I was completely stunned when I heard I had won Real Simple's Life Lessons contest. I am an aspiring writer, but an amateur. It was my first submission to anything, ever. The essay is starkly honest because I never dreamed anyone would read it.
I started writing as a kind of therapy when I got sick. I needed a new creative outlet that I lost when I stopped singing. I was a life-long voracious reader but I never thought I could come close to creating anything as substantive as the work of the authors that I admired. Before I my diagnosis, my feeling was if I was going to do something, I wanted to do it well. That attitude held me back from trying. There isn't a soul alive who can sing as gloriously as Pavarotti could in his prime. Does this mean we shouldn't sing?
When I first got my diagnosis, I told only a handful of close friends, and I begged them not to tell anyone. Speaking so publicly about my cancer is daunting. But it was a story I needed to put on paper. And in the end, it felt like I lost one voice, but I gained another.
I started writing as a kind of therapy when I got sick. I needed a new creative outlet that I lost when I stopped singing. I was a life-long voracious reader but I never thought I could come close to creating anything as substantive as the work of the authors that I admired. Before I my diagnosis, my feeling was if I was going to do something, I wanted to do it well. That attitude held me back from trying. There isn't a soul alive who can sing as gloriously as Pavarotti could in his prime. Does this mean we shouldn't sing?
When I first got my diagnosis, I told only a handful of close friends, and I begged them not to tell anyone. Speaking so publicly about my cancer is daunting. But it was a story I needed to put on paper. And in the end, it felt like I lost one voice, but I gained another.
RSS Feed
