When I was a child, writing wasn’t a hobby or a creative outlet. It was a lifeline.
Most weekends, my family and I would pack up and drive to my grandparents’ house. My grandmother was seriously ill, and my mother, brother, and I would spend the weekend helping my grandfather help care for her, as well as helping with the household tasks. My grandfather, utterly lost in the face of domestic life, leaned on us for everything from cooking to emotional support. My dad worked weekends, joining us only on Sundays to bring us home.
Later, when my grandmother passed, it was just Mum and me. My brother had found an escape through a part-time job, so it was just the two of us — and my grandfather.
He was… old-fashioned. That’s the polite way to put it. The truth is, he didn’t have much time or space for girls, let alone sensitive, imaginative ones like me. Children, in his eyes, were meant to be seen and not heard — and in my case, preferably not seen at all.
Everything I did was wrong. If I studied, I was boring. If I watched TV, I was lazy. I couldn’t win. It was a tough place to be. I was away from my friends, my room, my toys. I didn’t belong there. And worse, I felt it. I even tried to say it out loud: I don’t think he likes me. But my parents didn’t see it then. They told me I was imagining things. Of course he loves you. He’s your grandfather.
It’s only now, years later, that my mum looks back and sees it too. And says: You were right.
But back then, I didn’t have that validation. What I had, what saved me, was a notebook.
Every weekend, I’d bring one with me. I’d fill it with poems and stories, creating entire worlds where I was free, where I mattered, where I could rewrite the narrative I was living. I gave my feelings somewhere to go. I gave my imagination somewhere to breathe. In those pages, I found the friendships I was missing, the voice I wasn’t allowed to use, the escape I desperately needed.
That’s where my love of writing began. Not from joy, but from necessity. Not because I had something to say, but because it was the only way I could say anything at all.
Writing became my secret act of survival. My way of saying: I am here. I exist. I matter.
That little girl with her notebook has grown up. But the writing never stopped. It changed form — into song lyrics that got me through anxiety attacks, into a novel that helped me survive burnout, into psychological thrillers that give voice to the tangled parts of mental health we’re still learning how to talk about. But for me, it has always been the same thing:
Writing through it.
This series follows the winding path from writing alone in a notebook… to building a writing life that connects with others. It’s also the story behind how Author Events came to life — but we’ll get to that later.
And now, I ask you the same thing I once asked myself on a blank page:
✍️ Let’s write through it. One honest word below—how are you?
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