Tanya Sousa's Blog - Posts Tagged "taking-chances"

From Behind the Words

I worked with Desiree (name changed) in my school counseling room once a week. We brought together paints and canvases and created, simultaneously sorting through the challenges of her twelve-year-old life. She discussed problems, and I sometimes helped her decide what to do by sharing my own past situations and offering different solutions that worked for me. Sometimes she would stop speaking and hold the paintbrush still in her hand because something on her canvas didn’t look right. I pushed my own brush against the palette and showed her new techniques to make it work.
Sometimes Desiree read me her poems and asked for critique. She wants to be a writer someday, and maybe an artist, and maybe a teacher, and maybe a veterinarian, and maybe a hairdresser. “You don’t have to decide on one thing,” I told her, and pulled out copies of magazines colorful with words and photographs. I point out my paintings on the wall and gesture around to the school counselor’s office. I show her by example there are no walls that can contain her, and she can blend the things she loves.
The most community benefit anyone can offer is providing examples for our youth of how to live fully and with joy and health. Authors have used words to share ideas for countless generations, but I think it takes a writer’s art to a higher level when s/he steps out from behind the words and is also an example. When we are gone, our written words will continue to speak for us if we are lucky. However, the impact we make on the world not just by what we write but by what we do will influence generations even if our words have not become classics and are lost in mounds of dust.
Even if I don’t become famous or widely read, benefit has already begun through the very ideas of writing I share. My students know I write feverishly when I’m not with them and what my stories or novels are about. I’ve shared some in draft form and show them the finished product later. They’re aware when a dear project is sent away and have witnessed some of my successes and rejections.
Having the thoughts, assertively seeking resources and taking the risk of rejection is my living example. Desiree’s eyes were wide when she first realized how much work my writing takes. “What if you’re turned down,” she asked. “Won’t it kill you to have done all that work for nothing?”
I explain it’s never “for nothing”. I tell her about the benefit from the mental exercise of writing, about the importance of reaching for dreams, and the beauty of believing in something passionately enough to share it, and now Desiree seems to work harder when she paints or writes her poetry. She’s beginning to see. Her face shines like a light at moments when she realizes anything is possible. I live for that look on children’s faces the same way I live for telling a story.
2 likes ·   •  2 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on May 27, 2013 12:54 Tags: authoring, children, counseling, education, schools, taking-chances, writing