Dear You, My Reader:
I'm glad to have you along for this journey I am on and have been on for a few months now. The fact that you've taken the time to open this article and spend even a minute looking at it, means more to me than you know.
I’m known for being the girl who posts articles, quotes, and inspirational mantras that other people just seem to always relate to. I’ve even been told I’m “an inspiration” – that one still blows my mind a little. I really haven’t done anything to be an inspiration other than live my life but I guess for some people who have been through similar situations as mine, the way I persevered could be inspirational.
I graduated from college with an English degree and though I wasn’t planning to pursue a career in anything to do specifically with “English,” I knew that I wanted to put my degree to work somehow, some way. All my life I’ve tried to write meaningful material. I’ve tried to write poems, short stories, and even personal journaling. Nothing ever really seemed to stick. I always felt this need to be heard and I wanted people to relate to me more than anything. I tried blogging for a while and while that was satisfying, something was still missing. When the opportunity arose for me to write for the Odyssey, it was like a sign from God that this was going to be the way for me to write about my life, help and motivate others, and to use my English degree. What I didn’t realize at the time was, how much writing for the Odyssey was going to change my life and as I’ve been told, how it would change others’ lives in the process.
I started writing for the odyssey in the summer of 2016. When asked what I wanted to write about – I knew that I wanted to write about life, love, relationships of all sorts, and maybe even politics (even though that can be a slippery slope none of us really wants to go down). I never realized how raw and vulnerable I would be in my writing. I never imagined I would allow so many strangers, seemingly enough, to see into the deepest parts of my psyche; but, that’s certainly what happened.
I told the story of my break-up with my boyfriend turned fiancé and about how him ending our relationship catapulted my life into what I’m living right now. I’ve talked about the struggles of being a plus-size woman and how even though being “thick” is the new “thing,” I still feel undesirable. I’ve talked about my growing relationship with God and how my relationship with Him has transformed my life in so many unbelievable ways. I’ve written about my friends, my family, and I’ve prayed for my future husband. I’ve written about how to be brave and how to be unapologetically yourself. And that's just a handful of articles I recall vividly ....
Every single article I’ve written, week after week, is a piece of me. Some people forget that there is an author behind the article and that what they’re reading is in fact the real-life emotions, situations, and feelings that that person has gone through. Anytime I thought about that too long – about how everything I’ve written has allowed someone I may not even know into my life – I get scared and I even wonder if that’s what I really wanted to happen in the first place. And even more so, I wonder if my experiences, my truths, and most importantly, my words, have helped whoever it is reading my article. I know that writing these articles has been therapeutic for me and I can only hope that in some small way, my words have been therapeutic for you too.
I don’t know what I will write next or how it will impact you but I do hope that you’ll continue to follow me along on this journey. I hope that you will tell me what you like and what you don’t like. I hope that you won’t be too cruel and you’ll understand that everything I write is mine and I’m simply sharing it with you, whoever you are. I hope you don’t think that any of this is “pointless” because that would mean that I’m doing this all for nothing and I know that to be completely false in so many ways. I hope that we will grow together and you will continue to be proud to share my words with others. I won’t always be perfect and there may come a day that I feel it’s time to move on, but for now … I hope you’ll stay and I hope I’ll continue to inspire you just as you all have inspired me.
This is why I write for the Odyssey.
Best,
Kirsten Ceron (Odyssey Content Creator & Contributing Editor)
