My Journey Home: Changes Through Writing

by Desirena Cortijo

Overview

There comes a point in your life when you must step back and just look. Look at everything around you. Your family, friends, home and where you are at that moment in time. For some, this moment comes early in life and for others it comes later. This is a time when you just look with your eyes. At some point that simple look turns into an evaluation and reflection. Your mind begins to wonder if all of your choices up to that point have been the right ones. You begin to wonder if this is the path you saw yourself on 10 years before. We have all done it in high school. We had our hopes and dreams of a better life then what we were living. In high school the grass was always greener on the other side, no matter how good or bad our lives were, we had the same goal; to do better. Our teachers at one point asked, "Where do you see yourself in ten years? Where will you go after high school?" Half of us wanted to go to college while the other half wanted to party and celebrate the victory of finally completing school. At 29 years old I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. As I sat waiting in the cold doctor's office lonely and scared, I began to look at my life. I looked at my shaking hands and my half naked body wondering what my fate would be. What affects this disease would have on my body and my life. In my mind I could see my four children looking up at me and not up to me. How could they look up to a mother who had never finished school? High school wasn't easy and I never went to college because of it, but there I was pleading with my own children, explaining to them how important school was. It was at this moment that I began to evaluate my life and the looking stopped. I was stagnant in my life up to that point. I had no job and an education that didn't go past high school. My job as their mother is to lead them to the right path and guide them while they are on that path, but how could I? I had no path of my own. I dreamed of being a journalist, photographer, lawyer, judge and a writer. I never wanted to be a mother let alone some one's wife. I was immediately slapped in my face by my own reality; I didn't know who I was anymore. I lost site of my goals and dreams. So, I asked myself a hard question, "What I am doing with my life?" I decided to go back to school, which was no easy task. During grammar school I got the worst grades possible, Ds and Fs. It wasn't until the end of high school that I finally pulled myself up and did the hard work necessary to succeed. I enrolled in journalism and found a love for writing. My teacher would have us come into class, grab our journals and write whatever was on our minds. It didn't matter if it was just one word, we just had to write and write I did. After graduation my life turned upside down and I lost focus. My focus became family; all of my friends had children and I wanted one. As selfish as it sounds, it's what I wanted and it's what I got. When my focus shifted from my own writing to having children I lost who I wanted to be and who I was. 12 years later I had to embark on a new journey and my focus became becoming a good role model to my children. Still; I had no clue as to who I was and what it was that I wanted out of life. Writing no longer existed in my life; I couldn't write anymore. For years I stared at my half empty journal. A journal that was given to me when I was sixteen and fourteen years later I had close to nothing written in it. I decided to go back to school to learn how to write again. What I learned from my teacher wouldn't just be how to write again, I would find a new love for it and myself. It was one assignment that would be the start of my journey. In my first writing class we were asked to write an essay in which we had to define ourselves. I didn't know what that meant, but I also didn't know how to define myself other than to say I was a mother and a wife. That same summer we were asked to do it again and still I couldn't do it. It was two years later in 2006 in a Creative writing class that I was asked once again to write a paper on defining myself, and again I was stuck and didn't know how to do it. I wanted to find me again and then I would finally be able to answer, "How do you define yourself?" As a child and a teen it is easy to say what you want to be when you grow up, but it's all together different when you try to achieve it. This book chronicles my journey from being just a mother and wife to a successful student, mother, ex-wife, writer and English tutor. Along my path I would encounter many teachers, but only four would touch my life in such a way that the true poet would emerge. I would find beauty in my own words and in myself. This is my journey home.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940148472858
Publisher:	Epic Press
Publication date:	05/17/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	103 KB

About the Author

My Journey Home: Changes Through Writing is a look into the life of a struggling mother of four who, at 30 years old, returned to the college classroom and found a love of writing, teaching and herself. This book includes poetry and essays written for her teachers, writing which became a way to rediscover the true writer lost within the real woman. This book chronicles her struggles through divorce and becoming the single mother of four children all the while trying to redefine herself as a woman, teacher and writer.