Today is Monday, Day 104 in Bahrain, day 69 of The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. Today’s prompt was written by Sara Lettes. The task is to write a letter to the editor.

That should be a piece of cake in these days, but what will I choose?

I’m going to think about that some more and write it another day. Today, I will reflect on my first two letters to the editor.

When I was young and trying to conceive my first child, I decided it would be important to deal with my co-dependency and other issues I had being a child of an alcoholic. I approached my oldest sister, and she gave me a lot of resources to read and listen to, plus she shared long letters about the pain she experienced. I read Co-Dependent No More by  Melodie Beatty. Another thing I needed to do was go to a therapist who specialized in addiction issues. I went to some individual and group sessions. All in preparation for becoming a parent. By God’s grace and with some of the help I received hopefully it helped me to become a better parent than I would have been otherwise.

Anyway, at one of the meetings I had with my counselor, I had to make a poster with things I wanted to do but didn’t feel able to or didn’t feel I had permission to. I was to make a poster so I could hang it up to remind me to do those things. One of the items on my poster was “Write a letter to the editor.”

Well, it took me three years to write that letter, but I did. It was in the Grand Rapids Press. I can’t remember the circumstances exactly, but it was a rebuttal on another LTE about a story in the news. The writer explained that a “mountain was being made out of molehill” and the girl’s parents should teach her the playground rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me.” It was easy to write an LTE rebuttal saying that this rhyme was a lie and I would not teach it to my daughter, but instead I would teach my daughter to dismantle that rhyme and learn that our words are powerful for building up and for tearing down. No one should have to be subject to other’s taunts. I said I hoped other parents would do the same. In 2008 I wrote another LTE about reading critically.

Both of these letters to the editor I could write again today.