I did not plan to become a person who writes. For most of my life, I was the person who meant to write. I was the woman who said, "One day, when things calm down, I will finally start my journal again." That day kept moving further and further away, the way the horizon always seems just a little out of reach.
Then one morning, the house was quiet in a new way. The kids were grown. My calendar was not packed anymore. I stood in my kitchen with a warm mug in my hand and no rush pushing against me. I could hear the fridge hum and the clock tick on the wall. The quiet used to scare me. That day, it felt like a question.
What do you want to do with this time, Marissa?
I did not have a perfect answer, but I knew this much: I did not want to spend the rest of my life only watching other people chase their dreams. I wanted something of my own. Something small. Something steady. Something that felt like me.
The First Tiny Step
My first step was not brave. It was simple. I pulled a dusty spiral notebook out of a drawer and sat down at the kitchen table. The cover was bent, and a few old grocery lists were scribbled inside. I flipped to a clean page, held the pen, and just sat there for a while.
What do you even write after years of not writing?
I did not start with a big story. I did not write about my whole life or some grand idea. I wrote one moment. I wrote about my son running down the driveway on his first day of school with his backpack bouncing behind him. I wrote about how his shoes were a little too big and how he turned around twice to wave at me.
That was it. One small memory. One page. It was clumsy and simple and a little shaky. When I finished, I closed the notebook, slid it back into the drawer, and went on with my day. But something inside me felt different, like a tiny window had opened.
The next day, I wrote again. Not much. Just a few lines about the way the morning light fell across the table, catching all the crumbs I had missed when I wiped it down. The day after that, I wrote about my mother humming in the kitchen when I was a girl. One small picture at a time, the pages began to fill.
Letting My Writing Be Messy
At first, I tried to make every page perfect. If a sentence sounded strange, I crossed it out. If a memory felt too strong, I stopped halfway through. I treated my notebook like a test I had to pass instead of a place where I could be real. The more I tried to control every word, the more tense I felt.
One afternoon, I caught myself tearing out a whole page because I did not like how I had described a scene. I held the crumpled paper in my hand and suddenly felt tired of my own rules. I smoothed the page back out as best I could and taped it back in.
That messy page is still in my notebook. I keep it there on purpose. It reminds me that I do not have to be neat to be honest. I do not have to be tidy to be true.
Once I allowed myself to be imperfect, something shifted. I wrote faster. I worried less. I let my feelings show up without dressing them up first. Some days, my writing was soft and gentle. Other days, it was raw and a little sharp. Both kinds had a place on the page.
Around that time, I also started looking for places online where people shared their writing. I was nervous at first. The idea of letting strangers read my work made my stomach twist. But curiosity won. I wanted to know if anyone else felt the way I did.
Finding People Who Understood
The first evening I posted a small piece online, my hands were shaking. It was a short memory about my daughter losing her first tooth and putting it under her pillow. I hit the submit button and closed my laptop right away, like I had just done something wild.
The next morning, I opened the site again and saw that three people had left comments. One person said the story made them smile. Another said it reminded them of their own child. The third said, "I hope you keep writing. Your voice is gentle and real."
I read that line over and over: your voice is gentle and real. Nobody had ever said that to me before. I had never even thought of my writing as a voice. Up until then, it just felt like random thoughts. But to someone else, it sounded like something.
Little by little, I explored more spaces where people wrote and shared. Some were busy and lively. Some were small and quiet. I liked the ones where people gave kind feedback and talked about their daily writing habits. I loved reading about someone writing on their lunch break or staying up late with a notebook by the bed.
One day, while looking for places that felt steady and warm, I came across a longer guide that shared how people use writing to grow. I did not read it all in one sitting. I took my time with it, like you do with a cup of hot tea. Every section gave me a new idea to try, a new way to be gentle with myself as I learned.
What I liked most was knowing I was not alone. There were people my age starting fresh. There were people older than me, finally letting themselves write after decades of putting it off. There were people younger than my children, and still we felt connected through our stories.
Building Soft Routines
My writing life did not grow from big bursts of inspiration. It grew from small, repeatable things. Morning tea. A quiet corner. Ten minutes with a notebook. Fifteen minutes before bed. No huge goals. No giant word counts. Just simple steps I could handle on a tired day.
Some mornings, I wrote full pages. Other mornings, I only wrote a few lines. Some evenings, I sat with my notebook closed and just thought through a memory, letting it settle before I tried to catch it. I stopped calling days "good" or "bad" based on how much I wrote. If I showed up at all, I called it enough.
Over time, those tiny efforts added up. My notebooks got thicker. My thoughts grew clearer. My fears got smaller. I started to look forward to that time with myself, even on days when my mood was heavy.
I also began to notice how writing changed the way I experienced the rest of my day. A bird on the fence became a possible scene. A smell from the kitchen turned into a line I wanted to save. The way the sky looked just after sunset made me stop and stare a little longer, because I knew I might want to describe it later.
Listening To My Own Heart
One of the biggest gifts of daily writing was learning to listen to myself again. For years, I tuned my own thoughts out. There were meals to cook, towels to fold, forms to sign, and people to check on. I pushed my feelings aside so often that ignoring them became a habit.
Sitting with a blank page broke that habit. The page did not rush me. It did not ask for anything except honesty. Some days I wrote about joy. Some days I wrote about things I was ashamed of. Some days I wrote about fears I had never said out loud.
The more I wrote, the more I saw patterns. Certain memories kept coming back. Certain hopes kept rising to the surface, even when I tried to push them down. I started to see the shape of my own heart again, the way you might see the outline of a hill when the fog lifts.
I noticed that I love writing about small acts of care: making soup, folding a blanket over someone who has fallen asleep on the couch, leaving the porch light on for a late return. I noticed that I return to themes of second chances and quiet bravery. I would not have seen any of this if I had not given myself time to write often.
Why I Keep Going
People sometimes ask me now, "What are you going to do with all this writing? Are you trying to publish a book?" The honest answer is that I am not sure yet. Maybe one day. Maybe not. For now, the act of writing itself is enough.
I keep going because my days feel fuller when I write. I keep going because putting words on paper helps me make sense of things that used to sit in my chest like heavy stones. I keep going because somewhere out there, a stranger might read a few lines and feel a little less alone, the same way I did when I first started sharing my work.
I also keep going because writing has changed how I see myself. I am still a mother, a friend, a neighbor, a person who burns the toast sometimes and forgets where she put her keys. But now I am also a person who writes. Not in a distant "maybe someday" way. In a real, daily, here-and-now way.
If you are reading this and wondering if you are allowed to start late, I hope my story answers that. You are allowed. You are allowed to begin with one small memory, one short page, one quiet morning where you write instead of scrolling your phone.
You are allowed to be messy. You are allowed to learn slowly. You are allowed to take your time and find the kind of writing life that fits the person you are now, not the person you were years ago.
My life did not suddenly turn into a movie after I started writing. I still have bills to pay, errands to run, and floors to sweep. But now, tucked between all of that, I have something that belongs only to me: a notebook, a pen, and a growing stack of pages filled with my own voice.
Those pages remind me that it is never too late to begin again. Not with writing. Not with hope. Not with the quiet dream you have been carrying for years.
One small moment at a time, I found my voice by using it. And if I can do that with my busy past and my messy pages, I believe you can too.