Alongside
   Editorial

There are three things that have been always been true: I read, I write, I listen. 

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First, I was a reader. 

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I have clear memories of, as a kid, sitting at a miniature table on a miniature chair, and reading whatever was in front of me.

 

The back of the milk carton. (Those cows sounded happy.)
The story of how Annie's was founded. 

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I read Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret  several times over in the back of a very relaxed Episcopal church. I was definitely having some kind of spiritual awakening on those summer Sundays...but about BOOKS. 

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I started reading books by the light of my nightlight. I would sneak out of bed past my bedtime and read until I couldn't stay awake. 

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Being a reader made me realize I could be a writer.

 

Maybe not consciously, because I started writing early, but I felt curiosity--what was this? 

 

I wrote my first story in first grade, with a friend. It felt so joyful. I can feel the scratchy rug beneath us as we lay for too long on it. We didn't care. I still look back on this memory and appreciate that my first writing experience was not a solitary pursuit, but one of togetherness. 

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How I came to listening is the most complicated, I think. Or maybe the simplest. 

 

What I know is that listening has always been a part of who I am. I enjoy careful, thoughtful listening, and when I am quiet, I am usually always listening, to people or animals around me or to myself. 

 

I am an older sibling, an INFJ, a Libra sun, was born on a Friday, and am a Type 4 Enneagram. And I have lived with chronic pain in the form of severe migraines since I was five, was diagnosed with OCD when I was a teenager, and consider my brain to be neurodivergent. I have observed that I need a longer processing time than others, and that magic happens in the quiet. 

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