“I always knew I wanted to be a writer,” was never true for me. I was, however, an avid reader and an ardent letter writer throughout my early years and into adulthood. Also, I had tape put across my mouth by Mrs. Campbell in third grade. When she later apologized, my mother said, “Why didn’t I think of tape?”
Despite detesting diaries, with their pretty locks and defining lines, I fell into journaling at 18, out of desperation. I needed a witness. I needed to make art from the chaos into which my family was careening.
When I became a mother in my thirties, my words jumped out of my journals and into print. My mother died in the weeks after my son’s birth and it was at that time that writing for me became a vocation.
Kelly Salasin 
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