My mother worked at the Bank of Kigali, where every year the employees were given diaries. And, she had the habit of bringing them home and gifting them to my father, her relatives and her friends.
In 2000, she approached and handed me a small one, and told me, “I think you should have one of these. Every evening before you sleep, write down what has happened to you. Treat this as your special diary.” And it was on that evening that my passion to write was born.
Over the years, Mama gave me diaries and I always tried my best to document my life. Back then, there weren’t any smartphones or this social media takeover, so I stored my memories, not in pictures and videos at the tip of my fingers, but in words written and safely tucked away in my Bank of Kigali diaries. My high school crushes were safely recorded, my teenage and emotion-based blunders were written down, and a piece of my soul was kept on those beige pages.
I didn’t know it then, but as I grew up and kept this tradition, I realized that writing made me feel better. Writing became my safe place to express my feelings and process my thoughts. I documented my life experiences, my thoughts, my dreams, my fears, my loves and my aspirations.
Through this, I also discovered that I loved writing poems, which became my tools for deep, emotional expression. So then, instead of writing about my High School crushes as a young woman, I wrote poems for the gentlemen that I admired. Oh well, I never gave them their poems. In hindsight, when I wanted to reflect on relationships I had been involved in, my poems taught me so much about myself and my view of relationships at the different stages of my life.
Alright, you got that right; I am a hopeless romantic that writes poems when she is in love. And no, you, dear reader, will not read these poems anywhere. But let me tell you this…Writing down my emotions helped me so much!
Later, in my early thirties, I decided to try therapy, and it is there that I discovered that this is a technique that counsellors use to help their clients in processing their various issues.
Fast forward and we were in the pandemic stricken, chaotic year of 2020, and I couldn’t leave the house. Like everyone who was in lockdown, we almost lost our minds!
There was no leaving the house, no working, nothing. We had to stay in our homes, and only leave the house for emergencies.
It was during that time that I decided to rekindle my passion for writing. This time, I wasn’t writing in a Bank of Kigali diary, but on my laptop.
It was in the second week of the first 2020 lockdown in Kigali, that I took my laptop and decided to just write what I was feeling in the moment. In one hour, I had written five pages. I couldn’t believe it. But, I felt relieved.
I read my pages and decided to share them with a friend and asked him for his view on what I had written. After a few minutes, he called me back and told me that I had the potential to write a book, and there could have never been a greater time for me to sit still and actually start writing than in that season of lockdown.
He challenged me to think big, think of a book and think of publishing, and unknown to him, he reignited a fire in me that I had caught on the first day that Mama gave me a Bank of Kigali diary. Over the course of the following weeks in the lockdown, I made writing my full time job, and by the time the lockdown was lifted, I had written 70% of my memoir.
After the lockdown, I realized that my personal writings could actually be turned into something more. So, I set out to look for an editor and the rest is history. I have my first book and personal memoir, #SHAPED, slated to come out this year. I looked back at how each life experience shaped me to become who I am today, and it dawned on me that perhaps, someone somewhere could learn from some of these life experiences and do better. Or better still, become a better person. If anything, my contribution to the wellness of another human being is a great reward for me.
When Mama handed me that Bank of Kigali diary, she didn’t know that she was literally birthing an author. Unfortunately, she went to be with the Lord in 2012, and will never know from this side of heaven what that simple act did for me and for the upcoming generations. But, that simple act wasn’t that simple.
As you read this article, allow me to speak to you through these words: Every act that you do, whether small or grand, holds so much weight. It will impact your life but even more, it could change the lives of this generation and the ones to come.
Keep at it. Keep posing actions, whether small or grand, you just never know what seeds you have planted.