Sharing Our Stories and Slice of Life: The Magic of A Writing Life

As I've shared before, I'm not a person who has written since childhood. I do have the diary (spelled "dairy" from my years as a Brownie Girl Scout). I started faithfully keeping a journal during my college years which continued until I married when my efforts reduced considerably. And now almost 40 years later, I only have four journals, the college one, the one I kept during my missionary service in Hong Kong, and two journals (one of them incomplete) from my life post mission until now.

But the "magic" of my writing life began in earnest when I discovered blogging through Two Writing Teachers and Slice of Life. Thanks to a unique group of students who sliced with me every day in March of 2012, I found myself hooked.

In the eleven years that have elapsed since then, I've published 1,280 blog posts. I like to think that I'm leaving behind a record of who I am through these blog posts. But the greatest magic of my writing life has been the relationships I've formed with fellow bloggers. I am forever grateful for the support of writing communities through the good times and the difficult times.

While I began my blogging journey with an initial attempt at a 48 hour reading challenge, it was the community of writers at Slice of Life and my sixth grade students who supported me in my attempt to write daily for 31 consecutive days. I planned for last year (2021), my 10th, to be my final year of writing daily in March, but I found it impossible to stay away and joyfully wrote daily for the 11th year. I've also enjoyed blogging for Spiritual Journey Thursday, Celebrate This Week, Poetry Friday, a #52stories project to collect family stories, and Sharing Our Stories. The members of many of these communities overlap and I feel lucky to count each of you as my blogging friends.

YOU are the magic that keeps this reluctant writer returning and writing. My thanks to each of you!

Sharing Our Stories and Slice of Life: Magical Moments

He arrives at the back door with a special bundle in his arms, excited to be the selected delivery person. He's watched this gift grow from pieces of colorful fabric to squares to quilt size and return to us a few months later beautifully quilted and ready for the binding. Perhaps part of his excitement is knowing that the next quilt slated for creation will be his. Every time I look at this gift from the heart, I marvel at how my daughter was able to do this with three boys five and under. She's the magic behind this gift!

I rarely have the opportunity to read to just one boy, unless it's nap time. And now Ollie is our only boy who naps during the day. If I pick up a book to read, my lap is quickly filled with boys. Grandpa and Ollie's big brothers are at the park. We pull out the basket of books and I choose Little Blue Truck. We enjoy making all the animal sounds and the beep-beep-beep of the little blue truck. Book finished, Ollie crawls over to the foam shapes we built with earlier, selects the truck and carries it to the front of the book to show me that he knows this is a truck too. And he's only nine months old!

This young man is headed for kindergarten in the fall and he loves wordplay and rhyming words. So when I picked up Digger the Dinosuar and the Cake Mistake from our stack of library books, he was thrilled. He has read other books about Digger, but not this one. As soon as we finished reading and laughing, he had just one request, "Read it again!"

These are the kinds of giggles that the book elicited from the boys.

            Here's to finding magical moments in your busy days!