IF ONLY I COULD HAVE KNOWN HER THEN...

Around this time last year, when my nephew and his wife were here visiting, they made a remark that got me to thinking. They said, "Ever since we started reading your blog, we've felt like we're actually beginning to know you, for the very first time." The more I thought about it, the more I realized, that has a lot to do with why I started writing in the first place. Because, before I picked up pen and paper, no one ever really had known me - not even John.

When Susan Albert spoke at the library on Saturday, one of the things she talked about was Story Circle Network, and why she had felt compelled to create this organization. Susan truly believes - and so do I - that every woman has a story to tell, no matter how ordinary she believes her life to be.

Think, for a moment, about your mother, your grandmothers, and your great-grandmothers. How well do you really know them? Wouldn't you give just about anything, to stumble across a journal written by one of them? Not one that told of an illustrious career that brought them fame and fortune, but one that talked about their very ordinary days as a teen or young mother; their hopes and dreams when they were ten or eleven; their struggles and their successes; their sorrows and their joys... Why, just think of what generations of young girls might have been deprived of, had not Laura Ingalls Wilder kept a record of such ordinary things!

Need help getting started? Join Story Circle Network, and take advantage of their reading and writing circles (both on-line and physical), on-line class offerings, workshops, book reviews, mentoring, etc., and give serious thought to the possibility of attending their bi-annual conference being held in Austin, Feb. 5-7. Your daughters and your granddaughters will thank you for it!