I’ve been writing for almost 40 years, my very first article being published in the Chicago Tribune in 1984. I’ll let you do the math. My mother was a writer, my grandparents were writers and editors, and even my great-grandfather wrote while stealing onto a sailing ship from England to navigate this country at the age of 16.
Is it inherent? Or did I just follow along on the path of least resistance like a lemming nosing along the red slashes of an editor’s pen? Not sure, and it probably doesn’t matter because by 2017 I had stopped writing. Until today. Seven years, cold turkey. Just. Like. That.
It seems like it should be harder to give up something you love so much, something that has been such an integral part of most of your life, but it wasn’t. It makes me a little sad to think how easy it was. I didn’t feel guilty or like I had failed my writing forebears. I simply felt I had nothing to say, or at least nothing you would want to hear.
In my last year of published writing, 2017, I was lucky enough to have six or seven articles published in Wednesday Journal alone (thank you, Ken & Dan) and by that time the merda had squarely hit the turbo fan and was flying off in every direction: The Donald had been installed as the new Antichrist. Soon after, the Pandemic reared its ugly variant head, and I had not only lost my mother, but both of my in-laws during those seven years. However, the real Luxardo cherry on top of this crap sundae was being diagnosed with cancer in 2022. Helluva carnival ride, huh?
I’m not making excuses for myself, or looking for sympathy. As my husband likes to say, ‘I’m not complaining, I’m just explaining.’ I won’t unload the unpleasant and gory details that go along with a cancer journey. Many of you, sadly, know it all too well. I share this because surviving cancer, the sadness of personal loss, and the tangible fear of almost losing everything that makes America America, has brought me to the other side.
Where I discovered I still had a voice. Kind of raspy, a little quiet from lack of use (unless you ask my family), but my voice just the same.
And this may be a bit of the reason why that voice re-emerged today:
Monday night, Aug. 19, I sat with my husband and good friends in a box seat at the beautifully restored Auditorium Theater to watch the opening night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention on jumbo screens. We were invited to be in the audience of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert “Live from Chicago,” the first of his 4-night stint here during the 2024 DNC. His special guest was none other than our 67th Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The Auditorium was packed with 3,900, all the way up to the fourth-floor balconies. It was loud, joyful and hopeful for all the possibilities and potential of a new young Democratic ticket. The energy was electric and contagious, and it hit me like a 64-ounce Stanley of Jolt Cola. We got home at 1:45 a.m. (Love You, Joe!) and then I wrote this article.
Was my 7-year curse broken? Who knows? And who cares? What I do know is that we all have a voice hidden somewhere behind the trauma, the tragedy and the day-to-day monotony. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have never stood up to live.”
Hopefully I’ve found my voice for good. Here’s hoping you find yours as well.
Julianne Wood is a native Oak Park/River Forester, who now lives in Elmwood Park.