For me writing is...

I have never really been the verbal type. You know the one that can express themselves without much thought. I have always relied on my pen and paper to tell my story. To express my hurt. Despair. Until this day, married and with kids, I still find it easier to write my thoughts down in notebooks and journals. It makes me feel better.

There was no teacher who gave me the passion in which I express myself through writing. I do not recall anyone standing over me telling me that this is the way you write a story or a poem. I look at it as a gift from God. One day a pen found my right hand and paper found the left. I wrote. Wrote for pleasure, pain, happiness, and comfort. Writing makes me Shauna. Helps me to take away some of the chaos in my life.

I remember a professor telling me that when you write a poem you are supposed to capitalize each beginning line. Not in my poems. Whenever I feel like capitalizing a word, I do. My poems flow, evoking pain and laughter. Writing cures an aching soul.

No matter if it’s the The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes tapping inside my head or Nikki Giovanni’s Love Poems or the hips of the sassy Sula causing laughter in the back of my throat, I know one thing for sure; if it wasn’t for reading and writing the freedom in which I express myself would never exist.