THAT´S WHY I LOVE WRITING

I never made a stop to think in me as a writer.  Well, not really: I just always knew how much I enjoy writing.  From the time when I was in high school when my best friend asked me to write a poem for his girlfriend or when my teacher chose me to write speeches about Independence´s day, mother´s day or another special celebration, and after that I usually had to read them in front of the entire school.  Since then, like a soft shadow, writing started to become a very important part of my life.  I still remember that I was popular not because I was pretty or a cheerleader, but I was the best helper for literature homework, and my payment, chocolates, candy bars or chips.  Kind of cheap don´t you agree?

Anyway, In that stage I began writing just for fun, in fact I didn´t even know that I could write, I just closed my eyes, took a pen and paper and I left my hand move for itself, it was that easy. But then everything was altered, others feelings started adding to my reasons for writing: sadness, angry, frustration, love, and one in particular was the breaking point, it was my increasing needs to communicate my ideas, my sentiments and my thoughts properly.  In a simple explanation, we grew up, my writing and me.    

In Law School, I continued writing poems and poetic prose.  However I started to dabble in academic world, with essays, agreements, paperwork, seminars, research work, even with one of my master piece: my thesis degree. That was how in certain point I had changed my writing style from pink poetry to academic and formal writing. 

As a professional lawyer and university professor, writing was part of my career, part of my life there was not one day in which I did not write.  I have written a plenty of articles for law magazines and books.  I have prepared different research papers for conferences and speeches, I have lectured hundreds of business law students, and I have tutored students in their undergraduate work, as well, all of that between lawsuits and contracts.

And then, something happened, my head exploded…I realized that I was spending my life submerged in my job, and writing was another tool to make money.  I needed to breathe again and suddenly, out the blue I recall one of my favorite poems “Birches” by Robert Frost, and I understood that the problem wasn´t my work, because I never have forgotten my love for any style or kind of writing, but I did forget the fun part of it.  As a result, I took the piece of advice that Frost gave to me. After that, as soon as I feel desperation I try to be a “swinger of birches” and I make an effort to keep in mind that “Earth's the right place for love”.

Today, when I remember about that time as a Litigant Attorney and University Professor, I like to think that I helped a few people, that maybe I was a good teacher and I collaborated with others to express and find themselves. Sometimes when I receive email messages or tweets from my ex-students asking for my opinion, I like to think that I am right.  

One day, I changed my address, from the south to the north, from my native country in South America, to Canada.  I have had to set up over with my little and lovely family, my husband and our daughter, just the tree of us, and in this moment I have to admit, Canada changed me in every possible way.  I am not even a shadow of the person who I was, for good or bad I believe that people used to know me, they are incapable of recognizing me now, but the one thing that remains intact is my passion for writing.

Despite of everything has happened in my existence; nobody ever asked me whether or not, I am a writer?   For some the answer was implicit, but for those who ask me now, the answer is yes, I am a writer. Sometimes I am a creative writer, others I am a poet, a fairytales teller, a professional science writer, furthermore I am a teacher, I am a lawyer, a mom and a wife. 

I´m in love with writing, I´m in love with the idea to write for the person that I have became, therefore I can know her again.  Writing is my path to fix the gap between before and now. Writing and my soul are one, Writing belong to my heart, to my mind, and I belong to it, at the end, it is my way to express myself and to grow up, to fight against fear and vanquish it, to escape for the world and come back, to believe and live.  

APRIL 2013.