The Day My Dad Reminded Me I’m a Writer

The Words I Lost—and the Ones That Found Me Again.

I was elbow-deep in the file cabinet, searching for my mom’s ID.

We needed it to find her taxes, but her current ID was nowhere to be found. The one we needed to track down her taxes. (Because apparently, even after death, the IRS waits for no one.)

We found four old driver’s licenses, the paper copy of her most recent ID, but not the ID itself. Dementia meant she’d put things somewhere safe—so safe we could never find them again.

That’s when I found it.

A manila folder. Unlabeled, stuffed with papers.

It was my stuff.

My writing.

Things I didn’t even remember writing—my Game and Fish column. Pieces from an old blog. A kids’ newsletter. Some articles from the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Random Facebook ramblings.

My words, printed on cheap printer paper, no formatting, no organization.

As I leafed through them, I saw my dad’s handwriting. Notes in the margins. Passages circled. Little directives like, “share this at coffee.”

He’d saved them.

He’d read them. Printed them. Folded and creased and reread them.

My dad, who was never one to gush, who never needed a lot of words, had quietly kept all of mine.

I flipped through the pages, remembering a life when I was single, with only a house and a feed bill to worry about. I laughed out loud at a column introducing the world to “Outdoor Guy,” the amazing man who would eventually become my husband.

And I thought, this stuff was actually really good.

It wasn’t so much a punch in the gut as it was a slap on the back of the head from the beyond.

I’ve wandered from writing.
Let photography, life, and the business of being useful swallow my time whole.
Forgot that I’m at my best—not when I’m doing all the things—but when I’m writing.

That old folder reminded me:
Writing was always how I moved through the world. How I made sense of the hurt and the joy and the long, strange middle ground.

That moment stuck with me.
It helped lead me here—back to the words.
To telling my own stories again, instead of just documenting everyone else’s.

It hurts. But also? It feels right.

I have more ideas than I can get down on paper.
I stay up too late, blue pen scratching frantically before the thoughts slip away and my muse leaves in a huff.

It feels so damn good.

I wish I could end this with some proud declaration like, “I locked myself in my office and finally finished my novel.”

Honestly, I’m doing good to shower and put on makeup most days.

But I’m finding my way back.

So thanks, Dad.
Thanks for saving my words—so I could come back and find myself in them again.