from mary Keller on pinterest.com

I’m feeling very thankful.

I’m excited I’ve had people in my life who believe in me.

I love the fact that I have others in my life who love my dream as much as I do, for me.

So today, I’m writing about that moment. Not the birds and the bees; but the second my life changed, where  my one big dream shaped into a seed. The moment in my life someone took that seed and helped me plant it in the ground right under my feet. I’m talking about my first grade teacher, Mrs. Heinz.

And the story goes something like this…

Once upon a time—okay, thirty years ago—I’m sitting on the floor in pigtails, rainbow sparkle shoes and jeans. I’m squeezed in with 18 other classmates on a pink carpet, legs criss crossed and eyes glued to my teacher at the front of the room. It was story time and it didn’t matter what our teacher read out-loud—Mrs. Heinz had a voice that could silence the room—in a good way.

Finally, she closes the book. She sends us back to our seats and we scuttle off like mice frantic to be the first one to our desks.

“Erika, stay with me for a second.”

I freeze. A giant ear-to ear stretching smile lifts my face as I turn around. I loved Mrs. Heinz. She helped me make sense out of a bunch of scratches on a page and to see the letters out of all those scratches—eventually turning those letters into words.

Mrs. Heinz hands me a white card. I recognize it. An assignment, a story from a dream we could remember. Little unicorns decorated the top of the stationary drawn with my own two hands. Beneath those unicorns, I’d written my first story ever—a girl who could call the unicorns—a girl who could ride them anytime she was sad.

Mrs. Heinz bent down to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Erika, you’re going to be a writer someday. I loved your story.”

I’ll never forget the picture of her face. I’ll never forget the way I felt when she said it. I was good at something. I was good at something I loved to do. So I wrote. I wrote my way through middle school and high school and then something terrible happened when I started college—I stopped.

I’ve often wondered why—why did it take me 30 years to cycle back to my one greatest dream?

To be honest, I think I forgot how to sit still with my thoughts. Life became so busy with college and work and of course friends and fun.

So now I leave you with my favorite thought of the week because it’s never too late.

Chase what you want. Run as fast as you can to catch it. Sooner or later it will happen. I just know it.

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