A few days ago, a close friend passed away rather suddenly. I think the shock of her death gripped many of us in those first hours, where we didn’t know exactly how to react. We searched for meaning, we tried to make sense of the fact that she was here in one moment, and gone in the next.

I posted the following on Facebook to express that yearning for understanding:

When a friend dies, you search. You look for meaning in your own life, seek out understanding in the loss, and rummage through old words shared. In that search, you find yourself laughing and crying, wishing and regretting, loving and hating. Gretchen, I have done all of these things in the past 5 hours, and none of it brings me any closer to finding illumination in a loss as great as yours. There were too many stories untold that we were to share over coffee. You, Gretchen, will always be a merchant of smiles to the masses. We love you, and we will miss you greatly.

The morning after I posted it, a person I did not know on social media commented on it and asked if, many years ago, our paths might have crossed. It turned out they did – for the entire year of third grade, where she was my teacher.

Other elementary school classmates joined in, and within moments words of grief had turned into a celebration of life and gratitude. In Gretchen’s passing, relationships were rekindled, brought together for profound, yet simple purposes: there is an appreciation of life in this moment, and wherever we go, we can discover the beauty of others that swirls around us endlessly. There is no limit in the abundance of love.

In talking with my old teacher and new friend, I found myself returning to two memories from elementary school. The first was when I was in first grade, and I had written a little tribute to Abraham Lincoln for Presidents’ Day. In that brief piece, which I read to the whole school during the afternoon announcements (talk about publishing at a young age), I remember distinctly calling Mary Todd, Lincoln’s wife, his “beloved.” The principal snickered and suppressed a laugh as she held the microphone in front of me. I guess this was the first review I had ever received of my writing.

The second memory was of another teacher I had in elementary school. Jack Delaney was my sixth grade language arts teacher. He passed away 11 years later in my first year of teaching in 1988. Jack assigned us weekly writing projects, which I absolutely loved. What Jack did differently, though, was he had us go through this thing called “the writing process,” where we would draft stories, workshop them, edit them, and then share them with a larger audience.

Perhaps that was happening all throughout elementary school and I just don’t remember it. I certainly don’t remember workshopping the line about Abe’s “beloved” wife Mary.

The point is, Jack gave me a chance to breathe as a writer. He gave me the space to explore writing and take risks as that writer. Since that year, I have journaled on a near-daily basis. And in those journals, I have discovered the writer within.

We don’t all have those lucky moments where we are given, directly, the chance to discover who we are as artists. In fact, in too many instances (especially today), those opportunities no longer exist. There isn’t time in the classroom, or we are too caught up in other aspects of life to give ourselves the time to discover that writer or artist within.

But inside you, the artist resides. You have to make the time, create the space, provide yourself with the license to write for no other purpose than to discover your voice and see yourself for the artist you have always been.

Maybe you journaled a little when you were younger, and you had to pass it up for reasons that, even today, might make perfect sense. What makes greater sense, though, is reconnecting with the artist inside you, giving that artist the chance to breathe, and allowing that artist to resonate more confidently through you.

In Part 2 of my series “Answering The Call To Adventure,” I will address how you can create a vision – an authentic direction – as that writer.