I’ve kept a diary since I was a little girl. I remember reading about a girl who wrote stories in hers, and something about that stayed with me. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I remember thinking—maybe I could do that. Maybe I could become a writer someday.
So I started writing things down. Not stories at first. Just pieces of myself. The things I noticed. The strange things other kids would say. I was always watching, always thinking, always building something in my head. I loved school—especially library day. That was my favorite. But I learned to keep that quiet. It wasn’t something you admitted out loud. So I held it close.
I was always a little out of step. My mind felt bigger than the rooms I was in. I daydreamed constantly—still do. There were whole worlds living just beneath the surface, and writing became the way I could visit them, and keep them.
I was also the sickly child. Pain was always there, woven into everything. For a long time, I thought that was just how life felt—that everyone was carrying something constant in their body. It wasn’t until my twenties that I understood that wasn’t true. That what I was feeling had a name. That something in me needed more care, more attention, more understanding than I had known how to give it.
And somewhere between all of that—the imagination, the quiet, the not quite fitting, the pain—these pages became a place I could go without being questioned. A place where nothing had to be explained perfectly. Where I could be honest before I was ready to be understood.
Over time, they held everything. What hurt. What changed. What stayed. The questions I kept returning to. The small moments that ended up meaning more than I realized.
With Care.
Tasha Monroe
Founder, Simply Edyn & Co.