A Bit of Background…
Many aren’t aware, but I’ve been a writer since as early as I can remember. My very first board book that I wrote (and I still have it till this day) is called “My Dog”. I’ll attach a picture of it later :). Yes, it was in third grade and never nationally publish, but hey, that’s not the point haha! Ever since then I grew a love for writing because I realized at that young age what I wrote actually made sense.
A few years later in middle school, is when I began writing poetry. My mom was my Sunday School teacher at the time and she gave us an assignment to write a poem. The lesson this particular Sunday was about how God blessed us with family. The poem that I wrote was simply titled as such, “Family”. I remember seeing my mom’s eyes light up when I gave it to her to read. She began to tell me how great and well put together the poem was. Little did she know, I remembered to write it the morning a few minutes before we were off to church. I guess it all just came natural to me. My thoughts flowed freely and easily when it came to writing.
During the Sunday School class, she said there was going to be an anonymous voting on each poem and one winner. In the class, there were about 10-15 students and they chose my poem as the winner! Of course I was shocked because I knew exactly how long it took me to write this poem (a few minutes) and that I just whipped it up at the last minute.
From this moment on, she began to push me to write as often as I could and as much as I could. I wasn’t too serious about it though. Sure if given an assignment to write, I could do it with my eyes closed. I was however, an avid reader; thanks to my mom taking us the library every two weeks advising us to check out no less than 4 books at a time, reading before we go to bed at night after homework, and also reading 1 hour per day during our holiday’s, spring and summer breaks off from school (which turned into more than 1 hour for me). It’s what I loved to do.
After winning the Sunday School class poem contest. I know what you’re thinking and contrary to popular belief (I love when people say this)…. the answer is ‘no’ I did not win the contest because the Sunday School teacher was my mom. I did however enter this exact poem online in 9th grade to a national company who publishes poetry books. A few weeks after my submittal, I received a letter in the mail with a copy of how my poem looked, advising that my poem was one of the ones chosen to be published in their book! Now, being that my parents were not aware that I submitted anything online without their permission, unfortunately I could not purchase the book for proof… since of course I was an unemployed 9th grader.
Just to know that someone outside of my family and friends enjoyed my poetry enough to publish it made my heart glad. Especially since family normally ‘likes’ whatever it is you do out of default lol! Since I cannot recall the name of the poetry book published years ago, I just pray that my quick poem about God blessing me with my family blesses them to see what they are blessed with as well.
