©ESR 2026

Sometimes writing isn’t about answers.

Sometimes it’s about the questions that keep returning when the page goes quiet.

These are a few questions I find myself circling back to—not because I’ve solved them, but because they keep shaping the way I write.

1. Why do I write at all?

Honestly, I’m still trying to answer that question.

Writing has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, I was a prolific journaler—starting all the way back in grade school. At the time it wasn’t anything grand or artistic. It was simply a notebook where I wrote down my thoughts, the things that happened during the day, and whatever emotions I was trying to understand.

Looking back, some of those early entries would probably be embarrassingly dramatic in the way only childhood journals can be. But even then, writing served a purpose. It gave me somewhere to place the things I didn’t know how to say out loud.

I grew up in a home where I often felt misunderstood. There were experiences in my childhood that forced me to grow up far earlier than I should have, and when that happens, a child learns quickly to carry more than they are meant to.

For me, writing became the place where I could set those things down.

A notebook doesn’t interrupt you.

A blank page doesn’t argue.

It simply holds what you give it.

So long before I ever thought about poems or publishing anything publicly, writing was simply the safest place I knew to be honest about what I was feeling and what I was trying to make sense of.

In that way, writing didn’t start as creativity.

It started as survival.

Even now, many years later, I think part of that instinct still remains. The page is still the place where thoughts untangle themselves, where difficult emotions become understandable, and where the quiet parts of life can finally speak without being rushed or corrected.

Maybe that’s the real answer.

I write because the page has always listened.

2. Why poetry instead of straightforward prose?

This is another question I still find myself answering in pieces.

For me, poetry became a way of stepping slightly outside myself in order to see something more clearly. Sometimes it begins with something simple—a moment, a feeling, or even something as ordinary as rain against a car window. My mind shifts into a different kind of awareness, and the words begin to move more like a stream of consciousness than a structured explanation.

Poetry lets me follow that current.

Unlike prose, poetry doesn’t ask me to organize everything perfectly before it can exist. It doesn’t require a rigid structure, and it doesn’t even require rhyme. Many of my poems don’t rhyme at all. What matters more is capturing the movement of a thought or a feeling as it unfolds.

When I try to force those moments into straightforward prose, it often becomes harder. Prose carries expectations—grammar, structure, pacing, and the pressure to make sure everything is explained clearly. I find myself stopping to correct punctuation or worrying about rules I barely remember learning in school.

Poetry allows me to bypass that hesitation.

It lets me pause where a pause feels right. It allows space between ideas. Sometimes it even allows silence to speak between the lines.

Most importantly, poetry doesn’t have to make perfect sense to anyone but me at first. It’s simply a way of articulating a feeling, an insight, or an observation in the moment it appears.

Over time, I realized I kept gravitating toward that freedom.

Poetry became the place where a thought could breathe before anyone asked it to explain itself.



3.When did writing become survival instead of hobby?

Writing became survival when I was twelve.

There were things happening in my life then that I didn’t yet have the words to explain. They were difficult, adult realities that a child should never have to process alone. For a long time I tried to convince myself that maybe I was misunderstanding what I was seeing or feeling.

But there was a moment—one of those moments that brands itself into memory—when everything suddenly became clear.

I realized that if I didn’t find some way to process what was happening around me, my mind and spirit would eventually break under the weight of it.

In that moment I also saw something else clearly: the instability of the person who was hurting me and how much worse the situation could become if I didn’t find some way to protect myself internally.

When I tried to reach for support, it didn’t come in the way I needed. That realization forced another kind of clarity. I understood that I would have to find my own way through it.

So I started writing.

At first it wasn’t poetry or storytelling. It was simply journaling—page after page of thoughts, questions, and emotions poured onto paper. The page became the one place where I could say exactly what I was thinking without interruption, without judgment, and without needing to explain myself.

Something unexpected happened as that habit grew.

Once a thought was written down, it stopped circling in my mind. I didn’t replay it endlessly. The act of putting it onto paper seemed to release it.

Looking back now, I recognize that as a kind of grace.

Writing became the way I stayed steady while trying to understand experiences that were far too heavy for a twelve-year-old to carry alone.

Over time, though, writing slowly changed its role in my life.

What began as survival eventually became something else. As the years passed and healing began to take root, writing stopped being only a way to process pain. It became a way to observe the world, to reflect, and eventually to create.

The instinct to journal never left, but it expanded. I began writing poems, small reflections, and observations about the way life moves and changes.

In that sense, writing has lived two different lives for me.

First, it helped me survive.

Now, it helps me see.

4. What does silence mean to me when I’m not writing?

Silence, for me, doesn’t mean absence. It simply means that creativity has shifted into a different form.

There are seasons when the words pause, but that doesn’t mean the mind has stopped exploring. Often it just means I’m creating in other ways. I crochet. I spend time studying and reading, especially spiritual writings. Recently I’ve been exploring the works of Saint Teresa of Ávila and reflecting on some of her ideas about prayer, discipline, and the interior life.

Sometimes I’m journaling quietly, letting thoughts unfold without the pressure of shaping them into something public. Other times I’m experimenting with character ideas or story concepts that may or may not ever turn into something larger.

And some days, silence simply looks like rest. I’ll watch a film—often foreign films with subtitles—or just allow my mind to slow down after a long stretch of thinking and writing.

I’ve learned that I can’t write twenty-four hours a day. When I try to force that rhythm, the writing itself suffers.

The other creative practices in my life help balance that energy. When I crochet, my hands are busy counting stitches and patterns. That quiet concentration steadies my thoughts and keeps my mind from wandering in endless circles.

In that sense, silence becomes its own kind of preparation.

The page may be quiet for a time, but the mind is still gathering ideas, noticing small details, and slowly weaving together the thoughts that will eventually become words again.

So silence may be the absence of writing.

But it is never the absence of creating.

5. What does faith do to writing?

This is actually a very new question for me.

After being away from faith for about twenty-five years, returning to it has been like seeing the world with new eyes. Old ideas suddenly carry new meaning. Familiar concepts reveal deeper layers that I hadn’t noticed before.

In that sense, faith adds a certain richness to writing. It introduces perspective. It reminds me that not everything meaningful needs to be explained or proven in order to matter.

But faith also shows up in another way that may be less obvious.

A writer has to have faith in the act of writing itself.

You have to trust that the words matter in the moment they are written, even if no one ever reads them. Even if no one praises them. Even if those words disappear someday after you are gone.

The value of writing isn’t determined by an audience.

It’s determined by the honesty of the moment in which it was created.

In many ways, that mirrors faith itself. A relationship with the divine—whatever name someone chooses to give it—is deeply personal. It doesn’t require validation from the outside world. It exists because it matters to the person experiencing it.

Writing can be the same way.

You write because something in you needs to be expressed, explored, or understood. Whether the world notices or not doesn’t change the truth of that moment.

For me, having faith in my writing means releasing the constant question of “What if?”

What if people don’t like it?

What if no one reads it?

What if it isn’t good enough?

Those questions eventually lose their power when you realize they don’t actually matter.

What matters is whether the writing meant something to you when you created it.

If it did, then the act itself was worthwhile.

And if it didn’t, then that becomes an opportunity to explore why.

Nothing on this blog is meant to be perfect. None of it is meant to represent some polished, professional standard. It’s simply a space where I write honestly and share the things I’m thinking about, learning, or noticing along the way.

And I have enough faith in both myself and the writing to be comfortable with that.

Strangely enough, that kind of faith might be one of the purest forms of freedom a writer can have.