steadfastly, reading my emotional piece about fearing for my children’s future as the Gulf War continued to rage on far away and much closer to home a gunman had senselessly massacred fourteen female university students. My soon-to-be-born son kicked and stretched as I leaned into the podium to receive my shining moment of applause for the words I’d fearlessly written and shared from the very same heart connecting the two of us to life.

“You’re still fearless,” my husband told me while we ate that salad I’d made for dinner. I knew he meant strong about facing the hardest things over the years that needed to be either accepted or worked through. “Except for when it comes to my writing,” I said to him. “Why can’t I be fearless about that again?”

Where was the wannabe columnist who made up her mind one day she wanted a job she wasn’t qualified for? What about the woman in her late twenties who went back to college because she hadn’t given up on her dreams? The mom who discovered not only did she still have a lot to say, her writing touched another woman enough to make her cry in the front row of an auditorium. That writer never feared sharing what she wrote because she believed in every word. Even if her stories never saw anything beyond a cluttered desk drawer, she still kept writing them. She wrote for herself first. In fact, her only priority was telling her stories as well as she could.

We’re told so often to look ahead, to keep moving forward. Don’t look back! Focus on the road ahead. Sometimes looking back to who we used to be is the only way we can move forward now. Recently I sat down and started writing and I kept writing for over a year. Pages and pages until the story was done. I’ve rewritten that novel three more times since then because I believe in it just the much. Today I’m writing a second novel. The words keep coming and here I am, a grandmother now, happy to receive all those many words. Some days I dream about trying to get my novel published. Other days I’m content to leave the manuscript safely in a drawer. Regardless of the outcome, close to 90,000 words have reminded me there’s a certain fearlessness in staying true to yourself.