Who is Regina the Writer?

LIFE ROLES

Throughout life I have worn many hats. I am daughter/sister/mom/aunt/teacher/wife/friend. I am librarian/ paralegal/manager/student/caregiver/provider. Until now, I have not thought to distinguish my writer self from the others. Until now, I have not allowed myself to take myself seriously as a writer. So, I ask myself, what does that look like? Who is Regina, the writer? I must know her so that I can be her. The writer hat must become my primary hat now. In order to do that, I must know that person.

GOALS

First, as Regina the writer, I have dreams and I have concrete goals. I have on-going projects.

MEMOIR

Because I currently find myself in a transition period of life, my memoir is now front and center.  The memoir serves as a vessel to fill and explore how I came to be where I’m at now. In order to write other things, I have to understand how I got here and why certain problems have reoccurred throughout my life. There is a cycle that must be broken, not only in my own life, but also intergenerationally. After some pretty intense therapy and difficult digging deeply into my soul, I can now give a name to the monster that has haunted me for a lifetime and that has colored my relationships, that has shape-shifted into drinking, low self-esteem, self-sabotage and a myriad of other masks. The monster is abandonment. When I write about this, when I use my own life as an example, I can help others to understand their own abandonment issues. Through sharing this pain, my daughter will understand me better and together she and I can break the cycle of abandonment that has been passed down from one generation to the next in our family.

A NOVEL

When that is done, as I see it, I get to roll up my sleeves and do the fun stuff. Several years ago, I set aside a novel I started. When I don my writer hat, I have so many questions about the plot and the characters of this story. I struggle to know these people. There is a connection, I believe, between my Cat Island story and my memoir. There must be, they are my ancestors. after all. Getting to know these people in my head is so difficult because they did not leave behind diaries or any written artifacts to help me. Not only were they illiterate, but amongst themselves they did not even share a common language. On a small island, three generations spoke French and Spanish and likely Choctaw as well as English.

There are other topics trying to find their way out of me too. Finally, I have reached a time in my life when I can make my stories a priority. My next step is to get organized. My desk looks like my brain.

IDENTITY

Who am I as a writer? I am a woman who is deeply passionate about words. Like other roles I play, as a writer I hope to serve others, that is to help others find a better way. I hope to weave stories that fascinate, empathize and explore our amazing world. I love sharing my discoveries with others and that is what I want to do as writer.