I had the perfect life. I was the grade-school star and the teacher’s pet. The world revolved around me and I suspected it always would. If you ask most people about their life, they don’t begin with fifth grade. But that was a good year.

Illness changed that. I retreated into a shell and escaped into words. Writing a story sucked the pain out of me, at least for a while. That’s when I learned to “feel” on paper. I didn’t think I’d be an author, I didn’t think I’d be much of anything, I was simply writing to survive.

Life changed in college. Health returned, the cloud lifted, and I got my teaching license. Being a teacher, and being with those kids healed me. Surrounded by them, I relived periods of time stolen by childhood sickness.