Major Project Two

            Writing has impacted my life, first in an indirect manner and then in a very dominating way. Having a mother who graduated from UNC’s Journalism School, the concept of journaling my experiences and using it as a cathartic tool in order to overcome trauma and empower others. However, even with my mother’s background, it was not until I learned of the importance of writing on my own accord that I truly acknowledged its significance. I decided to define writing as simply a string of words that form an idea. The five artifacts I chose the showcase take multiple forms: a blog post, a chapter in a novel, a song, a poem, and a journal entry. This story, and it is a story, follows my experiences as a sibling of someone with cancer. I did not know how to express my feelings of frustration, so I simply did not.

The first artifact is a blog post that highlighted my sister's cancer treatments. In August of 2010 my little sister was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma and Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, types of cancer in the central nervous system and in the blood. It was an even that shocked my family and completely changed our lives, and as a result many people wanted to know how we were dealing with everything. This blog helped to connect all of our friends and family by showing them what was going on in Ashley's treatments and in our personal lives. This took place during the age of social media, but the blog helped to allow people to dive deeper and discover more about her than posts on Facebook were able to, and by having a blog specifically devoted to her treatments, people were able to learn about her treatments all in one place and look at all of her updates archived in one location. In this specific blogpost, my mom is writing about a major surgery my sister went through at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City. This was a very traumatic period for my family, and it was something that stressed my household a lot, so my mom made sure to balance a sense of innocence and humor alongside seriousness in the blogpost. To do this, she wrote the blog from both my sister's perspective, who was eight at the time, and from her viewpoint. This helped to simplify the complex treatments she was going through, and it allowed people to fully understand and feel as if they knew what was going on. 

This introduced me to writing in the sense that I understood what it meant to connect a multitude of people with your words. Even though my mom would always be tired from being with my sister at the hospital, she would always take time out to write about what was going on, and this was because of how important it was to keep our extended family involved and a part of the process with us. Not only did it allow people a view into our world, but it helped us to see that we truly were not alone in this fight. With Facebook not being a fully established platform yet, this blog allowed us to connect to people of all ages. The blog platform also allowed for all of the information involving her treatments to be consolidated in one place. It also allowed my mom to have more creative liberties with how she would share our family's information. This artifact showed me that words are able to connect people, especially when utilizing technology, more specifically the Internet, as a resource.

The second artifact is a chapter from the novel Wonder by RJ Palacio. It follows a boy named August Pullman, Auggie for short, who suffers from mandibulofacial dysostosis and a cleft palate. This story, showcases Auggie’s journey entering a mainstream school system for the first time and facing conflicts involving bullying, relationships, and fitting in. It definitely mimicked my family's situation in terms of a major life event completely rocking our world. However what struck me most was how much I related to Auggie's sister Via--short for Olivia! She talks about feeling as if she could never vocalize how she was feeling concerning her life or anything that did not have to do with her brother. Ironically, these were things that, up until that point, I was unable to vocalize. I had spent the first two years of my sister being sick completely internalizing everything I was feeling in order to not act as a burden on my parents, something that caused me to suffer. When I read this for the first time in middle school, I remember crying because I had never seen it written out and had my thoughts exactly articulated. 

Through this I was able to understand how words not only unite people, but long complex stories filled with well rounded characters help people to see themselves in others and to know that they are not alone in this situation. This was different from the blog post in the sense that it was a piece of writing that was about me and not about my sister, and it was something that I could feel included in. I spent a lot of time away from my family while my sister was in treatment, so while my family compares my sister's cancer to a hurricane or a tornado, my situation felt like being on the sidelines screaming at the hurricane in anger, frustration, and sadness and finding that I was mute the whole time. However, this book truly gave me a voice.

My third artifact is the song “Waving Through A Window” from the musical Dear Evan Hansen. This musical follows a boy dealing with anxiety who fabricates a relationship he had with a young boy who committed suicide. While I did not especially relate to Evan's situation, I did relate to his dealing with anxiety. After my middle school years and leading into my high school years, I was diagnosed with anxiety. However, for a while I did not think I had anxiety and I pushed the concept away. It was not until I learned about this musical and dug into how Evan dealt with his disorder and how he used writing letters to himself to combat the disorder. Throughout the production, Evan writes letters to himself saying, "Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day and here is why..." to help him deal with his panic attacks and anxiety. It was this musical that pushed me to seek treatment, and it also unconsciously showed me how writing for one's self can impact someone's life.

Its format as a song helps, because the combination of the lyrics and the melody help to fully emphasize the tone. The usage of staccato throughout the song helps to emphasize the message that the lyrics are working to carry. While the melody is not a component of language, its role helps to elevate the words' intent. This song not only helped me to further learn about my experiences with anxiety, but it allowed me to realize that words can allow me to feel a part of a community. Not only did I feel closer to people who also enjoyed this musical, but I felt less strange in terms of how my mind worked; I was able to feel normal, something that I had not felt in a long time.

The fourth artifact is Walt Whitman’s “O Me O Life” from Leaves of Grass. This was assigned reading my senior year of high school, and while we read many excerpts from Leaves of Grass, it was this poem that most resonated with me. It talks about leaving your mark on the world through your writing. this was one of the first direct messages I've ever gotten about writing and how I should engage with it because it is a necessary part of life and relaying my story to others. I still read this poem in college occasionally, and it influenced me to begin writing and viewing it as me “contribute[ing] a verse.” This is one of my inspirations for beginning to journal and putting my thoughts into writing  physically. 

By reading someone who is iconic in the literary community talk about making your mark helped me to realize that my story was impactful, and whether a million people read my journal in the future (unlikely) or it's always just me reading and writing in it (much more likely) I am still making an impact on the world.

The fifth artifact is a recent journal entry in my daily journal. I began journaling earlier this year, and it did it as a way of getting my thoughts out in a safe and more private manner. I'm an external processor, so it really helped to have an outlet for my thoughts. At this point, I journal about a page every day, and it really helps me to grow as a person because I discover things about myself as I write. Having these words written down rather than spoken helps to keep the thoughts to myself, but it also helps to freeze these words in time, and it makes them always present. It helps to read about when my life was doing well in periods of stress, and it helps to remind myself that life can suck sometimes in periods of prolonged bliss. I like occasionally going back and reading what I wrote because in most cases I learn and evolve my thought processes as I write my feelings out. 

The format of my journal being a fluid outpouring of my thoughts acts as a form of language that is closest to how an actual conversation would work. I never plan what I will write about before I do it, and many times I will be talking about something completely different from what I originally had been writing about. This artifact also most closely mimics the first artifact written by my mom. Just like my mom would blog about my sister's treatment, I journal about my day-to-day experiences.


In conclusion, these five artifacts helped to shape me into who I am today. Through these I learned that words connect people, allow people to feel heard, form communities, carry on legacies, and allow people to understand themselves. The way I think about language has permanently been changed as a result of me reading, internalizing, and creating my own string of words that will hopefully impact someone in the same way these artifacts have impacted me. For now, though, I am merely "contributing a verse."