Detours & Dreams

Growing up, I was called a “storyteller.” Whether riding the school bus or just hanging out with friends, kids loved my stories. I made them up on the spot; no rhyme, reason, just tall tales woven with sheer fun and imagination, hoping there would be a punch line because just like my captive audience, I had no clue where I was going. My stories never failed to draw a crowd, and someone would say, “You made that whole thing up,” whereas I’d laughed and say, “Maybe I did, but you believed it.” It was fun, and for a short while, I felt important and the center of their attention.

I’m no longer a young kid, nor do I tell tall tales except to my grandkids, who believe every word of them. But there is still a story to be told. It’s no tall tale; it’s real. All of it is true, even when I wished it wasn’t.

It’s worth telling because there’s a whole group of people out there who need to hear it. So I’m not telling for me; I’m telling it for them. Maybe you are one of those people.

You see, sometimes as kids, we do things that turn us and our families upside down and inside out. We lose the core of who we are, or maybe, for the first time, we discover we really never knew who we were in the first place. Your bags get packed with guilt, shame, hopelessness, and lots of fear that the future just shut its doors; you pick up those heavy bags and begin to live out of them. No one tells you differently; some even tell you this is who you are now.

Out of the blue, one by one, some older women are sprinkled like pixy dust along your desolate journey. But unlike pixy dust, their words, actions, and unconditional love go deep into your wounded heart, and like a key in a dull rusty lock, the door opens, and you come out of that self-made prison.

The journey is still hard, the challenges tough, but for the first time, you see differently. You’re not sure why; you just know the sky is blue, the grass is green, and you are different. Just as those women made a difference in you without realizing it, you are going to do the same for the ones placed on your path. Some call it paying it forward; I just call it doing for others what they did for me.

This is my story. I’ve waited a long time to tell it, but too many people are letting others write their story for them. I met some of those people; once I was one of those people.