Stories are the fabric that binds us all together. Your local library is the most important resource you can utilize and it is all available for free. All you have to do is sign up for a library card. I encourage you to have your children also fill out an application for a library card as well.

I was about five or six years old when I filled out an application for my first library. That is when I fell in love with books and I knew I wanted to be a writer.

I had no idea at that age so many worlds were available at my fingertips and that I could create worlds of my own. My first story I wrote was when I was six and in the first grade. I still have it! It was about a girl who ran away because her parents made her do chores. Of course if was chalk full of spelling errors, but that makes it even more special to me.

You see when your young you don’t care about what others think or what mistakes you may make.You just know you have this idea inside of you that you need to give birth to.

Later that year I began illustrating my own stories as well. The series I created an illustrated was called “The Adventures of the Valley River People.” My parents still have those drawings and stories somewhere. I also typed some of them up on a typewriter. That’s when I fell in love with the process of creation.

I created a whole world. A whole town of people. Some people lived in nursing homes and needed learning to adapt and use wheelchairs. Out of this, was born the ability to empathize with people and later led to a job as an Nursing Assistant as a career, later in my life. I had people that were all from different walks of life and nationalities in my story. One woman was from China and was a Buddhist. She wore beautiful Kimonos and became a princess. One man wrote spooky stories for a living and found a spooky story of his own! He found out the local school was haunted.

I still have ghosts that haunt me. Unfinished stories. They call out to me at night, needing to be written and told. The thing I fear most is that these stories will die with me. Death is perhaps a reminder of the importance of our stories. We have an obligation as writers, readers, as people with souls to tell our own.

I hope that someday when I am gone and six feet under, the stories I have written will outlast me. That they will inspire others and live on in the souls of those that they have touched.

My Son found me again writing his stories this morning when he woke up.

He said to me, “Mom when you die I will still have all these stories…my books,” and then he asked me to read him more. He threw his arms around me and said, “Mommy I love my stories. Please write me more.” That means the world to me.

When he filled out the application to get his own library card, I saw the same joy I felt at the moment when I got mine.

I told him, “You can go anywhere with this. This is your passport to new worlds of adventure.” Perhaps one day he will want to write a story of his own. He loves sharing his own stories with anyone that will listen…and to think that both of our journey’s started with a library card. Isn’t that something?