One Year Later
Written By : Grace Wedienhamer
From a TikTok comment to a year of Havens... One year ago, I wrote my first article for Havens. This was in the midst of being laid off from my corporate job, not really knowing what to do or who I wanted to become. One day on my TikTok FYP, I came across a girl named Hannah, who shared a day in her life as an editor of a digital magazine. Feeling uninspired, lost, and a bit ballsy, I commented on her video that if she ever needed writers, let me know.
You can take a guess how that turned out. What started as something to keep my creative juices flowing while unemployed turned into something much more: finding my voice. I’ve always had a passion for writing. I can’t tell you how many notebooks I filled as a kid writing short stories and books and diary entries. When you live with a brain that has 17 conversations with itself at once, you need some way to ground your thoughts. For me, that’s writing.
In school, the last thing I wanted to do was write papers. Not because I wasn’t good at writing them, but because it felt like I was speaking through a voice that wasn’t my own. I knew what to say and how to structure paragraphs to make the teacher write a green check next to it, but it felt impersonal. A large part of my professional career has been writing, and although I’ve learned a lot about writing styles, I still didn’t feel as connected to my work as when I started writing for Havens.
Now, I write in my journal, I write in the notes app on my phone, I write on loose leaf paper, I have a stash of articles I’ve written just for myself. Writing down and expanding on my thoughts has given me clarity, an outlet, and a way to learn more about myself. When I sit down to write each week, I picture my younger self getting out her notebook and sparkly pens, laying on the floor, pouring the most drama and intrigue that a 10-year-old could conjure up onto the page. I was probably writing about a cute dog or something of the sort.
I wonder what she would say if you told her that other people would one day read her words; that her ideas would be immortalized on paper (or in this case, a screen). In the past year, I’ve developed new skills, stuck with a passion project, created for the sake of creating, met some great people, and started to figure out where I want to go.
If I could give anyone one piece of advice from just this past year alone, it would be to just ask the question. One comment, one message, one conversation, could be the difference maker in your life. One question could take you down a path that you never could have dreamed. One question could be the difference between wanting something, and actually doing it. One question could prove to yourself that you are capable; that you can actually do it.