The prompt for my weekly contemplative writing classes a few weeks ago was on when you first knew you were good. The writings out of this prompt were powerful - as often pointing to realizing when we thought we were bad, or told we were bad, as times when we realized or heard we are good.
This writing in particular stuck out to me. Deb Lamers, one of my students, uses many lovely metaphors around goodness, and doesn't mince words about how an early sexual trauma, unfortunately quite familiar to many, changed her sense of inherent worth for a long time.
Read all the way to the end to see how she pairs Catholic School with Alice in Wonderland!
As always, student writings are unedited, presented as is, written in twenty minutes without planning.
Enjoy Deb's tenderness and kindness to herself.
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Once upon a time, I thought I was good. No one ever told me I was, but the way my grandpa and grandma, aunts, and uncles, and even my mother and father treated me, I thought I was good. A good girl.
