Your corner of the world.

The use of the word I. 

I am. I will. I can. 

So many of us are talking about ourselves these days, me included. 

Someone wrote me last week and said it was used far too much in my letters. And she is right. Every editor I have ever worked with has told me so. I write these letters because I am sharing with you how I see the world. It is through the lens of my own understanding. They are not the truth but a perspective.

These letters are about how the world is seen through these eyes. From your responses over the years it is true that they are also about you and and how we might be similar to each other. How our stories cross and our paths collide because we are here together in this world. These letters are tiny stories. 

Last weekend I spoke to 120 rug hookers at the Newfoundland and Labrador Rug Hooking Guild's 30th Anniversary. It was an honour to be there with a vibrant group of women who brought rug hooking back to life in that province. When you are asked to talk to a group there is a responsibility to talk to them about something meaningful and enriching. It is important to be authentic. And so to do that, I just told them my story because that is something I know. And I wondered if it was too much about me and my sense of place. Before starting I asked then to close their eyes and picture where they grew up. And then I told them the story about where I grew up, about leaving home and how it helped transform me into an artist.

Before beginning I was afraid that this story might be too personal, not relevant enough to the people in the room. For any speaker knows that when you talk, it should be about the people in the room. That is what I want these letters to be as well, to be about you and your life. That perhaps you will extrapolate your own stories amongst these "I" s and "Me"s. For all any of us has is our own story. It is what we have to offer the world. And in offering it we aim to makes ourselves free for having told it and others richer for having heard it.

So a story about a girl leaving home is not a story of one person, it is a universal story. It is a truth that is shared from generation to generation. A story about belonging does not belong to any one person, it belongs to all of us. So when I stood in that parish hall and talked to those good women in Tilting on Fogo Island in Newfoundland, I told them my story. Not because I wanted them to know me, but because I believed that perhaps they might see themselves, their sisters, mothers, or daughters in what was true for me. I wanted them to see something of themselves in my story.

And I am sure many of them did. I could see it in their eyes. 

It is all we have, our story. It is at the core of who we are and why we are here. And these stories as much as they are our own, they belong to all of us. We are blades of grass, all of us, so much the same, yet each one of us an individual.

So when I say "I "  in these letters, know that "I" am only telling a story and hoping that you might understand. Not thinking that my story is more important than your own. Never. For I know how small I stand under a big sky, and yet, in knowing that I still feel that my own story is worth telling. It is the artist in me. It cries out in colour, and lines, and words so that others will hear. 

And every editor I have ever worked with has asked me to use more "we" and so I should perhaps. But when I do I feel as if I am putting words in the mouths of others, and so these letters are written like a diary. And in them is a story of a woman hooking rugs on seven acres in a small corner of the world and trying to make sense of it all, just as you are doing the same in your corner of the world. We are here together in this time, and together we make our way, You and I.

Thank you for reading.